Battle Scars Read online

  ‘I didn’t mind him joining in and already he was competitive,’ Walsh said. ‘I had a very strong belief that Stuart would go a long way. Before I even had him in the program I said, “If ever I’ve seen anybody, this kid will ride the Tour de France.”

  ‘And when he came to us as a seventeen-year-old you could see the quality of him. He was fiercely competitive, very smart and aggressive—all the qualities you would look for in a cyclist.

  ‘When he came into the program, my first instructions were, “I want to gradually feed you in.” He was a little reluctant to accept this because he wanted to be crashing in. If the seniors were doing 250 km, I started him off at 180 km to 200 km which is still a fair amount. He stuck with this but within two months he was up doing what the others were doing—but he wanted to do it as well or better than them.’

  Walsh said he wasn’t worried about Stuart being such a small kid training for an event that required such enormous power through the pedals. ‘What he could deliver was top-shelf,’ Walsh said.

  Twenty years later Walsh was asked where he rated Stuart among every athlete he had ever worked with. Walsh said his decision was based on four benchmarks—physical attributes, psychology, leadership and personality in terms of respecting people around them.

  ‘I rate Stuart top in all of those qualities,’ said Walsh, who has photos of Stuart and his signed yellow jersey on the walls of his Adelaide home. ‘Any coach, if they had an athlete like Stuart O’Grady, they’d walk around smiling every day.’

  At 7.5 km long and averaging 4.1 per cent gradient, Nor ton Summit remains a popular climb for cyclists in Adelaide. At the top is a well-known pub, the Scenic Hotel, where hanging on the wall are three jerseys including one yellow and one green from the Tour de France, personally signed by Stuart. Little did Stuart know as a teenager, grinding his way past the hotel sometimes five times per session, that it would one day house the two most famous cycling jerseys in the world—both with his name on them.

  Cycling was slowly becoming my life and everything I did, from stretching in the mornings to eating the right foods and training the right way, had a purpose. I was literally living and breathing cycling. I’d buy bike magazines and when I wasn’t riding my bike I’d be cleaning it or tinkering with it.

  Slowly I started learning about the world of European cycling. My first ‘Euro’ experience was watching an old VHS video in, of all things, Dutch. Adelaide cyclist Pat Jonker and his dad Evert, who were very supportive of me and good friends, gave me a video of the 1984 Paris–Roubaix. I didn’t have a clue what the commentators were saying but you could hear the excitement in their voices. Guys were covered in mud and were crashing everywhere. I was gobsmacked as Irishman Sean Kelly rode to victory. While most teenage boys I knew dreamt of kicking the winning goal in a football grand final or playing Test cricket for Australia, I wanted nothing more than to become a professional cyclist.

  If I was going to be a proper bike-rider, I figured I better start shaving my legs. The first time was a disaster. I was that embarrassed that I locked myself in the bathroom and ripped my legs to shreds with an old cheap and nasty blade. Everyone noticed it and gave me heaps of shit but I said, ‘I’m a bike-rider and if I crash or get a massage … you know.’ (Not that I was even getting massages at that point but I had all the excuses ready to go and had my whole life planned).

  One day at school we were asked to write down what we wanted to be when we grew up. My plan was to get an electrical apprenticeship. I hoped it would lead to becoming a fireman because then I could have four days on and four days off to train, which would allow me to become a pro cyclist. Everyone laughed it off because I don’t think there’d been more than three Australian professionals in the history of the sport—Neil Stephens, Stephen Hodge and Phil Anderson—but they were the three names I wrote on my pencil case at school.

  I wanted to get my plan moving along quickly so after Year 11, I enrolled in TAFE to do my electrical engineering course which would advance me to a second-year apprenticeship and a job. Cycling was still my priority though. I’d be up at 5 am, lights on the bike, and do 60 km on my race bike with my backpack full of books, shoes and clothes. Then I’d stop at my nanna’s house, get my old crappy bike that purposely had no handlebar tape and only one brake so no one would steal it, and off I’d go to TAFE. Afterwards it was back to Nanna’s, eat a quick sandwich, swap the bikes and set out to do 100 km. I had the same loop along the beach to Port Adelaide, Outer Harbour, Glenelg, Anzac Highway, Cross Road, the foothills and back to Ingle Farm, finishing in the dark every night. No one ever told me to do it but in my mind that’s what I needed to do. I’d get home, have dinner, study and go to bed. I guess it wasn’t much fun in the winter but I don’t have any horror stories. I never came off my bike or anything like that—I must have been saving it all for later.

