Chris Boardman, Former Olympic Cycling Champion HARDtalk

Now on BBC News it's time for HARDtalk.

Professional cyclists are phenomenal athletes

Big races like the Tour de France push them to the very limits

In recent years, the sport has been mired by drug cheating -

can it change its tarnished reputation?

Tonight, retired Olympic champion and world record breaker Chris

What does one of cycling's great innovators make of the sport today?

Chris Boardman, welcome to HARDtalk. I talked about how cyclists are

phenomenal athletes but which say the top attribute is mental? I think

it is. I think it is a very arduous task. Being able to deal with

pressure, in the case of cycling, a race can last for three weeks to be

able to cope with the pressure day in day out is remarkable. It is at

least 50-50. I want to dig into your psyche. You said, I am fanatical

and, to be honest, other riders may have been healthier than me. When I

was at school, I will slowly be self-esteem and full will my

self-esteem was wrapped up in results. Then I met coach Peter

King, who was fascinated about getting better rather than being the

best. He was fascinated in performance, not interested in the

results. That was a godsend for me because the gobby interested in the

performance and making something. --... . People associate top level

cycling and other endurance events with so much paid and suffering. --

pain. Do you have to have a mentality that embraces that? People

reached their limit and that is the defining point of how you can cope

with that day today. The Tour de France lasts for three weeks. You

are more less with the same people every day because it has found your

limit and it might be mental and how much suffering you can cope with.

Graham Aubry, a Scottish rider, he said to be, he did not seek a truly

happy person could be a great cyclist because they would be too

tempted to kick back and relax and you can never do that. Isn't there

an element of view that is depressive? Are you sure about

depressive certainly fanatical. It is painful, it involves so much

sacrifice and it is intense and specialised. A sane person would not

necessarily do this. It attracts extreme people by its nature. Is it

true that after your wedding, you persuaded your new wife to get up

early to go to a race? It is a cathartic process, writing a book.

In the early 90s, looking back, I do not recognise myself. We got up the

next morning at six o'clock to write a tidy race in Lancashire because it

was the only time that race would be odd that course between the National

Championships. Did she say, can I take yesterday back? Where we had

our first daughter, I took her to hospital and rank the next day and

asked what is the score and they told me it was a while so I went to

hold to a race and I was the fourth posted to know I had a daughter. You

had to be. If I did not do that and stayed at the hospital, I probably

still would have wanted the national title but you cannot unpick it. I

asked my father, why did you let me do that? And he said, what makes you

think you are the only person obsessed with it. One of the

highlights everyone remembers is 1992, Barcelona, winning the pursuit

gold medal. What is you got world acclaim, did the edge disappear? If

anything it went the other way. It was, how far can we take these? I

was a carpenter, a wife, two kids and absolutely no money. The Brits

turned up and it allowed me to prove it was possible. I tempted a world

record for next year, attended the Tour de France. It was a deeply

fanatical period. When to pick at the intensity and fanaticism. As you

know, I think in many people 's minds, that element in cycling is

now always associated with pushing beyond boundaries, going over the

edge and, in particular, resorting to cheating and doping. Given the

mentality you describe you had, how tempted where you? You have

described a mentality that is the same across sport. It is a very

intense thing where intense people live. I was fortunate that I had

something I could do. I could come to a race fresh. I could do

something that had value but, at the time, you could tell they were

performances that were just not right. People you had beaten the

week before was suddenly climbing mountains and you could see this

environment was not right but only in hindsight you look back and see

it. It has taken cycling 20 years to get on top of it. I puzzled why it

was hindsight. People like Tyler Hamilton, David Millar... I like

David. Stuart O'Grady... He was on the team. He was cheating at the

time and he was your teammate. You say it is all hindsight and are you

wondering, were your eyes closed? No, what we saw were the results.

Remember riding Stuart on a mountain and we went past a young woman

huffing and chuffing and it was Stuart that said, if he is going

well, from now that will scale the. -- scarred me. No one discusses how

you got there. The tragic Italian writer, Marco Pantani, he was a

brilliant ride, he ended up dead of an overdose of cocaine. He said at

one point, entry the world of professional cycling was like a

jointly by the mafia. Was there like a code of silence? Lodge cycling in

totally and when I retired and you see performances, you saw the

Armstrong year, in the press, USA, that is ridiculous, it cannot

happen. It is only once the evidence comes out that you can put the

pieces together. But the point is you are not a journalist, you were a

ride. You rode alongside Armstrong. We do how systemic it was and I come

back to this point... You inside, all of us outsiders were thinking

that is just remarkable. I was focused on my career. I thought, why

cannot I win the Tour de France, Clyde mountains... -- climb

mountains. You are brilliant at the problems and time trials but

mountain climbing was not your thing. We knew were in the peloton

and the guys at the front charged forward and leave you chuffing and

puffing, are you angry? Are you thinking of those guys are cheats?

