2005 to 2008 After a surprise fourth place in the
national road championship in 2005, she was signed by UK national team Team Fat Birds UK and rode in the British team supporting
Nicole Cooke in the
road race at that year's world championships, but crashed out of the race. and 9th in
the road race. This earned Great Britain one of their places in the
2008 Summer Olympics. In 2008, she won the
Trofeo Alfredo Binda UCI Road World Cup in Italy after another solo breakaway. but her greatest success of the summer came in the
time trial on 13 August, where she won the silver medal behind American
Kristin Armstrong.
2009 to 2012 behind) during the
2009 UCI Road World Championships in
Mendrisio, Switzerland In 2009, Pooley signed to the Cervélo Test Team, where she remained until their disbandment at the end of 2011. She won the 2009
national time trial championships and took wins for the team in the
Coupe du Monde de Montreal,
GP de Plouay, and Grand Prix Costa Etrusca one-day races, and the final edition of the
Grande Boucle Féminine, once dubbed "the women's Tour de France". Due to financial issues the 2009 Grande Boucle was reduced to only four stages, leading Pooley to joke that it was "more of a Petite Boucle than Grande". She also wore the leader's jersey for three stages of the
Giro d'Italia Femminile, but finished the race in fourth place in the general classification after losing the race lead due to her poor descending, which she improved after the 2009 season with the help of her coach Tim Williams and British Cycling psychiatrist
Steve Peters. 2010 saw several of Pooley's greatest successes. She won her first major stage race in May, the final edition of the
Tour de l'Aude, the longest-running event on the UCI women's calendar. She went on to win another top-level stage race in June, the
Giro del Trentino Alto Adige-Südtirol. She also won two
UCI Women's Road World Cup one-day races, the
La Flèche Wallonne Féminine and the
GP de Plouay, and earned a
rainbow jersey by winning the
time trial at the Road World Championships. She was British national time trial champion for the second year running and also took her only national road race champion's jersey. She finished the year 5th in the
2010 UCI Women's Road World Rankings, the highest end-of-year ranking of her cycling career, and received one of the
British Olympic Association's Athlete of the Year trophies, recognising her performance that year as the best by any British cyclist of either sex in any Olympic cycling discipline. in London In March 2011, Pooley won the one-day
Trofeo Alfredo Binda World Cup race for a second time, again after a lengthy lone breakaway. She broke her
collarbone in training on 12 April so was unable to defend her
Flèche Wallonne title and did not race again until the
women's invitational time trial at the Tour of California on 20 May, in which she placed fifth. Later in the year, however, she won the hilly
Tour de l'Ardèche stage race in France and finished second to
Marianne Vos in the
Giro d'Italia Femminile, both achievements that she would repeat in 2012. Following the discontinuation of the Garmin Cervélo women's team at the end of 2011, Pooley began riding for the Dutch team
AA Drink–leontien.nl which, in turn, wound up at the end of the 2012 season. At the
2012 Summer Olympics she competed in the
Women's road race, helping teammate
Lizzie Armitstead to win a silver medal, and placed sixth in the
Women's time trial.
2013 Pooley took a step back from pro-racing when she signed for the long-established, but non-UCI registered, Swiss-based
Bigla Cycling Team for the 2013 season in order to concentrate on completing her PhD in
geotechnical engineering. In a severely reduced season, she missed the
2013 UCI Road World Championships. Pooley managed to win four UCI-ranked races including the six-stage Tour Languedoc Rousillon in May. In September 2013, Pooley joined with professional cyclists
Kathryn Bertine and
Marianne Vos and professional triathlete
Chrissie Wellington to form an activist group called
Le Tour Entier (“the whole tour”), to petition ASO to launch a women's Tour de France.
2014 Pooley signed for the
Lotto Belisol team for 2014. She claimed her third national time trial champion's jersey and won three stages and the mountains classification at the Giro d'Italia Femminile. Pooley announced during the
2014 Commonwealth Games that she would retire from cycling after competing in the Games'
road race in order to concentrate on competing in long-distance triathlons and
mountain running. Following her retirement announcement, Pooley took the silver medals in both the
women's road time trial and
road race, and played a key role in helping England teammate
Lizzie Armitstead win the road race gold medal.
2015 to 2016 Pooley made a return to competitive cycling in October 2015 when she competed at the
Chrono des Nations time trial, where she finished sixth. In December 2015 she announced that she would aim to compete for Team GB in the
2016 Summer Olympics in
Rio de Janeiro after being approached by British Cycling's technical director
Shane Sutton, who had studied the Olympic road racing courses and felt that Pooley would have a good chance of winning a medal in the time trial and of helping Lizzie Armitstead to win the road race. She also confirmed that she would continue to compete in triathlon and duathlon competitions in 2016. Pooley made her first appearance in a mass start road race for two years in April 2016 for the British national team at the
Women's Tour de Yorkshire, where she helped teammate
Alice Barnes to fourth place. In June 2016 announced that Pooley had rejoined the team for the remainder of the 2016 season, and that she would be part of the team's squad for the
2016 Giro d'Italia Femminile with a role as a domestique for
Claudia Lichtenberg. At the Olympics, Pooley rode in the service of Armitstead in the
road race, whilst in the
time trial she finished 14th, just over two minutes down on winner Kristen Armstrong.
2018 On 28 July 2018 Emma won the
Brompton World Championships, which ran as part of the
RideLondon event. The event takes the form of a
Le Mans style start as 500+ smartly-dressed competitors have to unfold their bikes and completed eight lap circuit around
St James's Park.
2020 On 8 July 2020, Pooley set a new
Everesting women's record by climbing the Haggenegg climb (6.8 km with an average gradient of 13%), near
Schwyz in Switzerland, ten times in a time of 8 hours 53:36. Her ascent (and descent) covered 129.8 km, and beat the previous female Everesting record of 9 hours 08:31 set by Hannah Rhodes on the
Kirkstone Pass in England on 8 June 2020. ==Running and triathlon career==