[Closed] Chris Boardman?

and Chris Boardman hated cycling.....

especially when it got tough.......

He had trouble keeping the rubber touching the tar.

more gold medals then any of us though

Saw him once get knocked off his bike....... by a sheep 🙂

I used to try and keep up with him on the track at Kirkby.... Not just in a different league he was MILES ahead of anyone else and a few of us were quite handy.

Brought cycling into a lot of peoples living rooms (not literally).

Done many a lap around Kirkby, on two feet though.

Boardman was awesome but he wasnt the absolute best in the world therefore being British he must be sh*t musnt he?

The great British disease!

i dont think he was shit.
i think he did not like it when it got a bit tough.
he could have won the tour if he had the courage of robert miller or sean kelly.

saw him win the opening prologue of the Tour of Britain in Sterling a few years back. Caught and over took his 2 minute man (he was last off) to win by miles (well seconds).

Kirkby track O I remember those days, I went to a talk held by him at the track many years ago and I hate to say it but he was so boring I neally fell asleep.

But he qas a cool cyclist but my fav was Sean Yates and Seam Kelly (legend) and I even raced with him too.

Happy days.

Boardman struggled because a lot of his competitors were smacked up to their tits on drugs. Reckon he would get better results these days.

What Blackhound said: difficult to hang on to your motivation when 90 odd percent of your competitors are cheating.

I thought he was fantastic - honest, gutsy performances.
He was the first British rider since Simpson known to the wider British public, which helps to explain why the bikes with his name on are so popular.

made me chuckle...

I know Chris fairly well & Blackhound & Rusty Spanner are pretty much spot on!
Chris saw it as a way to earn money to keep his family well looked after, he did say that towards the end it drove all love of the sport out of him as it was much the same as being a shift worker.

Though speaking to him the week after he took Merckx's hour record, apart from not wanting to do the press conference afterwards as he thought he had done himself some permanent damage. At last he realised what he had achieved.

Boardman - legend

(And a Manchester Wheeler back in the day - proud to wear the jersey he won in so often as an amateur. Had a brief chat in the early stages of this year's Étape, too.)

[i]Boardman struggled because a lot of his competitors were smacked up to their tits on drugs. Reckon he would get better results these days. [/i]

Isn't this what caused Robert Millar to throw in the towel too?

He complained the other riders would be climbing fast without even opening their mouths.

I saw Boardman do his final "Athletes Hour" at Manchester. One bloke going round in circles for an hour, but one of the most exciting sporting events I have watched. Tremendous atmosphere, and the noise of the crowd was incredible as he entered his final lap a fraction of a second off record pace (having recovered from falling well behind schedule about half way through the event). He beat the record by about 10 metres, I think, and looked absolutely shattered.
Not tough? Try sustaining over 400W for an hour and you'll understand what tough means.
Great sportsman.

kcr, not tough as in the mentality to win the tour............read my post 🙄

I read the post, and I was also referring to mental toughness.
I don't believe Boardman failed to win the tour because of his mentality. A tour winner has to have a complete package of physical and mental attributes, including the ability to time trial and climb, and excellent strategic and tactical awareness*
Very few people have all the components to win a grand tour. Boardman was clearly a specialist, but succeeded brilliantly in the disciplines he targetted. That's what winners do, and they have to be tough to do it.

* plus a well organised drug regime.

Merckx, who won the TdF a few times i think, said doing The Hour was the hardest thing he'd every done and he'd never try it again, Boardman completed The Hour three times.

just to add to the 'toughness' mix

Ton, Iwan Thomas was on Radio 5's Fighting Talk last Saturday morning and said pretty much the same thing:
It's very hard to give 100% ALL the time, year after year, dedicating your life to the pursuit of success which you know will probably never happen because the miserable, toad licking, crab-walking son of a Basenji next to you on the starting line is cheating.

I've ridden for an hour lots of times, it wasn't so tough.

What, a FULL hour?
No stops for Jelly Babies or anyfink?

You don't see boardman stopping for jelly babies do you? No. That's like taking drugs.

I overtook him whilst he was doing some practice runs in Stirling for the PruTour - I was riding back from work (the other way) and passed a whole load of riders...they all waved and said hello as I rode past...Boardman on his own...didn't - so I turned round and chased him (in my version of the story he was going flat out on a roiad bike and I was on my 2.1 knobbly MTB - in his version - he probably doesn't even recall this but he'd be spinning his leg in his lowest gear just to get his leg moving!), caught up with him and then overtook him, kept ahead of him for about 20 metres then darted off up a path off the road so he couldn't overtake me.

