Triumphs and Turbulence Page 3

  I almost met Sally in early December 1984 at the North Wirral Velo annual club dinner, held in The Red Rooms function suite above a café in Arrowe Park. It was a cost-effective affair, a few trestle tables tarted up with some paper table cloths and the obligatory one-man disco with his lonely three-bulb flashing light box. It was the social highlight of our young lives. In charge of handing out the various medals and plastic plaques was Pete Johnson, the club president. Slightly rotund and red-faced with a mischievous grin, he was a real character and the club was his primary passion.

  On one of the tables across from ours was the Edwards family. Barrie and his son Andrew were both racing members of the Velo. As Barrie was an adult and Andrew younger than me, we were only on nodding terms. I was vaguely aware they had two daughters, who I’d glimpsed from time to time at local events. His older daughter – not a cyclist – must have been dragged out of bed at the weekends to accompany the family. She could sometimes be seen hanging around the results board, wrapped up in a duffle coat, looking generally unenthusiastic and waiting for her dad to finish racing so she could go home. I’d noticed her but never spoken to her.

  Tonight she looked very different from the figure I’d glimpsed in Broxton picnic area: dressed in a simple black outfit with little make up and no jewellery, her dark hair cut short in a Phil Oakey wedge. She was quite beautiful. And she seemed to be looking at me. I had no idea what to do about this, it was an utterly alien experience. I wanted to talk to her but knew if I went over it was sure to turn out to be a terrible mistake. I sat there in turmoil and did nothing. A couple of hours later, as the evening was winding up, I still hadn’t made a move. I watched her put on her coat and head towards the door where she turned, looked at me again, smiled once and left, leaving me disgusted with my lack of courage. I hadn’t even tried. Pathetic.

  I was still brooding on this a week later while I was out with the local gang – a mix of Velo and Port Sunlight Wheelers members. Dave O’Brien, a lad who could always spot a potential angle, announced with a sly grin that he had, in fact, got the contact details for one Sally-Anne Edwards but believed that a negotiation was required before he would hand them over. He didn’t want money, he wanted something more precious: the cachet that came with owning a pair of Assos cycling shorts. His inside information for my hard-earned Manchester Wheelers kit – that was the offer. I tried to haggle but he wouldn’t budge. Eventually I gave in and the deal was done. An old receipt with a phone number scrawled on the back was handed over.

  That evening, scrap of paper in hand, I stood in the hallway where my parents kept the phone, staring at it for a good 20 minutes, before plucking up the courage to lift the receiver and dial.

  ‘Hello?’ A female voice.

  ‘Can I speak to Sally please?’

  ‘Who’s calling?’

  ‘It’s Chris Boardman.’

  Rustling, a hand going over the mouthpiece, a muffled, sing-song shout: ‘Saaaallllly!’ Another 30 seconds passed. Eventually Sally came to the phone and after a short but excruciating exchange of polite conversation, I blurted it out: would she like to go to Chinatown with me and the gang? Amazingly, she said yes.

  The following Friday, I went with some of the group to call at No.22 Kelsall Close, a small semi-detached in Oxton. I was resplendent in my Guinness jumper and flat cap, sporting a barely visible moustache as I escorted Sally into the back of Simon Flood’s blue transit van for the trip through the Mersey Tunnel to Liverpool. Our first date: a night out with the lads and a Chinese meal. Classy.

  It was a damp, foggy night a week later when I rode around to Sally’s for what we now refer to as our real first date on Christmas Eve, 1984. It was also the first time I stepped over the threshold at Kelsall Close and met her family.

  Our house was quiet, with a small back room where my parents read. The front room was where the TV resided, and when it was on it was considered rude to talk. Sally’s house couldn’t have been more different. Picture an early pilot of The Royle Family: everyone sat together in the lounge, the only downstairs room, the TV was permanently on and there was lots of shouting. Sally’s mum, Sandra, sat in her armchair wearing big furry slippers and chain-smoking. Barrie wandered in and out, making jokes and chuckling, while Sally’s younger siblings, Nicola and Andrew, squabbled continuously. I felt instantly at home.

