I am blessed with being both Welsh and British. I have represented both with pride and have sung the Welsh national anthem ‘Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau’ (‘The Land of My Fathers’) and ‘God Save the Queen’ on winners’ podiums with equal gusto. I was born at Morriston Hospital in Swansea on 13 April 1983. Our family home was in the small village of Wick in the Vale of Glamorgan, ‘near Cowbridge’ as noted when addressing mail which would otherwise end up in the Highlands of Scotland.
Growing up was idyllic. We lived a mile or so from the sea, surrounded by a web of high-hedged, narrow country lanes, twisting and turning to reveal around every corner the sorts of things children find exciting. Streams, bridges, little sandy coves, long, broad tide-washed beaches, and cliffs with steel ladders set in them to escape the incoming tide. Overgrown paths into woods, stepping stones across rivers that flood when the tide comes in, giant sand dunes, disused quarries, and wild common with even wilder sheep. There were medieval castles, ruined, and, in the case of St Donats Castle, restored, by the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst before it became Atlantic College. We lived in an adventure playground – it was like child ‘heaven’ – and testing yourself in one way or another became second nature. The village also had a green, on which every Sunday during the summer formal cricket was played, but during the rest of the week an impromptu game of football would take place most days after school. Often the group was split into two teams of all ages. The participants would change as children left for their tea and then returned. New arrivals joined the losing team until they got ahead; the little ones played with the eldest, all learning to be mindful of the abilities that come with growth. All the children in the village had a fantastic time. We wanted for nothing.
One day my brother Craig and I took our bikes to the ford at the bottom of a nearby hill. I was probably eight at the time. The weather had been awful and the river was flooding across the road. When we hadn’t returned by teatime, my mum, Denise, got on her own bike to come down to check on us. We met her halfway up the hill, dripping wet and laughing, having spent the afternoon daring each other to ride our bikes into the middle of the flooded roadway and then do a sort of track stand to see who could stay upright longest without falling off. We had also helped out a young motorist whose car had spluttered to a halt in the middle of the road. He’d opened his car door, not expecting the river to flow into his car and his credit cards to float out. Craig and I chased his cards, wading down the river and retrieving them for him, then helped him push his car out of the water. Whatever the weather, there were never anywhere near enough hours in the day to do the things you could do. It was a great time and certainly set me up for a life where exploration and adventure into the unknown were a significant element.
Later, as we got older, jumping on a bike to ride to the next town to go the music shop or pet shop was quicker and more fun than waiting around for the bus. This was the time before mobile phones. You left home and you were gone. Mum and Dad were great. Sometimes they came with us and other times they let us go off alone, always striking the right balance. With only 20 months between us, Craig and I were very close, and we learned to be self-reliant and enjoy the freedom that came with a country upbringing and an outdoor life.
Mum and Dad had taken us cycling around the lanes on the back of their bikes from a very early age. As I grew too big for the child seat, we needed to upgrade. I spotted an old tandem bike frame in the loft of our house. I was five at the time and not sure what the object was, sitting big and dark in the corner. Dad had ridden it with his older brother, Chris, when they were youngsters. Somehow, sentimentality meant that the frame was never thrown away. Dad hauled it out of the loft, had it re-enamelled then rebuilt the wheels and re-equipped it. Because I could not yet reach the pedals, he made up a separate crank system with an extra set of pedals connected to the crankset below. So we were mobile again, with Craig having the choice of a child seat behind either Mum, on her bike, or Dad and I on the tandem. Stopping us on one of our excursions, a neighbour told us about another tandem in a local antique shop. We bought it, and Dad created a second set of cranks and specially set-back handlebars for Craig. Now we could all ride as a family, usually Dad and Craig on one bike and Mum and I on the other.
In the summer of 1990, when I was seven, we went on our first cycling holiday, loading the tandems onto the roof rack and driving down to Lymington to catch the ferry to the Isle of Wight. Now that might not seem such a big deal to a world-weary adult, but to two children aged seven and five, spending a week touring the island when the sun seemed to shine constantly was fantastic. We explored the scenery and wildlife, and we had two buckets and shovels on the top of the bags at the back, so that we could play in the sand on the beaches and in rock pools. We had our transport and could just go wherever we wanted. Craig and I loved every minute of it, and so bikes became the focal point of being together as a family.
The next three years we had similar holidays, with Mum and Dad organising everything. One summer, we just rode from the house, through the Vale of Glamorgan to the seaside town of Penarth. There we had a big ice cream each while we waited at the pier for the steamer Balmoral to arrive and take us to Ilfracombe, from where we went exploring Dartmoor. Every night, after Mum and Dad had cooked our meal in the youth hostel, they would read out the options for the next day with possible routes and activities, factoring in the weather and how tired we might feel. Although each day was a new adventure, nothing was happening by accident, as Mum and Dad would research everything for months before. Ever since those early days, that is how I have approached life, weighing up everyone’s views before coming to a communal decision that’s best for everybody.
