Chris Boardman

Speaker 10:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:04

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 cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is 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 home the first British Olympic gold medal in cycling for 72 years on a revolutionary carbon frame bike. He became the first Brit to win the prologue in the Tour de France two years later, then set the UCI absolute hour record in the now famous Superman position with his arms stretched out to minimise drag. Many more successes including two more spells in the yellow jersey and two more hour 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 than 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.

Chris Boardman2:05

Hello?

Presenter2:06

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?

Chris Boardman2:16

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 worldwide 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. I think the Department for Transport tagged it at over 300%.

Presenter2:50

So you're now the Cycling and Walking Commissioner for Greater Manchester, and that comes with a budget of one hundred sixty million pounds at your disposal. What changes are you planning to introduce to make cycling more appealing?

Chris Boardman3:01

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, oh, I 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 safe space and I need to be joined up to where I want to go. And so what we did in Greater Manchester, we 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 helped 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.

Presenter3:39

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

Chris Boardman3:45

First and foremost a commitment on how they use their 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 user and it's civilised and you get 60% of kids ride to school every day and that's just normal and it's less than 300 miles away.

Presenter4:11

It slap

Presenter4:13

For now, let's get into the music, Chris. This is your first disc. What is it and why have you chosen this today?

Chris Boardman4:18

Well I was 11 years old when I first heard this one back in 77 because it was the first track that intrigued me and 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 ELO's Mr. Blue Sky.

Presenter4:36

Sun is shining in the sky.

Presenter4:39

There ain't no bout in sight

Speaker 24:43

Everybody's in the lake And don't you know it's a beautiful new day

Speaker 24:51

Hey

Speaker 24:53

Running down the avenue

Speaker 24:56

See how the sun shines brightly in the city On the streets where once was Betty, Mr Blue Sky is living in the day

Presenter5:07

Uh

Presenter5:07

ELO and 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?

Chris Boardman5:29

You're rubbish now if 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 staff of the GB 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 Kean.

Speaker 15:45

Ha ha ha.

Chris Boardman5:51

who was um 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. We'd go out and do it and pull it apart and wow, that didn't work. Why didn't it work? We had the next idea.

Presenter6:06

So it's the satisfaction of problem solving.

Chris Boardman6:08

And it was the problem-solving aspect of it that fascinated me and turned what could have been quite destructive actually because I was 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 Keene, who changed the focus to being about being better rather than being the best, and it became a wholly more productive thing to do.

Speaker 16:33

Okay.

Presenter6:44

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

Chris Boardman6:51

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

Presenter7:19

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

Chris Boardman7:23

What they're seeing is real, yeah. And I think that happens, that can only happen with time.

Presenter7:25

Bang.

Chris Boardman7:29

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.

Presenter7:41

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 have you chosen it?

Chris Boardman7:49

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 Baz Luhrmann's sunscreen song, Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen, I thought was just ingeniously clever.

Speaker 28:11

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.

Speaker 28:21

The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindsides you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Speaker 28:31

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Speaker 28:36

Same.

Speaker 28:37

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Presenter8:43

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?

Speaker 28:43

What?

Chris Boardman8:53

Yeah, both my mum and dad rode bikes and it 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'd get into, or at the time we had various secondhand 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 dad would do that and then we'd be off out for the day.

Presenter9:23

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

Chris Boardman9:28

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

Presenter9:40

Mm-hmm.

Presenter9:45

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

Chris Boardman9:50

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 club riding and 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 on 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 10 mile race and then we had the result 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.

Presenter10:32

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

Chris Boardman10:35

Well to start with it was just me against me. My name was right down the bottom of that piece of A4, you know, 29 minutes and something which wasn't going to light any fires to cover 10 miles. But the next week I went back and did it in 28 minutes and something and I had my own marker that was just mine until after a few months I was the fastest schoolboy and suddenly 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.

Presenter11:14

It's time for some more music. What are we going to hear next, Chris?

Chris Boardman11:18

It was actually my wife Sally who is a big fan of Flight of the Concords 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 mom. And it's something that connects us all really and this one is called Hurt Feelings.

Speaker 111:37

And it's something that

Chris Boardman11:43

I got the feelings Give me a small man's witch

Presenter11:49

It's my birthday, 2003, waiting for a call from my family.

Presenter11:59

They forgot about me.

Speaker 212:01

I got hurt feelings, I got hurt feelings.

Presenter12:06

The day after my birthday is not my birthday, mom.

Presenter12:10

Flight of the Concords when that was hurt feelings. So Chris, you were a member 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?

