A hematoma near her left hip is a painful reminder for the 23-year-old of the 60km/h training accident nearly a month ago at the Rio Velodrome that will forever haunt her.  The crash sent team pursuit colleague Mel Hoskins to hospital and left the rest of the group in considerable pain.

They recovered to finish a credible fifth.  Despite the major hurdle they faced, there is still disappointment for the West Pine product considering her medal aims.

Despite this the now two-time Olympian said Rio was an experience which allowed her to grow.

She revealed after the group’s round one loss she got the squad together (Hoskins, Tasmanian Georgia Baker, Annette Edmondson and Ashlee Ankudinoff) for an emotional chat to get them back on track.

“When you put so many hours into training, it is upsetting when you realise you don’t have a chance to win a medal,’’ she said this week while home on the Coast.

“I’m not really that good with words, but when we got back to the room, I just pulled all the girls aside in a group and did what I could to lift them up. It went from us just being sad to us bawling our eyes out, but it did allow us to stay positive.

“I was proud of how I was able to stand up and play that leadership role, and that is a big step in how I have developed as a rider. One of the sad things is coming home with nothing for the effort, but you can get some positives out of it.

“I have improved and used my disappointment from London to be the rider I am now. In the past two or three world championships I’ve led the team, and I now have the mentality that I don’t want to be selected for a race, I want to select myself.”

It was the first time Cure, a former world champion, had experienced a crash such as that, when the clipping of wheels forced the riders to the track. There was no real pain once she got back on the bike, but tasks such as getting off the couch still have some level of discomfort.

She said the emotional toll meant her Olympics experience post-competing wasn’t that enjoyable. But having boyfriend Anthony Pauwels, the physiotherapist and osteopath for the Belgium Cycling Team, close by helped.

Cure is having a ‘’mental and physical break’’ and won’t go near a bike until November. 

Her focus when this downtime ends will be the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Hong Kong in April, with the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics long-term goals.