Together with teammates Laura Trott and Dani King, Rowsell pedaled to glory in the women's team pursuit at the Olympic velodrome, smashing the world record three times along the way in the qualifiers, semis and final.
Victory was clearly an incredible personal triumph for Rowsell, then 23, but it was also a source of inspiration to fellow alopecia sufferers who saw the young Briton stand bold and bald on top of the podium. You can still do whatever you want to. Rowsell has endured alopecia areata a condition that causes partial or total hair loss for most of her life and sports a wig when she's not on the track.
I used to love doing plaits and hair braids and I didn't understand why it was happening. Obviously, I was quite upset. READ: What it feels like to be a bald woman. Doctors think alopecia is an autoimmune disease which causes the body to attack the hair follicles.
While the underlying causes remain a mystery, the psychological toll is well known. Many sufferers experience bouts of depression, anxiety and social phobias. It was difficult. I can't deny that it wasn't," Rowsell admits. I never wanted to shy away and say, 'Oh well, I'm just going to stay indoors and never go out. It was an attitude that served her well when talent scouts from British Cycling turned up at her secondary school in Cheam, Surrey.
The village, located a few miles southwest of London, is better known for its commuters than its pedalers. But Rowsell changed all that. It was just purely by chance they came to the school and I was like, 'That sounds like a fun way to spend an afternoon. I'll have a go. She won her race and was invited back for more testing, which revealed the year-old possessed a good power-to-weight ratio for her age.
From there it was on to a talent development squad before starting racing in , when she quickly made her mark by winning the 2 km Pursuit at the Junior British National Track Championships. While Rowsell races professionally on the road and in time trials, it is on the track in both team pursuit and latterly individual pursuit races that she has risen to the very top of the sport.
It's a lap race -- which is 3 km -- and there's somebody on the opposite side of the track who you are chasing," she explains. The winner is the rider who catches the other rider or, as is more frequent, the one who sets the fastest time. Team pursuit, meanwhile, is run over 4 km with four riders previously three on each team.
Things haven't go too badly for Rowsell since joining the senior ranks. Email: joannaenquiries gmail. Message sent. Jo Rowsell. About Me. By Kathryn Knight for MailOnline. Equally difficult for her to take in, however, is her overnight transformation into inspirational role model. Hair loss condition: Olympic cycling heroine Joanna Rowsell has suffered from alopecia for 13 years.
There have, of course, been many moving and inspiring moments during London All over the world, commentators praised her courage, while her website was inundated with messages from fellow alopecia sufferers thanking her for making such a positive statement.
It should be said at this point that, in the flesh, Rowsell is enormously pretty. Fresh-faced and lean, she has luminous blue-green eyes and an impish smile. Joanna, who grew up in Cheam, Surrey, was diagnosed aged ten when her thick auburn hair started to disappear. One eyebrow went, then the other, then the hair from her scalp in big chunks along with her eyelashes. She was, she admits, bewildered. Countless visits to doctors and specialists with her parents, bank worker Roger and school accounts manager Amanda, both 52, all ended with the same message: the condition was incurable.
By the time Joanna went to secondary school, she was completely bald save for a few tufts. It must have been agonising: adolescence is hard enough without the added burden of a physical condition that sets you apart.
Inspirational: Joanna says she has about ten wigs and changes them according to her mood. In some ways my way of dealing with it was not to deal with it, to pretend it was a phase.
On reflection, she admits that she hid herself away. I threw myself into my studies. My teachers used to tell me I would burn out as I worked so hard. But, to me, working hard stopped me worrying about the future. Then there was the cycling: at 15, Joanna was scouted by the British Cycling talent team when they visited her school in Sutton, Surrey.
At the time she had little interest in cycling but, after clocking her incredibly fast time in a school trial, the scouts felt she had raw talent and she started to train. Then, at the age of 16, the thing she had longed for happened: her hair started to grow back. Within a few months it fell to below her ears. But it changed everything. It was so nice to leave the house and feel normal. My heart would sink when I saw another clump coming out.
She went through that process again three years ago, when her hair again grew back in patches, although this time only for a month. After the previous cycle of hope followed by disappointment, it must have been another crushing blow.
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