Battle Scars Read online

  INTRODUCTION

  1. BORN TO RIDE

  2. NO PAIN, NO GAIN

  3. A TERRIBLE DECISION

  4. BENEATH MY YELLOW JERSEY

  5. SMASHED, BASHED AND CRASHED

  6. PODIUM GIRL, WIFE OF MY DREAMS

  7. YELLOW, GREEN AND GUTTED

  8. WORK HARD, PLAY HARD

  9. ALL HEART

  10. CLOSE TO HOME

  11. WORTH THE WAIT IN GOLD

  12. NO TEAM TO DREAM TEAM

  13. A BEAUTIFUL DAY

  14. MY OLD FRIEND, PAIN

  15. CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN

  16. FOR MY COUNTRY

  17. COMING CLEAN

  This book is about me and my bike. It’s about an adventure that began thirty years ago and the emotional rollercoaster of life as a cyclist.

  Cycling has been my obsession for almost my entire life and I’ve made more sacrifices than I can remember. I’ve ridden approximately 600,000 km, suffering on the roads day after day for over three decades. I’ve sacrificed being close to my family and friends. I’ve missed nearly every one of my family members’ and friends’ birthdays, weddings, funerals, and even the birth of my own daughter.

  But what I have gained are experiences from riding my bike on almost every continent. I’ve been to more cities than I knew existed, met some of the most amazing people, been exposed to many different cultures and learnt new languages.

  I’ve worn the green and gold for my country and I’ve sung our national anthem from the top step of the podium at an Olympic Games. I’ve ridden the Tour de France seventeen times and I’ve conquered the toughest one-day race that cycling can come up with in Paris–Roubaix.

  But I’ve also broken almost every bone in my body several times over and made comebacks when doctors told me that my career could be well and truly over.

  I met the woman of my dreams who has been with me for the best and also the toughest moments of my life. Anne-Marie has been my rock and the foundation of my career, bringing up our beautiful family on the other side of the world, far from her own family and friends. She has done it just as tough as I have and never complained—well, maybe once. Anne-Marie can tell you that professional cycling is not all about podiums, flowers and champagne even though that’s how we met. It’s a tough job and only the strongest make it through the other end.

  These are the parts of my life that I wouldn’t change for the world. But I’ve also done things that I wish I could change and made decisions that I am not proud of. Life is a challenge and as human beings, we tend to make mistakes and bad judgements and I am no different from anyone else.

  My life was good in 1998. I was young, healthy and doing what I loved. But for some reason—maybe deep down I was scared of failure or of letting people down—I was not strong enough to resist the pressure and temptation to go down a path that I openly swore I would never follow: doping.

  It may have been only a tiny moment in my career, but the person I cheated the most was myself, and that feeling of guilt will haunt me forever. I have to live with that. But I can also still hold my head high due to everything I achieved throughout my career while racing clean, and this means the world to me.

  My family also means the world to me; they are the sole focus of my life. I can now give back to them the care and support they’ve given me for the past twenty-three years. From here on, it’s no longer about me. It’s about guiding and helping others through their own adventure so they make the right decisions, whether it be in cycling or in life.

  All I ever wanted to do was make my family and friends proud. And to everyone who has been there for me through the good and the bad—made a phone call, sent a text message, an email or a letter—I say a massive thank you. You’ve all played a part in making this one amazing life cycle.

  STUEY, DECEMBER 2013

  Veteran cycling coach and manager Shayne Bannan remembers the first day he met Stuart O’Grady. ‘The AIS group was doing efforts up Nor ton Summit, and it was a pretty talented group, when this little redheaded kid turned up and started following us up,’ Bannan recalls.

  ‘I looked around and thought, “Shit, this little fellow is still there.” He was still there when we got to the top, so I went over and said, “G’day mate, what’s your name?” And this quiet little voice says, “Stuart … Stuart O’Grady.” Then I asked him how old he was, and he replied that he was fourteen. “Oh, you’ll make a good little bike-rider one day,” I told him.

