“There were moments when I was in France and I was like: ‘Maybe they’re right, maybe I should stop eating,’” Dan Martin says as he remembers an early example of him refusing to surrender to the unhealthy demands of professional cycling.
Martin, who recorded top-10 finishes at five Grand Tours and won stages at the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España, had been rejected by Dave Brailsford and British Cycling despite being a national junior champion.
He turned pro in France instead where he soon discovered a sport in which cyclists are often treated as machines rather than human beings.
After Martin won the Valle d’Aosta time trial in 2006 his road captain said: “Imagine what you would be capable of if you were two kilos lighter.” Martin also recalls “scary sayings like ‘eating is cheating.’” Martin dismissed such dangerous talk with calm determination.