Olympic Dreaming...

My first memory of the Olympics are from the summer of 2012. 

There are two outstanding memories: watching the opening ceremony while crammed on the sofa during a family holiday, and Bradley Wiggins winning Gold.

A home Olympics, an Olympics that inspired a generation of Brits. An Olympics that inspired me, and are probably the reason I do what I do today. 

I was eleven years old at the time and just about to head into secondary school. I played football at a local level, and had yet to fall in love with the sport that’s since taken over my life. Some twelve years later, my life looks very different. I’m twenty-three years old and my job is to travel the world and race my bike. 

The Olympics is no longer something that is this far away crazy land. The Olympics are at home.

–

I get to see the behind-the-scenes of the Olympic dream quite closely. My girlfriend, Maggie Coles-Lyster will be heading to the Games to compete for Canada in three different track events. 

I was never quite good enough to step up to the pro ranks. And, even if I did ever turn pro, I wouldn’t have been good enough to go to the Olympics. Not in a month of Sundays.

Yet, my brain is still doing the maths, trying to figure out where I’d have come in the TT and what it’d have been like to race around the streets of Paris. There are former competitors, peers and colleagues racing that event. Would a slightly different path have put me on that start list?

I digress, I can’t live the Olympic dream. I’ll be living them out through Maggie.

There’s a strong feeling of pride and emotion thinking about it. We may have only been together for 18-months, but it feels like forever. When we met, I was going through the whole transition of  leaving the road scene and going on my own privateer adventure. You were making the big step to Europe, only to have the immediate hurdle of not one, but two teams folding.

There are so many ups and downs that people always talk about when referring to elite sport, but you never really appreciate what they are until it’s a part of everyday life.

There are the dark days when an injury flares up, or a training session doesn’t go to plan. Days when there’s a hatred for travelling, training or suffering. There are days when questions as to whether it’s all worth it crop up.  Of course, it’s all worth it, but that doesn’t stop the tears and the question marks along the way.

Olympians are real people. Yes, they have a crazy inhuman ability to ride really fast around a velodrome, throw a heavy ball really far or run in a straight line stupidly fast - but they’re still just human. Humans who have emotions and humans who care. 

So, as Maggie is in Paris to live out her Olympic dream, I’ll be there for the final weekend of track racing to support her along the way. You know how football has “WAGs” (Wives and Girlfriends), I joke that I’ll be there as a “HAB”.

I’m not sure what Maggie is most excited about. The suitcase of Team Canada Lululemon that greeted her when she touched down in Paris, the opportunity to race on sport’s biggest stage with the Maple Leaf on her back, or that incredible feeling that very few of us will ever know: living out a childhood dream of competing in the Olympic Games.

I’m sure she’s dreaming of an Olympic Medal, who wouldn’t? The Olympics are special. Endorsements are forgotten - every athlete is simply trying to improve they’re the best in the world.

With that said, there’s not always time to sit back and reflect on the steps that got you to this point. You might be just trying to tell yourself the old psychological trick that it’s just another bike race, but it’s not. It’s the Olympics.

Oh, and Maggie, thanks for making me sound cool, forever more I can now now I can now say: “Yeah, that’s my girlfriend - she’s an Olympian.”

—