You live through periods thinking you just have to deal with what it

is. I was very lucky to have one thing to be able to win in the short

time trials and even that was by the end of the 90s only got to the point

where I am not enjoying it and you mentioned I wife, in the late 90s,

she said, I have had enough because I was miserable and were making all

these sacrifices. Health is a big factor as well. Why my career was

short. One thing that always strikes we were talking to the athletes,

especially in a world tainted by drugs, the degree to which you feel

cheated that nobody on the outside can never be quite sure that any of

the participants in that era were absolutely clean. I mean, do you

feel there is a cloud of suspicion? That would reflect on me. There is

nothing I can do about it. It is that I cannot do anything about it

but I do not spend a lot of time looking backwards because you to get

it and twisted. You have to live your life. I did something that I

enjoyed and then I did something else. I think, looking backwards, I

only intend to look at in terms of how it pertains to what I'm going to

do next. I think writing a book has caused the two go back and write

something down. My last thought on this is whether you were ever faced

with an active choice? Were you ever offered drugs? I think the Stuart

O'Grady revelation was a surprise because our team was conspicuous by

the fact that we could not do anything and get caught. My boss

probably around 1994, he got us together after a classic in the team

can't and said, right, I could see there is something really wrong here

and it will hit the fans and it will take weeks or months - in the end it

took years- but he said I do not what you hear any of that.

Livelihood depends on resorts. -- results. The former head of the

anti- doping agency said to me that he could not watch cycling any more

because it is so tainted. It will take a long time full confidence to

recover. I mean, we are 20 years old now and cycling is, in my opinion,

probably one of the cleanest sport in the world but because it was

uncovered and they put processes in place, do you have a culture that it

would not be tolerated from within as well as without. Even though a

lot of people who work in this area, people in Oxford, they say, it is a

really the dumb dopers who get caught. Is talk about masking agents

and timings, and facings and taking different compounds that can mask

the star. I work in television and watch the races and it looks

believable to me. Last year, I think everybody would was still very role,

Chris through did very well and the French TV was questioning it and by

the end he released test results and the old rule, you cannot prove a

negative. The entire race came down to less than a minute and by the end

of it, it looked extremely humid and that is what we need to thing. It

has taken cycling years to recover from that.

It is true of cycling that there is this constant ambition to push the

envelope and to do things that take you to the very edge, both

personally in terms of physical endurance, at also actually in terms

of what you can do with the machine that you are riding. And you have

is kind of obsessed with developing is kind of obsessed with developing

the perfect writing machine. It is like, I just like making things, I

mean from wood, personal performance, writing, I just love

making things -- riding. I had an opportunity when I worked. I worked

for a diving magazine and various other publications. Gap years I

suppose before sucked back into British cycling. I had a coffee with

Dave Brailsford after the 2004 Games and he said, the coating is going

well and the athletes are really coming on but what about the other

stuff? -- coaching. I said, what do you mean? He said there is helmets

and clothing and bikes and wheels. All that stuff. Why don't you go

away, do whatever you like, see what you can find out and see if you can

make people faster. It was a unique opportunity people haven't had to go

and explore, to have no commercially viable product at the end but to

just make people go faster. You have a track record in that, it takes us

back to 92, the Lotus Sp bite you wrote, it was new at the time, it

was revolutionary and you developed a special helmet and you were very

keen on your riding suit and all that sort of stuff -- Lotus Sport.

In 96 when you conquer this amazing world record, the one-hour distance,

you bust it completely, 56 kilometres in one hour. That was

largely down to one individual, Graham, who you mentioned, who was

the first real innovator, the person who stopped talking and thinking

about the history and started talking about the demands of the

event, and he simply went, well, if it is all about aerodynamics, about

pushing out the air, if I am pushing these tubes, I am going to go

faster. Changing the riding position. He was able up stock at

the time. When you do that in 96 and smashed the record, the governing

body of world cycling, UCI, said that is unacceptable -- he was the

laughing stock at the time. They said you are making it a sport

dominated by technicians rather than athletes and essentially they

changed the rules and undermined your record and said it wasn't

legitimate. Nor is always changed. In Formula One they have supercars.

