Nigel Mansell Autobiography

by Nigel Mansell

  As a deliberate recuperative plan, learning magic was exceptional for me. It led to a total transformation from being housebound and unable to talk, to putting on my own magic shows within 24 months in front of random members of the public. I would love to tell you all about the specific tricks that really helped me get better . . . but I’m not allowed.

  CHAPTER 24

  ON YOUR BIKE

  Being a racing driver is a dangerous job. Even with today’s fabulous safety standards there is still enormous risk on any racetrack. Yet I’ve nearly killed myself twice on bikes! A major part of my life since retirement from Formula 1 has been my involvement in two epic bike rides and a professional cycling team. Over many years, this has provided me with a lot of fun, a lot of work and the single most difficult sporting challenge I have ever faced, including my entire motor-racing career.

  Initially, the impetus to get involved in cycling on an elite level came through my involvement with UK Youth. I am extremely proud to be president of UK Youth, a fantastic charity that I hold very dear to my heart. UK Youth supports and helps disadvantaged young people with the largest network of youth clubs and projects. UK Youth actually started way back in 1911; in the 1980s it was spearheaded by Princess Anne, who is an absolutely wonderful person and an incredible representative of the royal family.

  I first became involved when I was a racing driver and then, after I retired, I began to donate more and more of my time, such that by 2000 I was asked to become president. What an honour! I was so privileged to be asked, although I have to admit that following the Duke of Westminster in the role made me feel somewhat intimidated. How do you follow someone like that?! (For the record, I am also president of the IAM (Institute of Advanced Motorists) and co-patron of the Road Safety Awards of Great Britain and the Commonwealth with His Royal Highness Prince Michael, which are roles that are also very dear to my heart.)

  At the time I took over the presidency, the charity did an amazing job of reaching around half a million children who needed help and support. That has now risen to upwards of one million in some years. This has been achieved through an enormous amount of incredible hard work on the part of upwards of 45,000 volunteers each year, as well as the staff at the charity. It is a tremendous honour to be part of such an incredibly profound charity and to help so many young people. I am hugely proud to hold that role.

  One day we were all brainstorming ideas and thinking of ways we could get the message out. My two lads were very much into cycling so we decided to start our own cycling team, beginning in 2009. That professional cycling team was simply called UK Youth, designed to raise awareness of the charity. I was the major sponsor personally and it was a very good outfit. We won a lot of races across the country and enjoyed great success for four years.

  I am very proud of all the riders in that pro cycling team and it was a magnificent achievement when they won the highly coveted Tour Series Championship. In terms of putting UK Youth on the map, it was a great exercise; it definitely helped raise the profile. It was a lot of work – that sport is incredibly complex and people have no idea how hard the riders train and how demanding the competitions are. In fact, I will say this: I consider professional cycling to be the most brutal sport in the world. It really is. What those guys put themselves through for six, seven, eight hours a day, day after day, at the very highest level, is just astounding. Brutal, there’s no other word. Greg was involved as a rider and I was very proud of his part in the team.

  To run a professional bike team is not a cheap option; it costs a seven-figure sum each year. Sponsors can help but we were let down by some companies who promised a lot but delivered very little. So we were left holding the baby to a certain extent, and for a number of years we personally contributed very substantial sums of money to that team’s subsistence. Relatively, if you put the same amount of money into motorsport it would be insignificant, of course, but in terms of the charity it was a very sizeable amount. I think having a well-known name can sometimes work against you, because a few potential sponsors definitely implied that we were comfortable enough financially and therefore didn’t need their money. Of course that is nonsense – the charity and team needed a lot of funding. We really wanted to make the charity more visible and it cost a lot of money to do that. It was tough trying to get money out of sponsors and we did become rather disillusioned at times. It could be very disheartening.

  When it came to the centenary of the charity in 2011, as a professional cycling team we decided that it would be amazing to stage an epic bike ride. Basically, we were all still on a mission to put UK Youth on the map, get more visibility for the charity. The idea was put forward to stage a charity ride around the country, the notion being that along the way we could call in at a large number of the 5500 or so youth clubs that the charity supports around the UK. The plan was to start in London, go around Wales, up the coast to Glasgow, then all down the east coast and finally drop back into London and finish at Number 10. It was in excess of 1300 miles in just 13 days. To give you some context, the pinnacle of cycling, the Tour de France, is 2200 miles in 21 day-long segments over a 23-day period. So this was a serious challenge.

  Being a public charity, the idea wasn’t something you could do easily. It wasn’t simply a case of throwing yourself on a bike one morning and setting off. There was the team of riders, a physio, two motorbike outriders, the motorhome driver, representatives from the charity – all in all, it was quite a team. There were lots of expensive supplies too – special recovery drinks, pre-ride drinks, muscle recovery drinks, breakfast drinks, sleep drinks, you name it! Plus all the physio supplies, spare bike parts, fuel for the back-up crew, their lodgings, food, and so on and so on.

