Nigel Mansell Autobiography

by Nigel Mansell

  ‘I’m going home. I need to get back . . .’

  ‘You are not going home – you are going to the doctor’s.’ She was really concerned for me, this complete stranger, what a lovely lady. I never did find out who she was and I’d like to know, because it was such a generous act of kindness.

  I said I knew the doctor locally, who was a friend, and I could ride to his surgery. I got back on my bike and, unbeknown to me, she followed me there. I do recall starting off really slowly but, I have to be honest, I don’t remember any of the rest of that journey.

  It was only a short distance to the doctor’s surgery. I don’t even know what I did with my bike, but I do remember there was a surgery full of people. I felt really groggy by now, so I sat in the corner and it was all a bit of a blur. But I could hear my Good Samaritan saying, ‘This guy’s been knocked out. He’s bleeding all over the place. You need to see him urgently, he is not well!’ There I was, blood dripping down the chair, my legs and arms all ripped and my clothing torn – I looked a real state! Then I passed out.

  Next thing I knew a doctor was with me. He took me into his surgery and spent a good deal of time dressing my wounds. Let me tell you, tarmac and skin don’t go together! They put gauze on the cuts and bruising, but it was the shoulder that was of most concern so I was booked in for an X-ray. I don’t know who collected me from the surgery to take me home, and I don’t know how my bike got back home either.

  With just nine days left now till the start of this 1320-mile charity bike ride that I had been training for over months and that we’d been planning for the longest time, the doctors told me I had broken my collarbone. Great! They couldn’t operate because the break was too close to the shoulder, so they just put me in a sling and sent me home. Everyone in the camp was seriously concerned as to whether or not I’d be able to continue with the challenge. Actually, nothing could have been further from my mind; as long as I was breathing I was going to complete that ride.

  The day finally came when we set off to the airfield to take the plane to John O’Groats. Bizarrely, on the day before, I stubbed my toe and it was agony. It turned black really quickly and a physio looked at it and confirmed it was broken. And this was all before I’d even got on a bike and done one mile! They just taped it up and I got on with it.

  We lucked out because we had a light tailwind for the first day of the bike ride, so our average speed was over 20mph – we were flying, helped along by gallons of adrenaline and excitement. My shoulder was very painful, but adrenaline is a marvellous thing and the pain quickly numbed. The agony comes when you stop, so I didn’t sleep very well that night and I was on loads of painkillers. You have to be very careful not to take too many of those pills, though, because not knowing exactly where you are on a bike going 30mph downhill can be very dangerous.

  This time, I took full charge of the planning and logistics, which were far more controlled. Race-car drivers learn always to be honest with themselves, which is incredibly helpful when doing special planning and logistics. A lot of people kid themselves.

  We built in fudge factors. If we did more miles one day then we had a cushion the next. We were so mindful of our safety that we had two ex-police outriders on motorbikes with us at all times, David and Roger, who were fantastic; patient, kind, funny. We had some laughs with them because they’d occasionally take us down the wrong road, which we’d rib them for, but they are splendid men who kept us safe and I am eternally grateful to them.

  With just the three of us on those early stages we rode in single file, but crosswinds were a big problem. Once we had more riders later in the trip you could peel off the back and go to the front, slipstreaming, which really helped. The maximum we would ride without stopping was an hour and a half to two hours, then, regardless of whether or not we felt fresh, we stopped. We’d vary it from day to day depending on the terrain.

  We had a great time during the first few days and then the weather hit, really cold temperatures, snow, black clouds, freezing rain and wind. One day, riding through Aviemore in the Cairngorms, even though it was the middle of summer it was snowing and freezing cold! Nobody wanted to get out of their lovely, warm motorhomes.

