Читать книгу Chris Hoy: The Autobiography - Chris Hoy - Страница 7
ОглавлениеPimped-up Rides and Broken Hearts
As a sports-obsessed seven-year-old boy Olympic gold medals were a long way from my thoughts, but bikes were not. Bikes were in my thoughts all the time during my childhood in Edinburgh; they occupied every waking hour, with the evidence plastered all over my school jotters, which were filled with poems about bikes, essays about bikes and detailed drawings of my ‘dream machine’.
It’s probably more accurate, however, to say that cycling occupied every waking hour when I wasn’t thinking about football, and obsessing over my favourite team, Hearts (as in Heart of Midlothian), or later, when I was a teenager, when I wasn’t thinking about rugby, and then rowing.
You get the picture: life revolved around sport. I have no idea how I found the time to do anything else. Such as chess, for example. Chess was my first passion, and in my first day at school, George Watson’s College in Edinburgh, I made a point of asking the head teacher how I might join the school chess club. I had been introduced to the game at the age of four by my uncle Derek, who had what was then an unbelievably modern piece of kit – an electronic chess board. I think I was fascinated both by the game and the novelty of the technology, and played my dad all the time; he let me win initially, before his competitive instincts kicked in. Sadly, my chess playing became a casualty of my all-consuming interest in more physical pursuits. But I’m really not sure I was Grandmaster material.
There’s a story which has been told quite a few times now about how I was inspired to take up BMXing after seeing the bike chase scene in E.T., when it came out in 1984, and I was an impressionable seven-year-old. In fact, it has now appeared in the media so often that I’m sure many people’s instinctive reaction would be to assume that it isn’t true – or am I betraying my relatively newfound cynicism?
It comes as a relief to be able set the record straight at last. It’s true. I was inspired by E.T. to take up BMXing. So thank you Elliott, thank you Steven Spielberg … though I suspect my love affair with cycling would probably have blossomed anyway, sooner or later.
Whether it would have started without BMXs is another question. I really don’t know. All I know is that – thanks originally to what I saw in E.T. – BMXs looked like great fun. What’s more, they were the epitome of cool for a seven-year-old kid.
It wasn’t just the bikes – though they were pretty cool. The padded outfits, complete with motorcycle-style helmets, were cool too, and the tracks were magical places, even the rudimentary ones, of which there were a few in Edinburgh. Not too far from my parents’ home, in Murrayfield, there were cinder tracks at Lochend and Danderhall. Lochend had been virtually destroyed, and Danderhall didn’t have a proper gate, but they were still great fun to tear around on our bikes. The nearest track with a proper start gate was in Livingston, a new town about 15 miles west of Edinburgh, and six or seven of us would travel out there midweek, usually on a Wednesday evening, to do gate practice – the start was critical in a BMX race, and it was my killer weapon.
My mum got me my first bike, for a fiver from a church jumble sale, and my dad went to work upgrading it – pimping my ride, you could say. As a youngster my dad, David, had been quite into bikes himself, or, more accurately, into taking them apart and reassembling them. He built himself a bike out of old parts, which he used for his paper round in Edinburgh (he grew up there too), and when I became interested in bikes he was delighted, because it allowed him to indulge his passion. As I got better and better bikes – having broken the original one doing jumps on a home-made ramp in the garden – my dad’s role as mechanic became even more important. Once a week he’d strip the bike down, clean all the parts, and put it back together, often using the kitchen table as his workbench. My mum, Carol, was remarkably understanding … most of the time.
But at that time the BMX was vying with football for my attention and affection. George Watson’s, a mixed-sex independent school, both primary and secondary, owed much of its reputation to its illustrious rugby-playing former pupils – the Hastings brothers, Gavin and Scott, foremost among them. I played football, which was, if not frowned upon, then not exactly a core part of the curriculum. But we were allowed to play for one year, before being introduced to rugby, and when I was eight I was part of the school team.
We were unusual – ahead of our time, perhaps – in that we had a female coach, even if Miss Paton probably assumed the position by default. I don’t think any other teachers were particularly interested in football, so I think it fell to her to run the team. And yes, we had the mickey taken out of us by other teams for having a female coach in those unenlightened times, but she was clearly a fan of the beautiful game.