Chris Boardman12:23

Well, it was early on really that I started to win some schoolboy stuff, and that's what gave me something that was missing in my childhood. You know, it sounds a bit melodramatic, but a sense of self-worth. So, it was both healthy and potentially destructive because my mood would 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 realize 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.

Presenter13:00

So you said you didn't cope 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?

Chris Boardman13:10

I 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 and I had that problem.

Presenter13:37

How long did it take to overcome it?

Chris Boardman13:40

When I started to work with Peter Keane, in a sense he wasn't interested in me, not in a horrible way, or the results. He was interested in improvement. 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.

Presenter14:04

For now it's time for your fourth disc.

Chris Boardman14:06

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 were in our first house behind the technical college in Birkenhead, which we could afford to heat one room of, 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 I used to hear Sally singing this to him. And it's by Simon and Garfunkel, but in our house, it was just called Groovy.

Speaker 214:45

Slow down, you move too fast You got to make the morning last Just

Presenter14:52

Kicking down the cobblestones Looking for fun and feeling cruising

Presenter15:00

Ma la da la la la

Presenter15:03

Didn't improve it

Presenter15:07

Hello Lamforst, what you know?

Presenter15:11

The Fifty Ninth Street Bridge song Feeling Groovy, Simon and Garfunkel. So Chris Boardman, that takes you back then to your early days as 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?

Chris Boardman15:30

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

Chris Boardman15:33

I was one of the few amateur riders, so I was riding for a sponsored club and got some things paid for and we scraped enough to get them to live. And Sally worked 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 centre of her life as well.

Presenter15:54

Hmm.

Chris Boardman15:54

Um you just made it work.

Presenter15:56

You became a household name overnight after winning that gold medal at the nineteen ninety two Barcelona Olympics. It was men's individual track pursuit on a specifically designed lotus bike. Now I watched the race back and that thing still looks futuristic thirty years later.

Chris Boardman16:11

It's pretty funky, but I remember at the time that I thought that looks pretty cool, a real space age thing. Imagine a wing standing on its edge with a saddle on it, and that was pretty much it. The whole thing was formed out of a single piece of carbon fibre, the wheels were held only on one side. Its inventor Mike Burroughs had come from the world of model planes, so he too, although he was a bike rider, was thinking completely differently.

Presenter16:34

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

Chris Boardman16:40

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 Keene and I, and just getting better and better, until eventually I was sitting on a bike in Montjouille Stadium in Barcelona looking at the Olympic final. And on my 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.

Speaker 117:09

By meeting.

Chris Boardman17:14

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.

Chris Boardman17:22

And eventually, because of a conversation I'd had with a guy called John Cyr, who 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.

Chris Boardman17:39

and see what it's got me.

Presenter17:40

Do you remember the the race itself?

Chris Boardman17:43

No I don't and then suddenly it's over.

Presenter17:47

Mm-hmm.

Chris Boardman17:47

And I was being pushed forward when somebody's putting a medal round my neck, and I felt cheated.

Presenter17:47

Uh

Chris Boardman17:52

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 I quite fancy that. So, 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.

Chris Boardman18:12

And it just didn't sink in.

Chris Boardman18:15

It was um quite a long time later before it actually did.

Presenter18:19

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

Chris Boardman18:23

You are

Chris Boardman18:27

We went home and that was when I stepped outside of the 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 where I live and it was full of people and every shop had a display in the window and we turned into our little terrace street and it was just full of people and I didn't like it at all because

Speaker 118:53

Because

Chris Boardman18:54

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. That was culture shock. But that evening it went quiet.

Speaker 119:04

Mm-hmm.

Chris Boardman19:07

eventually and I stepped out and I walked down to the end of the road to the dolphin Chippy and uh the guy who ran it Ming. It was almost like the the fountain scene on Oceans Eleven, if anybody knows that. And it was just quiet and I I said hi anyway, hi.

Chris Boardman19:24

Portion of chips, please.

Chris Boardman19:26

And then there's quiet and he gets the chips and pushes them across the counter and then he holds his hand up and says, No.

Presenter19:31

Uh

Chris Boardman19:31

It's okay. And that's when I knew I'd made it.

Presenter19:33

It's when I knew I'd made it.

Presenter19:35

Free chips from the dolphins.

Chris Boardman19:35

Free chips from the dolphin.

Chris Boardman19:38

Well only one portion of three chips, one medal, one portion of chips, very high standards at the dog.

Presenter19:42

Exactly, don't overdo it. It's time symbol music. Tell us about your next disc.

Chris Boardman19:47

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 being, whether I liked it or not, a household name. It's marked by Barcelona by Freddie Mercury.

Speaker 220:11

I said my normal song.

