As she threw her hands up in celebration after crossing the finish line to become New Zealand women's road racing champion in February, few knew Olivia Ray's career was in tatters back in the US. In an exclusive interview with Tom Dillane, the 23-year-old admits to taking performance-enhancing substances amid a tumultuous relationship while living as a professional rider in the States last year.
Olivia Ray claims she didn't take drugs to win a race, but to win her boyfriend's approval.
She remembers the first time they were casually injected into the conversation. While dining at a Mexican restaurant in Atlanta, an ambition the New Zealander had expressed to own a gym once her cycling career ended suddenly swerved into dangerous territory.
The conversation with her then-boyfriend of one month, Jackson Huntley Nash, was filtered with questions: "'Oh well you know how bodybuilders do it, right?"... "What do you know about drugs?"
Like many aspects of the pair's relationship, she claims the subject escalated at an uncontrollable rate. That next day, around late May 2021, Ray says she took her first Clenbuterol tablet - a steroid-like weight loss substance banned by sports bodies across the world. It would be almost another six months before she tried it again.
But it was one of several performance-enhancing drugs allegedly photographed at Nash's home, presented in a US court in January this year. Also present in those photos were anabolic steroid testosterone and a drug used to mask the negative side effects of steroids - Anastrozole.
As part of that court case, another former partner of Nash - an amateur competitive cyclist on the US Crits tour - accused him of years of abusive behaviour, to ex-girlfriends, including being a "danger" to Ray.
After two transpacific phone interviews with the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) this year, Ray is no longer so shy about her true feelings on her first direct encounter with performance-enhancing drugs.
"Like, it interested me, only because it's so taboo," she told the Weekend Herald.
"It's not something that's talked about and when it is, it's so negative. It sort of changed my perspective on why people do it . . . I didn't necessarily choose to take these, but I wasn't necessarily forced.
'I'm not denying it. I'm very open that I did drugs. I'm just coming to deal with the consequences now."
The Auckland-born 23-year-old admits she has "always struggled" with body image issues, suffering from an eating disorder and descents into a "psychological hatred" of her own physicality.
But Ray definitely hadn't been doing badly at races.
In mid-2021, she had just been promoted to a professional rider for US team Human Powered Health had won 19 national races on the US college circuit. She'd won another seven elite adult road races in New Zealand.
Ray had been living in the US since 2017 on a scholarship at Savannah College in Atlanta, Georgia. Ever since then, she had been a racing nomad at events across North America with only part of her time at her college dormitory, and latterly Nash's apartment.
As Kiwi Olympian and former world track champion Dylan Kennett told the Weekend Herald: "I just don't think she needed to do any of that. I don't think anyone does but she certainly had enough horsepower as it is. Guilty or not she doesn't need the stuff. For an endurance athlete she is one of the rare ones who can slog it out. If she's there at the finish, she'll win."
This raw talent was on show as recently as February, with Ray maintaining she took banned performance-enhancing drugs only briefly late last year.
Ray is the current New Zealand road racing national champion after beating a field of experienced pro riders who battled the gusty remnants of Cyclone Dovi through the Cambridge streets on February 13.
Her pro team lauded the win on their website as "rocketing Ray into an extremely exclusive club of cyclists that have won both their national road and criterium titles".
Drug Free Sport NZ are yet to reveal if a dalliance with banned substances in the months prior compromises that win.
And it is unlikely her title will remain once USADA hands down their long-awaited decision on Ray's professional future. She faces a ban of four years from competition - a length of time she says will end her career barely before it has begun.
But how did USADA find out? And what series of events now has Ray living permanently back in Auckland, having blocked all contact with Nash, and perjured herself in a US court?
In an exclusive interview with the Weekend Herald, Ray offers her confession.
'I believed she was in danger'
Ray sits in a cafe on Ponsonby Rd in central Auckland picking at a croissant and looking remarkably relaxed given the chaos she's endured over the past few months.
Back home permanently, no longer competitively bike racing and working in a retail clothing store over the road, she seems unburdened.
The USADA decision is looming any week now, and she's been told she may only get a 30-minute warning before the decision is public.
"Honestly, the not knowing has been very challenging because I've started a new life - a job that I've really enjoyed," Ray says.
"I've been running, but not riding my bike. I was saying in the beginning, if it's more than a year [the ban], I'm not going to go back to cycling. I race to win, that's why I train."
In two separate two-hour interviews with USADA, Ray admitted to taking Anavar and Clenbuterol late last year.
"I took stuff from about November to December, just the month of November."
"I wasn't racing. I wasn't going to have anything in me for when I raced. I thought in a way it was acceptable because I wasn't affecting the race, I wasn't cheating. I was doing it in a safe space on my own to see what it was like. That was the thinking that he [Nash] had created, 'just try it blah blah blah … '
"In my head it was, I didn't hurt anyone and I did it when I wasn't racing, I wasn't tested, I've never tested positive, I will have it out of my system before I get tested again."
