Boardman the racer

Nothing says success like free chips

‘At the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, I sat on the start line before that individual pursuit final as an unemployed carpenter with a wife, two kids and utterly no money, knowing that the next four and a half minutes were either going to change my life or not.

‘I can remember watching the seconds tick over before the start, I could hear it ticking, and I thought to myself, “F*** it, I’m going to be the best I can be and when I cross the line I’ll see where that gets me.” That was a liberating experience knowing I couldn’t affect the big things, only the things that could change me. Next thing, I’ve won an Olympic gold medal.

‘After I won I came back to Hoylake where I lived, and the whole village came out to celebrate my return. I immediately didn’t like it because this was my home, and I wanted to turn it off and I couldn’t. But in the evening, everyone disappeared home and I went down to The Dolphin chip shop at the end of my road. I walked in and Ming, the owner, was behind the counter. We just nodded to one another and I ordered my chips. He slides them across the counter and says, “No, on me.” That’s when I knew I’d made it – free chips from The Dolphin.’

‘When I became head of the R&D programme at British Cycling it was absolutely amazing. We were given half a million quid and told you’ve got four years, see if you can make us go faster, and at the end we don’t need to have any commercially viable product. It was an unbelievable period of my life.

‘In the first Olympic cycle from 2004 to 2008, we tested just under 10,000 different materials to find the most aerodynamic material we could. Two years of intensive experimentation, one year of prototyping, half a year of manufacturing, and right at the end I was writing an update for British Cycling next to my wife in bed. I mentioned we’d tested 10,000 materials and she asked if we’d tested them wet, because I’m always wet when riding the bike.

‘The next day we went in and tested the same materials wet and it completely changed the results, which basically invalidated two years of work. That was quite significant.

‘Ignorance is a marvellous thing, because you ask the questions that lead to innovation. Those who don’t know what you cannot do are the ones who push the boundaries.’