Speaker 220:17

And I hide all for you

Presenter20:24

He's a guy.

Presenter20:30

Small girl.

Presenter20:34

Barcelona, Freddie Mercury, and Montserrat Caballier.

Presenter20:39

So Chris Boardman, after Barcelona, you made the move into professional cycling. Life had changed. All of those grueling schedules and training. How did it agree with you?

Chris Boardman20:49

It was horrible.

Chris Boardman20:51

Yeah.

Presenter20:51

It was horrible.

Chris Boardman20:51

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 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.

Presenter21:21

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

Chris Boardman21:26

Well, I didn't think I was going to make it for a few months, but I was lucky that I won the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. I had 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 peloton and there's very little, you know, there's only 20 places at the front for 200 people, the one person who doesn't get pushed out the way is the one wearing the leader's jersey. So I had this passport to the right bit of the Peloton where I could learn to stay there and learn the skills.

Presenter21:56

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

Chris Boardman22:02

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 pass go without that. But once you've got that, it's not enough in its own right. You need to understand other 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 there's a limited amount of space or shelter behind wheels, then the people you like aren't the ones you're going to try and push out the way. So it was a very complex ecosystem to navigate. And then also to be able to survive with the amount of pressure there.

Presenter22:38

And then all

Presenter22:41

Let's have some more music, Chris. This is your sixth disc to day. Why have you chosen it?

Chris Boardman22:46

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 Devil.

Presenter23:05

Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm a man of will and today

Presenter23:14

I've been around for a long, long year Stole many men so do they

Presenter23:22

I was round when Jesus Christ had his moments of doubt and pain.

Presenter23:30

Me damn sure the pilot

Speaker 123:33

Washed his hands and sealed his face

Presenter23:37

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 to help

Chris Boardman23:52

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. We went and had a coffee in town in Manchester, and he said, Right, it's all going okay now, and the coaching's going well, and the tactical side of it we've got covered. We've got a new sprint coach from Germany, but what about all the other stuff?

Presenter23:54

Actually

Chris Boardman24:28

I said, Well, what do you mean? He said, Well, you know, all the stuff, there's wheels and there's there's frames and there's clothing and 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.

Presenter24:40

Okay.

Chris Boardman24:40

In that one meeting, which later became the Aggregation of Marginal Gains, I think, after the fact it got a nice title. And it was brilliant.

Speaker 124:40

Uh

Presenter24:49

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 had 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.

Chris Boardman25:07

Well, it was a unique experience that very few people ever have, but 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 £300,000 to start with. I could spend £300,000, and 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, and because we had a wind tunnel, we could measure, it's like a set of scales, we could weigh the difference between things and look at it, and it was utterly revolutionary.

Presenter25:43

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.

Chris Boardman25:49

It's a boat.

Chris Boardman25:50

And you have much

Chris Boardman25:52

We actually started by a man called Alan Ingerfield who was a lovely, gregarious, passionate former triathlete and he had a backer and wanted to start a company making bicycles and thought 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 luck is readiness meets opportunity so we 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 so just as cycling was about to become incredibly visible is when we started selling bikes

Presenter26:31

Your passion for cycling, of course, began with your parents and and their love of the sport. Now, tragically, your mum died when she was out on her bike in twenty sixteen.

Chris Boardman26:40

In 20

Presenter26:41

She was hit by her driver, who's since been prosecuted. How did that affect you? It must have been devastating.

Chris Boardman26:48

I still haven't really worked out how to deal with it, to be honest. Um you just do. The worst bit has been watching my dad, who had his life partner and they spent all their time together. He's just had to cope and that's been um

Chris Boardman27:02

Heartbreaking and yeah, I was working on the tour de France at the time and and had to come home.

Speaker 127:03

Mm-hmm.

Chris Boardman27:08

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 young kids out on bikes and just a big part of a community and was suddenly taken away because um somebody was texting.

Presenter27:26

Mm-hmm.

Presenter27:28

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

Chris Boardman27:38

It it didn't change my course. I think it was just a

Chris Boardman27:42

Horrific irony that what I was already on course to do, what I was involved in and passionate about, and then my mother, who rode a bike more than me, was killed whilst doing it. Sort of underlined 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.

Speaker 127:43

Um

Chris Boardman28:05

Are the two things linked? No, I'd already started on it, but I think it's it's obviously poignant um that it happened to me when it only happens to

Presenter28:11

Um

Chris Boardman28:14

A hundred families a year in the UK.

Presenter28:17

It's time for some more music. Why are you taking it with you to the island?

Chris Boardman28:21

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 contests that the song was stolen. But since she was four when it was released, I think that timeline is a little bit sceptical. But it's Embrace Me Child by Carly Simon.

