BBC sounds, music, radio, podcasts Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were castaway to a desert island. And for right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening. Mike passed away this week as Olympic cyclist and businessman Chris Boardman, British cycling is currently booming and he's arguably the man who lit the fuse.

Born on the Wirral to keen amateur cyclist parents, he was still in his teens when he joined the British squad. He earned the nickname The Professor for his love of scientific innovation, and it became the hallmark of his career. In 1992, he achieved the seemingly impossible taking on the first British Olympic gold medal in cycling for 72 years on a revolutionary carbon framed bike. He became the first Brit to win the prologue in the Tour de France two years later, then set the UCI absolute our record in the now famous SUPAMAN position with his arms stretched out to minimise drag.

Many more successes, including two more spells in the yellow jersey and two more. Our records followed, but hanging up his racing shoes didn't mean slowing down. He simply took his research based approach to cycling and applied it to the rest of us. In 2007, he launched his own range of bikes and more recently became the cycling and walking commissioner for Greater Manchester. He says, I just want people to use bicycles to get around and I care more about that.

And gold medals by a million miles. My definition of success isn't winning. It's the guy using his bike to go to the shops. Chris Boardman, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Hello. Thank you for joining us now. Chris, there have been very few bright spots during this year's lockdown, but people getting out on their bikes does seem to have been one of them. What changes have you seen?

I'm very, very wary of using the term opportunity in the midst of a pandemic when people are dying. But I think we'd be very foolish not to notice some of the things that happened when we effectively turned off global traffic. And I suppose in a sense, we started a world wide consultation on how we use our roads. And we found that when you gave people quiet streets and you could actually hear birdsong and we took away the traffic, people wanted to ride bikes and they did that in their droves.

And we saw an increase across England, the Department for Transport targeted at over 300 percent.

So, you know, the cycling and walking commissioner for Greater Manchester, and that comes with a budget of 160 million pounds at your disposal. What changes are you planning to introduce to make cycling more appealing?

This has got nothing to do with cyclists. I think this is the weird, almost perverse bit. This is for people in cars, because it's not people who already ride a bike that need convincing. You need to be able to look out the car window and think, well, are quite fancy that because if you don't, why would you get out of the car? So you have to think, what do you need? Well, I need a safe space.

I don't need to be joined up to where I want to go. And so what we did in Greater Manchester is said, right. Well, we need a network fully connected that could be used by a competent 12 year old. That's how we defined and help people imagine what this standard is, competent 12 year old. And that's what we're delivering. And it's going to take 10 years.

People often cite the Netherlands as a cyclists paradise. What have they got going for them that we haven't?

First and foremost, a commitment on how they use the streets. And they have a hierarchy where somebody walking has precedence over somebody on a bike, has precedence over public transport, has precedence over people driving. And everything they do from legislation to the streetscape reflects that. And everybody has a duty of care for the more vulnerable road users. And it's civilised. And you get 60 percent of kids ride to school every day. And that's just normal. And it's less than 300 miles away for now.

Let's get into the music. Chris, this is your first disc. What is it? And why have you chosen this today?

Well, I was 11 years old when I first heard this one back in 77 because it was the first track that intrigued me. It made me notice music and it was on while my dad was wallpapering at home. And I was also fascinated by the album cover. So it was yellowish. Mr. Blue Sky.

Well. Line is something. And now that of they pay out search and rescue was worth. Yellow Mr. Blue Sky. So Chris Boardman, it's hard to explain to kids now that Britain hasn't always excelled at cycling. They're used to seeing British cyclists, men and women collecting medals at the Olympics. And British cyclists have won the Tour de France. You spearheaded that resurgence, but with quite few role models at an elite level. Who inspired you?

You know, you've only got one gold medal. It's like really just one. It's quite disappointing. You know, it does go back to a time when you were qualified to be the national coach of Great Britain or one of the start of the GBE Olympic squad by virtue of being able to take enough time off work. It was just a wholly different era. And I was very lucky to meet a guy called Peter King who was became my coach. He was a young sports scientist, not much older than me at the time, and he was fascinated by how things worked.

And he'd suggest a way of training would go out and do it and pull it apart. And, wow, that didn't work. Why didn't it work me at the next idea?

