Triumphs and Turbulence

by Chris Boardman

  Pete had fallen naturally into the role of Head of Strategy and although he knew of my reluctance to turn professional was adamant it was the way to go. It was the reason he’d been keen to tie my hour ride so closely to the Tour de France.

  ‘If you stay as you are, what happens?’ he asked me over a coffee in one of the pavement cafés in the old town. ‘You stand still and wait for someone to knock you off the top step. If you turn pro, on your own terms, then you have a chance to move forward, to be more. And if it doesn’t work out then you can come back to exactly where you are now, nothing lost.’

  In the end the decision wasn’t the result of a light bulb moment. There were no cries of ‘Let’s do it!’ or exchanges of high-fives. I simply didn’t have an answer to Pete’s reasoning.

  Several team managers had already contacted him to express an interest in signing me but only one was being truly proactive. GAN boss Roger Legeay had taken a day out from his duties on the Tour de France to watch me set the hour record and he’d been calling daily since, trying to secure a meeting. This was a man whose outfit had won the race three years earlier with an English-speaking rider, Greg LeMond. Greg, who I admired as an innovator as well as a great athlete, was still on the team. GAN were due to ride the Tour of Britain in August and Pete arranged for us to meet Roger in Cardiff at the team hotel.

  My only experience of continental cycling was watching it on the telly, a medium that always makes things seem bigger and more important. I pictured professional team managers plotting their annual campaigns in darkened rooms with huge maps of Europe in front of them, pushing tiny figures of riders around the continent to implement their master plans. The figure who greeted us at his hotel room door looked like somebody’s favourite French uncle.

  Roger welcomed us warmly, ushered us in and resumed his seat. He looked over the top of his half-moon spectacles and asked me what I wanted to do as a rider. I hadn’t been expecting this, the grand tactician deferring to me, but since he’d asked I thought I might as well jump in with both feet and tell him.

  I ran through the racing calendar, reeling off a list of races in which I thought I could perform well. To my astonishment he wrote everything down. While I babbled on Roger barely said a word, he just looked at me and listened, nodding every now and again. So I kept going. When I got to the month of July and stated that my main goal was to win the prologue of the 1994 Tour de France, an event I saw as a logical target for me, Roger’s hand came up. With a faint smile he said, as if to an enthusiastic ten-year-old, ‘Normally, first year professionals don’t ride the Tour. We will see.’ I think he liked the fact that I was aiming high but thought me naive to aspire to such grandiose ambitions in year one. I hadn’t even told him about the plan to take two world titles the following month.

  No deal was struck but it was a good start – I liked Roger – and we agreed to meet again a few weeks later at the world track championships in Norway.

  After what had been the most stressful year of my bike-riding life, I arrived in Hamar for the World Championships mentally and physically spent. In the semi-final of the pursuit, I was well beaten by a storming Graeme Obree who produced another great ride in the final to become world champion. It was an amazing achievement for someone who had only recently made a comeback after having retired the previous year.

  The following day, Pete Woodworth and I drove into Hamar to visit Roger at his hotel. This time I had more than just a few aspirational thoughts about winning races in my head. Having had time to digest that first meeting in Cardiff, Pete Keen and I had formulated our ambitions into what we hoped was an attractive proposition for him. Highly detailed, including intermediate targets, main goals for the year and even scheduled periods of down time, the proposal was the sporting version of a fully worked up business plan. We called it a performance plan.

  All of the activities listed in the document were subservient to the year’s big objective: to win the opening stage of the 1994 Tour de France. But it didn’t stop there. The document also listed the inaugural World Time Trial Championship and the individual pursuit title as targets. Both of these were to be contested in Sicily just three weeks after the Tour. In order to recover and have time for some specific training on the track, I was proposing to withdraw from my debut Tour de France after ten days.

