At the end of February we received the keys. While Sally scurried around measuring things, I went to stand on my own in the large garden and listened to a silence punctuated only by the crying of distant seals on West Hoyle sandbank. I wasn’t quite sure how to feel. Wirral Point wasn’t just a house but a physical representation, a waypoint in our life, and I think that moment, standing on the grass, was the first time I’d stopped ‘doing’ and put my head up to see where we were. I was almost shocked to realise how far we had travelled since heating one room in our first house behind Birkenhead Technical College.
Despite not yet having moved in, we had our housewarming party to coincide with the birthdays of Sonny and my grandmother. Proudly installed in the window seat of our new residence, my Nan said, ‘It’s got an awfully big garden.’ It took a while to explain that we didn’t own the whole estuary.
While we were busy with babies and builders, Alan had been making progress with prospective manufacturers for Boardman Bikes. Which meant I had to get down to designing some.
From the start I’d told Alan that, in my view, Dimitris Katsanis was the best frame designer in the world and the only person I wanted to work with. But any collaboration between us had to be handled carefully, since we were both part of British Cycling’s Olympic R&D team. Neither of us was a full-time employee, so we were free to take on other work, but the potential for a conflict of interest was clear and I was keen that we were upfront with our BC colleagues.
In fact, as soon as I’d decided to take Alan up on his offer, I’d told Dave Brailsford and offered to resign if it was going to be a problem. But Dave was happy with my dual activities as long as I ensured that they stayed strictly separate. Since most of the BC products we were developing were highly specialised components for elite track athletes, it wasn’t difficult to ensure there was clear ground between the two projects.
Having cleared Dimitris’s involvement, we set about designing our first Boardman Bikes product: a carbon time trial/triathlon frame. The guiding principle was one we both held dear: the demands of the event would drive our design, and function would always take precedence over form. I’d seen so many gimmicks over the years and I was determined there would be none on a bike that carried my name. We would celebrate the simple beauty of functionality. When we’d finished, I wanted to be able to point to any part of a Boardman bike and know that I could explain why it was how it was.
With all our other duties, it was a protracted process, crammed into evenings and weekends. Computer designs were emailed back and forth as we went over and over every detail. It took a year before we were satisfied. Armed with our blueprints, Alan toured the Far East and eventually found a suitable manufacturing partner: a factory both big enough to have all the required skills and small enough to be passionate about our start-up venture, an operation with a conscientious staff we knew we could rely on. It was a long haul, but by mid 2006 we’d established what we wanted to make and the method by which it would be created. Now we just had to nail down a way to sell it.
In parallel with his Far East factory tours, Alan had been exploring all possible routes to market and attending dozens of meetings with retailers and distributors across the UK. The most promising response came from the biggest seller of bikes in the country, Halfords. Halfords CEO Ian McLeod was a brusque, no-nonsense Scot with a clear vision of how to improve his company’s fortunes. He wanted to expand their presence in the bike market further, adding quality to quantity along the way. But as a place known better for car parts, Halfords was largely scorned by the Lycra-wearing, leg-shaving community of ‘real’ cyclists. Consequently, the big bike manufacturers refused to deal with them for fear of damaging their image. And since Halford’s own-brand bikes didn’t have the credibility to draw in more discerning customers, they were stuck.
So when Alan had approached them for an exploratory meeting, the timing couldn’t have been better. If they weren’t able to get the elite manufacturers to deal with them, maybe they could strike a deal to grow their own. Over the following months, a strategic alliance was forged between the embryonic Boardman Bikes and Halfords. The contract would give the chain sole rights to sell our bikes in the UK and me the right to sign-off on every product that bore my name.
It was a huge opportunity, but it meant the mission had to change to accommodate the needs of our new partner. Halfords wanted to move upmarket, but steadily – and not quite as far as the carbon-fibre works of art that Dimitris and I had designed. Their preference was for gentle evolution rather than wholesale reinvention. Our first offerings would be high-quality machines based on the principles we held dear, but with the initial emphasis on affordability rather than the last word in cutting-edge technology.
