1 I Was Put on This Earth to Run
4 Where Mere Mortals Quiver, the Superstar Becomes Excited by The Big Moment
6 The Heart of a Champion, a Mind of Granite
7 Discovering the Moment of No Return
13 A Flash of Doubt, a Lifetime of Regret
16 Rocket to Russia … and Beyond
Highway 2000, Vineyard Toll, Jamaica, 29 April 2009
Man, I gripped that steering wheel hard as the BMW M3 Coupe flipped once, twice, three times; the roof of the car bounced off the wet road and into the ditch. My windscreen smashed, an airbag popped. Bang! The bonnet crumpled as it hit the ground with a crunch.
Everything was still as I came around to what had happened. There was a weird quiet, like the tense, anxious seconds that always took place on a start line before any major championship race. Sssshhhhh! The silence was broken only by the hammering rain outside and the tick-tick-ticking of an indicator light. It was probably the only thing still working. My car was twisted up in a ditch and smoke was pouring out of the engine.
Stress can do crazy-assed things to the mind. I knew something wasn’t right, but it took a second or two for me to realise that I was upside down and my seat belt was the only thing holding me in place. It was such a weird sensation, checking for injuries above my head, in my legs, my feet. Thankfully, I couldn’t feel any pain as I stretched and gently tested the muscles from my toes down.
‘Yo, I’m all right,’ I thought. ‘Me all right …’
In a split second, the accident flashed through my mind and, oh God, it was bad. I’d been driving through the countryside with two girls, friends of mine from Kingston. Manchester United were playing a Champions League semi-final later that day and I was so desperate to catch the game on TV that as we hit the bumpy, country roads near Trelawny, my home parish in the north-west corner of Jamaica, my mind was only on the kick-off. Initially I took a few risks. At times, I pressed too hard on the accelerator and once we had a close shave with an oncoming car. It had just overtaken a van, and as it swerved around, the driver missed us by a couple of feet on the other side.
I looked across at the girl in the passenger seat. She was nearly asleep.
‘How can you relax on roads like this?’ I thought.
Noticing her seat belt was unclipped, I nudged her awake. ‘Look, if you’re going to chill, at least lock up,’ I said. ‘Otherwise if I have to break hard you’re gonna come forward.’
We came off the country tracks and hit Highway 2000 on the west side of Kingston. Jamaica’s roads were smoother there and I was enjoying the heavy purr of the engine and the surge of energy that pumped through my wheels when, out of nowhere, a flash of lightning flickered overhead. There was a clap of loud thunder. We had collided with a tropical storm and it was big. Whoosh! Rain suddenly crashed down and pounded the glass, so I flipped on the windscreen wipers and brushed the brakes, feeling the speed ease off slightly. My tyres hissed through a lake of water on the road.
Whenever it rained I often made a point of dropping gears for safety. The car had been given to me by a sponsor for winning three Olympic gold medals in the 2008 Olympics, and I’d recently visited a drivers’ school at the famous Nürburgring track in Germany to learn how to handle its powerful engine. I knew that on a slick surface, if I moved down a gear, the compression of the car would reduce my speed naturally. But pumping the brakes hard would cause the wheels to lock, and that might send me into a spin. I quickly changed down, moving my clutch foot to one side.
I was barefoot – I preferred to drive that way – and the car’s traction control was positioned next to my leg, but a funny thing had happened a few days earlier: while moving around in my seat, I’d accidentally knocked the button and the tyres had lost a little grip on the tarmac. This time, while focusing on the rain, the highway ahead, I made the same mistake and, without realising it, I knocked the traction control to ‘OFF’. Well, that’s what I think happened, because what took place next was a freak accident that nearly wiped me out for good.
I felt the car shiver a little; the body seemed to tremble at 80 miles per hour.
‘Hmm, that doesn’t feel good,’ I thought. I glanced down and checked the speedometer. It’s not slowing quickly enough!
79 …
78 …
77 …
Adrenaline came in a rush, like something bad was about to happen. That shiver, the slight tremble of the car moments earlier, had been a sign my vehicle was out of control. I wasn’t driving, I