As were we too, but that didn’t stop us from being rubbish. I cringe now in recalling some of the beatings we suffered at the hands of other schools. We weren’t just beaten; we were usually – to use a good Scottish word – gubbed. A seven-nil defeat by Juniper Green sticks in my mind for some reason, but I don’t know why, because that wasn’t too unusual. There was only one team in the whole of Edinburgh that we seemed to be able to beat: poor, hapless Bonaly.
Despite all that, I loved football. I played midfield, though positions were fairly arbitrary. We played on these big old pitches, with no nets in the goal. It was ridiculous, no concession being made to the fact that we were about four feet tall, with tiny little legs. On the full-sized pitches we looked like the Lilliputians from Gulliver’s Travels, and games would consist of the ludicrous spectacle of 20 eight-year-olds chasing the ball, like bees swarming around honey. It didn’t matter what position you were supposed to play in, there was only one place to be – as close to the ball as possible. It was like one of those medieval games of street football, involving hundreds of people, a free-for-all with no organization. As for passing – forget it. Poor Miss Paton, who could often be seen enjoying a cigarette on the touchline, wasn’t really able to impart any tactical instructions, or strategy – though I suppose you could say that we were allowed to express ourselves!
As well as playing myself, after a fashion, I became absolutely obsessed with Heart of Midlothian, the team that played about half a mile from my house, at Tynecastle Stadium. ‘H-E-A … R-T-S, if you cannae spell it, then here’s what it says … Hearts, Hearts, glorious Hearts,’ as the club song goes. I was a committed Jambo – Jambo being an abbreviation of ‘Jam Tarts’, the team’s other name – and occasionally went to games with the son of our local butcher, Bob the butcher. I didn’t go with my dad, because he was a supporter of Hibs, or Hibernian, the other Edinburgh club. When I didn’t go to games I’d listen on the radio, or watch the results coming in on the BBC’s teleprinter at 4.45 in the afternoon. The Hearts score that spewed out of that machine could make or break my Saturday evening. Not that, as a seven-year-old, I had particularly exciting plans most Saturday evenings.
The worst season was 1985/86, and it had a profound effect on me. I was nine going on ten, and at the zenith of my Hearts obsession. Now, anyone who knows anything at all about Scottish football, and especially Hearts, will not need to be told about the 1985/86 season. But for a nine-going-onten-year-old it was traumatic, to say the least.
The players, scores and games are burnt into my memory, engraved on my consciousness. To this day, I can still name the 1985/86 team: Henry Smith, Walter Kidd, Sandy Jardine, Craig Levein, Brian Whittaker, Gary Mackay, Neil Berry, Kenny Black, John Colquhoun, Sandy Clark, John Robertson.
These players, whom I wouldn’t hesitate to call my boyhood idols – with John ‘Robbo’ Robertson, Gary Mackay and John Colquhoun particular favourites – took Hearts to the top of the Scottish Premier Division, and within one game of winning the league title for the first time in 26 years. There was no better time to be a Jambo. And, ultimately, no worse time. On the final day of the season Hearts were leading Celtic by two points. All they needed was a draw against midtable Dundee. All they needed to do, most of us imagined, was to turn up.
In those days, it was two points, rather than three, for a win. Going into that final day, Hearts also had a goal-difference advantage on Celtic – they were on plus-28, with Celtic on plus-24. So if, in the worst-case scenario, Hearts lost and Celtic won their game against St Mirren, the Glasgow club would have to do so by at least three goals, unless Hearts lost by more than one. Got that?
On the day, Celtic won 5–0. And Hearts lost 2–0. The impossible, in other words, happened. And thousands of scarves and T-shirts, already emblazoned with ‘Heart of Midlothian, League Champions 1985–86’, had to be discarded. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And don’t even get me started on the conspiracy theories …
I was crushed – and if I hadn’t been, then I would be a few days later, when Hearts faced Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup Final, only to lose 3–0. It was bordering on cruelty. And, to be honest, I don’t know if I ever really rediscovered my passion for football. These days, I couldn’t name a single player in the Hearts team, which is a shame, because I would have liked to keep my interest going. But I feel that football has changed so much, and that a lot of what was so great about it – games packed with genuine and committed fans watching players they could identify with – has disappeared.
