RIO DE JANEIRO -- Mountain biker Emily Batty's voice still cracks when she speaks about how difficult it was to get over a training crash that left her with a broken collarbone just days before the London Olympics.
The experience being so valuable, she never considered pulling out of the 2012 race. Batty fought through the pain en route to a disappointing 24th-place finish.
"I knew that I had to experience that," she said. "I needed to feel that pressure. I needed to see how I responded to the crowd, how I responded to the intensity of everything coming at me so I could carry that into Rio."
Now healthy again and enjoying a strong season, the Brooklin, Ont., cyclist is coming off a third-place finish at last month's world championship. The No. 8-ranked rider feels the Deodoro Olympic Park course suits her well as it's comparable to her winter training site in Tucson, Ariz.
"It's like desert heat, high speed, loose kitty litter we would say, over hard-packed," Batty said in a recent interview. "It's very unusual terrain (for competition). You have to know how to properly corner, how to properly brake. I'm pretty fortunate that I've had similar terrain to train on."
Batty won silver at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and took sixth place at the world championships that year. She enjoyed a one-two finish at last year's Pan Am Games with longtime teammate Catharine Pendrel of Kamloops, B.C., who will join her for the Rio race Saturday.
Batty reached the World Cup podium in 2012 in her second season as an elite racer. She entered the London Games full of confidence and had been around the Olympic course over a dozen times before her fall.
"I didn't see past that day. I didn't see past that dream," she said. "So having it ripped away was just like, I still (get) emotional just thinking about it. It was an incredible learning experience because I had seen the darkest part of my life per se, but I also learned that with time things do heal."
Batty went down near a launch at the exit of a descent. She went over the bars and landed awkwardly on her upper back and shoulder area.
"That was three days before my event," she said. "That was trauma and that put me into a bit of a depression for quite a while actually. I did have some rib injuries as well in the same incident. Overcoming that has taken years."
"I'm still healing from that but I've learned so much about myself and what I can persevere through," she added. "I've just learned a lot about who I am and what I want in life and where I want to go. So definitely having that injury at the most important part of my life was definitely the biggest obstacle I've ever overcome."
Leandre Bouchard of Alma, Que., and Raphael Gagne of Quebec City will compete in the men's race on Sunday.