A month earlier, in October, Ray had won the most lucrative women's road race in the US - the Lion's Den Crit in Sacramento - pocketing US$15,000 (NZ$24,460).
It begs the question why Ray would risk her career with banned substances amid such emerging success.
But her doping can't be separated from her relationship. The only reason the authorities, the public, and Ray's team, Human Powered Health, who have since dropped her, even know about her use of performance-enhancing drugs is because of her relationship with Nash.
This was exposed early this year, when Nash applied to get a protective order against his ex-girlfriend from 2017, Madeline Pearce, also an amateur cyclist in the US.
In the January 11 hearing at Superior Court of Gwinnett County in Georgia, Nash claimed Pearce was stalking him - an allegation and case dismissed by Judge Regina Matthews for a "complete lack of evidence".
But during the hearing, photos were presented that allegedly showed banned substances at Nash's house in Atlanta at which Ray stayed also lived.
The photos were allegedly taken by Pearce on December 15, 2021, who said when giving evidence in the proceedings that she had gone to Nash's house to help Ray move her things out because, "she had told me that she was being abused by Mr. Nash".
Ray and Pearce were friendly cycling acquaintances, who had bonded over their shared experience of Nash's behaviour.
"I don't think she was racing at that time," Ray tells the Weekend Herald.
"Through collegiate racing, I think I'd met her 2017. So that would have been around the same time him and her had broken up. So I'd talked to her about Huntley before.
"Her and I would comment on each other's instagram photos like 'wifey … ' and all that. Like, we weren't best friends but when her and I were together we would talk like we were very close."
According to a Superior Court transcript, Ray had filed a police report against Nash for domestic violence on December 15 and it was Pearce she had called for help and refuge. A week earlier on December 9 Ray had also contacted a domestic violence hotline, the court heard.
In the texts to the US hotline, which the Weekend Herald has seen, Ray claims that during a fight Nash had "restrained" her to apparently "calm her down".
"I was trying to pack up my things to leave," Ray says in the text.
"Restraining me meant being put in a chokehold. He would block the doorway for me to be able to leave."
Ray says in the hotline texts that the next day Nash: "used his foot against my stomach then he tangled me. Yelling and swearing. Pushed me to the ground. I need to leave but I have important things like my passport coming in the mail, being sent to his place. I'm stuck until I get that back."
Ray has revealed to the Weekend Herald the backstory of when Pearce came over.
"When Madeline came to pick me up I told her … I was like 'do you want to see something?'
"I showed her where she can find the stuff. So opened up the door. She took photos and videos, syringes as well, the holes in the walls. She had all of that information."
Ray found a temporary bed at the house of a couple who were mutual friends of her and Madeline but as soon as Nash discovered she'd left, Ray claims a barrage of communications began.
Drugs and threats
Ray claims Nash simultaneously began to threaten her with a screenshot of her complaining about the side effects of the Clenbuterol she had taken. There were also discussions about how to avoid the detection of anabolic steroid anavar.
Ray says Nash was threatening to send the text exchange to USADA and her pro team.
"I was in Colorado, and I was like 'look, I tried it. I feel like s***. I don't look different'," Ray said describing the incriminating text exchange with Nash.
"He and I had talked about it and I said like I've got spots on my back and just feel really jittery sort of thing. Because that's what one of them is. I think Clenbuterol is like a stimulant. It acts as coffee . . . That was the thing, I wasn't racing. I wasn't going to have anything in me for when I raced."
Ray was also keeping Pearce up to date with all of Nash's correspondence with her and what she interpreted as threats to ruin her career. At a request from Pearce of 'what does he [Nash] have on you?' Ray passed on the screenshot showing her complaining about the side effects of Clenbuterol with Nash.
This would turn out to be the small detail that would seal Ray's fate a few months later leading to a USADA investigation.
That and the fact that despite their conflicts, it didn't take long for Ray to resume communications with Nash.
"Him and I started chatting again, and then I went to see him - just to tell him the truth of what I did. Like I left. Even though at the time… it was completely viable to get out of the situation… but it felt like I had lost something. He had a hold on me . . . When I wasn't talking to him or wasn't around him, it felt like I was anxious."
When the couple Ray was staying with in Atlanta found out she was back on good terms with Nash, she returned home to find her belongings on the sidewalk.
"All my stuff was on the grass, just thrown out there . . . I completely understood it."
At this point, Ray says that despite not being fully back in a relationship with Nash, she had to quickly face the reality that "she had nowhere else to go".
Pearce's anger and sense of betrayal at Ray's return to Nash after the personal help she'd provided her, was taken out on social media.
