Victoria Pendleton, the Olympic gold medalist, is swapping cycling Lycra for recycled haute couture in a bid to encourage people to live more sustainable lives.
The design by Wayne Hemmingway is based on a green Union Flag and made entirely from recycled materials.
Pendleton will wear the creation on the first Green Britain Day, organised by EDF Energy to inspire Britons to cut the UK's carbon footprint in time for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
EDF Energy is asking people around Britain to "do something green for the team" on July 10 and sign-up to Team Green Britain a website full of ways to cut carbon emissions
Pendleton is supporting the initiative along with a number of her Olympic team mates including rowing champion James Cracknell, swimmer Eleanor Simmonds - Britain's youngest Paralympic gold medallist, rower Tom James and gymnast Louis Smith.
The day will culminate in a concert at The Eden Project in Cornwall starring musicians Paul Weller and the band Florence and the Machine.
Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of EDF Energy, which is sponsoring the London games as sustainability partner, said: "Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing us. As an energy company, EDF Energy has a responsibility to be at the heart of the solution to climate change and we have the expertise to help people use their energy more efficiently."
Sebastian Coe, chair of the games' organising committee, commented: "London 2012 is all about using the power of the games to inspire change and it's fantastic to see EDF Energy, the first sustainability partner of London 2012, taking this on in their activation.
"The Green Britain Day campaign is a great way for people to come together and make a difference."
Victoria's secrets
Sprint cycling is about machismo. So how did petite, feminine Victoria Pendleton become world champion? She tells Emma John
Some years ago, when Victoria Pendleton was introduced to her new French-Canadian coach, his verdict was instantaneous. 'He looked me up and down, and said, "You're too skinny, too puny to be a sprint cyclist."' In a sport that requires explosive moments of acceleration, the men and women have always been physically imposing: short limbs, huge muscles and necks like fire hydrants. Lined up against her opponents, the now 27-year-old Pendleton - lithe, petite and unashamedly feminine - looks entirely out of place. Yet she is the world champion, and - if we dare say it out loud - Britain's surest thing at the Beijing Olympics.
When she entered track cycling's world championships in Mallorca last year, no British woman had ever won a sprint event. Pendleton competed in three of the toughest - the 200metres sprint, the team sprint (with Shanaze Reade), and the keirin (a mass sprint from a rolling start). She won them all. The Great Britain team finished with 11 medals, five ahead of their nearest rivals, Australia; triple-world champion Pendleton went on to be named Sportswoman of the Year at two separate national awards last December.
The general perception of cycling has, perhaps, never been worse; mention the sport to most people and they think of road racing, its doping scandals and tarnished Tour de France winners. But track cycling - which has none of road racing's commercial enticements - has grown into one of the UK's strongest sporting disciplines, and the one most likely to bring home golds at this summer's Games. It also has a considerably cleaner record. Pendleton - a stickler for the rules, who gives her address to the drugs testers every day - has become its charismatic icon.
'When I was a child,' Pendleton says, 'and my dad asked me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I never ever knew. All I wanted to do was be really, really good at something ... Once you've had a taste of that you want to do it again, to better it. I need it.'
We meet in Manchester, where Pendleton will compete in the 2008 world championships this month and which is her base for 10 months of the year - it's the only city in England with a velodrome where she and the British team can practise. 'The only problem,' she says with a laugh, 'is that all the things Manchester is great for - the clubs, the music scene - is the stuff I can't do.' Which is a shame, because you suspect chatty, sparky Pendleton would be brilliant fun on a night out.
Whatever her coach may have said, she is not puny. Her figure is a taut, compact powder keg. Her arm and leg muscles are elegantly defined; her sculpted abdominals could make a man weep into his protein shake. While endurance cyclists tend to be lean and sinewy, Pendleton relies on pure strength. 'There isn't a perfect body type,' she says, 'but as a track cyclist I just have to make sure I'm as powerful as possible compared to my body weight. You don't want to grow too much in size because that would work against you aerodynamically. My strength-to-weight ratio is very high and that's probably why I've had so much success.' She must be able to run 100m damn fast. 'I don't know,' she giggles. 'I'm not allowed to run. I'd pick up an injury instantly because my body's not used to it.'
