LES FERDINAND
Former QPR, Newcastle and England striker Les Ferdinand is leading a group of ex-footballers in a ride for a good cause
I’m living a double dream. I’m fortunate that I’m still living a couple of my boyhood dreams. I’m still part of football and earning a living from it and I’m still cycling just as I did when I was a kid. Through the bike I gained ‘The Knowledge’. Pretty much everywhere I know in London I learned from going on bike rides as a kid with my mate Glen. We’d ride all over the place. I’m not sure I’d feel as safe doing it now, but back then it was a great thing for a kid to be able to do. I needed to work on my cycling footwork. When I got back into cycling as an adult I had difficulty getting used to being clipped-in to the pedals. I got knocked by a car driver one day and couldn’t get my cleats out quickly enough. As the driver got out and helped me up he started saying, ‘Wow, it’s Les Ferdinand! Look everyone, it’s Les Ferdinand!’ Some passing school kids shouted back; ‘So what... He wants to learn how to ride a bike!’ These days I travel by chopper. I’ve got a helicopter and a pilot’s licence these days but as a kid growing up I had a Chopper bike too. It wasn’t my first bike though, that was a racer. We had a local guy who’d help do our bikes up. We’d spray them, change the handlebars to those ‘cow horn’ ones and put chunkier tyres on. The cycling gear replaced the football kit. I didn’t really ride a bike much when I was playing football, we weren’t encouraged to. But when I retired, about 10 years ago, I had issues with my left knee. A friend suggested I cycle as a means of keeping fit but not damage the knee further, and I got hooked. It pays to ride with a team. I’ve got a local loop where I live of 30 to 35 miles that I go around on a Sunday whenever I can. My toughest ride so far was 167km in one day in Italy. We hit fog and snow and then in the distance we could see our destination, San Gimignano. The route to it meant climbing some tough roads – I thought I was going to have to pull out but thankfully we had some really good riders with us who pushed us on
to finish. I’ve upgraded since the ‘cow horns’. When I first started riding again seriously I had a Specialized Roubaix, but I know a guy who used to work for Specialized and he’s made me a bespoke bike that I’ll be taking on my ride to Holland for Football to Amsterdam in June, a 145-mile ride, part of Prostate Cancer UK’s annual football fundraiser. I’m cycling with the likes of Terry Butcher and Viv Anderson who have both done it before and will make it an entertaining event for sure! It’s a cause worth riding for. I’ll admit prostate cancer wasn’t on my radar a decade ago; I knew nothing about it at all even though I lost my grandfather to it. It affects 330,000 people in the UK – I think of a packed out Loftus Road [QPR’s stadium] and then imagine that almost 18 times over; those are the figures we are dealing with. The guys who are getting into cycling are the ones who need to take note. Now I’m 50 I need to set an example to my family and peers, so I go and see my doctor every year to get checked. It’s our age group that needs to take note of the facts - that one in eight men in the UK will be affected by this disease and, as a black man, my risk is even greater. I expect bad weather for the ride. I hope it won’t be bad, but it would be typical of my luck if it were. When I took part in former England Rugby Union player, Lawrence Dallaglio’s charity Cycle Slam from Rome to Paris, I rode with Lee Dixon for the stage from Italy to Nice. We landed in Rome and it was snowing there for the first time in 60 years!
I didn’t really ride a bike much when I was playing football, we weren’t encouraged to
For details on how to support Football To Amsterdam, 9-11 June 2017, visit prostatecanceruk.org/amsterdam