Battle Scars Read online

  When the disappointment of pulling out of the Tour de France for the first time finally abated, I worked out that I had six weeks to get ready for the Olympics. So a few days later I was on the home-trainer in the garage in Toulouse with a makeshift harness made out of old tyres wrapped around a beam to hold me upright. I had a couple of cushions on the handlebars to rest my right arm and as long as my legs could turn over, I told myself I was still in with a chance to make it to Sydney.

  It took about twelve days on the home-trainer until I was ready to go back out on the road, then it took me another twenty minutes just to get out of the driveway. It’s a mental thing because even though you know you’re okay, you’re worried that one bump, one sharp turn or unexpected stop will put pressure on the collarbone which was still healing.

  Once I was out the driveway there was no looking back. I made it over the first bump safely and figured if I could do that, I could get over one hundred bumps so it was game on. It’s amazing how quickly your body can mend and how psychological the whole recovery process can be. Even when I had my massive crash in the 2007 Tour de France, as I lay in intensive care with tubes poking out of me everywhere, I said to myself, ‘Right, I’ll be good for the Vuelta, I’ll be good for the worlds.’ I wanted to make myself believe that it was possible even though my team director probably thought I was crazy.

  I’ve always believed that no matter how bad the situation or how much of a nightmare you’re in, you’ve got to look for the positives and try to think that everything happens for a reason. That’s been one of the biggest mottos of my entire life—that when you’re down and out and you miss a race, it only makes you hungrier. So when you come back, you’re better prepared for the next year because you start training harder, you don’t take things for granted, you look after yourself and then the next thing you know, you’ve won an Olympics or a world cup or a stage of the Tour. So then you realise that missing a couple of months might’ve helped you towards this achievement.

  As unlikely as it seemed when I sat on the trainer in my garage, held up by a few old bike tyres while nursing a broken collarbone, I made it to the Sydney Olympics for the 27 September road race—just over five weeks after my crash.

  The Olympic road race was a tough 239 km and, admittedly, I didn’t have a great day. Jan Ullrich won and I was 7:06 further back in 77th place. A week earlier I lined up in the points race on the track and managed to get 26 points but the winner, Juan Llaneras from Spain, took two laps and the gold medal with it while I finished tenth. I fully admit that I wasn’t anywhere near my peak condition on the track, but Scott McGrory, who usually rides the points race, was rested up to stay fresh for the madison with Brett Aitken and they went on to win a gold medal. I remained in Sydney for the closing ceremony then flew back to Europe to suffer through until the end of the season. My third Olympics and still no gold medal but after what I’d been through in the previous twelve months—a blood clot on the brain, fractured skull and broken collarbone—I was just happy to still be riding my bike.

  Celebrating winning the inaugural Tour Down Under in 1999. (© Graham Watson)

  How many men can say they met their wife while standing on the podium after a cycling race? Anne-Marie was a podium girl the day I won the most aggressive rider’s jersey after Stage 1 of the 2000 Tour Down Under. A kiss from Anne-Marie was enough to motivate me to attack every stage for the rest of the week so I could get back on the podium. Unbeknown to us at the time, that brief meeting was the start of our lives together.

  By the time I got back to the hotel that night my teammates had already eaten so I was at a table by myself when, coincidentally, the same two podium girls walked past. Naturally, I asked them to join me and I found out that Anne-Marie was from Adelaide, doing a bit of modelling, and knew absolutely nothing about cycling. I was the defending Tour Down Under champion but she had no idea who I was, which suited me fine.

  I’d always gone out with European girls because they tend to understand cycling and the sacrifices riders have to make. I never thought I’d marry an Aussie girl because I assumed they’d never want to live on the other side of the world. But when I dated a few girls from Europe, their families got too involved and became almost like stalkers; it was all too weird for me.

