Triumphs and Turbulence

by Chris Boardman

  As I walked over, he described the minimal eye contact I’d made with him and the closed body language that had left him no opportunity to engage with me. When I took his hand to mimic the greeting we’d exchanged, he froze me midway through and pointed to what I was doing. I’d subtly turned our hands so mine was on top, showing dominance. Then he showed how I’d gently but firmly pushed it back towards him and away from myself, sending an unconscious message of, ‘Hello, I’m being polite but don’t really want to talk to you.’ I’d reinforced this by not asking him a single question, instead directing all my attention to Dave.

  I wasn’t sure whether I was being told off for my lack of basic manners but if so I deserved it. I certainly learned a lot about myself in the space of that short demonstration. I was able to see and understand just how visible my feelings really were to others, and I accepted the lesson because it was being delivered by a confident individual with irrefutable credentials. More fun followed and Steve achieved just what Dave had hoped he would: he’d got almost everyone in the room to embrace the prospect of delving into the subconscious as a way to access untapped potential.

  In fact, as I found out later, Steve had already been working individually with a number of the riders, one in particular, with remarkable results. In a matter of a few hours he had helped turn a non-coping, virtually non-functioning human being into an athlete who was able to go out and win a medal. Dave was convinced this was a service that had a crucial role to play in the BC set-up and he’d persuaded Steve to join his new regime on a similar basis to my own, part-time. What Dave hadn’t envisaged was how valuable Steve would be in managing the coaches. We had just as many unresolved issues as the athletes.

  I really admired Steve, not just for his evident brilliance but also his honest, refreshing directness, and I was pleased when Dave drafted him onto the four-strong Senior Management Team, the successor to the informal steering group. The fourth member of the SMT was the men’s sprint coach Shane Sutton, a man Chris Hoy once described in an interview with the Observer newspaper as follows:

  ‘My first impression was that he was a complete nutter. He has incredible enthusiasm. His willpower is astonishing. And he’s a stubborn bastard … a force of nature, a bundle of contradictions … the ultimate people person, he’s in your face, intense and scarily perceptive.’

  That’s as good a summation of Shane Sutton as any I’ve seen. Regardless of the various job titles he held during our time together at British Cycling, he was never more than a few centimetres away from the riders, involved in their lives to an incredible degree, from helping wallpaper one team member’s flat to breaking the news of another’s family bereavement.

  The four of us couldn’t have been more different: Dave, the risk taker and embracer of creative chaos, across the table from me with my love of process and structure; Steve with an understanding of human psychology second to none, alongside Shane who was guided through life by gut feeling. He was the resident agitator, never afraid to upset the status quo. With Steve’s arrival things got slightly more organised, but only slightly.

  *

  Meetings were held once a fortnight, either in Dave’s office or Steve’s, a windowless room which had been annexed off from the physiotherapy suite. Although there was usually an agenda it was largely ignored. Steve would generally go first, working his way through a list of problems that staff and athletes had brought to him. Shane would latch on to one of these topics, then veer off to talk about whichever individuals and issues were currently pre­­occupying him. As the discussion lengthened and the focus drifted, I would become increasingly agitated, interrupting to try to drag the debate back towards its original point. Dave played the role of liberal referee – reluctant to step in until the squabbling got really out of hand. So we would quarrel our way though the two-hour slot, overrun and leave having covered less than half of the original agenda. The process was messy and difficult but somehow, despite itself, productive; our different vantage points ensured that we clashed but they also gave us a panoramic view of the operation that none of us could have achieved alone.

  I was still managing to write a few bike reviews during this period, although by 2005 the diving articles had fallen by the wayside. They’d been crowded out by my latest obsession: developing the capabilities of British Cycling’s coaching team, something Dave had asked me to do. As usual, I couldn’t go and take advice, I had to start from a blank piece of paper. I wanted to understand coaching and coaches in every detail – and, of course, I had to own the outcome.

  The first thing I did when I took on the role was go back and look at everything Pete Keen and I had done over more than a decade working together. We’d developed a coaching process directly analogous with business planning and this was the basis of the grand vision I wanted to present to the team. I arranged for all the coaches to meet in a hospitality suite at the velodrome on a Monday morning.

  Desperately wanting them to understand and buy into my coaching philosophy – and disregarding the fact I’d never coached myself, nor asked them for their thoughts on the topic – I worked furiously over the weekend to get everything I knew about performance planning into a Powerpoint presentation. Being a black hat thinker – the type of person who looks for threats rather than opportunities – I tried to imagine all the possible objections they could make and cover them in advance. I was going to batter them into understanding.

  Monday morning arrived and all 20 coaches were crammed into the tiny space of Hospitality Two. Over the course of 30 minutes I took them through my recipe for success, from selecting goals for the year and setting intermediate targets, to monitoring processes and gathering athlete feedback. At the end of my half-hour monologue I stopped, expecting rapturous applause or at least looks of awe and perhaps a few tears. Nothing. Silence. Didn’t they understand? This was it, THE formula for winning medals. Eventually there were a few positive grunts and a couple of nods.

