This article is part of a series called ‘A love letter to…’, where Cycling Weekly writers pour praise on their favourite aspects of cycling. The below content is unfiltered, authentic and has not been paid for.
I was an anomaly as a child. While all my friends at primary school were playing football, grazing their knees, and pretending to be the stars from the Panini sticker albums, I had a very different sporting hobby.
I would happily sit for hours with my friends, filling the pages of my own football sticker book, but what gave me more of a thrill involved two wheels and a bright orange cycling kit that I was given for Christmas one year.
If you haven't figured out where I’m going with this, let me give you a hand. While the rest of my generation wanted to be Premier League footballers, I was busy pretending to be random Basque cyclists that nobody else had heard of, dressed in my prized Euskaltel-Euskadi kit as I tore round the roads of Oxfordshire.
I didn’t own an Orbea bike, but that didn’t matter. As far as I was concerned, this was my first step towards being a pro cyclist in the Tour de France one day in the distant future.
There was one stumbling block though: I was never that fast at that age. Often, a bigger, stronger and older rider would soar past me, sometimes aided by a lighter and more expensive bike, it has to be said. But I played to my strengths and utilised my secret weapon on the downhills: tailwinds.
Twelve-year-old me would battle with everything I had to keep pace with other, more powerful riders when tackling the uphills, imagining I was Iban Mayo (we’ll forget the EPO for now) or one of the other Basque climbing sensations riding on the team whose kit I was decked out in.
But then the image I adopted would shift when I hit the top and sensed a tailwind coming behind me at just the right time for the descent. I knew deep down I was never going to make it to the pro scene, although catching a tailwind on the way home from a ride in my younger days gave me the brief illusion that I just might.
Knowing I had the wind on my back, I’d rocket down descents before powering up one of the short, sharp climbs that littered the local area. I'd switch my imagination, and channel my inner Peter Sagan making a bid for victory in a major Classic, instead of a gangly Basque climber on a mountain stage of the Tour.
All I needed was a team manager to drive past and I was certain they’d soon be waving a contract and a pen out of the window, urging me to sign.
Yet, all along, I knew it was really the tailwind doing all the work. The breeze was the power behind my imaginary victories at Paris-Roubaix. But a kid can dream, right?
A little part of me still sees that same kid within me now when I get out riding. Nothing could beat that sense of power, freedom and energy that my bike gave me in those days, even if my actual ability was masked somewhat by the weather now and again.
But that never really mattered. What mattered more was that escapism that I could look forward to while sitting in a dreary classroom on a Wednesday afternoon.
I still get that extra shot of adrenaline when I sense a tailwind behind me now at the age of 32, particularly when there’s Strava awards up for grabs in my local area. I might not be a pro, but I'll always try and challenge the best of them for a wind-assisted KOM.