  For my first year as a professional we had just outlined a scheme to win a stage of the world’s greatest bike race, taking the yellow jersey in the process, followed by a couple of world titles. This didn’t seem unrealistic to us. I’m sure Roger didn’t believe half of our aggressive battle plan but, somewhere between amused and impressed, he agreed. It probably didn’t fully register with him, but in my eyes he’d just signed up to the fine print of my schedule for the next year – and I wouldn’t want to deviate from it without very good reason.

  When the talk turned to money I excused myself and went for a walk, something Pete had been eager for me to do. I had no real idea about my worth as a pro and would have been happy with about £50,000. I knew that Pete saw things differently: he didn’t want to base the asking price on sporting potential alone, but factor in the media value we’d generated already. An hour later, I met him in the hotel lobby for a progress report. A base figure of £90,000 was being proposed. In addition, should I achieve the ambitious goals we’d set out, there was a hefty bonus arrangement that would see me not only receive a cash sum for each performance but an equivalent hike in my base salary for the following year. I was delighted. It would be the first stable income Sally and I had ever had.

  All that, though, was for next season and this one wasn’t quite over. Due to my hour record success, I had been invited to several prestigious end-of-year time trials and Roger was keen that I should ride them in GAN colours. Pete’s proposed solution was an interim contract to see us to the end of 1993 while he and Roger hammered out the final details of the main deal. As well as a source of extra cash, it would be a useful introduction to the pro world before breaking for the winter, a chance for the enthusiastic ‘ten-year-old’ to spend a day in the big school before moving up.

  I signed the letter of intent Pete had with him and walked out of the hotel a professional bike rider. I was both delighted and scared by the magnitude of the commitment I’d just made. Devising high pressure situations for myself and then dreaming about how to get out of them was becoming a habit.

  My first event as a professional was the Grand Prix Eddy Merckx, an invitation time trial held on the outskirts of Brussels. It was a crisp September morning when Pete Woodworth and I walked out of Charleroi airport to be met by the GAN team soigneur, Michel Decock.

  As far as I know, the term soigneur is unique to cycling. Although the role revolves around massaging the tired legs of athletes, it’s much more than that. Imagine Jeeves with a physiotherapy degree and you’ll be on the right lines. Short, stocky and bearded, Michel made up for his lack of English with a warm and welcoming smile. He had worked with Roger for many years – had been his soigneur when he was a rider – and was part of the team’s DNA. He would be my friend and companion for the duration of my time as a pro. Eight years later, it would be Michel who dropped me off at the same spot to fly home from my last professional race.

  Bike loaded into the boot of the team car, we set off for a small Best Western hotel adjacent to the famous Atomium on the edge of the Parc d’Osseghem. Nearing the end of the season, the team’s stock of equipment and clothing was running low. It was also unusual for a new rider to come on board so late in the year, so there was no team kit or bike set aside for me. I was allowed to use my own TT machine, an aluminium Terry Dolan model that he’d resprayed for me in GAN colours. For clothing, I had to make do with one of Greg LeMond’s spare skinsuits.

  The race was 66 km: two laps of a wide, fast, course through the park and the Brussels suburbs. It might have been no big deal for the team – part of an end of season wind-down, ridden largely for contract money – but for me, it was akin to a world
championship. Amateurs rarely got an opportunity to test themselves against those in the paid ranks so I had no idea how I would fare.

  It was spitting with rain as I waited on the start ramp, with a clock – exactly like the one in Barcelona – ticking down to my left. On both sides photographers snapped away and behind was a GAN team car with my name emblazoned across the front. It felt as though I’d parachuted into one of the TV scenes of my youth. I was as nervous as I’d been for the Olympic final.

  The starter’s hand hovered in front of my face, fingers being withdrawn in time with the five-second countdown. As his last digit disappeared, I bolted out of the start gate and threw myself around the first couple of bends, almost running out of road. Soon, though, all the colour and noise was wiped away to be replaced with the realities of riding against the clock: the zing of tyres on tarmac, the rumble of traffic and the sound of my own breathing. I’d burst out of the unfamiliar into a world I probably knew better than any pro cyclist.