My first school was Wick and Marcross Church in Wales Primary School, opposite the church and the memorial hall and a short walk from the village green and pub. The teachers were excellent, and the school encouraged us in all types of sport. In addition to the traditional netball and rounders, local schools were allowed by Atlantic College to use their facilities, so there was swimming in the indoor pool, canoeing in the outdoor pool, rock climbing and abseiling, even archery. At Wick and Marcross, sport and outdoor activities were a part of school life every bit as much as learning maths and discovering science, and I can see now how lucky I was in that respect.
Sports day was a red-letter day at the school where pupils were divided into three houses named after the local castles Ogmore, St Donats and Dunraven. We did the usual ‘egg and spoon’, ‘going through hoops’ and ‘wheelbarrow’ races, as well as running. Like the Olympics, we finished with the 4 × 400m relay on our undersized school track – with the older children running more lengths to make up the distance. Each team had one person from each year running a leg. A teacher and a couple of mums would keep the score. I remember one sports day when Sophie Moore (née James) was Year 6 representative and team captain of St Donats. After the boys’ relay, St Donats had to win the final event to come first overall, and I saw Sophie talking to her team before the girls’ relay. She took over in last place, ran as if her life depended on it and won.
She wasn’t big-headed or brash, she was just lovely Sophie who walked further down the road from our house to her mum and dad’s farm with her brother and sister. Her family worked really hard to make a living, just like my mum and dad. We all celebrated and took pleasure from her achievement, regardless of which house we were in. Everybody crowded around the track that sunny afternoon was captivated by Sophie’s heroism in inspiring her team and then finishing off the job herself.
In that glorious sporting summer of 2012, the whole nation took to heart its sporting heroes, just as that crowd of teachers and parents did at that school sports day. Exactly like that little group, the nation didn’t care if they were male or female, the colour of their skin, whether they were disabled or able-bodied. Our nation – a nation of mums and dads, teachers and children – proved in that summer, that those pundits and journalists and marketing managers who had perpetuated the myth that ‘only men’s sports are interesting, we are only interested in sponsoring men’s events, the prizes can only be for the men’ were wrong. Our nation showed that they were far more fair and bigger than those feeble people, with their own personal prejudices, gave them credit for.
Cycling was a means of transport, a freedom, a method of getting to somewhere where exciting things could happen more quickly than walking. At primary school, many sporting options were open to us and this inspired me. Mum and Dad played tennis and we would cycle to Llantwit Major to play on the municipal courts in the summer. Craig and I became sufficiently competent at tennis to play to modest success. I was also captain of the netball team. Mum often came to sports days and other events to watch us, whereas Dad, due to work, was a very rare attender. Our Year 5 netball team were great, and I’m sure my competitive streak was shining through by then. I was goal defence. The other team had to get past me if they were going to score. Dad had an afternoon off and we were playing at home. ‘Please come and see me.’ He turned up at the due time, but there was no sign of the opposing team. It looked like it was a no-show, so Dad went back home and said he would walk up later and see if anything was going on. He came back and caught the last ten minutes. We won, and our opponents failed to score. Dad was obviously proud, but in a quick word to me before I went back to join the final lesson of the afternoon, he offered his advice. I didn’t seem to be following the match quite as much as I should have been when the action was down the other end. I needed to concentrate 100% on the ball and the movement of the players off the ball, for the whole match.
During tea, Mum and Dad noticed that I was not using my left hand to hold the fork. When Mum asked me, I told her I couldn’t hold the fork because it hurt my hand too much. Mum and Dad inspected my hand and everything seemed okay – until they tried to roll up my jumper sleeve. My arm was very clearly broken. Mum asked when the pain had started. ‘Oh, in one of the first attacks by the other team in the game. The ball came awkwardly and I had to dive to get it and crashed onto the floor. After that it hurt a lot trying to use my left arm to stop their attacks, so I used my right hand and only used my left when I had to. Nobody got past me, so it finished fine and I didn’t need to tell anybody about it.’
As Dad drove me to hospital, he said he was sorry that he had criticised my performance and that a broken arm was more than adequate reason to be distracted when the action went up the other end. We finished the season unbeaten and Mum and Dad have the classic photo of the primary school netball team with me at the centre, as captain, holding the ball. It goes alongside the matching photo of Craig at the centre of the cricket team. Mum and Dad wrote a nice letter to the school telling them not to worry that nobody spotted my broken arm – Nicole was trying to keep it a secret!
