race that sticks most firmly in the memory is the 1986 world championships in Slough, near London. Glamorous, eh? Slough these days stands almost as a euphemism for dreary and boring, a suburban town where nothing much happens, thanks to it being the setting for The Office, Ricky Gervais’s satirical comedy, though the town had an image problem long before that, the poet John Betjeman writing: ‘Come friendly bombs, and fall on Slough! It isn’t fit for humans now …’
Well, Slough will always evoke entirely different emotions, and more colourful memories, in me. As far as I was concerned, Slough in 1986 was the height of glamour, and the centre of the universe, because it hosted the biggest BMX world championships in the sport’s young history. Around 1,600 riders – many of them having travelled over from America – descended on Slough for the meeting; there were 64 in my under-11 age group alone, which is a figure worth reflecting on. Could any other sport attract such a large field for an international event in such a young age category? But these were the glory days of BMX. If the E.T. chase scene had reflected this latest craze, then it had also acted as a catalyst, because BMX grew hugely in popularity from the mid to the late 1980s, before hitting a sharp decline.
For me, those 1986 championships were a defining moment. They gave me a glimpse of what might be possible and shaped my desire to carry on; to up the ante and see how far I could go. I’d been racing for two years, and doing quite well, but Slough was my first international race. I was going well; I could feel it, and I felt confident as I lined up, alongside seven fellow ten-year-olds in my heat. I won, qualifying for the eighth-finals (the stage before the quarter-finals), and then won again, going through to the quarters. And I breezed through them, finishing second – with the top four going through.
I was in the semi-finals of the world championships. Now it was really serious, because to make the final was the big thing. And here’s one reason why: all the finalists would have single-digit number-plates (i.e. 1–8, as opposed to some messy double- or triple-digit number) at the following year’s championships. There was huge kudos in that.
Let me describe a BMX race. Or, rather, let the eight-year-old me describe a BMX race (copyright: my school jotter from p4M, mistakes as original):
My Weekend
I enjoy doing BMX. BMX stands for Bicycle Motocross. I race on my bike, there are jumps you go over and the corners are banked. Scotia is my favourite BMX shop [and also my sponsors, so I already understood that it was a good idea to namedrop my sponsors at every opportunity]. Yesterday I went racing at Glasgow. Gate two seemed to be putting me into third place (the gate is a thing at the start wich you put your front wheel against and somone says ‘Riders Ready, Pedels Ready, Go’ and pushes the gate down). You pick a card and it will have a number, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6. So I got third. Scotia are taking me training on Thursdays. I have done a picture of a track on the next page.
Just for the record, this got a big red tick and ‘very good’.
Giving another flavour of the sport, a few pages later, under the heading ‘My Favourite Place’, I find another tenuous excuse to shoe-horn my obsession into my school work (see also ‘My Holiday’, and numerous other ‘My Weekends’):
My favourite place is at the Derby BMX track. You get to watch the famous riders and get their autographs. There is a commentator who tells you who is in the lead over a microphone. When you are on the start you feel very nervous! Once you are racing you can not really hear the people cheering because you are concentrating so much on the race. There is a smell of sandwiches and Mars bars [do these actually smell? I think I meant burgers and hot dogs, which, when I smell them now, evoke the BMX races of my childhood]. When I crash, if I fall on my mouth I have a mouth guard but dirt can get in your mouth. It tastes horrible! Especially when the ground is wet!
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