So it was the satisfaction of problem solving and it was the problem solving aspect of it that fascinated me and turned what could have been quite destructive, actually, because I didn't have a great time at school. I was a bit bullied and couldn't wait to leave, and I left with quite low self-esteem and low self-confidence. And suddenly I found something that I could do that other people couldn't and that gave me that self-esteem. But my self-worth was wrapped up in results and that's not healthy.

So luckily, I bumped into Peter Keen of change the focus to be about being better rather than being the best. And it became a wholly more productive thing to do.

Cycling has, of course, had more than its share of drug scandals. How confident are you that it's now a clean sport?

Well, I was kind of right in the middle of it, and it's one of the big reasons that led to me retiring at 32. You couldn't win at things that I should be able to win. And it was quite depressing. But I'm glad to say, and it's taken years and years, that cycling is probably one of the cleanest, if not the cleanest endurance sport in the world now. And it had to be completely on track to achieve that.

But it's going to take many years for the public to completely regain trust.

Yes, exactly. Because, you know, the fans have to believe that the competition is fair.

What they're saying is real. Yeah. And I think that happens. That can only happen with time. And you keep getting clean test results, clean test results, and you know that they're being tested now more than ever before. And that's I think all that we can do is wait, let time pass and let this new trend continue.

Speaking of time, it's pressing down on us. So I think we'll hear your second disc. Now, if you don't mind, Chris, what's it going to be and why you chosen it?

This one is from the late 90s, actually, the period that we were just talking about. It was just as I was coming up to retirement. And I chose it because I love things that are creative, not just a great sound, but poetry to words and basilone sunscreen song. Everybody's free to wear sunscreen. I thought it was just ingeniously clever.

Don't worry about the future or worry. But no, the worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. Real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind kind that blindsided you at 4:00 p.m. on some Bitel Tuesday. Do one thing every day that scares you. Saying, don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with people who are reckless with yours, Baz Luhrmann, and everybody's free to wear sunscreen.

Chris Boardman, you were born into a cycling family, I think. Is it true that your parents met at a cycling club?

Yeah, both my mom and dad rode bikes, and that was the sport, the pursuit of riding bikes that brought them together. And then it formed part of all of our family life. As my sister Lisa and I grew up every weekend was we get into or at the time had various second hand hand painted minis and things like that. And there'd be a canoe and a bike strapped to the roof and we'd be crammed into the back, maybe with a cousin or a friend at six o'clock in the morning off to a bike race.

But to do that and then we'd be off out for the day.

Your mum and dad, Keith and Carolyn, how good were their cyclists and who was the most competitive?

They were both nationally high achievers. My dad was the one that raced and eventually my mom stopped to look after us because it was just too difficult with kids and trying to juggle start times and things that my mom gave it up for us, really. But she was always the most competitive. My mom catered anything into a race there.

Must have been dedicated to the sport and to making it accessible to you.

Well, first and foremost, my parents didn't actually want me to ride a bike race. They wanted me to just use a bike and go out and discover the social side of it and the club riding, going out to the weekends with friends, which is the process that they'd gone through. But I was just interested in the racing bit. So eventually they kind of begrudgingly let me have a go when I was 13 and a small race just outside of Chester where people would turn up in cut off jeans and football shorts and have a go and ride against the clock to mile race.

And then we had the results on a piece of A4 paper that was posted on the lamppost to see where you'd finished. But that was the bit that I was interested in because this time was my time. And I went back the next week and went a bit quicker.

So you'd inherited your mum's competitive streak?

Well, to start with, it was just me against me. My name was right down the bottom of that piece of A4, you know. Twenty nine minutes and something which wasn't going to light any fires to cover ten miles. But the next week I went back into twenty eight minutes and something and I had my own marker. That was just mine until after a few months I was the fastest schoolboy and certainly that was a different thing. I was actually better than other people and that was nothing I'd experienced until that point because I was academically, physically everything middle of the pack, one of the ones who made up the background in the photograph.

And now I could just do this little thing that other people couldn't. And that was probably the moment that I was hooked in.

It's impossible music. What are we going to hear next?

