After the Mexico camp we were measured up for our suits which meant we were going to the Olympics. But we still didn’t know who was going to ride when we got there. I remember being excited but not as overwhelmed or emotional as I thought I would be. Probably because I knew what still lay ahead of us. We went back to Germany for a few weeks before the Games and every single session I gave 100 per cent. There was no way I was going to let my opportunity slip. The training really pushed me to the limit; for example, we would do a day like this:
5.30 am – 30 mins rollers
6.15 am – stretching
7.30 am – breakfast
8.45 am – 30 min warm-up on track
9.30 am – 10 x 4 km teams pursuits (each one faster and faster until the last one was full gas) 15min warm down
12.30 pm – lunch
2 pm – 30 min warm-up on track
2.45 pm – 10 x 2 km teams pursuits (flying start and again last effort would be 100% or approx 1.56 min)
5pm to 6pm – 30 km road ride
7 pm – dinner
The Olympics finally arrived in July. I’ll never forget walking into the athletes’ village for the first time. Here I was, eighteen, surrounded by hundreds of the best athletes on the planet in the biggest sporting event on earth; I had to pinch myself, I was that awestruck. The Olympics is as big as it gets, it’s the ultimate for any athlete. There are guys who are seven-foot tall, girls who are 140 kg weightlifters, and every single person is at the top of their game.
First up in qualifying, bang: an Olympic record of 4:11. We were the fastest qualifiers which meant that for the first time we’d gone quicker than Germany. It gave us a massive boost but also meant a lot of nerves because I think we realised that suddenly anything was possible. Second round, bang: fastest again and we were into the Olympic final the following night. I remember Shayne Bannan, who was assistant coach to Charlie at the time, telling me when I was young that a true professional athlete can switch off at night and go to sleep. But I was never able to do that my whole career. I would get into bed and start analysing everything: what if this happens, what if that happens?
I was absolutely crapping myself on the start line for the final, my hands and arms were shaking. During moments like that you feel like you’re having an out-of-body experience. You take off and it’s so loud in the velodrome, people are screaming, but you don’t hear them because the screams all intertwine into one huge ball of noise. You’re just focused on your breathing and you’re that paranoid about making a stupid mistake like clipping a wheel that you forget where you are. You drill yourself with thousands of kilometres of practice that by the time you take off, it’s serenity.
When the race started I couldn’t wait to get to the front and rip it up. One of the boys was struggling a bit, the pace was dropping off and I was frustrated because I knew we weren’t going fast enough. In a pursuit on the track the coach will walk a line to indicate to the riders whether they are up or down on their schedule.
That night, Charlie started walking the wrong way and I was getting angrier and angrier. We ended up losing the final to Germany by 1.5 seconds after they rode 4:08.7 and we clocked 4:10.2. You’d think that at eighteen years of age and in my first Olympics I’d be happy, but I reckon I was the angriest I’d ever been in my entire life. In photos of that moment, I don’t have a smile in any of them because watching the Germans on the podium with their gold medal, I was spewing. I knew we were going quicker, we all knew we could have done better, and this was an Olympic Games. I thought I might never get that opportunity again.
Brett Aitken says the pain on Stuart’s face was obvious by the tears rolling down his cheeks as they stood in the middle of the velodrome listening to the German national anthem. ‘It wasn’t an indication of any weakness but of how much it meant to him.’
After a few hours when the adrenaline had gone we went out. We were one of the first events in the Olympics so had quite a bit of time to have some fun. This partying mindset continued when I got home and for the first time I lived the life of an eighteen-year-old and went pretty crazy for a few weeks. I definitely didn’t want to go riding for a while, which was pretty normal. When Charlie called us up for the next round of testing and training it was a fair wake-up call and there was no easing into it—Norton Summit four times a day. The new season rolled around and by the start of 1993 we’d lost McGlede and O’Brien and our team became a whole lot younger. I later found out that Charlie had made a bet that our team pursuit wouldn’t even make the top eight at the world championships. Aside from me we had Brett, O’Shannessy and Billy-Joe Shearsby who came into the program that year; we had no idea what to expect. But it was a good group of guys, a mix of personalities. We trained hard and, amazingly, we ended up winning the world championship in world-record time. Not a bad turnaround from what was first expected of us. With a new team I had to step up a bit and it all started in training. I was so competitive; every time we went up Norton Summit I had to be first, or every effort we did I had to do the longest turn; I was always pushing it.
