Long hard road to the Olympics ahead for a team willing to go the extra mile

"Next time you come in these doors, ladies, it will be as competitors in the 2012 Olympic Games," said Audrey Cooper to her triumphant if saddle-sore team, now divested of their bicycles and tucking into the sandwiches. The athletes visibly gasped. It was a glimpse of destiny... as long as funding and fitness combine to keep their preparations on track.

The cycle ride was their own idea, to raise the extra funds they need to support their ambitions as a squad, but also to raise the profile of a sport to which they are extraordinarily dedicated. Every one of the 18-woman squad has surrendered financial, geographical and occupational normality to relocate to their training base in Sheffield and train for up to six hours a day.

Three weeks ago, Jenn Taylor was a 29-year-old teacher at a large

school in Derby with a pride-and-joy house in a village near Loughborough. She had given up volleyball, with all its financial uncertainty and a 127-mile round trip every day to Sheffield for training.

"I made the decision to pack it in. But it never sat right with me. I couldn't do it. I said to myself: 'This is your one and only opportunity to compete at an Olympic Games in your home country. This team has worked so incredibly hard. You can't walk away now.' So I came back. There isn't enough money to support us at the training base in Sheffield this winter, so I've got a contract abroad in Germany. I'll be on my own, and I'm scared to death to be honest. But it's what you have to do. Like 300 miles on a bike."

It seemed a fine idea at the time, this fund-raising cycle ride. A combination of bravado, athleticism and consciousness-raising to combat the serious financial worries of a sport on a limited budget. Bikes, clothing, accommodation, sunglasses, were all donated to the cause.

The original plan had been that Cooper would keep her team together and foster fitness and competitive edge by playing as a "club" in one of the stronger European Leagues. The politics had been sorted, but the 250,000 cost of spending the winter season abroad was the hitch.

British Volleyball is receiving a total of 4.3m from UK Sport over four years 2009-2013 – a quarter of the figure originally suggested as its "optimal funding" – and a sum that needs to cover the training costs of male and female teams in three different disciplines (indoor, beach and paralympic) volleyball.

The present budget is painfully tight and also threatened with cuts due to UK Sport having too little in the pot.

In the absence of top-up funding, perhaps from sponsors, the squad will have to disband this coming winter, with individual team members looking for contracts abroad instead of staying together, and there is doubt about the strength of the competitive schedule next summer. As one of the sports not expected to achieve a medal at the London Olympics, there is even a suggestion that the budget for the sport may be cut further.

Instead of bemoaning their fate, the women decided to do something positive to help realise the dream they have been nurturing since their formation in 2007. Their cycle route took them to the 2012 Olympic venue at Earls Court via Nottingham, Loughborough, Leicester, Stratford, Oxford, Reading, Richmond, Westminster and Trafalgar Square – where they were introduced to a cheering crowd, saw themselves on the big screen being interviewed, and took photos of each other standing on the rim of the famous fountains.

Along the way, they had faced hills that felt like a Tour de France Alp, battled through rain, slept one night in Army barracks, suffered punctures, Achilles pulls, hunger and exhaustion.

Londoner Lizzie Reid performed the most spectacular fall of the four-day epic, a crash in which her back wheel went one way and she went the other, colliding with the kerb in mid-parabola.

"I was in shock. I think I even blacked out for a minute," she said, smiling. Undaunted, she climbed back on her bike and blithely continued. Matt, the volunteer statistician, had merely looked behind him once and trundled straight into a ditch.

But there were other moments which inspired them, large and small. Reaching the top of the hill climbs was a common favourite experience, but so was being donated an enormously large pasta supper in Reading and receiving a bottle of champagne from an off-licence in Virginia Water, Berkshire, as they cycled past.

They met ex-Chelsea and Leicester footballer Alan Birchenall in the Town Hall Square in Leicester. He confided that he used to organise volleyball matches as training sessions when playing for his clubs in the 70s. "We cheated a lot and it was a bit competitive. But I loved it. Great sport," he said.

They played beach volleyball on sand in Nottingham's Market Square, cycled round the iconic track where Sir Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in Oxford and appeared on national television news as they pedalled towards Westminster on the last leg of the journey.

"The worst bit for me was arriving in Stratford on the second night, knowing we still had two days to go," admitted squad member, Jo

Healy. "I was shaking, I was so tired. I had tears in my eyes. I was struggling to stand up. But what made it all worthwhile was the team spirit and togetherness. This team is amazing, so strong. Whatever happens to us now, I don't doubt we've proved we're tough enough to compete, and compete well, at the London Olympics. All we need now is a sponsor to help us make it happen."

Rachel Laybourne, from Dronfield, near Sheffield, differed when it came to the most horrendous aspect of the odyssey.

"It was the state of British roads. Every time we hit a bump or a pothole, I thought I'd dislodged a disc or lost a tooth.

"But nothing detracts from the achievement. We wanted to do something to help ourselves and to inspire the thought that volleyball may be a smaller sport in this country but we have great aspirations. We don't want to be also-rans at our home Olympics. We want to be as good as we can be."

For Audrey Cooper, who competed in the British beach volleyball team in Atlanta 1996, the completion of the cycle journey represented one of her proudest moments.

"The way the girls pushed, helped and looked after one another all the way – because, believe me, we all had our moments of fatigue – was fantastic. On some of the hills, you'd be pedalling fiercely yet actually standing still. But there was always someone alongside saying: 'Come on, you can do it. Keep going'.

"That's how we feel about the Olympics now. If we can raise enough money to keep playing meaningful, competitive matches, then we might really achieve something special at the Olympics in two years' time."

n For more information on the journey, donations and British Volleyball: www.gbwomen volleyball.co.uk