Chris was actually my wife, Sally, who is a big fan of Flight of the Conchords. And so she infected all of our children with this love of the New Zealand band and their humour that was built in. And then phrases started to come out around the house the day after. My birthday is not my birthday moment. And it's something that connects us all really. And this one is called hurt feelings.

I got hurt feelings. I got to give me a small mans with Zoopla. It's my birthday, two thousand three waiting for a call from my family. They forgot about me.

I got hurt feelings. I got hurt feelings. The day after my birthday is not my birthday, mum.

I go my Flight of the Conchords and that was hurt feelings. So, Chris, you remember of quite a few cycling clubs as a teenager, when did you realize that this was more than a competition with yourself but that you had, you know, real ability?

Well, it was early on, really, that I was started to win some schoolboy stuff. And that's what gave me something that was missing in my childhood. Yeah, it sounds a bit melodramatic, but a sense of self-worth. So it was both healthy and potentially destructive because my mood had go up and down with the results. My whole world became cycling. And there isn't really a moment when I moved from one thing to another. It was just getting better and better until you look up and realise, actually, I'm now into the national squad here.

There wasn't a specific moment and I don't suppose I considered myself good until the Olympic Games.

So you said you didn't go well when you didn't win, that your self-worth was too tied up in winning or losing. How did you react when things had gone badly?

I'd just get emotionally down about losing. It's quite hard now, actually, to think back to how obsessed and it was an obsessive behaviour that was being encouraged because that happens in sport. Obsessive and unhealthy behaviour is called dedicated, and so it's disguised and not recognised for what it is. So be it losing weight or just emotional ups and downs, not being able to let go after losing. I had that problem. How long did it take to overcome it?

When I started to work with petechiae, in a sense he wasn't interested in in me, not in a horrible way, or the results he was interested in improvement if we didn't get the result that we wanted and then we'd go, wow, what happened? And then we'd be talking about it, the performance again and how to be better. And it's a much, much healthier mindset to have, really, because ultimately it doesn't matter what the stakes are, you can only do the best that you can.

For now, it's time for your fourth disc. Most of my songs are tied to family life. And this was very early on when I used to work in Peter's Furniture Emporium in Higher Tranmere and Sally and I in our first house behind the technical college in Birkenhead, which we could afford to heat one room off and used to be ice in the winter on the insides of the windows. So you can get the violins out. And we used to wrap Edward up our first son and put him in his bed.

And he used to hear Sally singing this tune, and it's by Simon and Garfunkel. But in our house it was just called Groovy.

Slow down, you move too fast. You got to make the morning last, just kick him down the cobblestone. Looking for fun and feeling groovy. Hello, Lamppost, first, we'll let you know when I come to watch the Fifty Ninth Street Bridge song Feeling Groovy, Simon and Garfunkel. So Chris Boardman, that takes you back then to your early days as a cyclist. I mean, your competitive career began in the days before lottery funding. So how hard was it to combine training with holding down a job for your young family?

Well, I solved it by not holding down a job.

I was one of the few amateur riders, so I was running for a sponsored club and got some things paid for. And we scraped enough to get to live and work at a lab in Unilever. And that was just about enough for us to pursue the passion that well, to pursue my passion, actually. And she was good enough to put that front and center of her life as well. You just made it work.

You became a household name overnight after winning that gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics men's individual track pursue on a specifically designed lotus bike now. I watched the race back and thing still looks futuristic 30 years later and it's pretty funky.

But I remember at the time that I thought that looks pretty cool, you know, real space age thing. Imagine a wing standing on its edge with a saddle on it. And that was pretty much the whole thing was formed out of a single piece of carbon fiber. The wheels were held only on one side. Its inventor, Mike Burrows. I come from the world of model planes, so he too, although he was a bike rider, was thinking completely differently.

So take me back to the race day itself. What do you remember about it? Did you think you would win?

It was something of a surreal experience, really. I was at the time an unemployed carpenter with a wife and two kids and absolutely no money and we'd slowly gone forward. Peter Keane and I am just getting better and better till eventually I was sitting on a bike in Mazrui Stadium in Barcelona, looking at the Olympic final. And on the left there was a small digital clock. This is how long ago it was. It was the little cards with numbers painted on that ticked over to change the numbers.