Through the second half of 2006 and on into 2007 I worked with their team to create a whole new set of designs, including mountain bikes. I loved mountain biking but I was far from an expert, so the head GB MTB mechanic was drafted in to advise on both geometry and equipment choice. For the road models, I led on the frame-design and sizing. All the bikes were aluminium, and for extra strength, every weld was ‘double passed’ and then filed smooth: a process that reduced the chance of stress fractures and had the secondary benefit of looking beautiful. For their part, Halfords were prepared to cut their profit margins to ensure that the bikes were class-leading, and so each was fitted out with equipment usually seen on machines twice the price. The finished article was stunning: simple, elegant and incredible value. Product we could be proud of.
Frustratingly, the beautiful carbon frames that Dimitris and I had worked so hard on found themselves in a retail cul-de-sac, no longer appropriate for the new mission. In the end, without having an appropriate route to market for them, we manufactured fewer than 200. Terry Dolan helped us distribute them under the Boardman Elite banner, before we mothballed the range and concentrated on the needs of our mass-market partner. It was a great product but it had arrived three years too early.
Over this period our tiny team grew from three – myself, Alan and Sarah – to a slightly less tiny six. Mark Harper, from the design house Bonbon, came on board to create the branding, and his partner Sasha Castling to oversee promotion. The final member of the team was Halfords’ product manager Andy Smallwood.
Just as Dimitris Katsanis was the lynchpin of the Secret Squirrel Club, Andy Smallwood was and still is the hub of the Boardman brand. Warm, passionate and deeply knowledgeable about cycling, he was instantly recognisable as one of those rare individuals who I can only describe as gold medal material; people with that special something to set them apart from their peers. A keen cyclist with an engineering background, Andy was the perfect liaison between us and Halfords, and from the outset it was clear that the Boardman range belonged as much to him as it did to me.
In July 2007, just before the Tour de France got underway in London, Ian McLeod and I travelled down to the capital to announce both the new brand and the partnership. It had taken a year of designing, prototyping and testing before we were finally ready to launch our range of nine bikes, along with branded clothing and accessories. Being surrounded by walls covered with pictures of myself and products plastered with my name was uncomfortable and flattering in equal measure. I couldn’t get used to thinking of and referring to myself as a brand. But it was certainly exciting and I hoped people were going to like the work we’d done.
I needn’t have worried. Over the following few months, the bikes were rated best-in-class in every magazine review. Like a fanatical bird watcher on the hunt for a new species, I scanned the traffic everywhere I went, waiting to get a glimpse of the first model in the wild. When I did, it was in London, as I walked down Woburn Place, not far from the British Museum. A genuine Boardman customer. ‘Nice bike,’ I remarked as nonchalantly as I could to the guy as he waited for the traffic lights to change. I think he thought I was trying to chat him up.
Customer recognition aside, I knew that my name and racing history were a big part of what
had helped get the brand off the ground and into Halfords. I also knew that they wouldn’t sustain it in the long term. The company needed a pedigree of its own, which meant a presence in the peloton. Luckily, timing was on our side again, and this time the perfect partners were people I was already working with.
The GB track team was performing strongly. At the 2007 World Championships in Majorca they took a record seven golds, five of them in Olympic disciplines. Everything was on course for Beijing. On the road, though, it was a much more hit and miss affair.
Due to the healthy professional scene, it wasn’t possible, or even really necessary, to run a men’s national road squad. Talented male riders were quickly snapped up by continental teams and so were kept fit and technically sharp by their employers, only coming together under the GB banner perhaps once or twice a year.
Women’s racing was not as self-sustaining. Quality national competitions were scarce and pay was poor, even for the very best who could find backing to travel abroad. Nicole Cooke, ever the vociferous champion of a national women’s team, campaigned for British Cycling to finance one, so that riders might get sufficient racing and learn to work together. It was a reasonable request but not one we could act on.
