Julie Speight

Julie Robyn Speight (born 1 October 1966) is an Australian former cyclist, eight time National champion, and Australia's first female Olympic and Commonwealth Games track cyclist, competing in the women's sprint event at the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics[1] and winning a silver medal in the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games.[2] At the time, she was described as 'a class above any other female rider in the country.'[3]

Speight is the only Australian to have held both the national Road Race title and the national Track Sprint title in the same year (1983).[2]

In 1984 Speight was selected to compete in the inaugural Women's Road Race at the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. Australian cycling officials, however, later reneged by electing not to send a women's team to Los Angeles.[4] Instead, Speight was sent to the Yu King Cup Road Race in China where she became the first Australian female cyclist to win an international race.[4]

When Speight started competing in the early 1980s there were only two national track events in which women could enter - the Sprint, and the Scratch Race.[5] During her career, Speight lobbied for more women's events to be added as state and national titles[6] and was successful in her campaign to have a Points Race included in the 1990 Australian National Track Championships.[5]

In 2017 Speight was recognised for her trailblazing contribution to Australian women's cycling through her induction into the Cycling Australia Hall of Fame.[7]

Speight lives in Hobart, Tasmania, where she is on the Executive of the Tasmanian Olympic Council and also works to raise awareness of concussion related injuries, namely Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in athletes.[8]