The local hospital casualty ward was familiar territory to our family. I was given a lovely girl’s pink bike with dropped handlebar for my birthday; asked what I might like to go with it, I selected a speedometer. One Sunday morning, I was out riding my bike when I made a mistake and fell, cracking my head hard on the road. Back home, when I got to the kitchen Mum, who was obviously shocked by my appearance, screamed for Dad. Dad came in and asked calmly, ‘You say you can’t see clearly . . . tell me how many fingers am I holding up on my hand?’
‘Dad, I can’t see your hand, just a sort of shape.’
I was more concerned about my bike, which I had deserted in the road. The accident had happened about 300m from the house. I had slowly made my way back home by feeling the garden walls of the houses on the street until I came to ours, which I could recognise by the feel of the gate. I had a cracked skull. Apparently I was slipping in and out of consciousness as Dad drove me to the hospital. Mum stayed with Craig, and most importantly they retrieved my bike. I had a helmet in the shed, but I was not wearing it. Mum and Dad made me promise that I would wear one every time I rode a bike after that incident. I have kept my word ever since.
I was into every sport. One summer holiday, a couple of years later, we stayed at a youth hostel in Ely which happened to be a school that was being put to other use for part of the summer. We slept in a classroom. The school came with a fully marked out athletics track and all the facilities. Early one evening, after a day exploring Ely Cathedral and Oliver Cromwell’s house, Mum, Dad, Craig and I held our own athletics festival. We had a long jump and triple jump competition, three attempts at each, with the best one counting. We had the 100m, 200m and 400m, all with some bizarre handicap system, so Mum and Dad had to chase hard to catch us in the dash to the line. I’m not sure what stood in to be hurled as the discus, but something was thrown. The weather was glorious.
As we lay on the grass that summer evening, with that slacking pair Mum and Dad feigning that they were tired and needed a rest before the final of the 800m, we read a report in the Cycling Weekly magazine that we had picked up earlier in the day at a newsagents, about a series of ESCA (English Schools Cycling Association) races for youngsters. There and then, I wrung out of Dad a commitment that on our return from holiday, he would find out about cycle races near to us. Then it was back to our athletics festival.
Something about cycling was starting to grab me, but it was still just one of many sports I loved and in which I could unleash my competitive instincts. With a child’s intuition, I soon realised that apart from rugby, Wales, with limited numbers and resources, was generally going to struggle in team sports. To cite a contemporary example, Gareth Bale might be one of the top footballers in the world, but the fact remains he is unlikely to ever play in a winning team in a European Championships or World Cup. If I was going to achieve sporting victories, I needed something in which my success was not too dependent on those around me. Win or lose, it needed to be down to me alone. I could not aim for success if it relied upon people who were not willing to show the same dedication and professionalism in preparation that I was.
My interest in cycle races did not come out of the blue. Mum had been a swimmer in her youth and Dad a cyclist, though my uncle Chris was far more serious about cycle racing than Dad ever was.
Every July, Dad would watch the Tour de France highlights on Channel 4 and Craig and I would sit with him, often wearing team jerseys brought by Uncle Chris, who at that time was working for a company which organised sporting events, including the Kellogg’s Tour of Britain cycle race. Mine was the blue, yellow and pink jersey of the Z-Peugeot team, and I quickly became a fan of their British rider, Robert Millar. Until Bradley Wiggins’s and Chris Froome’s victories in the Tour de France, Robert had been Britain’s most successful male competitor in the Tour, finishing fourth in 1984 when he also won the King of the Mountains.
It was the 1993 Tour coverage in particular that sticks in my mind. Millar had attacked the leaders on the Col d’Izoard, to escape with Pedro Delgado. As he ascended the long and difficult Col de la Bonette, the highest road in Europe, he dropped Delgado, climbing alone to the summit. These were mountains several times higher than Snowdon, the biggest mountain I had encountered. I could only marvel at the thought of cycling at those heights. Millar was riding to glorious victory, but behind him all was not right. Delgado had been caught by a small group and they were now ganging up to pull in the lone British rider. On the long chase off the mountain and along the valley floor to the final climb, Delgado pushed himself to his limits to get the group within tactical distance of Millar. It was an epic struggle, one against many. On the final climb to Isola 2000, the small chasing group caught Millar and the race seemed over; they were fresher and he was exhausted from his lone efforts.
Millar would not match them in the dash to the line; he was a spent force. Then, in a show of absolute defiance, to prove to everyone watching who the moral victor was, he attacked the group again. The pain was obvious. His arrogant rivals were shocked as he sprinted off up the road. The commentator described the move as heroic; I felt the same way. That he would be caught and passed was obvious, but Millar’s bravery was inspiring.