  A little later on we stepped out into the foggy night. The silence came as a shock. We strolled down the hill past The Swan pub and up into Prenton village where I bought half a chicken from the local chippy. I still don’t know why I did that.

  Sally was beautiful, confident, quiet and clearly very smart. She excelled at physics, which she was studying in the sixth form, and didn’t partake in exercise of any kind. She loved playing Trivial Pursuit, listening to music and reading poetry. I did none of these things. I was ambitious; she was happy to see where life took her. I worried about details; she preferred to focus on the bigger picture. I never worked out why she was interested in me and she’s never really told me. If you’d put in our personal details, no dating agency in the world would have matched us up. It was clearly a relationship that couldn’t possibly work. Within a matter of weeks, we were officially an item.

  Over the next two years, Sally and I spent as much time together as possible. She was finishing off her ‘A’ levels, while I’d finally escaped school and was pursuing a career – in the loosest sense of the term – working with wood. I attended Cavendish Enterprise Centre on Laird Street in Birkenhead to learn my trade – carpentry – but was enticed away by an offer of paid work making furniture. For someone aspiring to be a cabinet maker, I thought this was a good career move. It turned out to be assembling chipboard panels. After that I did a short stint fitting out an ocean-going yacht, the dream of a one-man band in a farmyard in Thornton Hough.

  While I was enjoying having some money in my pocket to fund my social life, the demands of training and riding for the national team were making it difficult to fit everything in. Employers weren’t keen on their workforce disappearing for weeks at a time to ride their bicycle. In 1987, I was offered a job by North Wirral Velo club president Pete Johnson, who knew about the problems I was having. Not only would I be able to work with wood, I’d also be allowed as much time off as I needed to pursue my cycling career. I spent the next 18 months at Pete’s Furniture Emporium on Church Road, Higher Tranmere, making furniture to order – often badly – and occasionally helping out with house clearances. All for ten pounds a day.

  Stacked floor to ceiling with a chaotic mix of cheap furniture, ornaments, curios and boxes of old cutlery, the three floors of Pete’s Emporium were almost impossible to navigate. It was perfectly normal to move around large areas of the premises without setting foot on the floor. Some rooms hadn’t been entered since the seventies. Out the back there was a small area with two huge metal tanks. These were filled with hundreds of gallons of caustic soda solution and usually had 20-odd doors soaking in each. The paint was slowly being dissolved off them and in many cases so was the glue that held them together. Each door was periodically turned and eventually jet washed by the master of the yard, Billy, his red face made redder by a speckle of burns from the sodium hydroxide, a roll-up permanently sticking out from under the left corner of his moustache.

  To the side was a small workshop where Paul, Pete’s only officially declared employee, toiled away finishing furniture. I also worked in this cramped, unventilated space from time to time. The fumes from the large amounts of petrol-based wax we used kept us happy all day: Sally used to be able to smell it on me for hours after I came home.

  Big Dave led the house-clearance crew and conveyed the booty back to the shop in one of the two barely functioning vans. Pete had a strict rule never to pay more than £30 for his vehicles, a philosophy that often saw the police returning them to their rightful owners. Every day we would all meet for lunch – usually chips and a fishcake – in the shed in Billy’s yard, where Big Dave tried to overdose on s
alt and tales of the day were exchanged.

  Running the whole show was Pete, a cross between Mr Pickwick and Del Boy. He was a generous man who had given me a job not because he needed a furniture maker, but because he wanted to help. I loved him. His character was reflected in the shop itself, where barely a day went by without a miniature drama of some sort. Altogether it would have made an excellent soap opera, although I don’t think the script would ever have made it past the lawyers.

  While I enjoyed life at Pete’s, Sally had taken a more conventional job at the Unilever laboratory in Port Sunlight, testing washing powders for £5,200 a year. She hated it. The only thing she detested more than working there was having to give her parents half of what she earned for her keep, so she quickly resolved to buy her own house. This was bold for a 19-year-old with virtually no money but fairly typical of Sally: strong-willed, courageous and imaginative.