  Things started to get serious after I won two gold medals at my first junior national titles—the 30 km points race and 4 km team pursuit—because that got me on the Australian team for the 1990 junior world championships. I was only a first-year junior (sixteen years old) which was a pretty massive thing for me. I got the green and gold shirts and Mum sewed the badges on for me, then we had to come up with the money to go overseas because the junior world championships were being held in Middlesbrough in the UK. I had a newspaper round and did odd-jobs, and Port Adelaide Cycling Club held barbecues and raffles that really helped me get the money together. I was the first one from our family to go overseas so they were pretty exciting times; by comparison, the whole TAFE electrical thing was suddenly looking fairly average.

  Before the junior worlds we had a training camp in Italy with the national coach, Nino Solari. He took us to a road race in Rieti and we were thrown in. We rocked up to see all these Bianchi team cars, kids with all the same bikes and fully kitted out—it was like watching Real Madrid or Barcelona FC run out. We were there in shabby tracksuits, our bikes weren’t matching and we’d come rolling along in a little blue mini-van. I felt so out of place and thought, ‘These guys are going to kill us.’ But funnily enough, I ended up winning the race. Guys were attacking and as we got to the climb, I did a little acceleration and all of a sudden I was solo and rode to the finish line. I was in disbelief because for an Australian junior to win over there caused quite a stir. I started thinking that this road racing business was pretty cool, but still my focus was on track racing and my dream was to race for Australia on the boards at an Olympic Games. Our junior team won a bronze medal in the team pursuit at the worlds and I did the points race and road race but was nothing special. My first junior world championship teammates were Tim O’Shannessy, who I still keep in contact with; James Cross; Matthew Gilmore, who’s a national coach for the Australian track team; and Damian McDonald.

  Tragically, Damian was killed in 2007 in an accident in Melbourne’s Burnley Tunnel. I have so many fond memories of us going through the junior program and we rode together until 1996. Damien was a really funny guy, the comedian of the group, and a great bloke. I was pretty shocked when I heard about the accident; he had a young child at the time and it was very sad.

  After my first junior worlds experience, I reluctantly dragged myself back to TAFE where my teachers told me I was so far behind that I would have to cram to get the certificate. So, like my cycling training, I threw everything at it, did the work and got it done. This led to an apprenticeship in 1990 working at the Royal Australian Air Force Base at Edinburgh, about 20 km north of Adelaide. I gave my first pay-cheque to Mum and Dad because that was apparently what you were meant to do in those days. Besides, I owed them everything anyway.

  I liked the job because it fitted into my plan. I’d ride to work every day, sometimes in the rain, and my workmates would say, ‘Where have you ridden from, Ingle Farm?’ They thought I was crazy.

  Three months into the job everything was going great. Just as I’d been given all my tools, my toolbox and clothing, I got a phone call from Charlie Walsh as
king me to come and see him. Dad came with me because I wasn’t old enough to drive myself. Charlie was the big dog of Australian cycling but because I’d seen him at training from time to time, I wasn’t nervous. I knew it couldn’t be a bad thing because I hadn’t been in trouble. All I could think about was Charlie inviting me into the Australian Institute of Sport. And he did. But it was what came next that really shocked me. I didn’t have time for the first bit of news to sink in before he said, ‘I’d also like you to have a crack at the Olympics.’ Here I was, a seventeen-year-old apprentice electrician living at home with Mum and Dad, and Charlie Walsh wanted me to train for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics!

