Incredible, but vital, interview with Kseniya Tuhai here (in Russian).
For those that have followed in here for a few years, Tuhai was, a few years ago, one of the most promising young climbers in the world. She'd been top 10 of the Giro Rosa at 21, followed by further top 10s at the Route de France and the Tour de l'Ardêche where she was 4th. But then, things went very awry. She couldn't finish a race in 2017, even dropping nearly 10 minutes in a 50km stage in the Emakumeen Bira and being eliminated hors délais in the kind of stage she ordinarily specialised in. Although she had a contract with Cogeas for 2018, after leaving BePink, she never raced again.
I remember seeing a couple of social media posts and wondering if the dreaded eating disorders had hit her - she was very thin, and I was of course aware of the tales of Bastianelli and of Abbott - and she went to radio silence for several months, before resurfacing with a new profile headed "ex-cyclist, cured of anorexia". That only seems to tell half the story, though. Likewise, you could tell from her social media that she had a deep respect and support for Alena Amialiusik, and it seems that their relationship was a really important cog in the machinery.
Kseniya tells of how at New Year in 2016, she was having a rocky patch in her relationship, leading to them going to different New Year parties, and at the party she went to, she witnessed the suicide of an old schoolfriend which put her in a state of shock. She didn't dare talk to her family, and her boyfriend was ignoring her, and she barely moved or ate for two weeks. Coming out of this time, Amialiusik, who had been functioning as something of an older sister/mentor figure for her, and her boyfriend took care of her, and forced her to eat because they were worried about her. The problem was that her mental state and subsequent problems led to positive sporting results and form in the early season, which got the team manager enthused, and she became obsessed with keeping her weight down for fear that overeating would cause her to lose form and favour.
Obviously the 2016 season was a good one for Kseniya, but her eating habits were incredibly unhealthy by that point. She describes eating a spoonful of peanut butter, and then the following day going to the gym with no food or water as penance for the calories she'd taken on. At the end of the year she broke up with her boyfriend once and for all, and comfort ate various unhealthy foods. Her body weight ballooned from 38kg to 50kg, which she tried to 'correct' with laxatives and forcible vomiting; she described a cycle of training on the bike, crying in the locker room at the Minsk velodrome, going home, eating, vomiting, and crying. After going to a psychotherapist and being prescribed medication to normalize her appetite, she started to bring her life back into line, and took a contract with Cogeas to try to return to the sport.
Her description: "By April, I had no bike or clothes", and spent her meagre earnings on travelling to races in Italy and Cyprus, only to be told that, actually, instead of the trade team Cogeas, the riders would be entering as a Russian national team, which she obviously couldn't enter, being Belarusian. The team started to exile her, and being in poor health she couldn't force her way into races on form either, and so, now sick, depressed and penniless, she returned home to Minsk and checked herself into a psychiatric hospital. She tried to call her ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend, with the result that she had her phone confiscated; from the sounds of things (if I've understood correctly) she was allowed visitors on a points system based on whether she was actually eating the food provided for her, which seems like a combination of motivation and barbarism. She even wrote a suicide note, but didn't carry through on the thought.
She left the psychiatric hospital to complete her exams, and despite some pleas (particularly from Tatsiana Sharakova, whose letter she describes as being particularly touching, though when Tatsiana tried to call her after leaving the hospital, she couldn't bring herself to answer the phone), decided not to return to the sport (even though it had been one of the justifications she had given for leaving the hospital). She does say, regretfully, that Amialiusik hadn't been in contact, she accepts that Alena had already done a lot for her and without her it might have been a lot worse, but it does rather further the impression I got of the relationship between the two of them, that she somewhat idolized and revered Alena, and it seems like she was hurt by that - however it seems the two have reconciled.
Most pleasingly, she does mention that she does have plans to return to cycling, but she does not have faith that she can mentally or physically handle it at the moment; her testing data is good, and she does ride a lot and constantly train, but she doesn't know whether returning to the sport as anything more than a hobbyist is something that she should do. She left Minsk and all of the associated memories to start afresh, working first as a waitress and then an administrator at a health club in Moscow, experimenting with her appearance, and then taking a job in the Crimea, and reverting back to her natural appearance, which is where she currently is, although she does say that she will probably return to Minsk soon. She came to watch the European Games Road Race, which were what she was originally supposed to be competing for and how she justified checking herself out of the psychiatric hospital.
She's in a much better place now, with or without cycling, and for that we should be thankful. If she can come back, then that's great, but just making it back into the péloton will be triumph enough for her and clearly it's not something that she
needs as she has found peace with what happened and how it all went down. And if she can't, or decides that it's not worth the risk to try to return to the professional ranks, then that should be no problem. The people she has around her now are much better for her, and she still has friends within the sport - particularly Kanstantsin Klimiankou, who is mentioned by name. She's settled down and got married (she does take care to point out that a lot of the relationship problems from before were self-inflicted, but clearly the earlier relationship was, if not a catalyst then certainly a lightning rod for her problems), and all of the big names from the Belarusian team - Amialiusik, Sharakova and the national coaches - were there, so obviously it seems there are no hard feelings, presumably now that she's been able to 'come clean' so to speak and they can understand a lot more about what created that situation - and it seems she's come through the other side. She only just turned 24, so she's still got a long, and hopefully happy, road ahead of her whichever way she chooses to go.