Scribbling furiously on a board, Pete outlined what I’d need to do to break the record and why he was convinced it was possible. Even then, after the Lotus experience and seeing first hand the impact aerodynamics could have, we still talked solely in terms of power required and never linked it to drag, never fully considered looking for ways to reduce the power needed in the first place. That particular streamlined penny took about a decade to drop.
Although the brief trip to Brighton had convinced me that the hour record was a worthy goal for 1993, there were still a lot of unanswered questions. Where would we make the attempt? What bike should we use and when would be the best time to do it? It was clear we needed to do some homework. National Coach Doug Dailey suggested that the indoor track in Bordeaux might be better than anything available in the UK for conducting trials. It was an excellent, practical idea, just the kind of outside help we needed more of. The man we turned to in search of it was Pete Woodworth – modest, slightly reluctant, but full of good will.
I’d known Pete for years as a fellow member of the North Wirral Velo, but while he was often involved in the club’s social activities he was always on the periphery, never a fully fledged member of the gang. Quiet and largely sensible, he was viewed as the reliable grown-up among us. Back in 1991, sick of living hand to mouth, I had been trying to secure some sponsorship. Pete was a manager at Asda and often got accosted by people like me seeking financial support, so I’d asked him what kind of approach would get his attention. He did more than offer advice: he actively helped Sally and me pull together a CV with which to attract potential backers. From that moment, he became a confidant, someone I could run ideas past knowing that I’d get a sound and considered response. He’d been a valuable member of the caravan cabinet up in the Lake District when we’d sifted through all my post-Olympic offers.
When Peter Keen was exploring the possibility of marketing a glucose polymer sports drink he’d been researching for several years, I introduced him to Pete Woodworth as someone who could help him work through the numbers. From there, the two Petes found other common interests and it was at Pete Keen’s insistence that his namesake became involved in the hour project.
In order to answer some of the big questions, we’d decided to take Doug Dailey’s advice and head out to Bordeaux to test various bikes and see if I really could sustain the effort required to set a new record. Working from the small office above his bike shop, Harry Middleton liaised with the British Cycling Federation and through them arranged for us to get access to the Stadium Vélodrome de Bordeaux Lac.
In early May 1993, we crammed all the test bikes into the back of Harry’s Nissan Patrol and set off for the French wine capital. Up front were the two Petes, Harry and me, four Brits without a word of French between us. It was a long drive down to Bordeaux, made longer by having to stop to change a blown out tyre. It was late when we crossed the Pont d’Aquitaine over the Garonne river and pulled into a seedy truckers’ hotel that Harry had booked to save money. It had dark blue carpet on the walls and 15-watt bulbs. Luckily, we would only be there for two nights.
The next morning we arrived at the Stadium de Bordeaux Lac and after a cordial exchange of arm-waving and blank stares with the security staff, we gained access to the deserted velodrome. Pete Keen’s plan for the two-day session was simple: first we would assemble bikes from all the manufacturers we believed were worth using: then I would ride each of them at exactly the same pace while my heart rate was logged along with my perception of how much effort I’d had to put in. It was incredibly crude, but we had yet to lay our hands on a power meter so it would have to do. On day two the trials would be repeated in reverse order with a whittled down number of bikes. I’d also do a 30-minute trial at record pace as the acid test.
Among the bikes we were looking at was a radical boomerang-shaped Zipp 2001 frame. There was also a curvaceous Corima 034 and two steel machines of different designs made by Terry Dolan. Each had been chosen for no more scientific reason than that they looked as though they might do the job.
There was no Lotus 108. A few weeks earlier I’d had a disastrous meeting with Lotus. We were there to discuss our continuing relationship and the possibility of attempting the hour record on a Lotus bike, but we got nowhere. At one point, a senior executive intimated that I should be grateful for being allowed to use their machine. I spat the dummy and we left with no agreement in place. Despite the soured relationship, I’d still have used a Lotus had it proved to be the best tool for the job, but repeated attempts to secure one for comparison with the other bikes were blocked. If I was going to set a new world record it would be on a new machine.
By day two of our testing session the word seemed to have got around and a few men in suits wafted in and out, muttering and frowning. There was also a lone journalist, apparently intrigued that an amateur was contemplating tackling one of cycling’s great records. He spoke English, so while I trundled around the track and Pete Keen blew his whistle, Pete Woodworth engaged him in conversation and learned a great deal. The stadium had recently been acquired from the local council by the same group that owned the Tour de France. It was one of the reasons that stage 18 of that year’s race was scheduled to finish on the road adjacent to the velodrome in July. It also transpired that the makers of one of our test machines, Corima, were vying for the position of equipment supplier to the Tour.
Testing complete, we stopped for lunch on the outskirts of Bordeaux before the long haul back – steak and chips, the only words we could get the waiter to understand. Up until that point we’d been considering the outdoor 7-11 Velodrome in Colorado Springs as the most likely venue for the actual attempt, mainly due to the advantages of riding at altitude. But Pete Woodworth recounted his conversation with the journalist and put forward three points in favour of Bordeaux: our testing had satisfied us that its hardwood boards were fast enough; the indoor environment meant we could specify an exact time to start our attempt rather than wait for a weather window; and making the attempt on 23 July, the day the Tour de France came to town, would maximise exposure.
