Felipe Nystrom

I’ve never heard of this gentleman, but stumbled across the story on the BBC website, it’s amazingly moving and incredibly positive so I thought I’d share it here.

Felipe Nystrom: From drug addiction and despair to the world championship – BBC Sport

Sounds like there’s an associated podcast too if folk are interested.

The story resonates with me. Didn’t ever make it to the world championships, but in 2016 I was hopelessly addicted to coke and had been for years. Turned my life round through cycling and exercise, and 6 months later was winning local races

the last paragraph made me laugh. Coke is an expensive habit, but buying bike kit isn’t that much cheaper 😂

I read it too. I know who I’m going to be supporting whenever he’s racing, that’s for sure.

I’ve been lucky and never had issues with drink or drugs, but I’ve had shocking (at times nearly life ending) mental health all my life & cycling plays a major part in keeping my mental (and, following multiple heart attacks, physical) health reasonably decent.

It’s always good to see cycling making lifechanging differences to people.

I’m going to resurrect this thread as there’s another nice piece on the Beeb about recovery from trauma & cycling (local to me too) –

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp9ek147ygpo

Perhaps the Mods could adjust the thread title to something more descriptive.

Here’s another nice story about someone using cycling to overcome difficulties – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6pp6d4p7n4o

Cheers, that article is great – lovely to hear the back story of the MVDP incident.

Here’s another nice story of cycling being used in addiction/mental health recovery. This chappy intends to cycle to the summit of Snowdon 4 times in 24 hours!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c869v641p9vo

Mods: Could we change the thread title to something more useful?