  The great thing about endurance riding is you can have as much chocolate and as many iced buns as you want. I am not built to be a cyclist; I am too big, too heavy, too meaty. The serious cyclists are all flipping emaciated. Rosanne always looks at them and says, ‘They need a good meal!’ You are burning so many calories all the time, although, of course, it’s important to eat the right stuff to get the correct nutrients in. However, every now and then you can eat what you want as a treat. You can have a few naughties and who the hell cares! I remember stopping during the run through Aviemore and we had some sticky buns. Oh, my goodness me, what a taste – the greatest taste that’s ever passed my lips! Iced buns, woo-hoo!

  Rosanne did the cooking and she was brilliant. She would be in the motorhome with the driver and they would go on ahead and find a place to stop safely. Then she’d set out some chairs and a table, go back in the motorhome and cook up mountains of pasta – it was like some kind of mobile Ready, Steady, Cook! Before long we’d come around the corner because we were riding so fast and relentlessly that we’d catch up pretty quickly. Then she’d feed us all and we’d get back in the saddle, while she’d be left behind to clear up all the mess, pack up the motorhome, zoom off ahead to the next stop-off point and do it all again. What a star. She was exhausted too!

  One strange part of the ride was that while everybody else lost about a stone or more in weight, I was the only rider to put weight on! My whole body was in crisis all the time, so it was hanging on to everything, and it wasn’t until two weeks after the ride that I finally started losing weight. My body was in such turmoil that it hoarded every bit of energy that I put into it. As soon as the ride was over and I went home to relative normality, my body quietened down and the weight dropped off me.

  When we were dragging ourselves up Shap Fell in Cumbria, the rain was lashing into our faces; it was horizontal and cold. It cut into my skin; it felt so harsh. The side winds were over 50mph and as we came down the other side of the hill it felt genuinely dangerous. Quite hair-raising.

  Some days I got on my bike early in the morning and my legs could barely turn the pedals. Until my body recovered and the lactic acid subsided, it was very gruelling. One day, I was so exhausted that I said to the group, ‘We have got to have a rest,’ so we pulled over on the kerb. I lay on the grass verge by the road with all these cars whizzing past and within less than a minute I was fast asleep, in the middle of the day, completely passed out on the side of the road! Obviously, the toll on your muscles and body is massive, but there are specifics to bike riding too; you get all sorts of bumps, boils and rashes in places that we won’t talk about . . .

  There were many times on that ride when the will to keep going had to be so strong, so resolute. We finally got down to London, which was 1000 miles or so into the route, leaving us with another 300-plus miles to go to Paris. On the penultimate day, there was a logistical cock-up that had a terrible effect on my already exhausted body. For a bike ride of that length, with that daily mileage, the team has to have a complex support system: there are physios around you all the time, people logging your performance and physical reaction; very particular dietary requirements that are planned to exact number of calories (apart from sticky buns); you get to your destination at the end of each day and have to have sports massages, etc. One of the most important techniques for recovery each night is a combination of hot and cold baths to both revitalise and soothe your muscles. The whole enterprise is very disciplined and precise; it’s not just a case of jumping on a bike and heading off.

  Well, this particular day we had joined up with the London–Paris ride and therefore our team were no longer in charge of the accommodation. Unfortunately, because of an error with the hotel booking my room only had a shower. That sounds relatively trivial but it meant I could not
have the required hot and cold baths. I was completely exhausted when I got to my room and really just wanted to lie on the bed and fall asleep, but I figured the shower would suffice and I didn’t want to make a fuss, so I had a hot shower. My legs didn’t feel right, I could tell that, but I got out of the shower and on to the bed and fell asleep pretty much instantly. I’d also missed eating any food because I was so tired.

  The next morning I had a hearty breakfast as I was very hungry, but when I got on the bike my body wouldn’t function, it just wouldn’t work properly. All of a sudden my body went, I am going to pay you back! The experience was like being a passenger in my own body. My will wanted to do something so much, but my body just would not allow it. I couldn’t even walk properly; it was the most amazingly weird feeling. It felt like pedalling lumps of lead; it was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. My legs were just useless.