  Somehow her project became our project and the house hunt turned into a joint venture. After looking at several basement flats and dilapidated properties on the eastern side of the Wirral, we found a tatty semi behind Birkenhead Technical College. With the help of a deposit from Sally’s parents and a dubious letter from Pete Johnson guaranteeing my ‘salary’ we were able to buy it. We also bought a cat called Bob who despised us from the off and promptly moved across the road. He’d glare at us from his new bay window as we walked past.

  It took me a while to get used to living somewhere different. Once I rode the 12 miles from Birkenhead back to Hoylake and was through the front door before the surprised faces of my parents made me realise I’d come to the wrong house. The best bit about having my own home was not getting told off for cleaning my wheels in the front room with the telly on and being able to set up a full woodworking shop, complete with a 12-inch circular bench saw, in the spare bedroom.

  By this point, Sally and I were engaged. We hadn’t actually discussed marriage: everything had just evolved along what felt like a natural path. There was nothing more natural than the next two events that would rock our lives. It was June, three months after we’d got the keys, when we sat on the bed – a mattress on the floor of our small bedroom – Sally holding a stick with a blue stripe on it indicating that the spare room would soon not be. We were living happily together, doing the shopping, the cleaning, all the things couples do, so I suggested we might as well get married now as later. It wasn’t as romantic as it might have been.

  I went home and told my parents that I had some good news and some bad news. The good news was that I was getting married and having kids, the bad news was it’d be a close call as to whether it happened in that order. My dad’s first response was ‘Well, that’s the end of your cycling career then, you’ll have to get a proper job.’ I was distraught, as my parents were very by-the-book about these things, and even though I’d left home I hadn’t really left their jurisdiction. But it only took them five minutes to get over the shock and become very supportive.

  Sally phoned her mother the same day, but before she could break the news Sandra launched into an account of her trip with friends to see a medium the previous evening. At about the same time we’d been staring at the blue stick, she’d been told she was going to become a grandmother. ‘Yes, that’d be me,’ Sally replied.

  In September 1988 I made my Olympic debut in Seoul, South Korea, where the GB squad helped to make up the numbers in the team pursuit, and a few weeks after returning Sally and I got married. I had mixed feelings about our wedding day. Being so young, we didn’t have a clue what we wanted and so we let Sally’s mother organise the whole thing. But I’ve come to realise it was the perfect wedding for us, it reflected our characters to a ‘T’.

  It started off pretty conventionally with a posh car to the church in Prenton and staged photos of me glancing nervously at my watch and worriedly looking over my shoulder down the aisle. To save money, I wore my Team GB Olympic dress suit. We’d also decided to skip the expense of a formal lunch in favour of buying a washing machine, so while we waited for the evening do and buffet we sat with friends in our front room – Sally still in her wedding dress – eating toast and watching Blind Date. My abiding memory of the day is of Eddie Alexander, one of the national team at the time, leading a rousing chorus of ‘Pick the fat one!’

  That evening in the function suite above The Naughty Edwardian there was nearly a fight. No speeches were made because none of us wanted to. Our wedding night was spent at a local hotel, which was not something I was keen on, but my best man, Jon Walshaw, insisted that was what you did when you got married. I suspect his real motivation was wanting the use of our place with his girlfriend, Carol.

  In true obsessive fashion, I got up at 5.30 the next morning and dragged Sally to a hill climb race on the Nick O’Pendle pass in Lancashire. It wasn’t an important competition, but it was the only race that would be held on that course ahead of the National Championships the following week.

  A few months later, just after Christmas, came our second shock. I rode my fixed-wheel bike the mile and a half from our house to Pete’s shop to find Johnny Fryer, Pete’s best friend and drinking partner, standing on the pavement outside.

  ‘Hi Chris, Pete’s dead,’ he announced. John was a man of few words.