Lottery money, the bulk of the GB stipend, was specifically allotted for maximising Olympic medal chances. Of the 14 gold medals available to our men and women in Beijing, ten were on the track and only four on the road, two of those being time trials. Funding a women’s road team would suck up a huge chunk of the available budget in pursuit of a single road race medal. In coldly logical terms, it would not be a good investment.
No one understood this dilemma better than Dave Brailsford. In late 2007, we approached Halfords to see if they would back an entirely British professional team that Dave would control. They agreed and in January 2008 Dave announced his first pro outfit, Team Halfords Bike Hut. Oddly, the launch event was held by the sloth enclosure at London Zoo.
Nicole Cooke was the team’s leader but there were many other stars of the future on the roster too, including Joanna Rowsell and a very young Emma Trott. Although it was primarily a women’s team, we also wanted a male contingent to represent us on the domestic scene. Rob Hayles and Tom Southam agreed to come on board and fulfil that role.With our own racing team, we now had a reason – and a responsibility – to develop machines fit for them to ride. During the first half of 2008, Andy and I designed our first carbon fibre frame together, the Pro Carbon. Even fully built up, it was well under the legal weight limit and had to have lead stuck to the underside of the saddle to reach the UCI specified minimum of 6.8 kg. Halfords had never stocked anything remotely like it. During that inaugural season, Rob Hayles produced one of the best rides of his career to win the national road race title. Nicole Cooke made it a Boardman Bikes double with her eighth win in a row.
It signalled the start of an extraordinary summer. I was already exhausted before it got going: the hectic first year of Boardman Bikes had run parallel to the final delivery of kit and equipment for the GB team. July was a busman’s holiday, working for ITV on the Tour de France, and from there I headed to Beijing to do the same for the BBC. The 2008 Games would be the first I’d ever travelled to as a spectator, albeit one getting paid to talk about what he saw. It felt strange to be outside the competition bubble, but I was excited to see what both riders and bikes could do. There was also the luxury of being able to have a beer in the evenings.
Soon after stepping out of the airport into the humidity and the smog, I headed off for dinner with my new Radio 5 colleagues, former sprinter Darren Campbell and ex-swimmers Steve Parry and Karen Pickering. Steve and Karen had a particular talent for sniffing out social freebies and soon had us inside London House, the British Olympic Association’s hospitality centre, where we drank complimentary Pimms and loaded up on nibbles.
Over the following days, I settled into a new and very pleasant routine. A crew of off-duty media types would gather in the hotel bar and head off to the many eateries lining the shore of Qianhai Lake. The menus were brutally translated into English – presumably using Google – and contained descriptions ranging from the incomprehensible (‘the lemon deep sea snow fish digs up’) to the downright disturbing (‘delicious roasted husband’ and ‘steamed red crap with ginger’). On one occasion I found myself invited to an intimate Chinese banquet with TV presenter Adrian Chiles, athletics star Steve Cram and senior staff from the British Embassy. I don’t think I’ve ever sat at a dinner table before where the conversation spanned sport, sociology and spying.
The other side of the fence at the Olympics was proving to be everything I had hoped it would be: social, fun and free from pressure. With a few days to go until the start of the track competition, the holiday atmosphere was marred by news from the outside world. Lounging in my plush hotel room, I received a phone call from the GB head mechanic Ernie Feargrieve. There was a loud cracking noise coming from Chris Hoy’s bike.
With a feeling of trepidation, I got in a taxi and headed for the velodrome. There was no visible reason for the noise but it had everyone severely rattled, including me. Phone calls were exchanged with Dimitris Katsanis and he prescribed a cure for the likely cause; bearings shifting in the bottom bracket. Somehow, Doug Dailey, head of logistics, sourced Loctite 7471 and its activator in Beijing on Sunday afternoon. A makeshift autoclave was rigged up using a hairdryer in the mechanics’ cabin at the track and the fix was implemented. The noise ceased and disaster was averted. From that point on, it was all upside.