This was summarised in the Superior Court of Gwinnett County transcript.
"It's unfortunate because I thought of Ms. Ray as a friend and many other people did as well, and I know the extent of her experiences with Mr. Nash and what she's gone through," Pearce said.
"I also know my own experiences with him [Nash], and after discussing with her over hundreds and hundreds of text messages, I believed she was in danger, and she reached out to me for help, and I was not going to deny her that help because I did not want her to put herself or her career at risk since she is a very promising athlete."
Critical posts about Nash began to appear on Pearce's Instagram. In her court testimony, Pearce reflects on one of the posts.
"He was selected to be on a [cycling] team that is - has - frankly, it has women and children on it, and I had had enough after hearing Olivia's story as well as stories from other ex-girlfriends as well as my own encounters, and I reached out to the owner of the team after making the post, as he is a good friend of my collegiate coach that I spent many years with."
Ray tells the Weekend Herald she told Pearce she shouldn't be posting such things and claims Pearce blocked her.
Nash - who was studying to be a lawyer - took a more proactive response to what Ray claims he considered to be public slander of him. Ray described it as a blatant "power move".
"He went to see his dad in his law office, because his dad's a defence attorney, a criminal defence lawyer and said you need to go and get a TPO against her - Madeline. So we do that, we go down to the court house."
The judge granted a 30-day restraining order against Pearce.
Perjury in a US court
This is the series of events that led to the January 11 family violence hearing in Superior Court of Gwinnett County where, in defending herself against the protection order, Pearse revealed both the photos of the drugs at Nash's house, and the screenshot of Ray's text exchange complaining about the drug's effect on her.
Pearce testified the photos she took were of a drawer in Nash's home which contained "an assortment of substances" including testosterone, anastrozole, Clenbuterol and estrogen inhibitors.
Ray has now admitted to the Weekend Herald that what she said in court on January 11 was false.
In the transcript of the hearing, Ray claimed it was Pearce who forced her to make a false police report and false accusations to the domestic abuse hotline.
In the court transcript, Ray tells the judge: "I was advised - well, almost coerced by Madeline [Pearce] to go to the police station to file a false report against Huntley. I had lied about some things and that allowed Madeline to twist my arm into doing certain things that I wasn't really okay with. I was very emotionally and mentally unstable at that time. Since this whole thing, I've recently been to a psychologist and had evaluations and just really unable to make my own decisions, really, for the most part, was very manipulated by a lot of people."
In dismissing Nash's application for a protective order against his ex, Pearce, Judge Matthews described Ray's testimony as "troublesome".
"I don't find her testimony to be credible with respect to allegations of violence. I don't believe that she made that up," Matthews said.
Ray now tells the Weekend Herald: "I was cross-examined by Huntley's attorney and [Pearce's] attorney. So just 'how would you describe him as a person?' I was like 'he's sweet blah blah blah, Madeline's insane, she's got this vendetta'. And here's me for the last month, three months playing for both teams [communicating with both Nash and Pearce]. So when I said my piece in court, the lying, trying to protect him, it was obvious at that point that Madeline knew I was lying."
The Weekend Herald made repeated attempts to contact Huntley Nash and his father's law firm in Atlanta - which represented him in the January 11 court hearing - for comment for this story.
Pearce and Ray individually filed to the Safe Sport athlete advocacy centre against Nash in the days that followed Ray's December 15 police report.
On May 6, Nash received a three-year suspension from USA Cycling events.
In its decision, seen by the Weekend Herald, the body said it had found Nash had "harassed and threatened" one of the claimants, including "physically assaulting her, confining her to her home, and withholding medication". He also "harassed and threatened" and "physically restrained" another claimant.
Pearce's testimony supported this account.
"It is my understanding that she [Ray] was getting physically abused. She told me that the bruises that she received in the photos that she sent me were a result of an argument that they had in the basement," the court heard.
At another point of her testimony, Pearce says she saw bruises on Ray's legs which Ray told her were the " result of an argument they had in the back room of a basement and Mr. Nash ended up pushing her [Ray] against the motorcycle."
"I watched the behaviour [Nash's] escalate with other ex-girlfriends, who have since come to me with friends of my own that have had negative experiences with him and upon hearing that his behaviour had escalated full on to physical abuse with Ms. Ray, who was a dear friend of mine at the time."
Big victory among the tumult
Incredibly, just a month after having to navigate this legal process, Ray became the New Zealand women's road racing champion on February 13.
"In hindsight, looking at it now, I think I was a bit naive," Ray says.
"I was happy to win, I think everyone was pissed off and worried that the course had changed. It had changed to suit me, which was really cool and I was excited about that because I was fit and capable. It was flat, fast."
