AThe bike traveled around the Manchester Circuit, faster and faster, interrupted only by the occasional whistle. Jody Cundy sat in the stands wearing a T-shirt this time, despite the cold wind and sleet seeping in outside.
In addition to his easy smile, Condie was a sporting star, winning three Paralympic titles and three World Pool titles in the pool before switching to track cycling. He has since won five more Paralympic gold medals (C4/5kg and mixed team sprint) and 20 world championship titles. Incredibly, Paris will be his eighth Paralympic Games.
But even now, at 45, he’s still unsure whether he’ll hang up his leather jackets for good come September. “I thought London would be my last Olympics and here we are 12 years later talking about the next one,” he said. “I was surprised by my performance in Tokyo, I had barely developed something. We will see when I actually perform at the Olympics. I have dedicated thirty years of my life to sports. I don’t know what the real world is like . It scares me a little bit.”
Condy was born with a deformed right foot, which was amputated at the age of three. At the age of five, he sank to the bottom of the pool during his first lesson, and his parents soon signed him up for a local swimming club and never looked back. After 11 years of swimming, he tried out for a disabled open day at Newport Speedway, where he was spotted by Talent and has been a member of the British Cycling team since 2006. This is his 18th year on the track.
“All the training we do, no matter how many different ways we do it, there are only so many ways to skin the cat,” said Candy, one of more than 1,000 athletes on the UK Sport national team. Lottery-funded world-class programme. “You have to do the hard work.
“My race was a 1km time trial, so we just broke it into different phases. The initial phase, from the starting gate to the quarter lap to the back straight, is basically accelerating the bike; then you sit down and accelerate the bike and get into the aero position, and then it goes all the way up to top speed – which will take you through the first two laps – and the rest is about form and function, and basically all the pain you go through in training is to learn how to The last two laps suffered.”
Sounds bad. “It’s not a good thing. If you can empty yourself… I passed out in the track and field center for 15 minutes after the win and you can’t celebrate because you’re lying on the floor with your legs full of lactic acid, but you’ve got the satisfaction of winning. It’s right and it’s done well.”
To the uninitiated, it seems almost unbelievable that after so many years of so much success, someone would want to continue putting themselves through painful obstacles. “It’s a different kind of hunger over time,” he mused. “The idea at first was, ‘I’m going to prove people wrong, I’m going to do this, I want to win.’ Then it became, ‘I enjoyed winning and I want to win again.’ Then when I transitioned from swimming to biking, I had that teenage feeling because every time I got on the bike I was a little faster and it was all enjoyable. “
He won in Beijing and then came to London, where he was controversially disqualified due to problems with the starting gate and Condi, in his words, “lost.” This gave him the motivation to go to Rio. Going from Rio to Tokyo was more difficult, “but I know I still didn’t perform at my best,” he said. “Then we got COVID and the Olympics got postponed, and during that year I found a new way of training and understanding my body as I got older, and I ended up achieving some of the things I’ve done Best performance ever.”
Unfortunately, he then became ill and then injured, and the game came to a standstill. Unable to ride a bike, he lost strength, gained weight, and lost motivation. A year ago, he was at the lowest point in his life, mixed with some personal problems.
“I posted on Instagram about the nationals and just said I was at rock bottom because I won, but it was at a bad time. I felt like I could leave the sport right away. But all of a sudden, I had a lot of support from people, but I had no idea they cared or had any interest in what I was doing. It actually meant something and it got me back on track.”
Since then there have been highs and lows, including winning a 20th cycling world title in Glasgow last summer and a brief break from cycling on BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing. Next up are the World Championships in Rio, the National Championships and this summer’s Paris Olympics. He thinks six or seven athletes have a chance to win the kilo category and he can’t wait.
“It’s a lovely track, bigger than here [Manchester], same length but with a higher incline, which doesn’t make any sense for the races I’m doing, but for able-bodied sprint races there will be some fast times since you have more height to drop. When your athletes ride on a fast and easy track, you start getting the best performances in the world, and who doesn’t love world records? “
