Peter Flax (editor) - The best of bicycling : the very best stories from the first 50 years of Bicycling Magazine

By Steve Friedman

Graeme Obree invented a new kind of bike and a whole new way of riding, inspired millions, and rode faster than any human ever had. But he could never quite escape himself.

June 2003

C hoosing is an ordeal. Chicken korma versus chicken rogan josh should not matter so much. To the ravaged cyclist, though, it is a matter of life and death. He needs to be vigilant. How can he afford not to be? Ten years ago, just a short bike ride from here, the racer peered through a chilly, driving rain and glimpsed the future of his sport in a blinding instant and what he saw brought him fame and riches and love. And then, for the past 10 years, the mad vision tortured him.

He cant afford such prescience any more. He cant survive the agonies it exacts. His doctors have warned him. His wife has pleaded with him. Even his former competitors and detractors, the ones he spent years challenging and vanquishing and mocking, with the hubris only a Prometheus on pedals could summon, even they wish him nothing but peace, because they have witnessed the disfiguring price of revelation.

He was an inventor and a visionary and a champion, who twice stood atop the cycling world by riding farther in one hour than anyone ever had, and, today, he needs to forget all that. He needs to concentrate on the moment. The doctors have told him that, too. Otherwise, what happened that Christmas might happen again. He couldnt bear doing that to his family. He needs to calm down, to take care of himself. He needs to order dinner.

But how can he? Korma versus rogan josh is just one of the agonizing choices facing him. His 8-year-old son wants Kashmiri naan, and though there will be plenty to share with his 10-year-old brother, the 8-year-old isnt much of a sharer. The older boy deserves his own bread, to make him feel special. Garlic breadthat might be the answer. How does the older boy feel about garlic bread? He doesnt feel so great about it, but he really doesnt feel great about sharing. The older boy is dyslexic, like the cyclist was when he was a child, and he is clumsy, too, just like his father. The cyclist wants to protect his firstborn. He wishes someone had protected him. He will take a chance: garlic bread.

The decision has cost the cyclist. He is blinking, squinting, grinding his jaw. It is September, chilly and damp in this coastal Scottish village, even inside the restaurant. But he is sweating. First his brow moistens, then beads appear on his broad forehead, and before longeven with him gulping at his pint of Diet Cokesweat drips down his aquiline nose and onto the table.

His eyes are grayish blue, and he squints and blinks and clenches his jaw during times of stress, like ordering dinner, or when he hears a question that causes him pain, like one about that Christmas. He is olive-skinned, dark-haired, 5-foot-11 and 161 pounds, with broad shoulders and heavy, muscled thighs. In racing close-ups, his high cheekbones and angular jaw combine with an unusually full lower lip to exude lupine menace. At 37, he has gained about six pounds, taking the edges from his face. Combined with the nervous tics, the effect now is more prey than predator.

The bread arrives and the boys are squabbling and the first pint of Diet Coke is gone and the sweat continues to drip from the racers nose onto his appetizers, which he has ordered with enormous, excruciating difficulty.

Oh, for Gods sake, his wife says, doing a brave imitation of a laugh. Wipe your brow.

The racer laughs, too, a small, helpless sound.

Its a mark of health, you know, he says. Sweating like that.

Not Including the Man-Hours

Bicyclings giants strap on heart monitors and watt-measuring computers and hire coaches who calculate maximal oxygen uptake and calibrate recovery time to the millisecond. They travel with nutritionists, and they ride state-of-the-art machines produced by sophisticated engineering costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Graeme Obree lived in Irvine, Scotland, a grim little town in a green, hilly district hard on the Irish Sea. When he was 28 years old, broke, in debt and on welfare, he announced that he was going to break one of cyclings most prestigious and time-honored records. He said he would do it on a bicycle he had built himself, for $200 (not including the man-hours, naturally). He ate canned sardines and chili con carne, vegetables and marmalade sandwiches (a pretty good diet, Id say) and boasted that he trained by riding when I feel like it.