  Don’t get me wrong. I was dreaming of the Olympics, but of 1996—not in two years’ time! As we left, Charlie told me to have a think about it. When we got home I expected Dad to say, ‘Look, you’re seventeen, realistically you’re probably not going to make the Olympic team and you’ve just got an apprenticeship so let’s just leave it.’ But he said the exact opposite: ‘Why not? Go for it, you can always come back and finish your apprenticeship.’ It was as though God had uttered the words I’d been waiting for my whole life. I’ve still got the diary entry from that day on 8 April 1991:

  BIGGEST DAY OF MY LIFE. Woke at 6.30 am, got ready to go to work. Waited for David, didn’t come. Dad had to take me on m/bike, got a bench job because of foot—sore as. Andy gave me a lift home, got so sore went to doctors, bandaged up, antibiotics. Went to Charlie’s; one of the biggest decisions I’ve ever made. Joining the AIS—quit work ASAP. Olympics here I come. I WANT IT NOW. Not going to work tomorrow.

  Luckily for me, the national program was in Adelaide so I could still live at home. All the other guys lived together in a house and they did it tough with no family, no mates and the house was a disaster. They were all in their mid-twenties and I was the new kid. I knew Brett Aitken, who was a bit of an idol for me, and they were all pretty cool and accepting of me.

  Aitken was two years older than Stuart when the younger boy first caught his eye at the 1990 national track titles where, as a bottom-age junior, he won the points race in commanding style. By the time he officially joined the national squad, Aitken said Stuart was already ‘a force to be reckoned with’.

  ‘He was just a scrawny little kid, he weighed next to nothing and was a late bloomer,’ Aitken says. ‘But when he came out training with us he was almost impossible to shake off. You quite often get a kid who is good in one area but Stuey could do anything on the track and he was fearless.’

  Stuart’s brother, Darren, left home to join the army at the age of seventeen and said he missed the five crucial years in which his little brother went from talented teenager to a beast on two wheels.

  ‘When I left home Stuart was a little kid and when I came back he was nineteen and tearing up the track,’ Darren says. ‘I was allowed to go on their training rides up Nor ton Summit and in those days they’d do it ten times, on the drops, in the saddle, flat out every time. I’d take that training to my mountain biking and it was very motivational, to put it mildly.’

  Darren remembers standing at a stage finish of the Tour Down Under in Adelaide one year looking at an antique photographic display. It turned out the husband of the lady running the display was Stuart’s old boss when he was an electrical apprentice. ‘He was the guy who suggested to Stuart he probably wasn’t making a good decision to go bike-riding full-time,’ Darren says.

  ‘And I know what our parents were like when I was growing up. Bike-riding was a hobby at best, and it was a dangerous hobby and relatively expensive. So for Stuey to give up a career for cycling was massive. It’s a fairytale, especially for a sports person in Australia. It was a major, major gamble and that’s why Stuey has put in the hard yards and made sure the gamble paid off.’

  If I thought 100 km after TAFE every day was enough to prepare me for the training that would follow, I was mistaken. I’ve still got the training programs from Charlie at home and they would blow you away. Every single session for the entire year was mapped out. Most days I’d meet the boys at Holden Hill near the police station; I couldn’t afford to be one minute late because these guys were coming up as a group and weren’t waiting. A few times I’d see them coming and if they got the green traffic light I’d have to chase just to start training; it was insane. I’ve never trained that hard even as a professional. The workload was unbelievable—you’re talking 120 km, 160 km, 180 km, 220 km, 260 km days then a day off consisting of 60 km. The next day, 220 km then 240 km with the odd 280 km thrown in for good measure to really put us on our hands and knees. We’d go through Victor Harbor, the Barossa and Gawler—where the Tour Down Under goes through these days—and it broke a lot of blokes. But I thrived on it. I saw those big days as a massive challenge and I used to love it. I’d think, ‘How far can I actually go?’

  One day we had 280 km on the program but I did another 20 km just to get 300 km on the speedo. I got home at 6 pm completely crossed up ten hours later. But Charlie had to turn this boy into a man in eighteen months before the Barcelona Olympics. I knew he was giving me a hard time but I was on the Olympic squad; I was like, ‘Come on, give it to me.’

  But training only got easier after that. Okay, the racing was in another world but I never trained that hard again and Charlie made me what I am. If I had the engine, Charlie fine-tuned it, and if I was ever going to crack and throw it in, it would have been then. Thankfully, I didn’t.