Speaker 128:36

I think that's

Speaker 228:36

Uh

Speaker 228:42

Embrace me, you child, you're a child of mine, and I'm leaving everything I am to you.

Speaker 228:56

Go chase the wild at night time.

Speaker 129:01

The streets sang Teddy and God sang praise.

Speaker 129:08

This one doesn't get to you

Presenter29:13

Carly Simon and Embrace Me, You Child. So Chris Boardman, 2020's been a very different year to any other. Have you learned anything about yourself?

Chris Boardman29:23

Mm-hmm.

Chris Boardman29:24

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

Presenter29:33

So how many of you were there?

Chris Boardman29:35

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 space for the kids. Basically we all ate dinner every night together for four months and I loved it. And it is a terrible time. We 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.

Presenter29:47

And

Presenter30:01

You've been volunteering at your local bike shop as well.

Chris Boardman30:04

People went out and rode bikes and bought bikes in their droves. And of course, we found that a lot of key workers, their 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 a day and a week to just go and build bikes, which in turn gave me something constructive to do as well.

Presenter30:37

See you literally in the workshop.

Chris Boardman30:38

Yeah, yeah, I just went and built bikes, very uh satisfying and educational.

Presenter30:42

There are people on the whirr all riding round on bikes that you fixed up with no idea that

Chris Boardman30:46

Yeah, hopefully they're the ones that didn't forgive.

Presenter30:48

Chris Baldman, MBE, was responsible.

Chris Boardman30:51

There'll be a couple.

Presenter30:53

Now, a very different kind of isolation. I'm about to cast you away to this solitary existence on your island. How do you think you'll cope?

Chris Boardman31:01

Absolutely great.

Chris Boardman31:04

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

Presenter31:04

Bye.

Presenter31:10

Well lucky for you, we're ready to send you to one. One more disc before we do though. What's your final disc going to be today?

Chris Boardman31:18

I think this one's really about

Chris Boardman31:20

Well, it is figuratively and literally about

Chris Boardman31:23

following a path and something we've just been talking about that um

Chris Boardman31:27

Money and riches and all glory, it doesn't make you happy. I think not having money can make you unhappy, but having uh the trappings of wealth and 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.

Speaker 231:47

I do not know.

Speaker 231:50

Back to Howell II

Speaker 231:55

In a haunted night tower

Speaker 131:58

Yeah.

Speaker 132:00

What?

Speaker 232:01

I'm my friend July

Speaker 232:04

Beyond the other river rail

Presenter32:19

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 you can take another book of your choosing to. What would you like?

Chris Boardman32:34

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, in fact I'm just reading one now, was Ian M. Banks and the book that I'm reading was called Fearsome Ingin. And it's written entirely phonetically, curious from the point of view of an ant.

Speaker 132:44

Gant

Chris Boardman33:08

So I'll take that.

Presenter33:11

You can also have a luxury item, what would you like to treat yourself to?

Chris Boardman33:14

Well, without a doubt it's got to be butter.

Chris Boardman33:17

Oh, but

Presenter33:17

Uh

Chris Boardman33:17

I'm going to grow some corn or I might catch a lobster. There is nothing that butter does not make better.

Presenter33:23

It's all about the food.

Chris Boardman33:24

That's all about the food.

Presenter33:25

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?

Chris Boardman33:34

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

Presenter33:40

Chris Boardman, thank you so much for sharing your Desert Island Discs with us.

Chris Boardman33:44

Thank you.

Presenter33:56

Hello, I really hope you enjoyed my conversation with Chris Boardman and I do hope he's found somewhere cool to store his butter. We've cast many Olympic athletes away over the years. They include Dame Catherine Granger, Sir Steve Redgrave and fellow cyclist Sir Bradley Wiggins. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds. Next time my guest will be Hilary McGrady, Director General of the National Trust. I do hope you'll join us.

Presenter34:36

Uh

Speaker 234:36

Before you go, I'm Miles, the producer of a brand new podcast for Radio 4 called Tricky.

Speaker 234:44

This is how it works.

Presenter34:45

People from across the UK meet up and without a presenter breathing down their necks talk about issues they really care about.

Speaker 134:53

Sex work is quite complicated for a lot of people and it's okay to be against it but not to shame someone because of their profession.

Speaker 135:02

Uh

Presenter35:02

Across the series we'll hear anger, shock and even the odd laugh.

Presenter35:06

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

Chris Boardman35:13

Nobody knows if you knew you would have done it.

Presenter35:14

It will work.

Presenter35:17

Discover more conversations like this by searching Trick A on BBC Sounds.