On 14 February 1977, a little baby boy was born in Katherine, Northern Territory. The delivery was a difficult one. The baby’s face was so squashed during the birth that his tiny nose ended up broken. The doctors at Katherine Hospital had a quick solution for that problem. They simply pushed the baby’s broken nose back into place.
The baby boy was named Cadel, which means ‘battle’ in Welsh. For Cadel Evans there couldn’t be a better name. He was only a few hours old and already he was pulling through his first major injury.
In his earliest years Cadel and his parents lived in an Aboriginal community called Bamyili (now known as Barunga). About 80 kilometres from Katherine, the community was isolated. It was rugged too, surrounded by deep gorges and bare, rocky slopes. Bamyili was also tiny. Even now only a few hundred people live there.
Growing up in Bamyili was tough. There were hardly any other kids around and there wasn’t much to do. None of the kids were Cadel’s age, so he played with a younger child, Emma. Emma was an okay playmate, but the thing Cadel really liked about her was her bike. Riding bikes gave the few kids in Bamyili something to do.
Cadel got his own bike when he was only two or three years old. Like lots of Australian kids, Cadel got his very first bike as a present from his parents. It was a 50 centimetre–high BMX with knobbly tyres. And it was yellow.
There was just one thing Cadel didn’t like about his first bike—its training wheels. The roads around Bamyili were loose gravel, not smooth bitumen like the roads in the city. Cadel wanted to explore and ride fast, but his training wheels were slowing him down. They were always getting stuck in the loose gravel. Cadel wasn’t going to let training wheels get in his way though. He decided to do something about it.
As a four-year-old Cadel took his BMX into his dad’s shed and helped himself to some tools. After some thought Cadel chose a spanner. It was much too big and completely the wrong tool for the job. His dad walked into the shed just as Cadel was trying to fit the spanner onto the training wheels. Seeing his son needed a hand, Cadel’s dad helped take the training wheels off.
Most kids would need their dad to teach them how to ride a bike without training wheels, but not Cadel. The second the training wheels were off, he got on his bike and shot off down the road.
From that day on, Cadel lived on his bike. He would often ride to the nearby waterhole or race along dusty red tracks with Woofy, the family dog. It was safe for a little boy to ride around Bamyili because there wasn’t much traffic.
Sometimes Cadel would ride off in the morning and only come home when his parents went out looking for him in the late afternoon. Out there on his bike, Cadel was free. And, even as a small boy, he was starting to love that feeling.
After four years in the Northern Territory, Cadel’s parents decided to move to the east coast. They bought a block of land in a popular holiday spot on the New South Wales coast, and built a house.
As it turned out, Cadel’s family only lived in their new house for a year. His parents weren’t happy together anymore and decided to split up.
Cadel’s mum had started long-distance studies at university and she decided to move closer to the university to finish her studies on campus. So she and Cadel moved to Armidale, New South Wales. They lived on a sheep station called Westbrook. There, Cadel’s mum was able to keep the horses she loved.
Like her son, Cadel’s mum loved to ride. Her passion was horses though, not bikes. Cadel grew up around horses. He liked them and was comfortable handling them.
Cadel’s mum brought two horses with her in the move from the Northern Territory. Their names were Sunshine and Stormy. By the time Cadel and his mum were living in Armidale, Sunshine and Stormy had two six-month-old foals called Rae and Blossom. Each morning, the two mares and their foals would walk up from their paddock to be fed. But one morning the foals didn’t come. Cadel, now nearly eight years old, went down the paddock to find them.
The foals were frightened without their mothers there to protect them. The little foal called Rae panicked and kicked at Cadel, hitting him on the side of his head.
Cadel dropped to the ground unconscious. His mum came running. Cadel’s skin was a deathly colour and his breathing was just a rattle in his throat. Acting on instinct, Cadel’s mum scooped him up and rushed him to hospital.
Cadel needed a CAT scan urgently, but the Armidale hospital didn’t have the right equipment. It was a real emergency so Cadel was put in a helicopter and flown to Newcastle. Once there, the doctors quickly realised how bad the injury was. Cadel’s skull was cracked. Even worse, a piece of bone was pressing dangerously on his brain. The doctors were certain Cadel would have a serious brain injury, if he recovered at all.
Cadel had an operation to lift the piece of bone from his brain. There was a risk that his brain would swell, so surgeons drilled a hole in his skull to ease the pressure. Cadel could only breathe with the help of a ventilator.
The ordeal was traumatic for Cadel’s body and brain. He was given medication to put him into a coma. This would help Cadel’s brain cope.
Cadel stayed in the coma for seven days. His mum sat at his bedside, massaging him. She exercised his legs and arms to stop his muscles wasting. And she hardly stopped crying the whole time.
Then Cadel’s pupils started to dilate. It was a dangerous sign. The doctors thought if Cadel’s pupils were getting bigger his condition must be getting worse. Perhaps his brain was swelling as they had predicted. The doctors ran some urgent tests. The results showed Cadel’s brain hadn’t swelled after all. Cadel’s pupils must have been dilating because of the medication that was keeping him in the coma.
Slowly, the doctors reduced Cadel’s medication. They weren’t sure what was going to happen. Cadel’s brain may not have swollen, but the outlook still wasn’t good. All the doctors thought he would be paralysed down one side of his body. No-one was sure that Cadel would ever walk or talk again.
When Cadel woke from the coma, he had a wild look in his eyes. All he wanted to do was climb out of bed. He could talk, but nothing he said made much sense. He kept telling his mum he had to go through the doors, along the corridor and up the stairs. Cadel’s mum was shocked and worried to see her son acting so strangely. Of course, she had no idea what he was talking about. It was only later that she worked out Cadel was remembering his school playground and classroom. Perhaps he thought the hospital was his school.
Everyone was surprised when Cadel recovered quicker than the doctors expected. Soon he was much more like his old self. Within a week, he was home from hospital.
Young Cadel had fought and won an epic battle. And he looked like it. He returned home with half of his sandy brown hair shaved off. He had a huge puckered head wound sewn up with bright blue stitches. His face was temporarily paralysed, and he suffered terrible headaches and bad balance. He had to wear an old bike helmet all day to protect his head in case he fell over. And there were lots of visits to the physiotherapist and doctors.
Yet, after only six months, Cadel made a full recovery. His accident was terrifying for him and his mum, but luckily there were no lasting problems.
When he had completely recovered, Cadel got a new, bigger BMX. It wasn’t long before Cadel was back riding every day, gaining confidence all the time.
A few years after his accident, Cadel and his mum left New South Wales and moved to Victoria. It was there that Cadel would pedal into his future. He started entering bike races—and winning them.