If anything positive came of the experience of following Hearts through that rollercoaster season, then it was in the form of an important lesson, and a good one to learn when you’re young. It could be summed up thus: don’t get your hopes up; don’t take anything for granted; expect nothing. These, as I would find out, would be useful mottos for any Hearts fan, or, for that matter, Scotland fan – when it came to either football or rugby.
There’s a postscript to my interest in, or obsession with, that legendary Hearts team – and they remain club legends, in part because we’re still waiting for a first league title since 1960.
Ten years later, John Robertson came into the Texaco garage where I, by now an 18-year-old about to head off to university, was working. ‘Robbo’ had been my ultimate hero, as he was to most Hearts fans – he is the most prolific goal-scorer in the club’s history. And here he was walking across the forecourt and into my shop! I was completely star-struck, and as he walked towards me I realized something else: he was tiny. He could barely see over the counter.
Still, it was quite a thrill to meet my boyhood hero, even if I was a little over-awed. In my flustered state I think all I managed to say was, ‘Pump four, mate? That’ll be sixteen quid.’
After our brief and largely unsuccessful foray into football, rugby took over. Rugby was a big part of the culture of the school, though there was no particular pressure to play, and it wasn’t cliquey, as I know it can be at some schools. Watson’s was a nice school, with a good atmosphere. There was a real cross-section of people among the teachers and pupils, and I felt fortunate to go there.
My parents weren’t wealthy – Dad working in the building industry, eventually as a chartered surveyor, Mum as a nurse – and I know they had to make sacrifices to send my sister, Carrie, and me there. Not that they were explicit about that to us, but we were made aware that we were lucky to go to a good school, and we both knew, I think, that we shouldn’t waste the opportunities available to us there. I tried to do the best I could, because I was also aware, from a young age, that although sport seemed the most important thing in my life, ultimately education would be more important. After all, as I was later told by my school’s careers adviser, ‘You’re not going to make a living out of sport.’ (OK, so this turned out to be bad advice … but I wasn’t to know it at the time – and neither, to be fair, was he.)
As far as the rugby went, there was no pressure to play, either from the teaching staff or from my peers. I suppose some implicit ‘pressure’ was applied by the roll call of illustrious rugby players among the school’s former pupils, headed by the Hastings brothers. But there are other notable alumni, too, including Martin Bell, the Olympic skier, Martha Kearney, the broadcaster, the MPs Malcolm Rifkind, David Steel and Chris Smith, the mountaineer Robin Smith, the architect Sir Basil Spence, and Mylo, the singer-songwriter. A pretty eclectic bunch – and even the three politicians all represent different parties.
When I was at school, there were future Scottish rugby internationals Jamie Mayer, Marcus Di Rollo and Jason White, who would go on to captain the national side.
When I started playing rugby we were coached by Mr French, a Rangers fan, but still a good guy. In those days it was straight into the full game, no mini rugby to break us in. And initially it was similar to the football in many regards, with 15 of us all chasing after the ball. Loosely speaking there were backs and forwards, but we didn’t stick too rigidly to that.
That said, I quickly settled on the position of stand-off, and I became the kicker. There was a lot of pressure involved in being the kicker. As with the football, there was no concession made to the fact we were small, with puny legs: we played on full-size pitches, with full-size goals. So kicking was a challenge, and my record wasn’t quite as impressive as Chris Paterson’s.
Like Paterson, I often managed 100 per cent, but that would be either 100 per cent over, or 100 per cent missed, with the ball invariably skidding along the ground. If I got the first conversion over, then I was fine; it would relax me, and I’d have a good game. But the kicking tended to mirror the game: if I kicked well, I played well; if I kicked badly, I found that it played on my mind and destroyed my game. I had some horrendous games.