And I could hear it counting down the last couple of seconds. And and there were 62 million people watching at the time around the world. And I just didn't know how I was going to get my legs to go around. And eventually, because of a conversation I'd had with a guy called John Scio, it was a nice, quiet psychologist who was working with the team. I just thought, well, I can't tell you precisely what I thought, but sod it, I'm just going to be the best I can be.

And when I cross the line, I'll look at the board and see what it's got me.

Do you remember the race itself? No, I don't.

And then suddenly it's over. And I was being pushed forward and somebody is putting a medal around my neck. And I felt cheated because I'd seen people jumping up and down on podiums and in tears. I'd seen that on the television. And it's what other people did and quite fancy. That said, first of all, I thought that doesn't happen to people like me. I'm the unemployed carpenter. People on television do that. And then in an instant, I was one of the people on the television and I just felt shocked and it just didn't sink.

And it was quite a long time later before I actually did.

It is one of those moments, I think, that life divides into it before and after. You obviously didn't realise that at the time. When did you clock out?

We went home and that was when I stepped outside of the Olympic bubble where there's just you and the same people and you go to the stadium and it's all confined. And we got a lift home from the airport and there was a bit of a noise at the airport, came back to the village Hoylake, where I live, and it was full of people on every shop, had a display in the window and we turned into our little terraced street and it was just full of people.

And I didn't like it at all because you can't turn it off. This is where I live. This is normal. This is where I go to get away from those things. And it's all here now. And that was culture shock. But that evening it went quiet eventually. And I stepped out and I walked down to the end of the road to the dolphin chippy. And the guy running, it was almost like the fountain seen on Ocean's Eleven, if anybody knows that.

And it was just quiet. And I said I. Anyway, high portion of chips, please. And then this quiet and he gets the chips, pushes them across the counter, and then he holds his hand up and says, no, it's OK. And that's when I knew it made it free chips from the Gulf.

I mean, you can't complain about that. Why? Only one portion for each. It's one medal, one portion of chips. Very high standards. Don't play. Don't overdo it.

It's times of war music. Tell us about your next disc jockey.

Well, it's not a song that I particularly like, but it does signify that moment, I'm afraid. And it is the moment when I went from being unemployed and having no money to big, whether I liked it or not, a household name. It's marked by Barcelona, by Freddie Mercury. Barcelona, Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballe. So Chris Boardman, after Barcelona, you made the move into professional cycling life had changed all of those grueling schedules and training.

How did agree with you? It was horrible.

It was horrible because I'd gone into this world of road racing, which I'd never done before, and it just felt like I was surrounded by complete nutters, you know? And and then I realized that all of these people, they're not crashing. And I had to reluctantly admit that it was skill and I didn't have enough of it. So it was quite a baptism of fire, really. And I was lucky that my physiology and being able to win the timed events got me enough kudos to stick with it until eventually I could make a breakthrough.

So you'd found another problem to solve. How dedicated were you to your training?

Well, I didn't think it was going to make it for a few months, but I was lucky that I won the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. But a couple more just before that in the opening stage. And the nice thing about having a yellow jersey, it's like a passport to the front. So when you're in a marauding Palatine and there's very little there's only 20 places at the front for 200 people, the one person who doesn't get pushed out of the way is the one where in the latest jersey.

So I had this passport to the right bit of the peloton where I could learn to stay there and learn the skills.

And what about the kind of psychology of it? Is that a psychological battle between riders as well as a physical one?

I'm not quite sure what percentages I would put on it, but sport, particularly cycling, is as much psychological as physiological. The physiology, you don't even get to go without that. But once you've got that, it's not enough in its own right. You need to understand or the people understand how you pressure them to move out of your way, understand how relationships actually matter because people like any other walk of life, you like people and you don't like people.

And when it's a limited amount of space or shelter behind wheels, then the people you're like aren't the ones you're going to try and push out the way. So there's a very complex ecosystem to navigate and then also to be able to survive with the amount of pressure.

The let's have some music. This is your sixth desk today. Why have you chosen it?