  In 1993 there were no wireless earpieces for riders and no in-car TVs relaying live images of the event to team managers. All the race vehicles had were CB radios on which the commissaires issued timing and other information. Anything worth passing on was screamed out of the car window. The single checkpoint on the course was at the finish line, so the only useful update on how I was doing would come at the end of the first lap. Twenty seconds or so after I zipped past the half-distance mark Roger started to shout from the car that I was leading.

  Over the second lap I increased my advantage on the next fastest man, my new teammate Pascal Lance, with the Dutch star Jelle Nijdam, who’d won the race the year before, finishing third. It was my debut as a pro, the first opportunity to measure myself against the big boys, and I’d won. The trophy, a dinner plate-sized bronze Eddy Merckx logo complete with rainbow bands, is one of the few mementos I’ve kept from my time as a pro. Now broken in two parts from some forgotten accident, it sits on the bookcase in my office.

  *

  Roger, still finalising negotiations with Pete, seemed happy enough but wasn’t overtly ecstatic. I later learned that having driven back to Paris that night to the team’s HQ, he walked into the local bar with a straight face and paused before shouting ‘Champagne!’

  CHAPTER 7

  Pro Life

  Among the many events I had been invited to as an Olympic gold medal winner was a dinner hosted by British Airways, who were launching a new direct route from Manchester to Barcelona. My fee for attending was four club class tickets to anywhere they flew in the world.

  During the evening there was a business card draw with a first prize of two of the same unrestricted tickets. Not knowing that it wasn’t the done thing to enter competitions at gatherings you’d been paid to attend, Sally and I dropped in a card each. An hour later when mine was drawn out I had just enough of a conscience to tell the master of ceremonies to draw it again, which he did and took out Sally’s card. Sod it, I thought, and accepted.

  In December 1993 we used the tickets for our first proper holiday since we were 17, taking the children and my parents to the ski resort of Mammoth Mountain in California. We’d never flown as a family before, let alone in club class, and I half expected one of the flight crew to come and tell us we were in the wrong cabin and had to move. It was especially odd seeing our two toddlers with their own seats. Harriet, though, seemed pretty relaxed about it: she fell asleep and wet hers.

  We’d never been to a ski resort either, but it was exactly what I needed to escape from the two-wheeled world. On the first morning we all awoke with headaches and it was only when the top blew off the jar of Nescafé we’d brought with us, spraying granules around the kitchen of our apartment, that the penny dropped. We were at 9,000 feet. The extreme environment was probably a contributing factor in George Douglas Boardman’s unexpected arrival shortly after we got home. He was six weeks early and spent the first seven days of his life in the neonatal intensive care unit at Arrowe Park.

  All of our children’s names were chosen for their own specific reasons but the influences weren’t always obvious or particularly profound. George was the lead character in one of Sally’s favourite films, It’s A Wonderful Life, which she’d watched on the return flight. The other main role was an angel called Clarence, so I think George dodged a bullet there. His second name, Douglas, had a source closer to home: family friend and national cycling coach, Doug Dailey.

  Born in Liverpool, Doug was a member of my dad’s first club, the Melling Wheelers, where he’d been a strong road cyclist, winning the national title twice. I had first really got to know him at Kirkby Sports Centre where he was the manager. He often came out training with us on the North West Centre of Excellence rides that left from there every other Saturday through the winter. In 1986 he left his job in Kirkby to become the national cycling coach, and during his time in charge he took me to my first international time trial, the Grand Prix de France, drove me down to Chichester for my initial meeting with Peter Keen and managed the GB team at the 1992 Olympics.

  In 1997 he handed over the performance reins to Peter Keen and after a short break resumed work with the national squad as head of logistics. From Barcelona to London, Doug was always there. I doubt there is one of Britain’s Olympic or Tour de France stars of the last decade who doesn’t have a Doug story to tell. He was even responsible for talent-spotting a young Chris Froome at the 2006 Commonwealth Games and flagging him up to Dave Brailsford as one to watch.