The fun started on day two of the cycling schedule, as I settled in next to Simon Brotherton at our commentary position for the women’s road race. By the midway point it was pouring with rain, resulting in numerous crashes on the slippery descents. Heading into the final few misty kilometres, five riders held a fragile lead over the remnants of the bunch. One of them was Nicole Cooke. I winced as they negotiated the last treacherous corner into the home straight and Nicole lost some ground. From there it was uphill all the way to the line, making it more of a long soggy slog than a sprint. Inside the last few hundred metres, our cameras switched to a long shot down the finishing straight and even though the figures were largely obscured by the spray, it was clear that one of them desperately wanted – needed – the win more than the others.
We stood and screamed as the drenched figure of Nicole clawed her way past the others to cross the line first, the shock on her face giving way to elation as she realised she’d done it. It was a joy to see, an outpouring of emotion that encapsulates why we watch Olympic sport. For me, the slow-motion footage of Nicole wining was the image of the Games. She conveyed without words how years of work and sacrifice can be justified by the intensity of an experience that lasts seconds. Nicole’s was Britain’s first gold medal of the games, the country’s first ever in an Olympic road race, and she’d achieved her record-breaking feat astride a Boardman bike. I couldn’t have been prouder.
Five days later, Simon and I relocated to the Laoshan Velodrome and watched in awe as the GB squad won eight golds. We seemed to be constantly out of our seats cheering – in a very BBC, non-partisan way – as British athletes challenged for victory in almost every event. Having been party to the tough journey they’d all endured to get here, I was delighted for them: Brad Wiggins’s early disappointments before finally making his breakthrough in 2003; the team pursuit riders, forever second to the Australians, at last getting their noses in front; Dave Brailsford, terrified at taking it all on in 2004 when Peter Keen left, and sweating over every detail for four years. Now they were all finally seeing their tenacity pay off.
From my place in the commentary box, I could see everyone jumping up and down with delight as GB athletes delivered. It was magical. And we’d done our bit too. The Squirrels’ work contributed a performance advantage of … well, I’m not allowed to divulge that. Let’s just say that it justified UK Sport’s investment many times over.
When it all ended on 24 August and the final t
otals were added up, Great Britain’s cyclists had won a staggering 14 medals, eight of them gold – enough to put them in the top ten as a country in their own right. In the timed events, they’d broken every Olympic record and two world records. It was the most successful GB Olympic squad of all time.
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The reaction at home to the Beijing results was extraordinary and widespread. The press hailed the team – and its staff – as sporting messiahs. It had a notable, and in some cases unwelcome, effect on their self-confidence. Some of the coaching team began to believe they were the kingmakers. Their healthy self-doubt was erased and their ability to listen to criticism diminished – all standard effects of winning big. I recognised the symptoms because I’d suffered from them myself. In 1992, I had gone from being an unemployed carpenter to the most successful British cyclist of his era, someone who could do no wrong. I began to believe everything that was written about me and it felt good. Those around me, the people I’d always relied on for counsel, were also affected by the press and spoke more quietly at exactly the moment I was less inclined to listen. Only failure brought me down far enough to start heeding their advice again.
As the only staff member who had been through anything like this before, I knew the process couldn’t be avoided or short circuited: everyone had to experience it for themselves. Although I knew it was both natural and inevitable, I was still saddened to witness the unsavoury change in the team’s dynamics as more and more people felt they had been undervalued, that their slice of credit just wasn’t big enough.
Away from the fanfare and public adoration, the Squirrels had their own small gathering in a hotel in Chester to celebrate. Only a few people had publicly acknowledged the huge part they had played in the Olympic success story, Dave and Steve Peters amongst them. Just two athletes took the time to thank the R&D team personally.
Triumphs and Turbulence Page 23