We Admire Chris Boardman t shirt

One of my favourite bits of sports commentary came during a 10,000m race being dominated Haile Gebrselassie. Brendan Foster was doing the commentary honours and John Walker, the New Zealand World mile record breaker, was sort of backing him up.

Most sports broadcasters seem to consider 10km races as interesting for the opening couple of laps, interesting for the closing couple and otherwise boring. Personally I like the attritional stuff in the middle and on this occasion the whole race was being broadcast live, it wasn’t being interrupted. We were probably at the tenth lap or so. Brendan Foster had been saying nothing much for a few laps and John Walker had been saying nothing. Haile seemed to have in mind lapping the whole field in the way of Dave Bedford in July ‘73.

Brendan Foster said at some point “You have to admire Gebrselassie’s will to win John. The will to win is the most important thing” Foster blundered on not really giving Walker much time to reply. Foster did not seem to immediately pick up that he had been contradicted when Walker remarked “I wouldn’t say the will to win was most important Brendan.” After a short delay and a few more words from Brendan came a slightly spluttered “What’s more important than the will to win John?” “I’d say the will to prepare Brendan.” Welcome silence from Brendan for a lap or two followed. In sport and life in general it’s the will to prepare that cuts it.

The image and the following text for our Chris Boardman t shirt comes from Phil O’Connor’s 21 Years of Cycling Photography:

In the week leading up to Chris’s TdF debut I had been in touch with him and other people in his camp. Knowing him, as I did, if he was preparing for this one stage alone I felt a win was on the cards. I told a journalist at Cycling Weekly Chris was going to win and he looked at me incredulously. A veteran of many races he could not fathom it. “Have you seen the size of theses guys? I mean this is the Tour de France, he’s not going to beat Miguel Indurain and Alex Zulle. They have come here to win this race.

Come the event I ignored all the other riders and stayed within photographic distance of Chris all day. He was completely focused. Later I learnt in the days before he had been riding through all the corners as fast as he could to see if it was possible to take them without braking. I took a number of pictures of Chris on the start ramp and an action shot and then ran through the streets of Lille to get to the finish before he did. I looked up at the clock to see the time he had to do. I then noticed Phil Liggett commentating for Channel 4 and realised by the look on his face that this was something really special.

One or two riders came into view and then Chris appeared I could see straightaway that he was going to be fastest. The picture caught him the moment he crossed the line with a semblance of a smile on his face. The heavyweights of world cycling came and went and each time I held my breath as they failed to beat his time. Finally Miguel Indurain came into view and amazingly it was apparent that not only had Chris beaten him but had trashed him by an incredible 15 seconds. Astonishing.

Celebrate a great athlete and the will to win as well as the will to prepare. Buy our Chris Boardman Tour de France Prologue 1994 t shirt.







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