We’d barely raced together when we went to the world titles in Norway and had no idea what was going to happen. What did happen shocked us. The first ride was a world record 4:07 and Charlie made us stay up until 1 am when drug control came over to confirm the world record. I remember sitting there saying, ‘Mate, I haven’t even hit third gear yet, we’re going to go quicker tomorrow, I can guarantee it.’
We rocked up and absolutely obliterated it with a 4:03 to beat Germany in the final. I started and did a two-lap turn and kept it up the whole race. A 4:03 back then was unheard of, it was ridiculous, but Charlie had done his job perfectly. It was the first time Australia had won the team pursuit world championship. Coming in as such big underdogs and going that quick, then standing in the rainbow jersey—it was pretty special.
Walsh and Aitken say that the 1993 world championship campaign is one of their most enduring memories of Stuart.
‘I started the year with four cyclists—that’s all, no spares, no nothing,’ Walsh says. ‘Stuart was an outstanding leader in the way he trained and the way he backed in and supported the coach. Whatever I asked, he did it with all the ferocity he could muster.’
Walsh explains that the general rules of a four-man team pursuit is that each rider does one lap on the front, then swings high up the track, waits for the team to come past then backs down at the end of the line repeatedly for 4 km.
‘Now and again a country will have a bloke who can do a two-lap turn and they’re superheroes,’ he says. ‘So I started the year with four riders and said to them, “When we go to the world championships, each of you will be capable of doing two-lap turns.” I knew Stuart and Brett were capable of that already.
‘Then one day when we were training in Germany, Stuart came up to me and said, “Charlie, do you have a restriction on two-lap turns?”
‘I said, “No, I don’t, and in fact I’d encourage you to do it and failure is not a concern. I don’t mind if people want to challenge themselves and if you fail there’s no consequences.”
‘So the next day we’re out on the training track and Stuart starts ripping in three-lap turns, then he got up to four-lap turns—at a phenomenal pace.
‘Now that is huge leadership to the group—“Here am I, challenging myself.” So Brett Aitken takes on the challenge, and the two others take it on. You could see the psychology of the leadership and it was all for the team.’
Aitken says Stuart’s multiple-lap turns were an ‘integral par t’ of the team ‘smashing’ the world record. ‘That [two-lap turns] was basically unheard of back then.’
It was still all about the track until 1994 when we went to Italy for the world championships. One afternoon after training I was hanging out with the boys in the middle of the track when an Italian guy came over and said he wanted to chat to me about turning professional on the road. It caught me completely by surprise because I hadn’t even considered such a thin
g. But he said he knew the manager of the Polti team and they were interested in me.
The next day I got a phone call from Chris Boardman’s manager who said he was downstairs at the hotel and wanted to talk. At that point, Boardman was Olympic champion in the individual pursuit and one of my idols so I couldn’t get to the meeting quick enough. He asked me if I was interested in joining the GAN team—a French team—of which Boardman was the only English-speaking rider. So in 24 hours I went from dreaming of turning professional but never seriously considering it, to having two offers on the table.
The difference between the two offers was pretty evident. There were two GAN team cars at the world titles, Chris had his own mechanic and masseur, and I could see they were serious about their track program as well. During my meeting with the Polti guy he said he could also introduce me to his beautiful niece. It was a no-brainer to sign with GAN.
It was all confirmed during the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Canada. The team sent a heap of faxes through to the athletes’ village and I signed my first deal for about AUD$50,000 a year. Coming from $20 a week with Charlie, I thought I was the king of the castle.