  Stuart O’Grady, at age 14, about to start the time trial in the 1987 ‘two-day tour’ at One Tree Hill just outside Adelaide.

  Even though I’d been called into the AIS with Charlie and the boys, I still rode the junior world championships in Colorado Springs in 1991. I did the individual pursuit, team pursuit and finished the points race after a rain delay on the Sunday night. The very next morning I was back with Charlie who was in Colorado on an altitude camp preparing for the senior world titles. That first morning Charlie had us doing 5 x 5 km efforts and I had to pack it in after a couple. It was the only time I’d ever not finished a session, and it happened to be my first day on the senior team. But the next day I was back on the full program and desperate to show the guys I could hang in there. We were also doing 200 km rides at altitude which was an eye-opener, but again I managed to hang in and suffer through with them.

  Things didn’t get much easier when we went to our base camp in Buttgen, Germany, where we were on a super-steep indoor wooden velodrome. All of a sudden we had the pursuit bars and double disc wheels and the first effort we did was absolute lightning. I did a turn, swung up the track and had never been that fast when I came back down on the aero bars and missed Brett Aitken’s rear wheel by a centimetre. ‘Holy shit,’ I thought, ‘that must have looked good.’

  At the junior worlds we won the bronze medal in the team pursuit in 4:24 and when we rocked up for the senior world championships in Stuttgart, Charlie had me starting which is probably the hardest position out of the four because you start, get the team wound up to max speed then swing up three-quarters of a lap later. Charlie had us running to a 4:10 schedule—which is a whole lap quicker than I’d gone two weeks before. I thought, ‘You have got to be kidding’—fourteen seconds faster than I’d ever been in my life, my first senior world titles and I was starting. I was shitting myself but the nerves must have helped because we ended up breaking the record with a 4:10—me, Brett Aitken, O’Brien and McGlede.

  Back then it was fast, nowadays we’d get our arses kicked, but when you have a fast, controlled team it runs smoothly. It hurts more when you’re going full gas and the pace keeps dropping off. Unfortunately the Germans came out a few minutes later and went quicker again, but for me to go from one extreme to another in such a short period was pretty amazing.

  After the rush of my first senior world championships we had a month off, which was most welcome. But it was only a matter of time before Charlie called us up and gave us a training program that set out what we’d be doing every single da
y for the whole year—from what time breakfast would be, to when we would stretch. We were booked to do some 300 km rides and it was pretty scary to contemplate. But every training session was a day closer to my dream of riding at the Barcelona Olympics. There were only five of us in the endurance team so it was already looking like a real possibility.

  In January 1992, we went to Mexico for a training camp and the volume of training was out of control. When I look back and remember we were training for a four-minute event and clocking up 800 to 1000 km a week, it was pretty hardcore. We’d go on ten-hour rides through Mexico and be scattered all over the countryside because I would treat it like a race. I wanted to push not only myself, but the other boys to chase me, all day if they had to. The boys must’ve hated me. I’d get back to the hotel, rest for an hour before my roommate would get home and throw his shoes across the room, hating life. But the next day we’d do it all again.

  Australian cycling journalist Rupert Guinness, who covered Stuart’s entire career, remembers a training camp in Toluca, Mexico, in the build-up to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics when he watched Stuart ride away from his teammates, just as Walsh predicted.

  ‘Walsh pitted his charges over a 295 km training ride including several mountains over which they had to ride in their biggest and hardest gear and up to an altitude that would edge closer to 4000 metres,’ Guinness says.

  ‘Following in the team van, Walsh warned that it would be the last time we’d see O’Grady for the day. He went as far as to say we would catch him at the hotel. I laughed, thinking he might be exaggerating. He wasn’t.

  ‘By the time everyone got back to the hotel O’Grady was showered, dressed in casual gear, smiling, and there to take bikes off his exhausted teammates as they dismounted. I knew O’Grady had a massive engine but that astonished me for someone who was still twenty-three.’

  I loved the challenge Charlie would throw at me because I knew he was testing me; he was pushing me to the limit. Some days he’d stand on the inside of the track and hold up two fingers which meant I had to do a two-lap turn, then the next day he’d test me again and hold up three fingers. It hurt like hell but I thrived on it.