‘I had thought about suicide loads of times’
Former world champion Colin Sturgess rebuilt his life and is back in the sport, says
For a long time, Colin Sturgess struggled with feelings of self-loathing when he watched the track world cycling championships, but last week the competition would have provided him with sanguine entertainment. Rather than blame himself for decisions that contributed to the unravelling of a hugely promising career, he was able instead to find pride in the memory of the success that he enjoyed at the same event three decades ago, while also looking to a future mentoring the next generation in the sport.
Given that this former world champion’s life fell apart so dramatically that only five years ago he was homeless and suicidal, such a recovery should serve as the most encouraging news to fans of men’s track specialism, Sturgess beat Boardman at junior and senior national championships and again at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, in which Sturgess won silver aged only 17.
“Chris was the great hope,” Sturgess recalls. “As a schoolboy he’d won umpteen races and done fantastic times in time trials. So I knew that this guy was supposed to be something super special but I came along and scuppered his ambitions.”
Sturgess was celebrated for his showmanship. Rather than adopt conventional tactics for the individual pursuit, which calls for a steady, constant pace, he preferred to hold back and kick hard on the last lap, introducing a dramatic twist for the fans’ entertainment.
He managed the trick perhaps most memorably when he won the world title in Lyon in 1989. Trailing the Australian Dean Woods by more than a second approaching the bell in the final, Sturgess produced such a burst of acceleration that he slowed before the finish and still won by 1.66sec. ‘‘The tactic backfired a couple of times but nine out of 10, it meant people enjoyed watching me because I had this electrifying finish,” he says, with a chuckle. “And it put the fear of God into many opponents.”
He earned contracts with two World Tour teams, including Greg LeMond’s ADR squad. He won bronze at a subsequent world championships, too, before dropping out of cycling to return to his studies, having become disillusioned with the politics, insecurity and drug-taking.
With an English literature degree, he emigrated to Australia and worked as a cycling journalist, but returned to the sport in the late Nineties, winning silver at the 1998 Commonwealth Games as part of the team pursuit quartet that included Bradley Wiggins. Sturgess moved on to the Olympic programme, only to quit suddenly, having fallen out over money. He walked out on the sport for a second time.
At the time, he felt it was a principled decision, but realised later that it was more the result of a depressive episode symptomatic of a then-undiagnosed bipolar disorder.
In retrospect, he can see that such dramatic emotional shifts defined much of his early life.
“I can look back and say, yeah, that’s obviously a manic phase and that’s a depressive phase. Walking out on the Olympic programme. That was a massive, depressive state, unmedicated, not really knowing what was happening. A certain amount of self-blame has gone [over such incidents], but I still look back at things like that and think, damn, what if?”
Even once his condition was identified, Sturgess could not prevent it from impacting on his life. He lost two marriages, the first of which produced a now 12-year-old son.
A second, successful career in the Australian wine industry petered out. Though he won awards for his work, which included wine-making and compiling wine lists as a sommelier, his compulsive streak meant he was prone to drink the produce to excess, and it cost him his job at about the same time as he split up from his second partner.
Distraught and with nowhere to turn, he ended up homeless in Sydney, living in his Mitsubishi saloon and overwhelmed with thoughts of taking his life.
“Oh, I thought about it loads of times, mate. I went out one night with a bottle of vodka, driving 100k down a dirt road, consumed with suicidal thoughts.” The car tumbled 20ft down an embankment in the Hunter Valley, prime wine-making territory. “Landed on its roof. I only survived because I wasn’t wearing a seat belt. As it landed, it shot me out.” Eventually word got to his parents Ann and Alan, once both keen club cyclists, that their only child was destitute, and they arranged to fly him home.
Four years on, he still lives in their terraced house – a source of regret when his son lives in Australia and their relationship is restricted mostly to conversations online – but Sturgess has laid down the foundations for a new life.
With Metaltek, he is responsible for a team holding their own at the highest level of the domestic road-racing scene. He also undertakes private coaching, and still finds the time to ride intensely. He even landed a semiprofessional contract which took him to the Tour of Morocco last year, though a crash and injured knee put paid to that particular comeback.
Content instead to pass on the benefits of his experience to some of the best young British talent, and hopeful that it will lead to further work, he was able recently to come off medication for the first time in 12 years.
“I’ve been given another crack of the whip. I’ve been through a lot in cycling and I’d like to think I have a lot of knowledge to impart. I certainly get great satisfaction from doing it,” he said.
One crucial responsibility, he says, is to ensure riders avoid some of the critical mistakes that he made. You hope they are grateful for the privilege of listening to him.