Well, this was a time when we bumped into weird things. And you have experiences like doing things like this that you don't normally have. And we bumped into a friend who worked for the Rolling Stones. And so we used to go and see them in concert quite often. And so it has to be a stones track. Sympathy with the depth.

Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm a fan of well, and I've been around for a long, long. You stole many a man's soul mate. I was around when Jesus Christ moment of doubt made me. I washed his hands to see the Rolling Stones and Sympathy for the Devil.

So Chris Boardman, after a very successful, competitive career, you made the move into become British cycling director of research and development for Team GB.

What kind of details were you looking at? Well, I started off as head of stuff, actually, and it came from I used to work with British cycling for a few years and we started to get quite decent. We had a gold medal in Sydney with Jason Quealy and then we went on to Athens and got some more medals and it was looking quite rosy. And the director at the time was Dave Brailsford. And we went and had a coffee in town in Manchester and he said, right are going okay now.

And the coach is going well. And the tactical side of it, we've got covid. We've got a new sprint coach from Germany. But what about all the other stuff I said? What do? And he said, you know, all the stuff that's wheels and frames and the clothing, helmets, all that stuff. Can't we see if we can make any improvements there? And I was asked to go and look at it, so I became head of stuff, OK?

And that one meeting, which later became the aggregation of marginal gains, I think after the fact it was bit got a nice title and it was brilliant, that dedication to granular details, to cutting edge ideas, that kind of blue sky thinking and willing to try stuff.

It was becoming accepted, wasn't it? And it's obviously been something you were dedicated to for such a long time, but had been viewed as quite eccentric. It must have been very satisfying to see that culture change.

Well, it was a unique experience that very few people ever have. This is the beauty of lottery funding in that it was about making people go faster and winning gold medals, and that was it. So after four years, I could spend I had a budget of about 300000 pounds to start with. I could spend three hundred thousand pound that at the end of that, I had to have no commercially viable product. I just had to make people go faster.

So we explored and we looked at clothing. We looked at all these. Different bits, because we had a wind tunnel, we could measure it like a set of scales, we could weigh the difference between things and look at it. And it was utterly revolutionary.

You set up your own business making bikes and now a lot of sporting professionals lend their name to products. But I'm imagining that you are much more involved in the bikes that bear your name.

We actually started by a man called Alan Englefield, who was a lovely, gregarious, passionate former triathlete, and he had a backer and wanted to start a company, makes bicycles. And though can't we do better than what's out there now? And that was kind of the right button for me about making things. And so we got together and sold our first bike in 2007. And then that's when I think luck played its part or or what's the term?

Loki's readiness meets opportunity. So we've sold our bike at the same month as the Tour de France came to London and then the next year Olympic Games and so on. And so just as cycling was about to become incredibly visible is when we started selling bikes.

Your passion for cycling, of course, began with your parents and their love of the sport. Now, tragically, your mum died when she was out on her bike, and in 2016, she was hit by a driver who has since been prosecuted. How did that affect you? It must have been devastating.

I still haven't really worked out how to deal with it, to be honest. You just do. The worst bit has been watching my dad and his life partner and they spent all their time together and you just have to cope. And that's been heartbreaking. And yeah, I was working on the Tour de France at the time and had to come home and I still haven't worked out how to deal with it. You know, one of the most wonderful people that you would could ever meet and was involved in village life and tending flower beds and taking your kids out on bikes and just a big part of a community and suddenly taken away because somebody was texting me.

I mean, it's obviously just a desperately sad, devastating loss for your family. But it must also have a bearing on your perspective. Your cycling commissioner, too.

It didn't change my course. I think it was just a horrific irony that what I was already on course to do when I was was involved in and passionate about. And then my mother, who was rode a bike more than me, was killed whilst doing it, sort of to underline the point that this should be something you should be able to do in safety and people should feel comfortable doing. And we'd all benefit if we did. So are the two things linked?

No, I'd already started on it. But I think it's it's obviously poignant that it happened to me when it only happens to 100 families a year in the UK. It's time for some more music. Why are you taking it with you to the island?

The song now is by Carly Simon. And I don't think I've ever heard Carly Simon sing it. I've only heard Sally, my wife, sing it around the house to the kids. And in fact, she can attest that the song was stolen.

