'I do this sport because I love it' – Amanda Spratt still finding new adventures in retirement season and 20th year of racing in Europe

After Amanda Spratt announced her retirement at the start of the year you might think she'd spend the season doing things for the final time, but in an odd twist she is currently riding the UAE Tour Women for the first time in her long career.

With all its glittering high rise buildings and choking traffic, the UAE is modernity itself, but despite only being in its fourth edition, the UAE Tour Women is a throwback to a time Spratt remembers well.

When she arrived in Europe with the Australian national team in 2006 there were no huge team busses, riders would change in a minibus with towels blanking out the windows. There might be changing rooms in the car park in the UAE, but teams still do their briefings in the car park.

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"A huge amount has changed," Spratt told Cyclingnews after the Lidl-Trek team briefing before Saturday's third stage.

"I've been in Europe since 2006, it's almost like a different sport now, we would never catch an aeroplane to a race, we would have just the one van and we would drive up and down from Italy to Belgium for the races. One soigneur, one mechanic, one director and maybe in the year you got one or two sets of kit. Everything has become just so much better.

"I do this sport because I love it and I think anyone that's still doing it at my age or who went through that period, you can genuinely believe they're doing it because they love it, because we certainly weren't making money back then to support ourselves. So it's been like also really special to see the way it's grown and to see what it is now and what it's going to become in the future.

"I think mostly everything is for the better, for example having the maternity leave, I think that was a huge step forward. I particularly think the Tour de France is a big one in convincing the sponsors that it's a sport they want to invest in and we've really seen teams and sponsors come on board through that."

However, like everything in life, Spratt says it's not all roses.

"The only area that still needs work is that level underneath the WorldTour, ProTour level, the Continental teams. The concern is finding a way that we can continue having a good calendar there. Ensuring there's that calendar there, because I'm a classic example of someone who took many, many years to develop. I went through juniors with Marianne Vos and Ellen van Dijk, they were good immediately, but for me it took years before I was there, if I was coming through these days I'd probably just be a talent that that didn't succeed, that went back to Australia."

Since her arrival in professional cycling's heartland Spratt has built an impressive palmarès, with 2018 and 2019 the stand out years. In those two seasons she won a stage of the Giro d'Italia, leading the race for a day before finishing third overall behind team mate Annemiek van Vleuten, repeating the feat the following year.

She won the four-day Emakumeen Bira, the second and third of her three Tour Down Under GC titles and there was a hatful of podiums too, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and two at the World Championships chief among them. But when asked what was her greatest achievement, Spratt didn't focus on one event.

"For sure my longevity in the sport. I think there's not that many riders that have raced for so many years and across the top teams, I'm really proud of that and the way I've come had several roles," she said.

"I've been that young rider who doesn't know anything to a domestique helping the leader, to leader and now supporting the younger riders, that's an achievement in itself. Results wise 2018 and 2019 were my biggest year, they're some of my proudest results."

When anyone announces their retirement, the first question they're often asked is 'why?'

"It just felt like the right time, it's not that I'm not liking it anymore, I just felt like it's a nice point in my career to stop, I still love the sport, I still love racing, for sure I want to stay in the sport moving forward," Spratt explains. "There are these amazing young riders coming through and it's getting harder and harder and I just feel like it's my time to take a step back.

"I really like the idea of finishing when I want to finish, on my own terms and when I'm still going well, all of those factors made the decision kind of easy and I'm really happy that I could announce it at the beginning of the season and enjoy the Australian races with many of my fans and family."

While the future remains uncertain, Spratt saying she owes herself time to breathe, she has taken the UCI's sports director's course, so that may be one avenue for the future. In the short term, though, there's the small factor of Sunday's final UAE Tour stage to the top of Jebel Hafeet, where one of the teams's young riders, Niamh Fisher-Black is sure to benefit from Spratt's experience.