  The competitive little engine inside me has always been there, and as a kid I fuelled it with both my love of bike-riding and the hard work that went with it. I had a daily ritual that even seasoned professionals would have been proud of. From the age of thirteen when I was unleashed—finally allowed to ride my bike on my own—my routine was always the same: wake up in the morning, record the time, my heart-rate, the weather and how I was feeling in a diary. Go to school. Get home from school, eat a sandwich, grab my bike, hit the start button on the stopwatch on my way out of the driveway and go full gas. I had mapped out my own 30 km time-trial course and every day was a chance to go faster than the day before. The carefully planned route started at my family home at Ingle Farm, went up Tea Tree Gully and Range Road, down Anstey’s Hill, along Lower North East Road and back home. The more times I did it, the more serious I got. Even if it was pouring with rain, I’d still be out there, sitting at the traffic lights fuming that I was losing valuable time.

  When I finished my ride I’d go back to my diary and write my maximum speed, my total time, how I was feeling and what time I went to bed. Dad has always been big on keeping a diary so I probably got that from him because I kept it up for years afterwards.

  This was my diary entry from 28 November 1991. I was eighteen years old and my training had obviously progressed a fair bit from time-trialling after school:

  Woke up at 6.45 am. Got dressed, had breakfast. Came outside and did rollers 15 km in 27 mins. Got changed, rode up to the corner and met bunch. Up the Gorge, along to Birdwood, then Mt Torrens, right turn to Lobethal from downhill, attacked all the way through the Gorge. Absolutely stomping, five of us left. Down Lwr Nth East Rd, Portrush Rd, Henk and I went thru city to home. Had lunch, had 5 x 15 min ergo sessions. Mega hard. Knackered after. Shower, stretching, had tea, watched TV, cleaned bike. Bed, new quilt.

  Morn HR—37

  Dist—120 km

  Time—4 hrs

  Ave—30 km/h

  Mxs—78 km/h

  Felt—Pretty good, tired after ergo

  Weather—Fine and warm, perfect 24 degrees

  Bed—10 pm

  Even as a teenager, my life revolved around cycling. As for who was directly responsible for my cycling genes—I got hit from both sides thanks to my mum, Fay, and dad, Brian. Dad was a really strong rider who was second in the state championships a couple of times and a real hard-nut. He won the Kangaroo Island Tour twice and in 1971 won a 200-lap points race at Hanson Reserve, which back then was the biggest points race in South Australia.

  There were four children in Mum’s family and they all had a go at cycling at some stage. My uncle Bob Baird was the best rider, going to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics where he was fourth in the team pursuit, and his older brother Lyle was a very strong state-level rider. So with Dad’s hard-nut gene and my uncles’ speed and power, I got the right mix.

  Ingle Farm, where I grew up, is about 15 km from Adelaide and nestled in the working-class northern suburbs where my parents still live to this day. Dad was a panel-beater working for the government and Mum worked in aged care when she wasn’t flat out running us kids around. My brother, Darren, was the eldest, followed by me, then our sister, Lesley, at four-year intervals.

  Mum and Dad didn’t have a lot of money but they were so supp
ortive and wanted to give us the best education they could. I went to two private schools, St Gabriel’s and St Paul’s College. We were aware of the sacrifices Mum and Dad made for us to have private schooling so there was no place for misbehaving. On weekends they’d take us to play just about every sport possible. It wasn’t unusual for me to go from soccer in the morning to quickly getting changed in the car and being taken to a bike race in the afternoon. But not once in my entire life can I say that Dad ever told me to go for a ride. Perhaps, had he pushed me into cycling, I mightn’t have gone on with it because I’ve seen what pushy parenting does to kids and it isn’t good.

  Still, I was surrounded by cycling growing up. I’ve got early memories of being around Hanson Reserve Velodrome in Adelaide’s western suburbs watching Dad race. We were just kids running around under the lights, not taking much notice of the racing on the outdoor bitumen track with dodgy chicken-wire fencing. But, as with anything your dad does, you want to copy. I wanted to be a panel-beater until I realised there was such a thing as professional cycling.

