From Katherine to the crown
A dusty start on two wheels in the Territory turned into a career that included reaching the pinnacle of his sport as winner of the Tour de France. Cadel Evans reveals all about how he achieved it in his new book
IWAS born on Valentine’s Day 1977, in the hospital of a remote Northern Territory town called Katherine. My first cycling-related memory dates from 1979. My dad Paul and I are in a bike shop and he asks me which one I want.
There are two bikes in the smallest size, a red one and a yellow one. Inside me, I know I want the red one, but the yellow one is closer so I point at that. Now I have my own 16-inch BMX. I spend hours hurtling around the isolated town where we live, red dirt flying everywhere, with the family dog, Woofie, following me in a protective motherly role.
Not that traffic or people are the danger; snakes and spiders are much greater threats. We live in an Aboriginal community called Barunga, about 80 kilometres southeast of Katherine, on the southeastern edge of Arnhem Land.
It has a population of just 700, nearly all of them Aboriginal. My young parents moved here for the adventure and a different experience. I have vague memories of some of the Aboriginal people — the smiling mothers, the children who ran round with seemingly unlimited amounts of energy, the young guy who could lift his fingernail up and show what looked like bones underneath. Mum and Dad take a photo of me on the little yellow bike, smiling.
Soon I feel as comfortable on two wheels as I do on two feet. When I’m four, we move to Upper Corindi, a collection of houses and farms 40 kilometres north of Coffs Harbour in New South Wales. My parents have decided they want to live near the ocean so they’ve bought 240 acres of virgin bush 10 kilometres from the coast. My father makes a horse float for the 3500-kilometre trip down from the Northern Territory, a steel-framed tin box that sits on the back of our blue Dodge Canter truck and houses our two horses and all of our belongings.
ON 25 February 1985, I nearly die. The stitches on my scalp leave an obvious mark, but what happens on this day stays with me for much longer. I’m eight years old. It’s early, before school. We’re packing to move to a new house in town and Mum is going through some stuff in a drawer. She asks me to bring the horses up from the paddock.
There are four horses plus two foals. They usually come up by themselves, but for some reason this morning they’ve chosen to stay down in the paddock. As I walk behind one of the foals to shoo it towards the house, it kicks out with both hind legs in excitement.
One of its hoofs strikes the right side of my skull. I spend seven days in a coma in Newcastle Hospital. The doctors say I’m lucky. I could have been braindamaged or paralysed down one side of my body. I come out of hospital slimmer and weaker, with one half of my head shaved, unable to walk for lack of strength. Slowly I regain enough fitness to walk continuously.
Still under heavy medication, I develop a series of headaches that strike me for years to come. Once or twice a week they hit, often when I’m sitting in class at school. They really nail me; sometimes the pain is excruciating. Different things will trigger the waves of debilitating pain — excessive exposure to sun, changes in temperature.
If I don’t wear a hat in the sun the headaches will usually start. I learn to avoid these situations but the headaches don’t go away for years. There’s a big scar on my head where the neurosurgeon, Dr Bookallil, lifted the piece of skull touching my brain back into place. It required 28 stitches to close the incision. If I ever bump my head on that spot there is the most agonising pain. The accident teaches me lessons about pain and discomfort that I don’t forget.
FOR 20 years, my bicycle has been an extension of me. I don’t want to count up the hours I’ve been on it, near it, fixing it, washing it, thinking about it, obsessing over it, straining to hear and feel any malfunction or glitch. From the earliest days of my career I could sense any tiny change in a bike’s set up, any variation in its efficiency, any moving parts that needed cleaning or lubrication.
An unfamiliar noise is often the first indicator of something about to go wrong — a part working itself loose, tyres that are getting old and dry, a hairline crack in a component or frame joint, a drivetrain that’s worn or in need of a fine adjustment. I’ve become so attuned to the feel and movement of my bike that anything out of synch drives me a little crazy. Sometimes my highly sensitised antennae have been detrimental to my psychology. When you’re racing and you think, ‘Hang on, what’s wrong?’, it can get in the way. I like to take the time before a bike ride to have everything just perfect. You come to know your bike in minute detail. It’s an exacting relationship. The bike is my tool, and I am intimately in contact with it. It is part of me, we are one.
ILOVE this sport. I love the freedom you feel when you’re out on a bike, the solitude when you’re riding along a quiet trail in the forest listening to the birds sing, the feel of the warm sun or the cool breeze on your skin, the deep connection you develop with your bike.
These things are what attract me to cycling. These things are what I love about the sport. Cycling has given me thrills, it’s given me opportunities, and it’s taught me important lessons in life. Cycling has given me everything.
That’s why I am forever grateful. That’s why I don’t hold any grudges. What other people did, in an era when doping dominated the sport, I can’t change that. My mindset as an athlete was: ‘Don’t think about the drug cheats because otherwise you’re going to psych yourself out before every race.’
There are many joys in a life of professional cycling. I have loved the camaraderie with teammates, the great friends you make, the endless enjoyment of being on a bike. And then on the other side there are the cheats. The ones who let us all down. As a young rider I would look up to older riders and be inspired by them. Then I’d find out that what they were doing wasn’t ethical, or was illegal. That happened many times.
My earlier admiration for these riders turned into a sense of disappointment, frustration and sometimes anger. What other people do — they have to live with that. You can’t go through life thinking about other people. You just have to live your own life in the best way possible. This is me. This is my reason for being. This is an edited extract from The Art of Cycling by Cadel Evans, ABC Books, $44.99