  I hadn’t met many people who lived their life as unhealthily as Pete had. Beer and chips were his daily diet, so it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. But it did. Despite being a bit of a rogue, Pete was a lovely man who’d employed me for my benefit not his. I could take weeks off to go on cycling trips or even just to go training. To this day I’m desperately sad that he wasn’t around to see my Olympic win, something he’d contributed to more than many will know. I’d have loved to bring that gold medal back to his shop and hang it around his neck. He’d probably have sold it.

  Pete’s shop stayed closed, putting me out of work. Sally, now seven months pregnant, was about to give up her post at Unilever and wouldn’t be eligible to return as she hadn’t been there the required two years. We were now facing married life, having a baby and paying for a new house while living on the dole. Typically, none of this fazed Sally in the slightest. On 11 March 1989, in the maternity wing of Arrowe Park Hospital, Edward Thomas Boardman arrived in the world, named in honour of Eddie Soens and weighing a whopping 10 lb. I was scared to death.

  The following weekend I’d accepted an invitation to ride the prestigious Porthole Grand Prix. The Porthole of the title was the restaurant of the sponsor, Gianni Berton, and the event was a tough time trial on the rolling lanes around Lake Windermere. All invitees were asked to dine at his establishment in Bowness the night before the race. I’d ridden the Grand Prix the previous year, but I hadn’t eaten at The Porthole because I’d travelled to and from the event on the day with my dad. Remembering just what a long slog that had been, this year I’d arranged to stay over.

  Despite Ed being just six days old, Sally had decided to come along, which probably seemed odd to onlookers. It certainly did to the midwife whose advice not to travel Sally ignored. But that’s how we’d both grown up, in families where life fitted in around cycling.

  Gianni’s restaurant was nestled in the centre of Bowness village. Through the window we could see tables set with long-stemmed glasses and candles, it didn’t look like the kind of place we would ever eat. Just to the right of the front door, which was fitted with a genuine brass porthole, hung a menu: £6 for soup! My hand almost froze on the doorknob.

  We were greeted by Judy, Gianni’s wife, who sat us in a quiet corner of the restaurant with Ed next to us asleep in his car seat. Despite having been invited we couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure we wouldn’t be presented with a bill at the end of the night. Too embarrassed to ask, we ordered starters and told Judy we’d eaten on the way. After an hour, we asked for the bill. Our request was met with a warm smile and dismissive wave of the hand from Judy, before she hugged us both like long-lost family. We filed out through the fantastic smells and past delicious looking plat
es of food. We went to the local chip shop, got two bags of chips and ate them in the room of our little B&B.

  It was the first time we’d been away with a child and I was worried that Ed’s snuffling as he woke every few hours for feeds would disturb our fellow guests. It was the end of an exhausting week and it showed in my result the following day. I finished a lowly fifth behind road rider Paul Curran.

  I returned to ride the Porthole Grand Prix as often as I could over the next ten years, even as a pro for GAN and Crédit Agricole, not for the prestige of the race but because of Gianni and Judy, two of the most wonderful people we’d ever met. The Porthole Eating House is where many a happy birthday was celebrated, where I had my first and last experience of grappa, where my kids were stuffed with rich food that they invariably threw up later in the caravan. I was never once allowed to pay for a meal.

  CHAPTER 3

  Barcelona

  The ticking sound was coming from my left, cards flipping over one at a time inside a small yellow box. As they turned, the numbers painted on them changed, dropping second by second towards zero. On the final flip the brake mechanism in the start gate would spring open, releasing its hold on my rear wheel, and the most important four and a half minutes of my life would begin.

  It was a searing hot summer afternoon in Barcelona and I was clipped into the pedals of my Lotus Type 108 bike. Waiting. The Velodròm d’Horta was packed but apart from the odd cough the crowd was silent. I was seconds away from starting the 4000 m Olympic pursuit final. I was also an unemployed carpenter with a wife, two kids and no money. If I won it would be Great Britain’s first gold medal of the 1992 Games – the first for 72 years in the sport of cycling. The world was watching. The Wirral was watching. It was all wrong.