They said it was too fast -- rules always changed. Everything went back

for a period of time and it has slowly caught up. Did you feel

cheated? It is like the four-minute mile. Things happen. That was the

day and these were the rules and we broke the record with those rules. I

didn't spend any time thinking about it. I did it with the rules. Then

the rules were changed. It is out of my hands. To an extent I agreed with

them. It became human powered racing. It came out with the Lotus

era. They said, you can't do that and he said, OK, I would do this. It

would move away from cycling. They couldn't keep up and work out how to

keep it as a sport of cycling. It was after 96 that they said OK. It

is funny that you agree because you pushed it away from cycling. You

push the rules and you but up against the edge. As a coach you but

up against the edge. They move the goal and you move back. Is there

mechanical doping today? There has been. It is technically possible. To

put a battery and murder in a racing bike? As soon as you said you can

have electric years in a bike then you have allowed that to be electric

stand wiring inside a frame. I would be absolutely gobsmacked if it

happened in mainstream cycling. There was one bike found at a cycle

cross race. I think you can find an exception to any rule. When I watch

the Tour de France in summer I can be 100% sure that there are no

batteries helping those blokes pedal? I cannot be a person to

ratify that for you but I would be gobsmacked, absolutely gobsmacked,

and the bikes are checked, a very quick check over the bike, they

scanned it for a electrics, and they can tell very quickly and they have

even been using x-ray machines on the Tour de France -- electrics. It

is the anti- advert for any team. I would be amazed. I would like to

make one. Well, because you are somewhat obsessed with developing

the perfect bike, have you tried putting little motors...? No, but

that piece of equipment has been available for nearly 50 years and it

is possible to take a stack of batteries and put them inside a

bike, and if I ever made and e-bike I would want a bike that you cannot

tell it is just a normal bike. One other area where it seems there is

an interesting discussion about how far you go in terms of pushing

yourself and your sport is in the coaching, and this has become very

relevant in the last few months because Britain's top cycling coach,

technical director of British cycling, he eventually had to

resign, a guy called Jane Sutton, allegations from one female cyclist

who had been on the elite programme that he had used sexist, bullying

language towards her, other allegations involving some of the

para- cycling team about bullying and Robert record and is, which he

has denied, he said in no way was he sexist, he does has that manner and

that is how he coaches. How far can you go? Every workplace you know

have to know where the line is. Shane is very, Australian was the

term, forthright, blunt, did he crossed the line, probably over the

years, did Shane, but now the enquiry is put in place and now they

are going to look into it and see what the outcome is. It is serious,

isn't it, I mean, you responded quickly and said you felt it was a

bit of a lynching in quotes. He is alleged to have said things... I was

annoyed because it made it look like my comments were the British

cycling... As a lynch mob. What we saw was a trial by press for a week

and we didn't see things in context, and we saw one person held

responsible for anything... For a variety of different issues around

British cycling. But I mean if a male coach says twerk top athlete,

go on, have a baby, as she alleges, that would be unacceptable? That

would be unacceptable and that is why they will have an enquiry. I am

not defending Shane. I have no position to be even way. I want to

see what happens in the enquiry. I know if you have the conversation

and say it won't go forward, maybe you want to think about going and

having a family, do whatever you what now, you could take it and say

that he said, go and have a baby, and it sounds different, so I am

aware that in this job you can take things out of context very readily,

as headlines were with me last week. It comes back to where we started,

which is about the mentality of a cyclist. Because we are talking

about 18, the British cycling team, and they have their own problems at

the moment, but in the end it is a massive individual sport --a team.

On the bike... To get to the end result it is a team sport. Lottery

funding is for winning gold medals. That might change but when it was

set up it was to win gold medals, it wasn't even a medal, not World

Championships, not to develop the sport, but to win gold medals and I

think passionately refers was the term. When I was involved it was

exactly that. You are not making the grade. We will do everything to help

you make the grade. If you don't make the grade you are gone. I have

not heard that, compassionately roofless. When you reflect on your

career in cycling and the stories we have discussed about some of the

individuals that you have written alongside from Lance Armstrong to

Marco Pantani, is there any part of you that Lee cycling is a deeply

unhealthy sport? -- ruthless. It is no different to any other stored. We

have seen that with athletics at the moment -- sport. It was ahead of the

game. French Customs started the ball rolling and 98. That was when

they pulled over someone and found products. Cycling has benefited from

that. It's taken 20 years but I think it was because of that...

Those circumstances ahead of the game. And I think although sports

are having to go through the same thing now. You said you got six

kids, and I wonder if any of them show any interest... I wonder if you

would encourage them to go into...? I have kids who can do whatever they

want. One is really into cycling. The rest are normal. They can do

whatever they want. I fully support them. I am not wedded to cycling or

sport. I enjoy watching sporting events. I am always quite happy to

go and ride my bike to explore and go and do the gardening. Chris

Boardman, it is a nice way to end, a nice thought to finish with. Thank

you very much for being on HARDtalk. Thank you.

We saw some torrential downpours across parts of the UK with thunder

In fact, there were thousands of lightning strikes across the UK

and there were some pretty significant impacts to go

Tonight, the risk of those thunderstorms rumble

on into the night, especially in the south-eastern quadrant