  In all the time I’ve known him, Doug has made a point of leading by example. I’ve never seen him eat anything unhealthy, his strongest curse is ‘bloody hellfire’, and he does 50 star jumps before breakfast. I’m not sure if that last bit is true but I’d like it to be. By anybody’s standards, Doug Dailey is the epitome of the sporting role model. After London 2012, his eighth Olympics with Team GB in one role or another, he retired. Doug now lives on the outskirts of Ruthin in North Wales with his partner Norma, who is still slipping illicit sugar and fat into his diet.

  On 24 January 1994, nine days after George’s arrival, I travelled to France for GAN’s annual training camp, held just outside the ancient hilltop town of Monflanquin in the Lot-et-Garonne region.

  The village, with its narrow cobbled streets, dated back to the thirteenth century and had an effortless charm. Surrounded by miles of quiet lanes that wound through rolling hills – dusted with frost when I arrived – it was the perfect place for training. I’d been looking forward to meeting Greg LeMond, but the GAN team leader was not attending this pre-season gathering, so of the 18 riders there I was the only English speaker.

  The team’s approach to training wasn’t overly complicated: five- to six-hour group rides every day. The long distances discouraged anything other than a steady pace and the size of the group meant seeing the front as few as four times in a ride. For someone used to doing a fifth of the volume at three times the intensity, it was a shock. I wasn’t there to train, though, I was there to integrate, understand the workings of a professional squad and get to know my teammates. That was easier said than done. And it wasn’t easily said – I spoke almost no French. Six hours on a bike every day for a week listening to everyone laughing and joking around me was tough. I’d had some lessons through the winter but hadn’t made much progress. ‘Passe-moi le sel et le poivre s’il vous plaît’ was one of the few phrases that had stuck, so although I was lonely I never had to endure under-seasoned food.

  At the end of the week Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle, one of the team’s elder statesmen, hosted a gathering in his lodge where riders were obliged to drink the local prune liqueur. The only food on offer was a huge mound of cold duck confit in the centre of the table. It was a wholly predictable recipe for disaster.

  Team climber Jean-Philippe Dojwa made the most amazing transformation. The shy, retiring individual we’d seen in camp until then disappeared to be replaced by a prune-fuelled party animal. The metamorphosis lasted about 15 minutes before he threw up in the b
read basket, which unfortunately was wicker. During those 15 minutes, though, he’d revealed himself as a fluent English speaker. In fact, after a week of shrugs and linguistic solitary confinement, I found most of the team now seemed to speak my language, an ability that had evaporated by breakfast the next day.

  After a week back at home I flew to Montpellier for my first continental stage race: the Tour of the Mediterranean. The field of almost 200 riders was double anything I’d been in as an amateur. My room-mate for the trip was 22-year-old Nicolas Aubier, from Roger Legeay’s home town of Le Mans. He was a quiet lad but could speak a few words of English, which is probably why he got stuck with me. Nicolas was alongside me when we lined up for stage 1a: a short team time trial to place the leader’s jersey before the race hit the road in earnest later in the day. For GAN, it turned out to be more of a stampede, an uncoordinated charge in roughly the same direction, rather than a squad effort. I put the crude approach down to the fact that this was a minor event early in the season.

  That afternoon we congregated in Beziers town centre for stage 1b. The 99 km route consisted almost entirely of narrow, undulating roads which would take us along the Mediterranean coast to Lattes. As soon as the flag dropped, the strongest teams decided that the stiff crosswinds blowing in off the sea made it the ideal time to go on the offensive. Road racing is all about slipstreaming, letting the rider in front punch a hole in the air for you. It saves an enormous amount of energy, sometimes halving the amount of effort needed to travel at the same speed as the unprotected man you’re riding behind.

  When the wind blows from the side, though, things get tricky – and diagonal. With a large bunch of riders all trying to shelter just behind and slightly to the side of the man in front of them, the width of the road soon becomes the limiting factor in the size of any one group, or echelon. So the bunch splits into a series of echelons and if you aren’t in the first one you can quickly find yourself out of the running. That’s why the strongest and most skilful riders try to use crosswinds to isolate their rivals.