  So I eventually found the courage to ask Anne-Marie if she’d go out with me, and on the Tuesday night of the Tour Down Under, just as I was leaving the hotel, Roger Legeay caught me walking out way too dressed up for just a coffee with the boys. ‘Where are you going?’ he said. ‘Oh, just for a coffee,’ I replied. He looked at me sceptically and said, ‘You’re pretty well dressed to be going out for a coffee.’ He knew exactly what was going on so I said, ‘Look, I’ll win for you tomorrow.’ We shook on it and that was it.

  Things between me and Anne-Marie went pretty well, and by the end of the week when it was time for me to head back to Europe I had some thinking to do. We chatted on the phone every day once I was in France, but soon enough we decided it would be a lot cheaper to fly Anne-Marie over. It was a massive show of faith from her family—allowing her to fly to the other side of the world to live with a guy they had only met once. I was on the road a lot with the team but we had our own community in Toulouse because Jay Sweet’s girlfriend was there and we had a great network of friends.

  Anne-Marie was only nineteen when she met Stuart. Funnily enough, she met Stuart’s sister Lesley before she met her future husband. ‘A good friend of mine had been a podium girl for the first year of the Tour in 1999 and when they needed one more in 2000, she recommended me,’ Anne-Marie recalls.

  ‘I had a meeting with Lesley who was working for the Tour Down Under. It was her job to choose the podium girls and we got along great; it was the start of a really good friendship.

  ‘For me, working at the Tour was just a job. I never dreamed I would meet my future husband and have my life turned upside down. I didn’t know who Stu was and cycling was only just starting to get the recognition it deserved in Australia.’

  In the early days of their relationship, Anne-Marie remembers Stuart ‘sweeping me off my feet with his lovable personality and romance’.

  ‘When we had a couple of months apart before I moved to France, he’d send me the most romantic, long emails about how much he missed me, so he does have that soft side to him which not many people see. I fell in love with the Stuart I still love today—his infectious and fun personality, caring and very loving nature. He is so much fun to be around; meeting Stu was the best thing to happen in my life.

  ‘Moving to France was a big decision but it wasn’t too scary as I had travelled around Europe the year before. It was an exciting time and I knew I was going into a good support network with Stu. He’s such a passionate guy that anything he loves, he puts so much energy into.’

  Lesley says she could not be happier that Anne-Marie ended up marrying her brother.

  ‘Anne-Marie and I clicked really quickly from day one. I thought she was a gorgeous girl, really down to ear th, fun and honest. We couldn’t be happier that he met someone so lovely, so genuine, so beautiful and Australian, which makes it so much easier.’

  It wasn’t all smooth sailing though. Not long after Anne-Marie arrived in Toulouse, I had to do some motor-pacing and asked her, ‘Have you ever ridden a motorbike?’ She hadn’t but I thought it would be okay because it isn’t that hard. I had a 125cc Peugeot and told her to go out the driveway, turn right, sit on 50 km/h and no matter what, don’t hit the brakes. ‘I’m going to be sitting an inch off the back wheel of the motorbike so if you hit the brakes, I’ll end up in hospital,’ I told her.

  I had a 150 km ride planned and my new motor-pacer was doing pretty well trying not to look at the Pyrenees and the sunflowers. Eventually we got to the 75 km turnaround point so I rode past to tell her to follow me into a cafe for a coffee. But because she’d been concentrating so hard, as soon as I went past her she must have just switched off. There was a slight curve at the end of the road and th
e next minute I heard the biggest crash behind me. I turned around to see Anne-Marie had hit the gutter and gone straight into a wall. The motorbike had been wiped out and there was blood pouring out of her knees. Straight away I called an ambulance.

  Later, I tried to find my way around the hospital still holding onto my bike. When I eventually found Anne-Marie, the doctor told us she’d need double knee surgery and would spend the next week in hospital. ‘Maybe I should have just started you out with a one-hour motor-pacing session rather than 150 km,’ I said. Anne-Marie didn’t find it funny and has never been near a motorbike since.

