Free On the Road Bike by Ned Boulting

each other often enough. Or rather, I have crossed him.
    But I like Mick a great deal.
    The more I speak to British riders, whether they are from the online here and now, or from the black-and-white yesteryear, the more I detect a commonality. They tend to brood. Accustomed to passing endless hours trapped in their interior monologues, with only the whirr of ball bearings and the swish of rubber on tarmac to accompany them, they often betray the signs of a fundamental unease with their circumstances, as if reinventing their physiologies day by day at the coal face of a punishing bike ride will somehow release them from who they are and what they are faced with. From the cards they’ve been dealt.
    This is not, perhaps, uniquely British. The badge of honour that suffering bestows on the professional bike rider is the minimum requirement for entry into their elusive club. To hurt is to be. That much is clear.
    But on these islands our small clutch of pros have it harder than most. Even now, when the wider public has suddenly started to embrace the sport, they battle daily against ridicule, isolation, incomprehension and the occasional assassination attempt. It’s not just the white vans and rogue cars that try to force them off the road (Bradley Wiggins and Shane Sutton), not just the tiresome puddles and potholes and the jostling for space at traffic lights. It extends beyond their lonely training rides, into their everyday world. The pro-cyclist, on admitting to his profession in the pub or at dinner with friends, will be counting down an internal clock until the inevitable question is asked, with a sneer and a chuckle. ‘Why do you shave your legs? Is it more aerodynamic?’ They have their answers honed to perfection, and are scarcely aware of responding.
    It takes determination, and a very thick skin to fly so obdurately in the face of the prevailing culture. Perhaps it also requires a particular sort of motivation.
    I wanted to know Mick Bennett away from race day. So I made an appointment, went to his office, sat down opposite him and waited to see if I could find out what forces had shaped him; what motivated the motivator, or better still: what agitated the agitator?
    I squinted at him. The sun shone through some slatted blinds directly behind him, so that I was not so much looking at the director of the Tour of Britain, as at a black-and-white cut-out of the director of the Tour of Britain.
    I offered up my opening line of enquiry.
    â€˜Mick, so many of the riders seem to tell me the same story, that as a child they got on their bikes to put distance between themselves and something that they wanted to run away from—’
    I am interrupted. ‘Can I just stop you there. That’s absolutely spot on.’
    Our early years working together were characterised by a certain mistrust. He thought I was a bit of an upstart, and couldn’t get a handle on my instinctive desire to raise an inquisitive eyebrow wherever I felt it needed raising. In 2008, for example, he’d invited Tyler Hamilton, who would later blow the whistle on Lance Armstrong, to come and ride for the Rock Racing team: a villainous assembly of dopers, ex-dopers and serial deniers, who traded heavily on their ‘bad boy’ image. I wanted to ask Hamilton all sorts of difficult questions, Mick wasn’t so sure.
    Perhaps he’s just given up on me. But for whatever reason, these days, he just lets me get on with it, and seldom interferes. Except where money is involved.
    Once, during the 2012 Tour of Britain, I won a bet I had struck with him. I was staggeringly right. And he was appallingly wrong. I can see steam coming out of his ears as he reads this now. But if he examines his heart, he’ll know I’m correct.
    The previous day, trying to predict what time the race would finish (a very necessary skill, especially when it comes to TV schedules), I had shaken hands with Mick Bennett. I’d predicted the