When Lizzy Banks finished the Giro d’Italia in 2023 after battling back from injuries and illness that had plagued her career, she had no idea it would be her last race. Nor could she see the nightmarish fight ahead to clear her name, an ordeal that would leave her mentally exhausted and with little appetite to continue in the sport she loved.

Banks, who competed at the highest levels of women’s cycling, was with team EF Education-Tibco-SVB when she was notified in July 2023 that a drug test had found traces of chlortalidone and formoterol in her system. That began a 10-month quest that finally ended when UK Anti-Doping found that she was not at fault.

But although the decision overturned the two-year suspension she was under, Banks wrote in her blog that she was mentally drained and had spent around £40,000 in the effort to reverse the doping decision. 

“This process has cost me a huge amount, literally and metaphorically. My husband and I spent every penny of our savings and the huge mental toll has left deep scars,” Banks said. “Since 28^th July 2023, I have worked relentlessly to understand, investigate and ultimately demonstrate how my sample could have come to be contaminated with chlortalidone.”

Banks, a professional cyclist from 2018 to 2023, said her health issues began with a flare-up of a long-standing asthma condition in 2020 that caused difficulty breathing. Her 2021 season and Olympic hopes were dashed by a serious concussion, and, as she was preparing to race the following year, COVID-19 struck. That led to pericarditis (inflammation of the lining of the heart) and other health issues, she wrote.

“I was relieved to finally have my health back in 2023,” Banks said. “I slowly clawed back my fitness and started to race again. Many people thought I would never get back but I defied the odds…”

Then she received the letter that informed her of the positive test. From that moment, “I was completely paralysed by fear,” Banks wrote. 

Mental health shattered, Banks retires

In her detailed blog post, Banks lays out the mind-boggling amount of work it took to finally overturn her suspension and get UK Anti-Doping to acknowledge that she was not at fault. Ultimately found innocent, she was nonetheless unenthusiastic about returning to the pro peloton.

“I knew already that professional cycling was over for me,” she wrote of her mindset during the ordeal. “Even if I wanted to go back, I didn’t think I ever could because of how damaging this has been and the way it has destroyed my husband and me. I could not risk putting us both through anything like this again.”

Banks said her “mental health had been ripped to shreds” and she began to have suicidal thoughts. “After reaching crisis point multiple times, I eventually sought the help I so desperately needed. It wasn’t a quick fix, it never is, but I am genuinely thankful to my psychiatrist and most importantly to all my loved ones who supported me so unequivocally that I am still here writing this today.”

Lizzy Banks’ battle is an eye-opening account of what cyclists accused of doping go through to challenge the findings. While there have been widely publicized cases of legitimate findings in doping cases, Banks’ situation shows that the anti-doping authorities don’t always get it right. And when that happens, the odds of proving them wrong can be stacked against the cyclist.