In January 1995 I left for Europe and my life changed forever. I said goodbye to Mum and Dad and flew to Germany to pick up a team car; all I had was a yellow sticky note with an address. I figured it was in Paris, and because there was no GPS in those days, I got completely lost. I stopped at a service station but by 10 pm I gave up and knocked on the door of a hotel. I couldn’t speak a word of French so pointed to the address. Luckily for me, the guy jumped in his car and I followed him to where I was supposed to be going.
I got to my hotel at 11.30 pm, it was dark and I had to wake up the owners who were meant to be looking after me. The hotel was about 20 km outside of Paris with literally one bedroom, a tiny TV which I couldn’t watch because it was in French, and a toilet.
I remember some nights just staring at the ceiling because back then we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t have laptops or smart phones for any outside information. Australia could have sunk and I wouldn’t have known about it until someone wrote me a letter because even ringing home wasn’t an option because it was so expensive. I was lucky to speak to Mum and Dad once a fortnight.
It really was the toughest two years of my life. I didn’t have a clue about the language, the weather was diabolical, the training was a nightmare and I was lonely. The only thing that was pushing me was my determination to become a professional rider. In those early years I’d rock up to a race, get my arse kicked, then be in the car heading back to my accommodation. It was so different to what I’d experienced in the national track program, which was more like a football team where you were surrounded by people, you knew what time you were stretching, eating and training.
Now I was making up my own training programs, there was no coach and my training was basically damage control. I was getting my head kicked in on the bike, my confidence decreased and I’d succumb to eating and putting on weight. The only good part of my day was the dessert my hosts at home would serve me; the lady was an incredible cook. But there was nothing else to do. Eat, sleep and train. I only had one teammate who lived close by and he took me for a ride when I first arrived, but because I didn’t speak French we couldn’t converse; he must have thought I was pretty boring. Most of the time, I trained on my own. Riding was my freedom and even if it was crappy weather I’d still train for hours and tell myself it was the apprenticeship that I had to do if I wanted to be a big rider.
I felt homesick at times and had to fight a mental battle because I couldn’t allow myself to think about going back to Australia. At the end of a race all my French teammates would pack up and go home to their families. The only English-speaking teammate was Chris Boardman who would jump on a plane and fly back to Manchester; I remember thinking, ‘How lucky is that guy.’ In my spare time I’d go to the service course which was a little old house. I’d sit there and watch the mechanic build bikes but there was no discussion because he spoke French and I didn’t.
The highlight of my week was Friday night when I’d drive into the Champs Elysées, watch a movie in English and get McDonald’s on my own. That was my night out. Slowly I started learning French, but only by picking up a few words at a time. Eventually I picked up enough to converse. When you’re surrounded by a language, you have no choice. There was a game similar to Sale of the Century on TV called Questions pour un Champion, and I’d read every question and would learn about pronunciation.
I was on the road program but the agreement was to spend the first five months on the road, then go to the track with Charlie and the boys. I had all the pro kit and laid it on the bed. I’m sure I slept in the GAN jersey when I got it and thought it was awesome. But after the first training camp in super-cold conditions I got a knee injury trying to push it. This put me out for three months, which only made my first year in France even harder. I wanted to prove to the team that I was going well when suddenly I had to sit in the cold, in a shitty hotel, with a knee injury.
But I stuck it out over there. I was committed, I wasn’t going to pack up and go home. I still managed to win two races—stages of smaller tours—which was pretty good for a neo-pro. The first one was in the Tour de L’Oise. We had a big team meeting the night before and my French sports director, Roger Legeay, would translate to English. We were to work for our sprinter, Christophe Capelle, and I had to lead him out.