  It wasn’t until we had covered 90km that the leaden feeling went away and I could finally spin my legs to ride more freely and with less pain. I am aware that the physical difficulties I experienced were not helped – in fact, they were sorely exacerbated – by my numerous racing injuries. However, this was another level – this was complete exhaustion and I got really quite deflated on that day. I was very down. I couldn’t see how I could get up and do another 180 miles or so to the finish line. In fact, I became so tired, so exhausted, so demoralised that I decided to make it to the next food break just after lunchtime then quit. I was done; I was toast. I was almost crying inside on the bike, I just felt so sick and ill. It was dreadful.

  We stopped for a bite to eat and, as soon as I had a little bit of sustenance, a trickle of resolve started to come back into my head. As my legs rested and I had some fluids and more food, my competitor’s brain began to think, I am going to finish this ride even if it kills me! The body and the mind in sport are an amazing thing, aren’t they? If there’d been a film crew doing a fly-on-the-wall documentary at that point, it would’ve made an epic programme seeing someone totally seize up and age 20 years overnight, but actually still go through all the pain barriers and get the job done.

  When we restarted I dropped down into a slightly slower group just to make sure that I got to the end of that day, which I am proud to say I did. However, in terms of sport, I think that particular day on the Paris ride was the single hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life. At times, I really thought I was going to keel over and die. I made it to the end of that awful day and I’m not reluctant to say that I made it known that unless I had a decent hotel with a bath the following night I’d pull out of the ride and go on with my own team to Paris. They were full of apologies because it was simply an oversight, but that could have derailed our incredible effort. We’d already spent ten days on the road doing the most fantastic event and that simple error could have proved catastrophic.

  But we also had some fantastically funny moments. We got pulled over for infringements on the road by police several times. Another time, we pulled up at a set of traffic lights and, because we were all so tired, one of the team couldn’t get the cleats out of his bike’s pedals so he tipped over, bumping into the bike next to him, who then fell on to the next and so on like some comical Lycra-clad row of dominoes! The cars behind us must have been crying with laughter looking at that. We had a few crashes, but fortunately nothing really serious. One time, someone knocked into me, then I smashed into the bike in front and we all went down in a heap, but the great thing was that I fell on them, so it was a really soft landing!

  One lovely moment happened when we were going through a small village and we stopped off for a break in the local church car park. This little old dear came up to us and said, ‘I was going to go and get my hair done, but I am not now. I am going to donate the money to UK Youth instead.’ Marvellous.

  We finally made it to Paris and the sense of achievement and relief was overwhelming. Against all the odds, we had done it, and completing that second epic bike ride is something I will always be exceptionally proud of. I am also proud that I didn’t let the charity down. For around four years, my whole life revolved totally around supporting the charity and these epic bike rides, the publicising of the centenary and trying to make sure that UK Youth was kept as prominent as it should be. I am very proud of that.

  Without doubt it is one of my proudest personal achievements to get on that bike every day for 11 days straight. To anyone who hasn’t done that, try cycling 120 miles in one day, then try it for two days, maybe five days, maybe even seven or eight days. But for 11 days? That was something else.

  CHAPTER 25

  THE CONSEQUENCES OF EPIC RIDES

  Unfortunately, there was a more sinister side to the fluctuating weight issues I had after the second epic bike ride. What I have never admitted to the world is that those two epic rides affected my immune system and my health to such a degree that it threatened my life.

  In the aftermath of the second epic bike ride, I was of course immensely proud of myself and the entire team. I was also absolutely wrecked, shattered, exhausted in a way that I had never been before. It was this all-consuming exhaustion that didn’t seem to go away.

  The broken collarbone took a long time to heal. The fracture became what is called a ‘non-union’, which happens when the ends of the bone rub together where the break is, to the extent that it never fully heals. It would take about two years for my collarbone to feel right again.

