Emma Jane Pooley was born on 3 October 1982 and is a British-Swiss athlete in multiple sports.
41 Facts About Emma Pooley
1.
2.
Emma Pooley competes in long-distance and uphill mountain running and has represented Switzerland at the world trailrunning championships.
3.
Emma Pooley won an Olympic silver medal in the time trial in 2008 and was world time trial champion in 2010.
4.
Emma Pooley has won six UCI Women's Road World Cup one-day races, as well as several stage races including the ten-day Tour de l'Aude.
5.
Emma Pooley is three-times a British time trial champion and in 2010 won the British road race championships.
6.
Emma Pooley went on to win the ITU Powerman Duathlon World Championships at Powerman Zofingen in September 2014 and again in 2015.
7.
On 16 December 2015, Emma Pooley announced that she would be returning temporarily to cycling, seeking to qualify to represent Great Britain at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, as she felt the unusually mountainous time trial course on offer played to her strengths.
8.
Emma Pooley was a founding member of Le Tour Entier, which campaigned for a Women's Tour de France and improvements to women's cycling generally.
9.
Emma Pooley began studying for a mathematics degree at Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 2001 before switching to engineering and graduated with a first class honours degree in 2005.
10.
Emma Pooley started cycling at university after suffering an injury from cross-country running.
11.
Emma Pooley rode for the same trade team in 2006 when they were based in Belgium and registered as an international-level UCI Women's Team under the name Team FBUK.
12.
Emma Pooley represented Britain in the 2007 UCI Road World Championships, finishing 8th in the time trial and 9th in the road race.
13.
Emma Pooley finished 23rd in the Olympic road race on 11 August 2008, where she rode in support of Nicole Cooke's successful gold medal bid but her greatest success of the summer came in the time trial on 13 August, where she won the silver medal behind American Kristin Armstrong.
14.
In 2009, Emma Pooley signed to the Cervelo Test Team, where she remained until their disbandment at the end of 2011.
15.
Emma Pooley won the 2009 national time trial championships and took wins for the team in the Coupe du Monde de Montreal, GP de Plouay, and Grand Prix Costa Etrusca one-day races, and the final edition of the Grande Boucle Feminine, once dubbed "the women's Tour de France".
16.
Emma Pooley wore the leader's jersey for three stages of the Giro d'Italia Femminile, but finished the race in fourth place in the general classification after losing the race lead due to her poor descending, which she improved after the 2009 season with the help of her coach Tim Williams and British Cycling psychiatrist Steve Peters.
17.
Emma Pooley won two UCI Women's Road World Cup one-day races, the La Fleche Wallonne Feminine and the GP de Plouay, and earned a rainbow jersey by winning the time trial at the Road World Championships.
18.
Emma Pooley was British national time trial champion for the second year running and took her only national road race champion's jersey.
19.
In March 2011, Emma Pooley won the one-day Trofeo Alfredo Binda World Cup race for a second time, again after a lengthy lone breakaway.
20.
Emma Pooley took a step back from pro-racing when she signed for the long-established, but non-UCI registered, Swiss-based Bigla Cycling Team for the 2013 season in order to concentrate on completing her PhD in geotechnical engineering.
21.
In September 2013, Emma Pooley joined with professional cyclists Kathryn Bertine and Marianne Vos and professional triathlete Chrissie Wellington to form an activist group called Le Tour Entier, to petition ASO to launch a women's Tour de France.
22.
Emma Pooley claimed her third national time trial champion's jersey and won three stages and the mountains classification at the Giro d'Italia Femminile.
23.
Emma Pooley announced during the 2014 Commonwealth Games that she would retire from cycling after competing in the Games' road race in order to concentrate on competing in long-distance triathlons and mountain running.
24.
Emma Pooley made a return to competitive cycling in October 2015 when she competed at the Chrono des Nations time trial, where she finished sixth.
25.
In December 2015 she announced that she would aim to compete for Team GB in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro after being approached by British Cycling's technical director Shane Sutton, who had studied the Olympic road racing courses and felt that Emma Pooley would have a good chance of winning a medal in the time trial and of helping Lizzie Armitstead to win the road race.
26.
Emma Pooley confirmed that she would continue to compete in triathlon and duathlon competitions in 2016.
27.
Emma Pooley made her first appearance in a mass start road race for two years in April 2016 for the British national team at the Women's Tour de Yorkshire, where she helped teammate Alice Barnes to fourth place.
28.
At the Olympics, Emma Pooley rode in the service of Armitstead in the road race, whilst in the time trial she finished 14th, just over two minutes down on winner Kristen Armstrong.
29.
On 28 July 2018 Emma Pooley won the Brompton World Championships, which ran as part of the Ride London event.
30.
On 8 July 2020, Emma Pooley set a new Everesting women's record by climbing the Haggenegg climb, near Schwyz in Switzerland, ten times in a time of 8 hours 53:36.
31.
Emma Pooley won the Lausanne Marathon in October 2013 with a time of 2:44:29 hours, which placed her inside the top 20 fastest British women in 2013.
32.
Emma Pooley has enjoyed success in triathlon, finishing as top female at the inaugural Swissman triathlon and coming fifth in the Ironman Zurich event.
33.
In February 2015 Emma Pooley won the Challenge Philippines triathlon with a margin of more than ten minutes over the next competitor.
34.
Emma Pooley went on to finish ninth at the Ironman Asia-Pacific Championships in Melbourne the following month.
35.
In March 2016 Emma Pooley took a comfortable win at the Powerman Asia Duathlon Championships in Malaysia, where she finished with a 16-minute lead over the runner up.
36.
Emma Pooley added another international duathlon title when she won the European Powerman Middle Distance Duathlon Championships in Sankt Wendel in May 2017, finishing almost nine minutes ahead of the second-placed finisher.
37.
On 2 January 2015 Emma Pooley was a member of the winning team on Christmas University Challenge, representing Trinity Hall, Cambridge who defeated Balliol College, Oxford, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Hull.
38.
Emma Pooley's teammates were international rower Tom James, novelist Adam Mars-Jones and actor Dan Starkey.
39.
Between February 2018 and March 2019, Emma Pooley worked at Global Cycling Network as a presenter.
40.
Emma Pooley has lived in or near Zurich in Switzerland since 2006, and in December 2013 completed her doctorate in geotechnical engineering at ETH Zurich, supervised by Sarah Springman, a former British triathlete who is a vice-president of the International Triathlon Union.
41.
Emma Pooley received an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law from the University of East Anglia in July 2012 and an honorary PhD from the University of Strathclyde in July 2015.