Over steak-frites in a French motorway service station restaurant the plan for the attempt on the hour came together. It now had a bike – the Corima had been chosen due to Harry’s connections as much as its performance – a venue and a date. At the end of May 1993, having just broken the national record for 25 miles, I announced the details to the press. Now we were publicly committed and Pete Keen set to work on a training schedule to bring me to peak form for the event.
There was one last question that needed answering: could I cope with the heat of a July day in south-west France? Our first failed attempt at an hour record in Leicester four years earlier had not been wasted on Pete. Now more aware of the impact climatic conditions could have, he checked the likely July temperature for Bordeaux and devised a trial to replicate it. A few weeks later, driven by Sally’s brother Andy in the new Vauxhall Calibra a local car dealer had given me in a sponsorship deal, I headed down to Brighton for a battery of lab tests. The key one was to be a simulated hour record attempt in a room heated to 24 degrees. That might not sound high but in a cramped lab with no cooling airflow it was stifling.
In fact, the temperature rose a fair bit higher than we’d intended. Now that the attempt was in the public domain, a TV crew was following me to make a series of pieces for Granada’s regional news programme. Pete’s advance calculations hadn’t allowed for the extra heat generated by their lighting. By the end, my core temperature was touching 40 degrees. We knew this because I had agreed to the indignity of having a body-probe installed – I still maintain that riding flat-out for an hour with that apparatus in place is the reason I received an honorary degree for services to sports science. But despite the probe and the heat, I completed the trial at the projected power and Pete declared himself satisfied. All systems were still go.
CHAPTER 5
The First Hour: Countdown
During the late summer of 1992 H
arry had introduced me to another of his friends, Alan Dunn, whom he’d known since the 1960s when they’d lived and raced together in France. Realising that they weren’t going to make it as professional cyclists, they had eventually returned to the UK and gone their separate ways. Alan’s path, which was worth a book in its own right, had culminated in the position of Logistics Manager for the Rolling Stones.
Despite being immersed in a very different world and spending huge amounts of time on the road with the band, Alan still followed the sport as much as he could and kept in touch with his cycling friends. So when Harry contacted him with a vague request to see if there was any way to link up his universe with ours, he too answered the call.
I first met Alan in front of the Saffron Lane sports centre during the National Track Championships. Not knowing what he looked like, I wasn’t sure about being able to pick him out from the hundreds of people arriving in the car park for the event, but I thought heading towards the only Ferrari F40 I could see was a fairly safe bet.
A large man extracted himself from the driver’s seat and walked slowly over to say hello.
‘Hi.’ Massive pause. ‘I’m …’ Massive pause. ‘… Alan.’
That’s how Alan spoke, even on the phone. I was never sure if he’d forgotten who I was, who he was, or if he’d just mentally bumped into something else more interesting to think about. Despite the occasional silence, though, we hit it off straight away. I got into the habit of meeting up with Alan for dinner whenever I was in London, which was increasingly often as commercial work began to come my way. It turned out that he’d actually witnessed the setting of the record I was hoping to break. In January 1984, the Rolling Stones had been in Mexico City shooting promotional videos. When they heard about Francesco Moser’s hour attempt, he and Mick Jagger had gone to the Olympic Velodrome to watch. Mick didn’t show up in Bordeaux – that would have been the support act of all support acts – but through Alan, he did end up making a contribution to the success of the project.
Sally’s dad, Barrie, did make the trip to Bordeaux, although in many ways I wish he hadn’t. It would have meant Sandra, Sally’s mum, was still alive.
In 1991, Sandra had started to have accidents. Nothing serious, just a small fall at work and a few things dropped at home, but as a nurse she knew better than to ignore even faint signs of something wrong. She went to her GP who referred her to a specialist. In December 1991 Sandra was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and over the next 17 months the terrible condition advanced. On 2 May 1993 she died, leaving Barrie, who’d cared for her day and night through the worst of it, looking ten years older.
A cyclist since his early teens, Barrie’s life revolved around twin hubs: family and bikes. Every weekend, he was either riding himself in a local time trial, or taking his son Andrew to compete in a schoolboy event. Every day, in all but the very worst of weather, he’d cycle the ten miles each way to the Vauxhall car plant in Ellesmere Port where he maintained the paint shop.
How he held down such an important job I’ll never know, as in every other area of life Barrie and tools spelled disaster. This was a man who would take scissors to the back lawn when it needed trimming and take off the end of his finger in the process. He once planed three inches off the front door to stop it jamming on the carpet, when half an inch would have done. It still stuck: he’d taken all the length off the top. Always joking and fabricating wild tales about his time as a fighter pilot, or the day he was run over by a tomato sauce truck, Barrie was great company and dealt with all but the most dire of life’s adversities though humour. Masked in mirth, his bad moods were hard to spot but usually manifested themselves as a tendency to take up contrary positions in whatever conversation was going on. If you saw it coming, it was possible to get him to champion even the most bizarre of causes.