The next day, as planned, it came down to the sprint. I hit out at 500 metres to go and as the finish line got closer, no one was coming past. ‘Oh shit,’ I thought because I knew Christophe was behind me but couldn’t come past, so I hit the brakes, he won and I was second. That night my masseur, who spoke English, said to me, ‘Don’t you ever do that again. If you can win a race, you win, it’s not your fault if he can’t come past you.’ But I was just following team orders and that night at dinner, Christophe was good enough to say thanks very much. The next morning in our meeting he said, ‘Why don’t we sprint for you?’ And guess what? I ended up winning. That was such a monumental moment. It was not a big race by any means, just a French cup, but to have experienced a win, I knew things were going to be okay and I fed off that.
My first season as a professional cyclist in 1995 included my first Paris–Roubaix which lit a flame inside me that would burn for the best part of the next twenty years. It wasn’t just my first Paris–Roubaix, it was my first Classic, but I’d been around the team long enough to understand that Paris–Roubaix was massive. We had a Frenchman in our team, Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle, who I used to call ‘papa’ because he was roughly double my age. He had won back-to-back Paris–Roubaix titles in 1992 and 1993 so I could see how seriously our team treated the race.
At the time of being selected I still hadn’t seen any of the course and the famous Arenberg forest, but on our first reconnaissance mission I was shocked at how ridiculously hard it was riding the cobbles. If you’ve never ridden over cobblestones at top speed, when you’re absolutely at your limit and in the freezing rain, it’s very hard to describe what happens to your body. The bone-jarring sensation starts in your wrists and feet, then winds its way up your arms and legs and suddenly your shoulders are aching, your teeth are gnashing together, your eyes are watering and your head is bouncing around all over the place. But through the pain all you’re thinking is, ‘Keep going, keep pedalling, watch out for that drop, hold the wheel in front of you.’ You’re scanning the roads ahead of you like some crazed person in a computer game; one false manoeuvre, left or right, and bang, puncture means race over. Somehow you become oblivious to what your body is going through.
The night before my first Paris–Roubaix, we had a team meeting in our little hotel. I was shitting myself because I was told my job was to be in the first breakaway of the day. I thought, ‘Holy crap, I’ve got to be in that first break, no pressure or anything.’
Riding to the start in the morning, it was cold and still foggy and I was nervous. Bu
t it was a good thing that I was on edge because I made sure I was with every single move that went in the first 30 km. I must have used up so much energy but I had to be in that first break, which finally got away after about half an hour when ten riders went clear of the peloton. The adrenaline rush was amazing and we rode in front for about 120 km before being caught on the fourth cobbled section. The first thing that warned me we were about to be caught was the noise—not the team cars or commissaires, but the bunch bearing down on us. It was like a hundred horses pounding the pavement, and before we knew it the peloton flew straight past, leaving us to fight our way through the dust storm. The race wasn’t even halfway through and I was done. I’d gone from the front of the race to the back of the race in thirty seconds and there was no way out. Eventually I managed to get to the next feed zone at 140 km and just clicked out of my pedals, got off my bike and into the team car and said, ‘What the hell am I doing in this sport? That was ridiculous.’
It might sound dramatic but I was seriously questioning whether I was kidding myself even being there. I thought, this game is obviously not for me; I’m good at the track and I can hold my own on the road, but there’s no way I could go that fast over the cobbles. Even though I’d won some small races, the difference in the one-day Classics was monumental; it was pretty hardcore. Despite feeling like I’d failed that day, as far as the team was concerned, I’d done my job and when we sat around the bar that night, Duclos-Lassalle, who finished nineteenth, gave me a big hug and thanked me. In my eyes I hadn’t gone far enough into the race but he said, ‘Job was perfect, thanks.’
I eventually finished my second attempt at Paris–Roubaix in 1996 which helped me overcome some of the mental scars from the year before. Despite the pain and suffering, something about the race intrigued me. I don’t know whether it was the history of Paris–Roubaix or the brutal pave which meant all-out war on a bike, but riding into the velodrome in Roubaix for the first time in 1996 was spine-tingling. After most races I would either ring home or send a fax so Mum and Dad could keep tabs on how I was going. The fax I sent that day reads:
Battle Scars Page 3