It’s funny, though, that kicking seems to be something that attracts the individualist. Think of Jonny Wilkinson and Paterson, and you tend to think of them obsessively practising the art of kicking, long after their team-mates have left the training pitch. Paterson has even spoken in the past about being given a hard time at school for spending so long on his own, practising his kicking. As an aspiring young rugby player I was similar, I suppose. If I’d kicked badly in a match, the following day would see me in one of our two local parks, with my dad, practising until it got dark – or until my dad got bored.
But the problem – and this would be something of a recurring theme for me in my sporting life – was that all that practice didn’t really make much difference. Nobody ever really showed me how to kick. My dad knew the basics, but I had no one to help me with my technique. It’s a bit like having a bad golf swing: you can practise as much as you like, but without expert help you’re not going to get any better. It was also like golf in another sense, though. If I stuck one through the posts every once in a while it gave me a real buzz – and kept me practising just a little bit longer.
My kick-offs were just as erratic as my conversion attempts. I had this knack of picking out the biggest guy in the opposing team, and I’d be confronted with the sight of this – relatively speaking – huge second row catching it and running straight back towards me. Thus, within the first minute of most games, I’d suffer a big bang to the head. But I only suffered concussion on one occasion, in training. I’d broken through and was running towards the try line; and I thought I was clear, so I throttled back as I neared the posts, and was cruising towards the line, oblivious to the fact that an opposing winger had chased me all the way. He dived and clipped my ankles, and I, clutching the ball to my chest, hit the ground like a sack of spuds. The ball ‘broke’ my fall, but it caused a whiplash effect, my head bouncing off the ground. I had no idea where I was, what day it was or what I was doing.
Remarkably, the only other serious injury I suffered on the rugby pitch was a broken thumb. It was the first and only time my dad missed a game – an omen, perhaps. I was in fourth year at secondary school, it was on the eve of my first important exams, the Standard Grade (the Scottish equivalent to ‘O’ levels) prelims, when, in the early minutes of a game against Heriot’s, I went to hand off a big prop and felt my thumb bend right back. It was excruciating, but I gave it a shake and carried on playing. Until the next scrum, when I received a pass. Suffice to say that the resulting scream could probably be heard by my parents, who were out of town for the weekend. The result was an arm in plaster from hand to elbow, which meant I was assigned a ‘scribe’ – some poor sixth year – for the exams. This wasn’t as inconvenient as it sounds, because I remember my ‘scribe’ being pretty helpful with the multiple-choice questions on my Chemistry paper. If I said ‘C’ he’d say: ‘Do you want to think about that r-e-a-l-l-y c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y?’
The high point of my rugby career came when I was selected to captain the Edinburgh Schools under-15 team against the North of Scotland. It felt amazing to pull on the navy blue kit – which bore an uncanny resemblance to the Scotland jersey – for a match played up in Inverness, and which we won, with me kicking three out of three conversions. Eat your heart out, Chris Paterson. It was quite an eye-opener playing with kids from other schools, and there was a seriousness of purpose about us; it came, I suppose, from the sense of pride, and responsibility, we all felt representing not only our schools, but our city. I remember a prop from Musselburgh displaying a particularly impressive attitude for a 14-year-old. After he scored the first try he jogged back with the ball, and threw it at me – hard – with the instruction: ‘Make it count!’ No wonder I felt such relief at seeing that first one sail through the posts. He was a big guy.
And I, by contrast, was small for my age. I had been big for my year in primary school, but found myself being overtaken by a lot of the others in high school. By third year, my last year in the rugby team, I was the second smallest in the team, which put me at a serious disadvantage. By the time I was 15 everyone had been growing and I hadn’t really started – I was a little shrimp, a Smurf. Only the scrum-half was smaller than me, and I used to take a real pasting in games.
I loved going to rugby matches as well, and attended virtually all of Scotland’s Five Nations home games, sitting in the schoolboy enclosure and then running on to the pitch at the end of the match. After one game against Ireland, which Scotland won, I was the first on to the pitch – a sign of my promise as a sprinter, possibly – and ran up to Damian Cronin, the big second row, as he was filmed leaving the pitch. I ended up on TV, very visible in my yellow anorak, with my mop of almost matching hair, patting Cronin on the back.