  All of this back-up and logistics costs money. Obviously, the charity can’t be seen to be spending many thousands of pounds on that rather than the main focus of its work, so the costs of an event like this have to be underwritten. To complete such a ride as this costs hundreds of thousands of pounds. It was a Mansell family decision to underwrite this whole amount and support the programme in its entirety.

  I just felt very strongly that this was a great opportunity not only to raise the profile of the charity, but also to drop in at the youth clubs and centres and really try to inspire young people and give them a well-deserved lift. Some of our meeting points were my old stomping grounds at McLaren and the Williams F1 headquarters! At the end of a day’s riding, it was wonderful to arrive at the youth clubs and see all these young people there, welcoming you and cheering you in. As tired as we were some days, we often wouldn’t go to the hotel or get changed. We’d just roll up at the end of the ride after hours on the road; we’d be dirty, shattered, cold, wet, but we’d just put some coats on, go and meet the youngsters and play games, talk to them, sometimes do a presentation. It was absolutely fantastic, every single night we did that was brilliant.

  We had a bit of a false start behind the scenes. However, when we took over total responsibility things started to run smoother, and this stuttering start just made me even more determined to push ahead and make the bike ride a huge success. We set off from Kensington Palace in London and were privileged that Prince Michael was there to drop the flag and send us on our merry way, with his best wishes. He is an unbelievable supporter of the charity. It was the most wonderfully exciting feeling, and when Prince Michael started us off no one jumped the flag and there were no start penalties incurred!

  Have you ever been shot by a gun? Well, I was asleep in the motorhome after the first day’s ride when I woke up absolutely screaming in agony. My leg felt like someone had come in and shot me with a gun. This was due to having the most severe cramp I’ve ever experienced in my life, and because of this something just snapped in my leg, which we later found out was the hamstring. At the time I just felt something totally rip and explode in my leg, it was actually a terrifying experience. The team physio examined me and confirmed I had torn my hamstring. On that second morning of the ride, my leg
was black and blue from the internal bleeding caused by this hamstring tear. Everybody just looked at me and you could see they were thinking, What on earth are you doing? The physio told me it was a bad tear and that I should not start the ride. Needless to say, I carried on.

  I didn’t captain the ride and, in my opinion, there were a few things that didn’t really go to plan. This one day, we were pushing very hard and going quickly and so I said, ‘What the hell is going on, guys?’ It turned out a mistake had been made in the logistics and we were going to arrive at our destination that night over two hours late. In that circumstance, I’d rather people say they have made a mistake and provide the information, and then resolve it all together as a team.

  On the eighth day, my youngest lad came up to me and said, ‘Dad, you look really terrible, you are gonna kill yourself. Get in the car and knock it on the head now. Follow us and we will carry on the riding.’ All along the way, people had obviously been checking that I was okay, but this time there was more urgency to it than just being cared for and I said, ‘Look, you indifferent person. I’ve gone through what I’ve gone through. I am gonna finish this!’ And then Greg started to chuckle and said, ‘Well, we’ve all lost then!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Well, we had a sweepstake on how many days you would last and because I know what you are like, I was the longest. I said you’d get to eight days . . .’

  Cheeky buggers!

  When I found out about that sweepstake on the first ride, after all the laughs had died down, I was actually quite surprised – I felt that my team did not know how dogged my determination could be, because people had made plans for the day when I crashed and burned and couldn’t continue. However, you do what has to be done. Little did I know, I was starting to kill myself.

  We finally finished at Number 10 Downing Street, which was really special, and, to top it all off, shortly afterwards I was awarded the CBE and the Queen even acknowledged the bike ride we had done, which was a real honour. (The great thing about being awarded the CBE is that the Queen ordains that your family can have its own coat of arms. Wonderful.) I was really nervous on the day I went to get the award. Even with all the work I have done over the years with different members of the royal family and the high-powered government people I have met, those two days were the most nervous of my life because the honour meant so much to me. I was just so proud. I was very emotional too; I had to stop myself welling up. When I accepted the award, the investiture was with Prince Charles and I was elated because I think he is a wonderful royal. Prince Charles was absolutely marvellous! The royals are briefed on everybody who goes up, but it must be a huge undertaking to research all that detail and remember so much. He was wonderful; he clearly had done his research and was really kind to me. It was absolutely one of the proudest moments of my entire life.

  That first epic bike ride was a fantastic achievement and we had created a lot of great publicity for the charity. Despite the gruelling nature of the event, in my mind I was already planning the next epic two-wheeled adventure.

  Two years later, it was time to get back in the saddle as we decided to set out on an even more gruelling bike ride. I just felt like I really wanted to push the limits of what we could do. Lots of people ride from John O’Groats to Land’s End and that is an amazing achievement, but the cycling team and everyone involved with the charity wanted to push past that and do something really special. So we decided to cycle from John O’Groats to Paris, a distance of 1320 miles, this time in just 11 days. The plan was set for three of us to start in the Highlands, head down to Blackpool and join up with some friends, make it to London and then join in with the pre-organised London–Paris event, which about 475 riders embark upon annually. By that point, we would already have covered about 1000 miles, so the hope was that the influx of cyclists and the excitement of joining that ride would re-energise us for the last section of the trip. So that’s what we did.