  Despite that early setback, Anne-Marie stayed with me in Europe and our relationship grew stronger. Eventually you reach a point in your life when you decide it’s time to grow up and become responsible. I was always very serious about my cycling but relationships had been tricky, as they are for professional athletes. Everyone sees the glamour and the accolades but they don’t read about the tough times or trying to hold a relationship together when you’re living in different countries. Anne-Marie didn’t put massive expectations on me; I guess she didn’t know a lot about cycling or who I was, and that was key.

  I’d been thinking about our relationship a lot and one day in June 2001, I was out training with Jay, preparing for the Tour de France, when I told him that I would like to get engaged. Cycling had been such a boys’ club for me, which was hard not just for Anne-Marie but for any girl who came along. The boys had always come first, no matter what—my life had been built around a team of blokes since I was sixteen—so this engagement business meant I’d be the first from our group to throw a serious relationship into the mix.

  Two days before we were due to leave for the Tour, I realised I hadn’t organised a ring, so I told Anne-Marie that I was going into the city to grab a coffee with Jay. We were a couple of experts I can tell you, looking in jewellery stores for an engagement ring. It didn’t take long to find what I thought was a pretty decent ring. Jay leaned over my shoulder, took one look at it and said, ‘Holy shit, that much for a ring? I’m never getting engaged, these are expensive.’

  My initial plan was to propose in Paris after that year’s Tour. When I got home I hid the ring in my motorcross boot in the garage and the next day we went to my favourite restaurant, Le Palmiers, before I left for the Tour. We were sitting there drinking champagne when Anne-Marie must have sensed something was up because she asked, ‘Are you okay?’ My mind was on the whole proposal gig but I said, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ As I looked around at this perfect summer’s night, on the river, eating my favourite entreìe foie gras, it struck me: this is the moment, I’ve got to do it now. So right then and there I asked Anne-Marie to marry me, even though I didn’t have the ring with us.

  After we finished dinner, I raced home and grabbed the ring out of my motorcross boot, then started calling everyone back home.

  As soon as the old man found out we were engaged, he started building a deck out the front of our place at Ingle Farm. He reckoned if I was going to be home with my groomsmen the night before I tied the knot, we needed a deck. Besides, he’d been talking about building it for twenty years so my engagement was the kick-start he needed.

  As it turned out, the deck came in pretty handy the night before the wedding when I plucked about ten bottles of my finest red wine from the cellar and sat with the boys to toast the occasion. We were married on a 42-degree day in Adelaide on 23 November 2002. Anne-Marie did a lot of work organising everything; all I had to do was take care of the cars, which were Daimlers. Jay was best man and my other groomsmen were my brother Darren, Nathan Rattley, Leigh Bryan and Paul Neighbour.

  Nathan, one of my oldest friends, was still living in the same house at Ingle Farm where we grew up together. He was the first person I ran to see when I got back from Barcelona with my Olympic silver medal because we did everything together. Leigh had become my longtime trainer and personal coach but also one of my best friends, and Paul Neighbour literally is my neighbour in Unley where I live when I’m in Adelaide. He’s a successful businessman and has been my go-to man for advice; I even bought my house from him.

  Rattley is not a competitive rider and is far from a cycling fanatic, which means he and Stuart share a unique friendship outside the bubble of the sport. He says Stuart has been there for him and vice versa through the good times and bad. None more so than in 1993 when Rattley lost his mother to cancer.

  ‘Stuey was pretty close with her, and Mum adored him,’ Rattley says. ‘He’d be over for dinner most nights if he could, he especially loved her curries.’

  ‘But in 1993 Mum was not well and Stuey could see I was struggling. And this is the character of the bloke: in the middle of training and racing he just dropped everything and said, “Let’s go camping.” It was a really emotional time.

  ‘When we came home from the camping trip Mum was in a coma. I was nineteen at the time and there was only Mum, me and my sister. Stuey stood with me when the ambulance left, he came to hospital with me where I was emotionally messed up, and he was pretty shattered as well.’