  From an early age Dad would take me on rides. He made a seat on the top tube of his bike and I’d try to hang on as we went through the back streets of Ingle Farm. The seat was not much bigger than a passport and made of plywood covered with foam but I thought it was brilliant.

  It was the freedom that got me with cycling. To be able to go anywhere, anytime. I’d stand in the driveway and watch Dad and Darren disappear on their bikes into the distance, then wait for them to come home. They’d finally get back, after what seemed like hours, and I’d say, ‘Where have you guys been?’ and they’d say, ‘Oh, the beaches and the hills’ and I was like, ‘Man I want to do that!’. The best I could wrangle was being allowed to ride around the block or to a mate’s house.

  My first real bike was a solid steel, metallic red Elizabeth Star that weighed about 15 kilograms—a far cry from the lightweight carbon machines they race on now. Dad reckons it was the heaviest bike the world had ever seen, but to me it was my dream machine. Before that, I had BMXs but this was my first road bike. It was Christmas morning and I’d been begging for a bike. I clearly remember going into Mum and Dad’s bedroom and pulling back the curtains but just seeing a set of wheels on the floor. I was devastated. I couldn’t believe they’d just got me the wheels! Then I opened the other curtain and there was the frame. You know those kids you see riding through the streets with a grin from ear to ear on Christmas morning? I was one of them.

  When summer holidays were over I rode it to school every day. I wasn’t an A-grade student by any means but I never copped a detention because that would have meant missing out on riding my bike. I played a lot of soccer and cricket but athletics and cycling soon took over and eventually I had to choose. Surprisingly, it was really easy because while I was good at running and finished second in the state cross country championships, I hated it. You could run for 40 minutes and would only get around the block which was fairly boring. Dad actually tried to hold me back from racing my bike until I was fifteen, which was when Darren started, but I cracked it and managed to convince him to bring it forward to thirteen.

  My first race was at Regency Park, a 30-minute criterium on a Sunday morning around an industrial block in Adelaide’s inner-north. I attacked like crazy from the start and got away with a girl and when we got the bell lap I saw her go for the drink bottle so I attacked with everything I had. Unfortunately she caught me and won the race. Later on I had people telling me that what I did was pretty sneaky, but all I saw was an opportunity so I grabbed it.

  It took me a long time to win a race because I was a pretty small kid. I had no sprint so all I could do was attack and hope for the best. But eventually I started winning and copped severe handicaps like being put a lap behind so I’d have to attack, catch up a whole lap and do it again. We’d get $2 prize-money for winning a race, which was pretty high stakes in those days. If we cleaned up, my friend and I would go straight to the fish and chip shop; two bucks would get you a kilo of hot chips. Then we’d go riding for the rest of the day.

  When I wasn’t racing on weekends my mates and I would ride all day—we’d be gone for six or seven hours and some days we’d sprint to every single bus stop on the roadside just to test each other out. My after-school rides also got longer as I discovered the Adelaide Hills and often I wouldn’t get home until dark, causing Mum plenty of angst.

  ‘One evening after school while Brian was still at work I got a call,’ remembers Fay. “Mum, I’ve broken down, I’ve used all my spare tubes and I’m at Kersbrook.” I was worried sick.

  ‘So I’m panicking and it’s a fair drive out to Kersbrook [26 km through the hills]. When I finally got there, the first thing I noticed was a ute and Stu’s bike lying on the road next to it. Then I recognised it was my brother-in-law’s ute. He lived at Springton and luckily just happened to be going through town when he saw Stu at the phone box.’

  The other moment that is still inked in Fay’s memory is taking a phone call and hearing that Stuart had been riding his bike to school one morning and had collided with a motorbike. ‘He hit a man-hole cover and because it was raining the roads were wet and he slid across the road into the path of an oncoming motorbike,’ Fay said.

  ‘Stuart was okay, a bit frightened, and his bike was okay, the front wheel just had to be re-built, but the motorbike had $800 worth of damage. Thank God we had that on our insurance policy.’