  What I didn’t know at the time was that the broken collarbone, the previous hamstring injury, the exhaustion, these were all relatively minor challenges compared to the most serious consequence of that huge bike ride. Lurking in my body was something far more menacing.

  For some time after the epic Paris bike ride, I still wasn’t feeling right. In fact, in some ways I was beginning to feel worse. At first, I put it down to the sheer scale of what we had done, the intensity of the ride and the fact that I pushed myself through too many pain barriers, which I shouldn’t really have done. An event like that just takes everything out of you. Great bike athletes are on the edge of being ill all the time; they push it right to the edge, but they know exactly how to pull back. As an amateur, you don’t have that same finesse; you just push and push and push out of sheer determination to complete your challenge. After the ride, I got every single cold, sniffle, flu bug, everything, for months. The simple fact is that I had lowered my immune system to such a degree that my body was open to attack.

  This niggling sense of feeling not right, in a worrying way, just got worse. Now, please forgive me for sharing a little too much detail here, but it’s important for you to know what happened.

  As you get older, it is a known fact that – men especially – need to go to the bathroom more often. There, I’ve said it – I bet that’s not something you thought you’d read in a Nigel Mansell book! Well, as much as we like to think of ourselves as invincible, Old Father Time has a habit of laying traps and, for men, one of these traps is this issue. Sometimes it is nothing more than an inconvenience; sometimes it can develop into something much more dangerous.

  Well, while I was still recovering from the ride, I noticed this was happening to me more and more. I might play a round of golf and end up going in the bushes. Before you say it, no, it wasn’t to find my stray left hook off the tee; it was for a pee. This often led to much merriment and sarcasm from my playing partners, which was taken in good spirits, but in private I was a little concerned. I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t want to worry Rosanne so I didn’t say anything.

  The situation continued to worsen, however, and I really began to feel . . . it’s hard to say exactly, but I just didn’t feel right. I knew something was wrong. So I booked myself in to see a top specialist in Harley Street.

  Now, your men’s kit is very personal, so this was all rather awkward and embarrassing, but I felt I needed to know what was going on. So I took a deep breath and went in to see him. He did extensive tests and asked a lot of questions. He
wasn’t particularly chatty but I thought nothing of it. Then, after getting all the results back he rather sternly said, ‘Sit down, Mr Mansell . . .’

  ‘Okay, so what’s going on with all this then, please?’ I asked.

  ‘I need to operate, Mr Mansell.’

  I was completely taken aback but in a way I was also very pleased I had found an expert who was so forthright; he knew what needed to be done and he was on it straight away. I had a busy schedule, so I wasn’t sure when I could fit this operation in, but I said I could do it in a few months and then I’d be fully recuperated by the autumn, which then wouldn’t affect my forthcoming heavy workload. So in my head I quickly rejigged my diary.

  ‘Okay . . . the problem is I have all this work going on for a little while, but maybe we could look at a couple of months . . .’

  ‘No, Mr Mansell,’ he interrupted. ‘I need to be perfectly clear here.’ He explained that there was a severe obstruction internally, complicated by the historic injuries I carried, which had obviously damaged my body in a number of ways in those internal areas, not helped by the years of having heavy-duty seatbelts strapping me in so tightly to the cockpits, crushing my insides. Specifically, the epic bike ride – with the length of time spent on the hard saddle – had exacerbated the problem and created a major challenge.

  ‘So, Mr Mansell, you need to decide. Your kidneys and liver are already being affected. In three more days you could be completely blocked and that could potentially lead to septicaemia. If we don’t sort this out and you do contract septicaemia, then there is a distinct possibility that you won’t have to worry about anything.’

  I almost didn’t compute what he said.

  ‘Pardon? What did you just say?’

  ‘Mr Mansell,’ he continued, ‘the test results are very clear. You are at risk of contracting septicaemia. Given your medical history and the current status of this problem, if that takes hold you will be in a very serious and potentially irrecoverable situation.’