  In my arrogance and ignorance, I’d overlooked the fact that these people had given their lives to this topic: they’d shed blood, sweat and tears striving to be the best coaches they could. Now here was a man standing in front of them with precisely zero coaching experience telling them to forget all of that, THIS is how you do it. I didn’t realise any of this at the time, I was just mystified that a group of professionals could be presented with such a foolproof plan and not be jumping for joy.

  A few days later I was having a coffee with Dave and recounting my experience to him. By now it was late summer 2005 and London had just won the bidding process to host the 2012 Olympics, flooding UK Sport with both enthusiasm and even more money. Determined to make the most of this once-in-a-generation opportunity, they’d set about identifying what was needed for Team GB to get the best possible results in their home Games. One of the ingredients was world-class coaches.

  When Lottery money had first come on stream, various British sports had tried to buy in coaching excellence, selecting candidates from nations around the globe who’d had long-term success. With a few exceptions, they’d been used as a dumping ground for said countries to offload their excess coaching baggage. After a few years the penny dropped and UK Sport resolved to manufacture its own talent.

  To create this coaching excellence, the most ambitious and expensive development scheme British sport had ever seen was put in place. The Elite Coach Programme would have a maximum annual intake of just ten candidates. Those selected would each have a lavish three-year customised course built around them as well as attending four intensive, week-long ‘residentials’ a year with their fellow cohort.

  ‘We could put one of our coaches forward for this,’ Dave said, ‘but why don’t you go? If there’s anything that you feel is really good, we can replicate it here.’

  I knew a bit about the initiative, specifically just how much time it would take up. I was already plate-spinning, and knew that if I did this it would be ‘as well as’ not ‘instead of’ my other responsibilities. Relucta
ntly, I agreed.

  Task number one was to be accepted onto the programme in the first place and the assessment was like nothing I had experienced before. For a full working day, I was to play the role of a government department head from the fictitious country of Simlandia, with all the associated duties such an official would perform, from writing reports to managing a hostile press interview and making a presentation to the country’s Prime Minister. I even had to mediate in an argument between two other department heads. All of this took place in Manchester United’s executive suites at Old Trafford, each of which had been turned into an office complete with Simlandia notepaper and computers. Moving between the offices was a gaggle of actors playing the various parts. Sledgehammers and nuts sprang to mind. When the news arrived that I’d passed the assessment I wasn’t exactly thrilled.

  On 9 October 2005 I walked into a beautiful oak-panelled room in Slaley Hall, Hexham for the first group session of the Elite Coach Programme and briefly met my classmates-to-be before ignoring them and burying my nose in a laptop. All I could think about was how much of my valuable time this course was going to take up, and I couldn’t see how speakers such as Bill Endicott, a former White House aide to Bill Clinton, were going to make being here worth my while. The language of self-improvement didn’t help me warm to the enterprise. The sessions had titles like ‘Being Elite’. I sneered inwardly and kept to myself as much as possible. Thank God Steve Peters wasn’t around to observe me.

  But slowly, over the span of a few of these weeks away, my cynicism began to fade as I noticed a trend emerge. All of the sessions I thought were going to be useful turned out to be merely interesting, while a high proportion of those that looked pointless – voice coaching, talking to polar explorers – produced revelations. Performing stand-up comedy in front of a live audience, walking around swearing at the top of my voice, these were activities from which I gained a huge amount of personal insight. Left to my own devices, I’d never have tried either of them in a million years – and certainly not in the cause of self-development.

  But perhaps the best thing about the programme was meeting my classmates. The people I’d ignored at our first get together at Slaley Hall turned out to be fascinating characters who taught me as much as the course did.

  Jim Mallinder and Nigel Redman both came from rugby union and coached in the England Academy. They couldn’t have been more different. Jim, who’d started out as a maths teacher before becoming a highly accomplished player, fitted the stereotype of a leader perfectly: smart, charismatic, loud and likeable. If he were cast as an historical figure, it would be as a gladiator. His talents were spotted by others too and his time on the programme was cut short when he resigned after a year to take up the head coaching position with England Saxons.

  Jim was a giant but Nigel was a marginally bigger one: six foot four of battle scars. His elbows wouldn’t lock out and little was left of his ears. Despite looking like a seasoned bouncer, a warmer, gentler character you couldn’t imagine. He had a quiet strength, choosing to listen long and hard before forming an opinion. In our second year we did an exercise to help us understand our own characters. This involved defining both ourselves and each other by one of four animal types: Dolphins (caring and supportive), Lions (commanding and single-minded), Monkeys (playful and extrovert) and Elephants (careful and analytical). Nigel, convinced he was a monkey, was deeply shocked when the group labelled him an elephant. It took him two days to formulate and express his feelings on the matter. I fancied myself as a monkey too, but according to my classmates I was a lion.

  Definitely in the ‘monkey’ group was GB Olympic Triathlon Head Coach Dan Salcedo whose violently stripy socks and Sideshow Bob hair complemented his fun personality. Diving coach Steve Gladding was much more reserved. He was an emotional thinker and naturally assumed the role of listener. He couldn’t have been more different from me, which is probably why it was with Steve that I learned the most about myself and how to adapt my style to get the best out of others.