But Ray doesn't distinguish the NZ national champs as bittersweet just for the controversy she knew she was embroiled in.
Rather, her reflections on the victory seem to just blend into a rather harsh appraisal of her talent and inability to acknowledge career achievements.
"I don't know, I'm very hard on myself so it's kind of like if I didn't win, that it's sort of like, 'what am I doing wrong, sort of thing'," she says.
"For me, when I'd do well at racing, when I'd win, it would always be like 'what's next?'. So that's why it was really cool. I was never very satisfied. It's a whole other beast racing and wanting to win. I was naive to think everything would work out. I don't think I was ever racing for myself, I was always racing for someone else, or to prove something maybe."
When Ray had arrived in New Zealand a few weeks earlier in January she had somewhat deludedly hoped the court case controversy "will all blow over". Perhaps it was willful ignorance.
But out of both the publicity of Nash's failed protection order case, and the likelihood that Pearce herself notified USADA of Ray's performance-enhancing drugs, an investigation by the US sporting authority into the Kiwi champ began sometime around February.
A week after Ray won the champs, she says she received an email from the Human Powered Health team lawyer with copies of the texts she had sent to Nash discussing drug side effects. Pearce's photos of the PEDs in Nash's Atlanta apartment were also included in the email.
Human Powered Health cut ties and removed her presence from their website.
"So I get told I am on paid leave, and they've cancelled my flight [for a team tour to Spain]," Ray said.
"Then a couple of days later I get an email from the owner of the team - Charles, who is an amazing guy - with a document that details I have been fired for misconduct, false police report, lying in court, doing banned substances. This was February. Then the team took me off the website. People picked up on that."
As her career was disintegrating in the US, Ray decided to remain in New Zealand.
She "didn't respond [to her US team]. I hired a lawyer". Actually, one of the most specialised lawyers on athlete doping cases in the world.
Based in California, Howard Jacobs coached Ray through her interactions with USADA.
Ray had two separate interviews with USADA on March 13 from New Zealand. The first two-hour interrogation she admits, "I was on the line of telling them the truth, not telling them".
In that initial interview, a request was made to access her mobile phone contents. Ray consulted with Jacobs, who she says advised her if she didn't give USADA access to her phone the chances of "any positive outcome from this are very low."
"Then I was like okay, I need to tell them the truth. So I called them back for another two hours and explained everything I knew.
"I think with the contrast with those two calls, they could see [I was telling the truth], because I was bawling my eyes out the entire time."
Ray also handed her mobile into the Serious Fraud Office on Queen St in Auckland.
"They took my phone and for however many hours, went through it. So I did everything to benefit me. And I think you can have reduction of up to 75 per cent, which would mean, if a regular ban for admission is four years, it can come down to a year."
Waiting game
It now remains a waiting game for USADA's decision to come down - one that has lingered for four months. The authority is notoriously secretive about any of their processes and have not responded to the Weekend Herald's request for comment.
Cycling NZ acting chief executive Monica Robbers said they contacted Ray to offer support after being informed by Drug Free Sport NZ that USADA was investigating her.
"While Olivia is not one of our high-performance athletes, she is part of our wider cycling community and we recognise this will be a difficult time for her," Robbers said.
On May 16, Cycling NZ released a damning independent review of culture at the sporting body conducted over the nine months following the death of 24-year-old Rio Olympian Olivia Podmore in a suspected suicide. The organisation is vowing to completely revolutionise how they deal with athlete welfare.
Ray says in her mind she has permanently left the US because "there's nothing there for me".
In March, she also finally cut all contact with Nash, who she claims has persisted in trying to reach her - sending jewellery and flowers to her parent's address in Auckland, where she is living.
Her attitude to the professional cycling world, which has sunk her life into turmoil over the past year but also been the sole focus of her entire adult life, is ambivalent.
"Well, that's the thing, once I know what the situation is I think I'd be more able to speak on what I want. But I think the whole side of road cycling, and just the things that surround it: the elitism and just the attitudes of it. I've noticed after stepping away, that it is quite damaging, as elite sport is.
Ray says that if the USADA decision results in a ban favourable to her restarting her career in the not-too-distant future, she would like to remain in New Zealand and focus on track races, as opposed to road course racing.
But she doesn't deny adjusting to a life without cycling in Auckland has been confusing for all the relative calm it has brought.
"I mean, I've had to move on, I couldn't have just sat and beared all day every day until the decision was made. It's hard, there are many different facets to it. Psychologically, and me as a person I feel a lot, like I haven't felt this open in terms of me being myself and not trying to put on this modest or elitist act. I feel like I'm me and that's really nice. Cycling was everything I did. I did everything for it so now to not have it, I think I miss the experiences of it, not the racing itself.
'It didn't do anything [performance effects of the drug use]. And that's the thing, it kills me now."