"Obviously a call at 5am is never good," Ms Haslock says, voice breaking. "It was his brother. He told me very quickly that Mike was dead. It was the worst news." One of the world's best riders in an extreme form of cycling, an aeronautical engineer and race director who won the first World Cycle Race over 29,000 kilometres in 2014 and had twice won the 4400-kilometre Tour Divide from Canada to Mexico, had been struck by a car while racing south of Canberra on the route from Fremantle to Sydney. Riding more than 5000 kilometres in just over 12 days – averaging more than 400 kilometres a day – Hall briefly led in the Snowy Mountains before being overtaken by Belgium's Kristof Allegaert, who was expected to win the race later that day. Mike Hall Four days earlier, Hall had tweeted his concern that cars were passing intimidatingly close to his bike.

After the race was called off, cyclists around Australia and Britain held memorial rides and a "ghost bike" was erected in his honour at the site of the collision. With the three-day inquest into Hall's death beginning in Canberra today , Ms Haslock has made her first trip to Australia. A part-time support worker for adults with learning disabilities who has taken over from Hall as director of the Transcontinental Race across Europe, she wanted to be there but had to start a crowdfunding campaign to raise £3500 (almost $6300) for the trip. "I think it was really important that somebody who loved Mike was present to hear the outcome of the inquest and hear what's said," she says. "[The collision] ended his life so it's a massive thing in my life and it's a massive thing in anybody's life who loved him. So it was essential that at least one of us came, just to bear witness if nothing else." A photo of Mike Hall taken by Anna Haslock. Credit:Anna Haslock

As the cycling community rallied, the crowdfunding campaign raised more than £11,000, which has allowed her to attend the inquest with legal representation. "I'm overwhelmed really," Ms Haslock says. "I know how kind the community are so in a way I'm not surprised and obviously it shows how well-respected and loved Mike was." She has supported a statement ahead of the inquest by advocacy group Australian Cycling Alliance that Hall's GPS tracker showed he appeared to have rested sufficiently on the previous two nights and a video showed his lights were "sufficiently bright" before the collision. Ms Haslock is concerned about how Hall and this form of racing are represented at the inquest. "Anybody who knew Mike knows he was very capable, very experienced, very intelligent, very aware of risks and very capable of managing risks," she says. "So having anybody who didn't know Mike maybe [suggesting he was] reckless or anything like that would be unjust. It's important for me to be able to say that if I need to."