‘That Hitler, what a terrible bloke.’
‘Well, are you sure about that? I hear he was a vegetarian who could mend a puncture …’
But it was Sandra who had steered the Edwards ship and without her he was lost. During this period cycling became more precious to him than ever. It was a cord that linked him to people, gave him a reason to congregate with others and a common topic of discussion. When Barrie turned out to cheer me on in Bordeaux it would be his first holiday without Sandra in twenty-three years.
In early June 1993, I flew out to Bordeaux with Pete Woodworth for two weeks of intensive training on the track. With a full-time job of his own to worry about, he wasn’t thrilled to be making a second trip to France, but we’d come to rely on his calm, clear-headed input. To help us with pacing for the record attempt, he had written a simple computer programme that would update my average speed on each lap and display it on a screen at the side of the track. Pete Keen persuaded him to come out ‘to test the electronics’. The fact was, we just couldn’t do without him.
We landed amid the biggest thunderstorm I had ever experienced. The plane lurched violently as we descended and lightning struck an airport light tower, blowing out the bulbs. Over the next five days I became convinced that the weather had been trying to warn us. Pete Keen had flown out separately and it was late when we met up in the arrivals hall with him and Phil O’Connor, a Cycling Weekly photographer who’d come to document the trip. The four of us hauled all the kit and bikes to the Avis desk to pick up the hire car Harry had booked. It was a Fiat Punto. Forty-five minutes of faffing about later, we put the gear in the back of a Renault Espace and set off for the house Alan Dunn had helped find for us.
The house turned out to be an hour’s drive away from the track. It was midnight when we reached our destination: an old, dark building with no one out front to meet us and not a sign of life in the surrounding streets. Phil, who had both a mobile phone and a smattering of French, called around to track down keys. It was the early hours of the morning before we managed to get into the place and our problems weren’t over. Damp ran down the walls, every surface was covered with a film of grease and the horsehair mattresses had unidentified microscopic inhabitants. Pete Keen was horrified.
At first light, after not much sleep, three of us headed for the track bleary-eyed, while Phil kindly took the car and went in search of lodgings fit for human habitation. A lacklustre morning session didn’t improve our mood. Neither did Phil when he reported back – Bordeaux was hosting an international wine festival and the only alternative accommodation he could find was nearly 100 km away on the coast. For the next two days we tried to put a brave face on it and commuted four hours a day there and back from Soulac-sur-Mer to the velodrome.
There was a sliver of good news on day three when I rode a 20-minute session on the first Corima prototype and unofficially broke Moser’s 10 km mark by 22 seconds. It was a much needed confidence boost after the stressful start, but the good feeling was soon squashed. On day four we arrived at the stadium to be met in the foyer by a small group of official-looking people who informed us we were no longer allowed to use the track. The reason for the sudden change wasn’t clear to us but the consequences were.
It was a disaster. The clock was ticking, the costs were mounting, we had already announced our intentions to the world and now it all seemed to be unravelling. I began to think maybe we had been foolish, that we were out of our depth here, thinking we had a chance at wresting such a lofty prize from a cycling legend. The lockout was the last straw. I phoned Harry, explained the situation and asked him to fly out to fix it. The pressure of trying to break the record was enough without all this added stress, and Pete Keen and I were really starting to feel it.
But what was really making us anxious, what had cast a shadow over the whole exercise, was a problem neither we nor Harry could fix. Back home, at the national 25-mile time trial championships on 13 June, Graeme Obree had declared his intention of tackling the hour record himself: a week before the date we’d set for my attempt. ‘We just need to find a track,’ said his manager, Vic Haynes.
Yeah, just a track. They didn’t nee
d to find their own project – we’d done that for them. I was seriously annoyed: in taking on Moser’s Hour, we’d dared to think big, put months of work into researching the feasibility of the attempt, travelled across Europe, done physiology tests, found the track and committed money I didn’t really have to make it happen. Graeme had a growing public image as the man who ate jam butties and drank beer before ‘just going out there and doing it’. But this time he was only able to just go out there and do it because other people, the people whose bandwagon he was jumping on, had put in the hard yards for him. It didn’t seem fair.
My indignation wasn’t really founded on ideas of fair play, though, it was emotionally driven. I felt threatened. Graeme’s athletic credentials were beyond question; if he managed to pull it off, to set a new record distance, then the margin between success and failure for me would become very slender. And having already announced a time and a place, I was helpless to do anything but watch it play out. Put simply, we’d been outmanoeuvred.
The day after the lockout, in emotional turmoil, I trained on the road, the only available option open to us, before heading to the airport to meet Harry. With the best of intentions, his opening gambit was to look on the bright side and try to put a positive spin on the situation. Unfortunately for him we were now totally out of bonhomie and Pete Keen exploded. I felt for Harry, especially as I was the one who’d put him in this position. I hadn’t really been listening when we’d first met and he had told me what he was offering: ‘I’d just like to help out … No, I don’t want paying.’ I’d pushed him into a managerial role he had never wanted because I needed someone I trusted to take all the pressure off me. He’d shouldered the burden and now he was getting an earful for his trouble.
Triumphs and Turbulence Page 7