Only a tick and ‘good’ this time. Obviously not my best work.
A BMX track is ridiculously short (this is me writing as a 33year-old again, in case you weren’t sure) – only around 400 metres long, sometimes shorter. It’s over within 30 seconds. You line up eight abreast, behind the start gate, feeling unbelievably nervous. It’s intense. Before you are traffic lights, which give the signal to start.
When the gate drops, you’re away. ‘On the “B” of the bang’, as Linford Christie would say; or, perhaps more accurately in this instance, the ‘G’ of the green light. You start in lanes, but as soon as the gate drops it’s a free-for-all and you’re into the first bend after around 30 metres. Often this will be a ninety-degree bend, with a U-bend after that, and three or four jumps located in between. It can be physical – it’s not officially a contact sport, but in fact it is, so you’re jostling with your rivals to hold position, and fighting for the best line into the corner.
But the start determines so much, which is why I used to travel the 15 miles to Livingston one evening a week, to practise on the only track in the Edinburgh area with a proper start gate. That wasn’t all: I would also practise on the street outside our home every evening. A bit like the goal-kicking for rugby, it was something I could practise on my own, honing my reflexes, experimenting with different pedal start positions, and working on accelerating my bike up to speed as quickly as possible, using lampposts on the street as markers for distance. And all that practice seemed to pay off: starts became my strength, my killer weapon.
So, back to Slough – where, incidentally, the other riders included Iwan Thomas, the future 400-metre runner, and, in my age group, a young German called Jan van Eijden, who, 20 years later, would become my sprint coach (see chapter one), as well as numerous other future track cycling champions, among them Australian Darryn Hill, the 1995 world sprint champion, and my future friend and team-mate, Craig MacLean. By the semi-final stage Jan had been knocked out – he only made it to the quarters, which shows the depth of talent there was in BMXing, given the career he went on to have as a cyclist. But I was still in the competition, preparing for my biggest moment – and with confidence, because I had progressed pretty smoothly to this point.
Bang! The start gate dropped and the race started in the usual frantic fashion. Four from the semi would qualify for the final, and I made a reasonable start, lying third going around the second U-bend. Coming out of that last corner, still in third, and, with a place in the final in my sights, we negotiated the final jump. Get over that OK and I’m there: in the final. But disaster struck. Hitting the ground after the jump, my foot slipped off the pedal, and I crashed onto the crossbar – which hurt, but wasn’t as painful as it would have been had I been a little older than 10.
But it was incredibly bad timing, and there followed one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve ever had in a bike race. I was still moving, but somehow couldn’t reconnect my foot and pedal; despite my desperate attempts, the pedal remained empty. And the more I panicked, the less likely I was to rectify this situation. It’s a bit like when you’re really late and in a hurry, trying to unlock your door – that’s when you’re most likely to fumble and drop your keys.
Paradoxically, time seemed both to stand still and speed up. As I tried to focus on getting my foot back on the pedal, one rider came past me on my left. Then, around 10 metres from the line, a second passed me on my right. My slip of the foot had cost me two places. It had also cost me my place in the final. I crossed the line fifth, just out of the qualification places.
I was inconsolable. And I couldn’t get the race out of my head, re-running it over and over again – not only in my head, but on TV. One of the dads had recorded it on an early video camera, which was about the size of an outside broadcast unit, with the battery in a backpack that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a week-long safari. His video of the race was a bit shaky, but I sat and watched it again and again, thinking: maybe this time my foot won’t slip off the pedal. It was a source of huge regret for me. I had really, really, really wanted to make the final. Not just for the kudos of the single-number bib at the following year’s championships, but because each of the finalists was presented with a small trophy. And I loved getting trophies.
After the race I was in tears. My dad tried to console me, telling me I’d ridden a good race, that I’d been unlucky and would have lots more opportunities in the future. Dad came to all my races – despite, for quite some time, being in the midst of his Grand Designs project back home – and he couldn’t have been more supportive, which was in contrast to some of the parents you’d see at these races. While I was crying because I was disappointed, others cried because their parents put pressure on them and reacted badly when they didn’t live up to the expectations they had for them. I saw kids being smacked on the head, their parents shouting, ‘What did you do that for?’ Then you’d see the bottom lip begin to tremble, and the tears start.
As we drove home from Slough, my dad and I discussed the race, and I came to appreciate that it hadn’t all been down to bad luck; that I wasn’t necessarily a victim of outrageous misfortune. The main reason my foot had come off the pedal was because I could see the finishing line, and thought I was home and dry. I allowed myself to be distracted, my technique fell apart for a split second, and the error followed; a bit like dropping a pass in rugby due to taking your eye off the ball.
I was 10, so none of this offered too much consolation at the time – and it didn’t stop me torturing myself by repeatedly watching the video of the race once I got home. However, I can see now that my dad helped me to analyse things rationally and logically, rather than seeing myself as the victim of a terrible injustice. It was about taking responsibility, I suppose, which starts with taking responsibility for yourself, and not looking for someone or something else to blame – opponents, team-mates, the pitch, track, referee, ball, weather, misplacing your lucky socks – when things went wrong.
One of the other dads who helped run the team I was in, Scotia BMX, has said that I stood out from a lot of the other kids for being quite rational rather than emotional; and for analysing races in a rational way, rather than kicking and screaming and throwing my toys out of the pram. Well, yes and no. I would say I was – and still am – very emotional. But I also think that I appreciated fairly early in my sporting career that your own performance is all that counts, and that winning isn’t the be-all and end-all, because there’s sod all you can do about your opponent. If you do the best ride of your life and come fifth … there’s no point being unhappy with that, is there?
As well as being my (more than willing) mechanic, my dad and the other dad I’ve just mentioned, George Swanson, helped organize the Scotia club’s training sessions. My dad thought a lot about training, and about ways we could replicate race efforts in practice. He and George used to take us to the closest beach to Edinburgh, Portobello. It wasn’t exactly the Côte d’Azur, but it was fringed by a long, wide footpath, which was excellent for training. They would line us up, six abreast, and have us race each other for 200 metres, before handing over to someone else, like a relay race. You’d rest a bit and go again – flat out. We’d be on our knees by the end of it, thanks mainly to there being a serious competitive dimension to this training, but it was a great way of raising our pain threshold, making these maximum efforts with nothing at stake but childhood pride.
Yet perhaps the most valuable lesson I learned from BMXing came from never being the best. Even as I progressed, there was always someone better than me – a target for me to aim at. I saw a lot of kids who would just sling their leg over a bike and win. Often it was because they had simply grown faster