  Undoubtedly the toughest person in the room was double Olympic judo medallist Katie Howey – though you certainly wouldn’t have guessed what she did for a living because she was probably the quietest of the group. Public speaking was her nemesis and became her personal focus over the three-year course.

  Ian Barker had won Olympic silver as a sailor in 2000 and multiple golds since then as a coach. He was an interesting guy who seemed to spend the entire course wrestling with his own character. Both Ian’s website and his Wikipedia page reflect his personality perfectly: factual and without embellishment to the point of being terse. He started off dismissive of ‘soft skills’, as he called the ability to engage with people on an emotional level. By the end of the course he seemed to have glimpsed that this area, alien and uncomfortable to him, was where his personal breakthroughs were likely to be.

  Scottish Swimming coach Ciaran O’Brien was a monkey/elephant hybrid. Although a lover of fun and easily sidetracked, when a topic did engage him he’d often ruminate on it for weeks before resurfacing with some profound observations. He was perhaps the most changed by the three-year journey.

  The final member of our group, the one I admired the most and who was perhaps the most capable of us all, was hockey coach Karen Brown. Karen had the rare ability to both listen and lead, to work through intensely personal issues with individuals and also think strategically. She was disciplined and always put the mission, whatever that was, ahead of herself. The only other place I have seen such a breadth of capability in one person is in business, amongst some of the most highly respected – and highly paid – CEOs. I have no doubt she would have made an excellent leader in any sphere she chose, had she not been missing one vital ingredient – an ego. I do have an ego and enjoy leading, so it came as something of a surprise to me when I realised that Karen was someone I’d love to have as a boss.

  Despite the diversity of their characters, my classmates had two traits in common: their total commitment to each other and their willingness to explore, to try new and often uncomfortable ways of doing things. That just left me, slowly getting to know these intriguing individuals. And through the tasks we took on together, getting to know myself a bit better.

  The swearing exercise – all of us walking around a room while a voice coach egged us on to shout the worst obscenities we could think of – made me realise that my discomfort was rooted in the need to control how people saw me. If I wasn’t prepared to risk looking foolish, I’d never be more than I was now.

  Stand-up comedy made me even more uncomfortable. For someone paranoid about losing face, it was about as stressful an exercise as you could possibly devise. Before tackling this excruciating task I’d been convinced I’d only ever want a straight-talking coach, someone who would tell me the uncomfortable truth no matter what. Instead, I learned that when I was under extreme stress I just needed unconditional support. Different approaches were needed not just for different people, but sometimes for the same person depending on the situation. Top teachers varied their style.

  Towards the end of our time together we found ourselves in yet another hotel, off the A55 just outside Queensferry in North Wales. It was the last day of a gruelling residential when we trooped into our work room for the final session and met our host for the afternoon: marine biologist and expedition leader Monty Halls. A passionate and animated individual, Monty didn’t look wholly comfortable in a suit. We knew each other a little as we’d both written for Diver magazine, but on this occasion he’d come to talk to us about his early days in the Royal Marines, where he’d quickly discovered his passion was less for killing people and more for organising expeditions.

  As a young soldier, Monty had been charged with leading a group of scientists into the Brazilian rainforest, keeping watch over them while they did their research, then getting everyone safely out again. He recalled how he’d treated the scientists as baggage, just something to be transported from A to B. From the outset he had hardly bothe
red to give them the time of day. As soon as the expedition was underway things started to go wrong. The monsoons arrived early, the camp was washed away, a team member was bitten by a poisonous snake and couldn’t be evacuated because of the weather. It was an unmitigated disaster. After two miserable weeks they all managed to get out of the rainforest, if not entirely intact then at least alive.

  Throughout the whole calamitous experience, though, there had been one quiet scientist who with cool alacrity had simply dealt with everything that was thrown at him. It had been this unprepossessing figure, not Monty, who had galvanised the party. He’d led by example, and in doing so inspired the group to see their ordeal as an adventure to be talked of for a lifetime rather than endured and forgotten. Monty recalled how he’d thought of this man and his colleagues at the start of the trip and how he’d treated them. He was humbled and felt compelled to confess and apologise for his behaviour. Before they all went their separate ways, Monty sought the scientist out for their first proper conversation and asked him how he’d managed to cope so well under stress.

  ‘Well,’ said the scientist, ‘I recognised that all of those things were beyond my capacity to effect. I couldn’t change them. But one thing that is always within my control, no matter what is happening around me, is the attitude with which I choose to face those challenges.’

  That was the grand moral of Monty’s story: attitude is a choice.

  I sat there, a bit like my team of cycling coaches had that Monday morning in the hospitality suite at the velodrome, slightly underwhelmed. I could appreciate what was being said to me on an intellectual level but I wasn’t inspired to leap out of my seat and punch the air. It seemed so simplistic. ‘Choose your own attitude.’ There was only one thing for it: I resolved to put it to the test.