The majority of her training, when she is not pounding her bike round a 250m track at speeds of up to 40mph, is lifting weights in the gym. We're not talking the shoulder-press and lat pulls here; no, this is the Olympic-style 'powerclean', lifting barbells over her head like a fairground strongman. She loves it, she says, because 'it's a mini-sport within my own sport'. Another opportunity to feed that gnawing competitive drive.
Sprint cycling lives on machismo. The 200m sprint - the only female discipline in this summer's Olympics - is the toughest event of them all, a one-on-one pursuit race in which two cyclists stalk each other warily around the steeply banked track until one makes a break and they race to the finish at lung-bursting speed. Reflexes must be instantaneous; muscles ready to explode; psyches unassailable. In this cat-and-mouse sport of anticipation and reaction, mental strength is just as important as physical. As Pendleton points out: 'You can be the fastest out there and make a mistake and come last, because you look over your wrong shoulder for a split second.'
Trackside, image is everything. 'How you portray yourself and how you appear, that's a very important part of the game. You make sure you seem as strong and confident as possible, you don't want to show any of your weaknesses.' Competitors act the part from the moment they enter the contest. 'You stick your chest out, keep your head high.'
As a result, the sport has tended to prize masculinity above all other traits, and even the women have buzzcuts (or, in the case of the Ukrainian team, Pendleton tells me, horrendous mullets). Body consciousness has, she believes, kept a lot of women out of the sport. 'If you show a girl a picture of a sprint cyclist, a guy all stacked up with massive muscles, they're not going to want to do that.' Until Shanaze Reade, world champion BMXer, swapped camps and joined her at the track, Pendleton trained for years without a single female colleague.
She has determined to stay different, to retain and celebrate her femininity. It has been suggested to her that her long wave of dark brown hair may be a hindrance, but defiantly it remains. The day before we meet, she had a manicure at the Lowry Hotel's spa, a little luxury that means a great deal because come competition time she won't be allowed to have nails long enough to paint. She's been around 'the guys' - veteran British cyclists such as Chris Hoy and Bradley Wiggins - long enough to cope with their teasing if she wears a dress, or says something 'ditzy'. After all, when her gears need changing, it's Pendleton who plays the mechanic.
Having to keep up with the boys is nothing new for Pendleton. Her father, Max, first put her on a bike when she was six and she grew up competing fiercely with her twin brother, Alex. She couldn't get enough of sport, whether it was tackling girls in netball or taking on the lads at mixed hockey. 'I did everything - even cross-country running, though I hated it. I always picked games up pretty fast but no one ever told me I could be an athlete. Only my dad, and you don't believe your parents, do you? They have to say that you're good.'
Her dad is mentioned a lot; she clearly holds him in a great deal of esteem and affection. It was he who spotted, and nurtured, both a natural sporting ability and a desire to win. Her elder sister Nicola, whom he also taught to ride, found the pressure too much; Alex, on the other hand, was too laid-back. 'Sometimes it was really hard,' Pendleton says. 'When we went riding when I was young, my dad would go out a long way in front and I'd have to catch him up. He wouldn't even look back. I'd think, "Does he even care if I'm here?"' She worries after telling that story; she doesn't want to make her dad sound like a pushy parent, because she's grateful for all he did. Fair enough, I say - you wouldn't have kept cycling if you didn't love it. But Pendleton shakes her head; she prefers to be honest. 'I didn't love it some of the time. Some of the time I hated it and wanted to give up. But I'm so glad I didn't, because otherwise I wouldn't have had the opportunities I have now.'
Pendleton was spotted by a national coach at the age of 16, but wanted to finish her education before concentrating on sport. After graduating from Northumbria University with a sports science degree in 2002, she was ready to take up cycling full-time; having made a very creditable debut in the Commonwealth Games that year, she was sent to the World Cycling Centre at Aigle in south-west Switzerland. For two years, she trained every day. By the time she arrived in Athens for her first Olympics in 2004 she was considered a genuine contender.