  I have to say this now: it would prove to be the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. By some way. That includes all of my most gruelling races. It includes my worst crashes and the recovery from my worst injuries. That bike ride to Paris was the single toughest endurance challenge I have ever faced in my life. Period.

  The reality was that we had to cover 120 miles a day. That is an elite distance and, looking back, it is ludicrous that we even tried. When we were planning the event, I talked to a pro cyclist about what we were thinking of doing and he said, ‘If you do a ride, it’s got to be meaningful – you have got to step up to a totally different level, maybe even an elite level. You should be looking at over 100 miles a day, maybe 120.’ We really wanted everyone to look at what we had done and think, Wow, that is really impressive.

  For those of you who don’t know cycling, 120 miles a day is a long way on a bike, a very long way. As you now know, I am a big one for preparation, so in the six months leading up to the ride I trained as hard as I ever did in Formula 1 – in fact, I would say even harder. I was extremely focused and also conscious of my injuries. People were saying it was a big ask, perhaps too big, to do 120 miles a day with the amount of broken bones and residual injuries I was carrying, but, of course, that just made me even more determined to complete the ride. For months, I went out on my bike for four or five hours a day, in all weather. I ate correctly, watched my diet, kept going over the route in minute detail and was constantly planning. It was months and months of training and preparation.

  The training really did take over. I had a great friend called Peter, who asked me to be his best man at his London wedding, which I was very proud to agree to. Then, quite late in the planning, his future wife’s father became rather ill and couldn’t travel. The problem was, the dad lived in New Zealand, so the wedding was moved to there! Having to fly to the other side of the world turned out to be the most wonderful trip and adventure, down in New Zealand and Australia. We said that, as we were flying to the other side of the world, we might as well extend our break and have a great holiday afterwards, so that’s what we did.

  I’d already started training, so I couldn’t afford to take a three-week break. When we got to Christchurch, therefore, I went to a bike shop and bought one so that I could continue training every day. Then for the rest of the holiday I was doing four or five hours a day in the saddle while Rosanne followed me in the car. I’d do upwards of 100 miles a day. That took a long time and Rosanne was very patient; she’d have to go ten miles up the road then wait for me. She did this for three weeks.

  During another training session, this time in La Manga, a friend of ours, who was due to come on the ride with us, had a horrific crash on his bike. One of my best friends in the world – who I have known for 50 years from way back in my karting days – almost killed himself. We were going down a hill when he had a puncture and hit a pylon, which then launched him almost over a cliff. He then somersaulted and landed at speed in a culvert. He badly damaged his hip and was in hospital, so that put paid to his chances of making the ride. That was really unlucky and ended his career in biking straight away.

  Typically for me, though, I even made the training a health risk! Going out cycling on the roads in Jersey (or anywhere) can be dangerous. In the dark, especially so. When you are training and minding your own business, a lorry or car driver who is not paying attention can so easily maim or kill you in a flash, just a fleeting moment of recklessness or lack of concentration. A split second of being absent-minded can take someone’s life.

  There is an esplanade near where we live which is lit up, so going up and down there with no traffic, backwards and forwards on my bike, was very good. Ten days before heading off to start the ride at John O’Groats, I went on one last long training ride and during the final hour of all these months and months of training, it started to rain heavily. The traffic was bad; I felt quite exposed on the bike and I was very tired. So I decided to come off the roads because everyone was rushing to work and I felt a little vulnerab
le.

  I decided to play it safe and went to a local cycle track. It was really pouring down with rain by now and I was having a conversation with myself about whether I needed to push the training right to the end of that last hour. I was determined to finish the programme, though. However, as I was going around the track I was saying to myself, You’ve done enough – don’t do anymore, just slow down.

  Then I went around this one corner and BANG! I lost the front wheel; it just went straight from under me and I slammed into the tarmac, smashing down on my side, with my shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. I was unconscious in the middle of the track for several minutes.

  When I came round, there was a lovely woman standing over me asking, ‘Are you all right? You came off your bike . . .’ I was groaning and mumbling and as I came back to my senses I started to feel a searing pain in my shoulder. The woman told me to stay at the side of the track while she phoned an ambulance, but I said, ‘Please don’t phone an ambulance, I am fine . . .’ She said, ‘You are not fine! You’ve just had an accident and have been lying here unconscious!’

  I noticed I had a big chunk out of my elbow, my clothing was ripped and torn, there were deep grazes and blood on numerous parts of my body, and my shoulder was absolutely killing me. I was so disappointed, angry, annoyed.

  I repeated that I was okay, got up and picked up my bike. It was fine, hardly damaged, because when the front wheel slipped it just whipped out from under me and my shoulder hit the tarmac first, so that took all the impact. I wearily lifted my leg to get back on the bike and the woman said, ‘What on earth are you doing?’