But since she was four when it was released and I think that timeline is a little bit skeptical, but it's embraced My Child by Carly Simon and me.

And I mean everything. Carly Simon and embrace me, you child. So Chris Boardman, 2020 has been a very different year to any other.

Have you learned anything about yourself?

I've learned that the things that I enjoy and value don't cost money. My kids, my grandkids all came to stay for the duration, so we were all locked down together. How many of you were there?

Because, well, I've got six kids, two grandkids. And I'm very lucky that we have some woods where we are. And so we have the space for the kids. Basically, we all make dinner every night together for four months and I loved it and it is a terrible time. You wouldn't want to wish it on anybody, but I'm also going to grasp the things that I took from it. And I have a relationship with my grandkids now that I didn't have, and I'm very thankful for that.

You've been volunteering at your local bike shop as well. People went out and rode bikes and bought bikes in their droves. And of course, we found that a lot of key workers. The shifts meant that now buses and trains that were running low service and sometimes they stopped very early, couldn't get to work. And so they needed old bikes repaired and bought bikes to just travel to those essential jobs. And the local bike shops weren't keeping up with demand.

They just couldn't still aren't, actually. So I went and volunteered that day in a week to just go and build bikes, which in turn gave me something constructive to do as well.

So you literally in the workshop? Yeah, I just went and built bikes. Very satisfying and educational.

There are people on the Wirral riding around on bikes that you fixed up with no idea.

The hope that the ones that didn't fall Chris Boardman MBA was responsible.

There'll be a couple now, very different kind of isolation. I'm about to cast you away to the solitary existence on your island. How do you think you'll cope?

Absolutely great. I really enjoy company, but I also really enjoy being on my own, so I think I'll be fine.

Well, lucky for you, were ready to send you to on one more desk. Before we do, though, what's your final disk going to be today?

I think this one's really about well, it is figuratively and literally about following a path and something we've just been talking about that money and riches and old glory. It doesn't make you happy. I think not having money can make you unhappy, but having the trappings of wealth and stuff doesn't make you happy. And that's what this song is all about, really. And I'm glad that this particular path is a circular one yellow brick road.

Elton John and Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road. So Chris Boardman, it's time to cast you away. I will, of course, give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to read while you're on your island. And he can take another book of your choosing to. What would you like?

Well, I discovered reading, really when I turned professional quite late in life because a high pressure job, I just wanted a way to escape without physically moving. And so I started to read quite I suppose you'd call it highbrow sci fi, something that was absolutely nothing to do with where I am now. And one of the writers I discovered that I'm just readable now was Ian Banks. And the book that I'm reading was called Fearsome Engine, and it's written entirely phonetically for it from the point of view of an ant.

So I'll take that.

You can also have a luxury item. What would you like to treat yourself to?

Well, without a doubt, it's got to be butter and butter. I'm going to grow some corn or I might catch a lobster. There is nothing that butter does not make better. It's all about the food. That's all about the food.

Okay, well, it's yours. And finally, which of these eight tracks would you rush to save if the waves were threatening to wash your collection away?

That is a difficult one. I think it probably go right back to Simon and Garfunkel.

Chris Boardman, thank you so much for sharing your Desert Island Discs with us. Thank you. Hello. I really hope you enjoyed my conversation with Chris Boardman, and I do hope he's found somewhere cool to stories, but we've cast many Olympic athletes away over the years. They include Dame Katherine Granger, Sir Steve Redgrave and fellow cyclists of Bradley Wiggins. You can hear their programs if you search through BBC sounds. Next time, my guest will be Hillary McGrady, director general of the National Trust.

I do hope you'll join us.

Before you go, I'm Miles, the producer of a brand new podcast for Radio four called Treki.

This is how it works for people from across the UK.

Meet up and without a presenter breathing down their necks, talk about issues they really care about, which is quite complicated for a lot of people.

And it's OK to be against it, but not to shame someone because of their profession. Across the cities will hear anger, shock and even the odd laugh. Another thing that really gets to me is when people say, I know what we need to do. I know what black people shut up, you don't like. That's the thing. That's not how it works. Nobody knows. If you knew, you would have done it. Discover more conversations like this by starting Trickey on BBC Sounds.