  The two have an unbreakable bond, even though they only see each other a few times a year. Stuart is the godfather of Rattley’s eldest child, Jemmah. ‘I’ve seen him do some amazing things in his cycling career, but his character and his loyalty will always outshine anything he’s ever done on the bike,’ Rattley says. ‘We have both had our fair share of adversity over the years and it’s because of our close friendship that we have been able to turn to one another in those times.’

  Another friend who has become like family to Stuart is his longtime manager and friend, Max Stevens. The pair have worked together for the best part of twenty years and while Stuart does most of his own contact negotiations, Stevens takes care of the rest including sponsorship, appearances and organising his schedule in Australia.

  Stevens remembers meeting Stuart as an eighteen-year-old over lunch with mutual friend Gary Niewand in Adelaide. ‘I was a football reporter with Channel 7 and a very keen cyclist, so I started to watch Stuart’s career with great interest,’ Stevens recalls. ‘I was in the right spot at the right time and became Stuey’s manager.

  ‘While I have the greatest respect for everyone I’ve managed over the years, being involved with an internationally revered athlete is another level. Over the journey I’ve tried hard to become the “manager” as opposed to the “friend” but Stuart is such an infectious person, you just can’t help but fall back into that mate-relationship. Stuey has given so much to his sport, his family and the people around him.’

  Stevens says his relationship with Stuart also opened many doors. ‘I remember walking up to Fabian Cancellara at the world championships one year and asking for a photo. At first he was quite unapproachable but when I explained my friendship with Stuart, Fabian was instantly happy to talk to me. That’s Stuey’s influence; it’s like having an open visa to meeting the movers and shakers of international cycling.’

  Stevens admires Stuart’s loyalty and passion for the sport. ‘Every deal we’ve cut, every contract, Stuart has always put money back into junior cycling in South Australia. He is a class act.’

  John Trevorrow is a multiple national champion who used to compete against Stuart’s father Brian. He first took serious notice of Stuart at the 1993 track world titles. ‘You could see everyone was nervous before the race and Stuey just said to them, “We can’t lose this,” and he was right,’ he recalls.

  Trevorrow has been at almost every one of Stuart’s Tours de France and witnessed it all, from stage victories to life-threatening crashes. But he said Stuart’s 2007 Paris–Roubaix victory would be etched in his memory forever. ‘It’s the only bike race I’ve ever put on TV and watched three or four times; it’s like a favourite movie,’ he says.

  But what impresses him most about Stuart is his character. On the morning of the 2013 Paris–Roubaix, Trevorrow received a text message from Stuart who had learned he (Trevorrow) had been diagnosed with cancer. T
hat Stuart took the time to send the message on the morning of Paris–Roubaix meant the world to Trevorrow.

  Anne-Marie and I invited about two hundred people to our wedding. The ceremony was in a small church in North Adelaide and the reception at Town Hall. In between we sent everyone to the Botanic Gardens where there was a marquee and a ridiculous amount of alcohol. Because it was 40 degrees everyone went pretty hard so I’m not sure whether half the people remember the wedding, but it was a fantastic night.

  Being the wife of a professional cyclist has got to be one of the toughest gigs on the planet. Guys who play football, soccer or tennis—they’re in stadiums, the wives can come to watch and it might be one night away at a time for an away game. But bike-riders can spend more than two hundred days a year on the road. On top of that, we’re very demanding, we’re constantly complaining about training hard, we’re tired, and walking was my number one hate. I would get home from training and Anne-Marie would say, ‘Do you want to go to the shops or to the city?’ and I’d be too stuffed and just want to chill out and recover. As athletes, we can be extremely selfish and anyone who says otherwise is lying. I think that goes across every top-level sport in the world because you have to be selfish if you want to succeed.

  During my career I had two different lifestyles. There was the Stuart who lived in Europe for ten months of the year, was professional, trained his arse off and was hardly home; and there was the Stuart who spent two months in Australia and was relaxed, went to barbecues, had a few beers and did a lot of socialising with our friends and family. That was Anne-Marie’s time because I realised the sacrifices she made for me the other ten months of the year.