One of the greatest games in Scotland’s history – and arguably my greatest sporting memory – was the 1990 Five Nations decider against England at Murrayfield, the national stadium that was a stone’s throw from my house. It was the Grand Slam decider, with both teams in contention, but England almost certain to win. Or so they thought.
Scotland, led out by David Sole, set the tone by entering the field at a slow, almost funereal, pace. England, led by Will Carling, had looked super confident, but – as crazy as it sounds – the way that Scotland walked on to the pitch seemed to say: we’re in charge. It gave them the impetus, and they sustained that in the game itself; you could see and almost feel how pumped up the Scotland team was as they got stuck into their opponents, and they won 13–7 to give Scotland the Calcutta Cup, Triple Crown and Grand Slam. All in all, it was a pretty good afternoon – one of the proudest in Scotland’s sporting history.
Watching Sole’s slow march gives me goosebumps, even now, but the irony was that, having attended so many games at Murrayfield, I missed that one. I had a ticket, but I had faced a huge dilemma: go to the game or compete in a BMX race in Paris. I opted to travel to France, but I watched the video of the game when I got home the next day, and watched it again and again, until the tape wore out.
Eighteen years later, I had the honour, and the unforgettable experience, of making my own appearance at Murrayfield for a Scotland international. It was the 2008 Autumn Test against the mighty All Blacks, who had just finished their haka when I was expected to perform the daunting task of delivering the match ball.
My only hope was that it would prove more successful than my previous ‘guest’ appearance on a rugby pitch, during the half-time break of an Edinburgh Gunners match in 2002, following my gold medal at the Manchester Commonwealth Games.
On that occasion, having been introduced and interviewed in the middle of the pitch, I was asked if I was a big rugby fan.
‘Oh yeah,’ I said. ‘I played at school, went to Murrayfield a lot – I love it.’
‘OK, Chris, a final question,’ said the MC. ‘Who are you supporting today?’
‘Well, no surprises there, I’m an Edinburgh boy, so I’m backing THE REIVERS!’
I was hoping to get a big cheer from the 5,000 in the crowd. Instead, and much to my surprise, there was a stunned silence, then a chorus of boos. Unbeknown to me, six months earlier, the city’s professional rugby club had changed its name from the Edinburgh Reivers to the Gunners. Which might sound innocuous enough, but in the highly politicized and heavily factionalized world of Scottish rugby, it was significant – they had only been the Reivers after an amalgamation, of sorts, with the Borders regional team. And now the name had been reassigned to the Borders; so ‘the Reivers’ referred not to Edinburgh, but to their bitterest rivals. What I had done was a bit like shouting ‘Come on, City!’ at Old Trafford – though fortunately rugby supporters are a little less partisan, and a lot more forgiving.
There was no such faux pas at Murrayfield in November 2008. Wearing a Scotland shirt with ‘3’ and ‘Hoy’ on the back, and with my three Olympic gold medals hanging from my neck, I was introduced to the crowd and walked into a wall of noise, plonking the ball down in the middle, then turning to the Scotland team and making what I hoped would be a series of rousing, fist-clenched gestures. I may even have shouted ‘Go onnnnnnnn!’ or something similarly encouraging. There was nothing planned or rehearsed about it; it was completely spontaneous, inspired by the noise of the crowd and the exhilarating sense of anticipation, expectation and sheer drama inside Murrayfield Stadium. It didn’t work, unfortunately – Scotland lost, after a decent performance – but the response from the crowd had a similar effect on me to that of David Sole’s famous slow march: the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I was stunned. In all my previous visits to Murrayfield, most of them in the schoolboy enclosure, I could never have imagined that one day a cyclist would receive such a reception.
My souvenir Scotland shirt now hangs in a frame in my house, a memento of an unforgettable experience, and a reminder of my boyhood dream of one day playing for my country.
The time has probably come to admit that it is the closest I’ll ever get to fulfilling it.
