After winning a silver medal in the women’s team pursuit with team-mates Ally Wollaston, Bryony Botha and Emily Shearman at the Paris Olympics in August, the Invercargill-born athlete visited the city last week to catch up with her colleagues from Academy Southland and Cycling Southland, and take part in a meet-and-greet at The Langlands.
"It’s just really cool to come back home, to Invercargill. I grew up cycling here and spent a lot of time here as well, so it’s just cool to be able to give back to the people who helped you," she told the Southland Express.
"I think it’s probably the best part and it’s [the medal] meant to be shared and passed around. So yeah, it’s amazing."
The 25-year-old grew up on a farm in Riversdale and moved to Clyde when she was 10.
While she moved to Central Otago, she still travelled down South for holidays and to visit her grandparents and friends.
"I was born here and all my grandparents were here and my uncles. So I would say I am a Southlander from Clyde. So I can double dip on both," she said, with a laugh.
When asked the one thing she could not miss when she was in the Deep South, she did not hesitate.
"Cheese rolls — definitely. They do make them in Clyde, but not so much up north. But the cheese rolls here are quite good."
Down to earth and very honest, Shields confessed the silver medal — at first — was not as exciting as people thought.
"It’s unfortunate in our event that you have to lose to get a silver medal, so our first reaction was really gutting.
"But by the time we got on the podium, it was kind of like, ‘oh, we did everything we could and this is pretty cool’."
This was the second Olympics for Shields who attended Tokyo in 2021 as a reserve cyclist.
While she was proud of her achievements, she confessed she was still undecided if she would pursue classification for another Olympics or what would come next.
"Definitely the further I get from it, the more I’m like, ‘Wow, that was pretty cool. I want to do that again’ as you block out all the bad stuff.
"I’m struggling with the question what is next if I’m honest, at the moment, but I’m just feeling my way through it and having a bit of time," Shields said.
"The best thing is that now I can just do it for fun — anything now is just a bonus, so we’ll just see how the next few years unfold."