When the programme was over, I ran outside, jumped on my bike and headed for the hills behind Wick where I rode up and down the steepest climb I knew, five times. I did it as fast as I could, inspired by the deeds of Robert Millar. I still don’t know what possessed me, given that I had not even started competing, but there was something about the event and the notion of being King of the Mountains, dressed in the polka dot jersey. At the first opportunity a few years later, I asked Millar for his autograph and in the late ’90s I struck up a friendship with him. I wanted to know as much as possible about how to live the life of a successful elite cyclist. There were so few British road cyclists, men or women, who’d had prominent international careers at that point, and I wanted to learn as much as I could. He had been there and got the T-shirt. I wanted a few T-shirts as well.
When the family returned from our summer holiday, our first move was to make contact with the Cardiff Ajax cycling club and we were invited to their club evening at Maindy Stadium in Cardiff the following Wednesday. I’d never seen a cycle track before in real life, let alone ridden on one, so Dad spent the trip in the car warning me about the need to stay on the inside, hold my line and not use my brakes. The track itself, which didn’t hold any fears for me, even as an 11-year-old, was a large cement track built for the 1958 Empire Games, with a gentle 25-degree embankment.
I followed Dad’s instructions and rode a couple of laps while he went off and spoke to some of the club officials and members. Riding against other riders on the track was out of the question, as I didn’t have the appropriate bike, but the official and Dad came back and asked if I wanted to do a time-trial that Friday night. My eyes lit up: from everything I had seen of the Tour on TV, the time-trial was the boring bit, with no tactics, but it had to be done before you could ride over the Alps in a polka dot jersey, and the sooner a start was made, the better. So it was a resounding ‘Yes’.
A time-trial takes place on the open road among the traffic, so questions about riding on the road and road safety followed. I had ridden to Bridgend and other places on my own, many times, so I was well versed in the etiquette of the road. I also told the club official other things I thought important, like the fact I had watched the Tour de France on TV, and had even been to watch the Tour of Britain. All went well until I was asked how old I was. I was 11. Too young! What? My career was on the launch pad; mentally the countdown to Friday night had commenced. I rode loads more than anyone else my age. I could think of some who couldn’t even ride a bike. No sane person would release them out into the traffic. What has age got to do with it? Who came up with that as an idea of how good a cyclist you are? I wasn’t speaking, but I’m sure Dad recognised the look in my eyes was the same as Mum’s in the moments before she would let rip with a torrent of common sense. A solution was needed – and quickly. ‘Well, how about if she was on the back of a tandem behind me?’ asked Dad. Agreed. The countdown started again.
No concession or preparation was made to the tandem prior to the event. For the record, this 1930s tandem featured massive steel drum brakes, front and rear, and had a totally removable tube so that the back could be quaintly converted to ‘ladies’ style and ridden with a full skirt. It had an 86-inch top gear of only five in total, which was tiny for going down the massive hill on the course, and meant we would have to freewheel. The plan would be that Dad would shout ‘free-wheel in five’ and we both would sprint while he counted down and then we would stop pedalling and sit in the most aerodynamic tuck position we could until the bike slowed enough for us to start pedalling again. There were carriers, a dynamo and large lights front and rear, the tyres were low-pressure 26 × 1 3/8 inch and we had to ride 15 miles from home to get to the start point. Dad was telling me that if we got near ‘evens’, or 30 minutes for the 10 miles, we would have done very well. We arrived and I was raring to go.
Years later, the timekeeper wrote an account for the club history: ‘The timekeeper looked at the duo’s tandem which looked like a relic from the industrial revolution against the sleek carbon and aluminium of other riders’ machines, and expected nothing special from dad on the front and the slim, youthful figure on the back. At the finish, everyone was startled to find that Tony and Nicole had returned a time of 26 minutes 30 seconds, among the fastest of the evening on a hard, hilly course. Clearly, Tony must be fitter than he looks was the consensus among the onlookers and we didn’t realise then how much of a power pack Nicole must have been pedalling behind him, even at the age of 11.’
Roger Pratt, the club timekeeper, had ridden the Alps in the ’60s in a prelude to the Isle of Man cycling festival, where he competed against a youthful Eddy Merckx. There’s a fantastic picture of Roger and a couple of other riders, in the break with Eddy on the mountain. The Ajax club is like a family, with Christmas parties for the youngsters and all sorts of social events. Club members celebrate success together and support each other through difficulties. I am a life member and couldn’t be prouder about that. There was one member, Jill Pring, who was always given the first starting time in the time-trial because she brought along a canteen of tea and boxes of home-made cakes. After finishing, she would set up the food and drink on a bench outside the church, ready for the others. That evening, as we all tucked into Welsh Cakes and shared our tales before Dad and I got back on our tandem and rode home, I was so excited. It was the real beginning of my love for the sport.