I'm sure he is a good guy but his interviews and press make him look like a c@ck...I'm not keen on him from his media appearances and stuff...however, he has achieved a fair amount and that doesn't just happen out of luck, so he clearly has some ability!

[i]i think he did not like it when it got a bit tough.
he could have won the tour if he had the courage of robert miller or sean kelly. [/i]

sweet baby jesus and the orphans.
He was incredibly tough, and he had no chance of winning the tour, even if the playing field had been level. He could have come a lot higher than his best GC placement of 39th, sure. But win it? no.
(who is robert miller, anyway?)

[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour_record ]wiki/Hour_record[/url]

56km in an hour! ber-limey.

Why knock the chap? Before he won at the Olympics, track cycling was almost unknown to the man in the street.

He was [b]very good[/b] at what he did. It puzzles me how armchair TdF champions can accuse him of not being tough.

DB

his interviews and press make him look like a c@ck

whereas you 'beating him' on your bike make you look like??

It's fair to say that Chris is one of the key factors behind cycling being where it is on the public radar right now.
Right from the early days of his Olympic Gold (when "British Cycling" pretty much *was* Chris) and road/track cycling was almost unknown to the general public through his Team Gan days at the Tour right up to now where he's the head tech guy at BC, a man in no small part responsible for making the GB Track squad the best in the world.

kcr, not tough as in the mentality to win the tour............read my post

He was never going to win the tour, however tough he was. Does that make him $hit? No.

+1 on the don't knock Boardman.
Plus he was happy to talk to anyone at the Etape - and who doesn't hate training 😆

Interesting about him in Bradley Wiggins book as well... Boardman did a lot for him, so still doing good work for the sport.

he could have won the tour if he had the courage of robert miller or sean kelly.

No he couldn't. And Millar and Kelly didn't ever win it either...

he could have won the tour if he had the courage of robert miller or sean kelly.

Millar was the closest we had since Simpson (and before Wiggins), but ultimately it came from being an amazing climber. Look how Wiggins has had to become so much better going uphill to see the effect that had.

Kelly could never have won the Tour. He was a glorious Classics rider (his true métier), and fantastic green jersey winner, but was never GC potential.

Boardman was a superb tester, with a capacity to continue to hurt himself for long periods. But he was no climber, and was never employed as a GC contender. But, he has been a yellow jersey wearer and, as others have indicated, did three times an event that Merckx referred to as having shortened his own life. That's f---ing hard and courageous enough for me.

Ton - do you know anything about Grand Tour racing? Or road racing at all?

Boardman is a real nice guy. Know him and his family quite well. All genuine nice people. Chris would never pretend to be a climber, so he was never going to win the big tours, and he knew that and accepted it. He was an absolutley superb tester, he must have been because he always beat me!!!

As for the Kirkby track....if Everton get their way then the new Goodison Park will be built bang on top of it.

Andy P - There is a book out about Millar - 'Searching for Robert Millar' I think it is called. Have a read. He was a fantastic rider and only Simpson among the Brits was in the same league. KoM in tours of France, Spain and Italy and was 'robbed' of the the Vuelta as well. Genearally considered a bit weird but I did pass him once, briefly!

Sean Kelly - another cycling hero of mine. As ourmaninthenorth says he was a classics rider, not really a tour rider. 4th was an incredible performance, can't imagine Cav winning the green AND finishing 4th. He got (4) green jerseys as well. Think he won the Vuelta once but would need to check my facts on that one.

he won the vuelta in 1988

[i]Andy P - There is a book out about Millar[/i]
Yes, I know all about Millar. I was just pointing out your spelling error 😉

Saying Boardman is rubbish because he didn't win the Tour is like saying Peter Shilton* was crap at football because he didn't score many goals.

*the only goalkeeper's name that I know...

Anyway, back to the OP - I had just watched the episode on iPlayer before flicking on STW and, magically, being drawn to this thread.

I love The Thick of It - used to be a guilty pleasure back when it was on at obscure times on BBC4. Now even my mother in law is watching it.

Eddie Merckx reckoned it took him a month to recover from the Tour and a year to recover from the hour record. Ton go and ask Eddy just how tough mentally and physically you have to be to even attempt that record.