  The rain wouldn’t stop us from riding; we’d stick bread-bags over our shoes and tie them with a rubber band to make instant waterproof shoe-covers. As a kid, if I wasn’t out riding there was a good chance I was at a bloke named Pud Brooks’ house in Pennington. Pud was a Port Adelaide Cycling Club legend who built bikes in his back shed. I’d help him out and he’d repay me with a pair of brake pads or handlebar tape, and I’d listen to him tell his stories and watch him build anything to do with a bike.

  Even though we lived in the northern suburbs, I always rode for Port Adelaide Cycling Club because it was Dad’s club—not that it helped me when I was trying to get the final spot on the state juvenile team to ride the team pursuit and Dad was the coach. There were two of us trying out for the last spot on the team and one of the kids wasn’t Dad’s son. We did our test and were pretty even but Dad came up and said, ‘I can’t put you in, mate. I’ve got to put the other kid in because it would look bad.’ I was pretty pissed off but Dad wouldn’t budge on it. My own dad left me out of the state team! I couldn’t believe it. In hindsight, though, he probably did me a favour because it threw a heap of fuel on the fire and made me even more determined. I was like, ‘Right, you’re not ever going to have to worry about not picking me again.’

  I eventually did crack the South Australian team and my first interstate trip was to Canberra when I was fifteen. I was sixth in a bunch sprint at the National Road Championships, and not being a sprinter, I realised there might be some potential there. My first time on the track didn’t go so well. I nearly ended up over the handlebars because I forgot about the fixed gear and stopped pedalling—but you learn that pretty quickly. I also learnt that it was a big deal to ride for SASI—the South Australian Sports Institute—and I was massively envious of those riders. They had SASI kits and team bikes, which was the ultimate for me at that age.

  After racing at Hanson Reserve one day, Mick Turtur, the SASI coach, came over to the middle of the track and said, ‘Mate, do you want to get on board?’ By then I was sixteen and it was like I’d just been offered a spot on the Olympic team. In an instant I had a coach, training times, access to the facilities and felt like a real cyclist.

  Turtur, a 1984 Olympic gold medallist, reflects on Hanson Reserve’s glory years as ‘the good old days’. He says Stuart was a ‘scrawny, skinny kid who would have weighed 50 kg wringing wet’ but showed unbelievable potential.

  ‘He was fourteen or fifteen and a complete standout. You could see very clearly that he had something special from the way he applied himsel
f on the bike. He had ability beyond his years and it was coupled with a fierce determination and desire,’ Turtur says.

  ‘He showed style in the way he rode, he was very intelligent in that he could read a race and he had all the physiological attributes.’

  One of Turtur’s fondest memories from that era was partnering with Stuart for the Australian Teams Challenge—a two-man omnium event at Hanson Reserve in 1990. Stuart was seventeen and still at school while Turtur was thirty-two with an Olympic gold medal.

  ‘I said to him, “I bet I can get more points than you,”’ Turtur recalls. ‘Which I eventually did but I had to ride my absolute arse off, I had to lay it all down. Stuart is one of the toughest, hardest competitors I have ever seen in my life—in any sport. What he’s put himself through, some of the crashes he’s had—the majority of people would never come back from.’

  Training with the state team meant the occasional training ride with the national team which was pretty cool. I would tag along with guys like Brett Aitken, Steve McGlede, Shaun O’Brien and Mark Kingsland. Often our training rides would head up the Gorge and I’d be hanging in there for dear life. A lot of them would comment, ‘You’re going alright for a little freckly kid.’ I was desperate to impress the older guys, which meant a lot of suffering trying to keep up with them.

  The main person I was trying to impress was the national coach, Charlie Walsh. Charlie was an intimidating man. For starters, he rode with us every day and was a man of few words, but they were hard words. If you started climbing and moving your head he’d be barking at you, or if you weren’t pedalling smoothly he’d be yelling at you not to rock. But he also gave credit where it was due which meant a lot of encouragement for me to keep going.

  Walsh, a legendary cycling coach who oversaw a golden era for the sport in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s, recalls Stuart turning up to Nor ton Summit in Adelaide’s east as a fourteen-year-old while the senior squad was training.