It was a disaster. 'I was totally underprepared to be in a competition at that level, psychologically and physically. I'd been basically thrown to the lions.' Even before the contest began, the Olympic village had overwhelmed her. 'Surreal is the only word to describe it. People from all over the world are interested in you. You eat in a giant dining hall. You take drinks out of cupboards and they're all free. It's just bizarre.
'All these different nations are supposedly living in harmony, but you sense the very high levels of stress, you can feel it. A lot of people hide it well, but underneath everybody is anxious about performing.' She found herself in a mental limbo. 'It was almost like I wasn't there. I wasn't fully aware of being there, concentrating and focused like I should have been.' She berated herself for her poor performances without understanding them; in the final reckoning, she finished ninth.
Pendleton admits that, unlike her twin brother, she is the kind of person who gets 'strung out'. And while she still had to improve physically, it was her mind that really needed rebuilding. Steve Peters, the British team's psychologist, worked with her, breaking down assumptions and beliefs that were causing her to tense up at crucial moments, not unlike a wheel locking up under braking. He asked her why she cycled, what drove her to succeed; gradually, he helped her gain invaluable perspective. 'In the weird environment of an athlete, your performance is the most important thing in the world: how fast you are today, whether you're going to be faster tomorrow. You feel judged on what you're going to achieve, because that's what sport's about. If someone says it's the taking part that counts, I say, "Not in my world it isn't."
'It sounds really obvious,' she adds, 'but sometimes you have to take a step back and look at sport for what it is. I have to be realistic about what I do: at the end of the day, what I do is entertainment.'
It must have worked, because only a year later, in 2005, Pendleton won her first world championship gold. A gold and a silver followed at the 2006 Commonwealth Games; then, last year in Mallorca, she achieved her treble - and became the one person that every female track cyclist now wants, and needs, to beat. Her closest rival is Natalia Tsylinskaya of Belarus, who has won eight world titles herself and is unlikely to enjoy being ousted as queen of the track. Pendleton is also keeping her eye on the Chinese: 'There are a few girls coming through who have shown a lot of improvement and are a threat because you don't know what they're capable of yet.'
We eat a Wagamama takeaway while we chat; she has ordered a yaki soba without even looking at the menu, a sure sign, I suggest, of a regular patron. She grins - when she was on a training camp in Perth, Australia, earlier in the year she and Chris Hoy could be found at the franchise most evenings. 'Food is the one indulgence I can afford myself,' she says. Ah, the life of the professional sportswoman - no alcohol, no late nights, and, I imagine, a sex ban from the coach. 'Oh no, we're allowed to do that,' she says. 'Just not with each other.'
With 10 months of her year spent on the international circuit, and the remainder spent feeling knackered, she has to live what she calls 'a very sensible existence'. When new acquaintances ask what she does in her spare time, she tells them: 'I eat and I sleep. I enjoy a nice sit-down with a cup of tea and a piece of cake.' She used to do dress-making - 'I love sewing, but you can't take a sewing machine away with you when you go to training camps' - and she still enjoys baking; her favourite recipe is a 'French cake' she learnt from her mum, a fat-free sponge layered with apricot jam and Grand Marnier and covered in dark chocolate (and if you're not salivating at the thought of that, you need your taste buds checked). She misses her girlfriends from her home in Stotfold, Bedfordshire, and doesn't like to talk about her day job in company ('My life seems quite dull - I ride around in circles').
If she sounds like an old-fashioned girl, a few minutes watching her power around the track will shake the impression. This month, she is defending her world titles at her home circuit. If she is successful, she will be Britain's most talked-of Olympic contender; and for these Games, she will be prepared. 'The experience [of 2004] will mean a lot,' she says. 'I think it will make a significant difference to how I will approach this one.' And her rivals? 'They're probably more worried about me, which is a comforting thought.'
