Why Falling Helps Us Rise
when i told my wife that i’d been
invited here today to talk about
creativity within crisis she literally
stopped what she was doing and what
really why you i tried to explain
and she came back with i get it it just
seems like you’re always in crisis
um so that’s a short version of my ted
talk and i did the longer version
uh the playwrights novelist somerset
moore once said
it’s very difficult to know people for
men and women are not only themselves
they’re also the region in which they
are born
the city apartment or farm in which they
learn to walk the
food they ate the games they played as
children the schools they attended the
sports they followed the poets they read
the god they believed in and these are
the things that make them what they are
i’m a firm believer in this idea and
it’s for that reason i’m going to try
and give you some waypoints through my
life that i hope will explain why i’m
standing here today and i hope also
allow you to believe a bit more on what
i have to say
i don’t remember much about my childhood
although my parents do tell me a story
that rings true
i was seven and they organized a
birthday party for me and i hid in my
bedroom until my friends had gone home
knox didn’t like them i’ve been weird
but uh because
i was a bit shy i didn’t like the
tension and just preferred being on my
own
to this day my mum would sometimes
remind me of that and say
give me the boy at seven and i’ll show
you the man
that’s the boy at seven and that’s my
little sister francis i just mainly put
that in there to annoy her
um avoiding people dictated my pastimes
art and sport came out on top
art i loved and i could do on my own and
people would respectfully keep their
distance
as for sport anything individual
preferably not on the school curriculum
cycling in particular the bike went with
me everywhere from the north of scotland
the south of england to the far east it
it gave me a freedom and space that
nothing else could
and as i got stronger and more skillful
it introduced me to the
thrill of fear and adventure then the
speed and competition
eventually racing racing is the
ultimate form of escapism when you’re in
it it’s
so pure so simple nothing else matters
i started with bmxing when i was eight
or nine
then my parents got divorced when i was
that put everything on pause or spell it
up i’m not sure it definitely changed
everything
i decided to leave my mum and sister
behind in england and move with my dad
to hong kong it was there that i took
out mountain biking
and i did my first race when i was 14
and a couple of expat guys saw me and
they were like whoa
you got to get on a road bike and i was
like no way
i’m not wearing lycra and i’m definitely
not shaving my legs
they they didn’t give up on me though
hats off to them they fed me magazines
books
videos anything they could find on road
racing
it worked i converted i sold my mountain
bike and
bought a road bike and from that moment
on
i never rode alone i projected myself
into this imaginary world i created of
european racing
i’d ride around the parks of the country
parks of hong kong
imagining helicopters droning above
motorbikes screaming by
crowds parting in front of me and always
the peloton chasing
the seed was planted art became
secondary
partly because i didn’t think i was
creative enough mainly because with
cycling i realized i might have stumbled
across something i was born to do
and i’d be a fool not to try i had that
binary state of mind where it was all or
nothing
cycling got it all and art almost
nothing
i turned pro when i was 19. my rise
through the ranks had been unprecedented
which was good but it was also bad
because it meant i was so
unprepared for the world i’d signed up
for
at my first pro race in the spring of
1997
it was made evident to me that doping
was rife within professional cycling
i was heartbroken i called my mum up
from that first race
from the hotel and told her what i
discovered and
i didn’t know what to do and i was
scared she told me to come home
as anyone would but
i couldn’t do it i mean she had a point
she said you’ve got a place that art
college held for you
you have another life here waiting for
you come back
but i couldn’t do it i couldn’t let
cycling go
partly because i was naive but more i
was optimistic
i was optimistic that i get stronger the
sport will get cleaner and everything
will be okay
the thing is with optimism it’s like a
plant it needs sunlight and water to
survive
and the deeper i got into professional
cycling the darker it got
and as for water there was none it was
only ever about blood
my fate was sealed and i was oblivious
to it
from the moment of discovery i fell in
love with the tour de france
i couldn’t believe that something so
insane could actually exist a
race a three-week race around france
crossing two mountain ranges
back then only one rest day to think
i’ve been worried about shaving my legs
i need a bloody haircut
i was enamored i learned everything i
could about it
and it soon became clear that it had
been designed as a madness from the very
get-go the big brother of its time
multiple days have curated and married
to drama scripted by the human condition
enough of it to keep the audience coming
back day after day over and over
again it was like love island survivor
national geographic the olympics all
rolled into one and put on wheels
my first tour was in 2000 i was 23 years
old
it was the beginning of the lance
armstrong era
by this point i was effectively french
i’d learned the language i was leading
france’s number one team i lived in a
small town in the southwest called beer
it’s a beautiful place
no other professional cyclists lived
there or even nearby which was the point
i figured that if i stood any chance of
holding onto my identity keeping my
value system
then i was going to have to isolate
myself as much as possible from the
professional cycling world when i could
that first tour was surreal i
won the first stage i wore the yellow
jersey
i was in a bubble for three weeks i
didn’t want it to ever end
on the final day my family and friends
from hong kong
came to paris to watch as i raced up and
down the champs-elysees
one of my friends said to my sister as i
leaned against the barriers
look at him he’s actually living his
dream
the thing is it wasn’t a dream i hadn’t
doped i’d stood my ground
but i was being groomed my team kept me
on an a program of racing they gave me
leadership status
they had me in a four-year contract
instead of the normal ones too they
roomed me with older riders seasoned
campaigners who knew the ropes
not the good ropes and through all of
that they taught me how to inject myself
intravenously and intramuscularly
back then it was normal within
professional cycling that’s how
we ingested our vitamins and supplements
it was not illegal
it was expected learning how to inject
yourself
is not fun and it’s where the grey area
began for me
they talk about gateways in the world of
drugs well
when you look down at your own hand
holding a syringe and you put enough
pressure on that needle to puncture your
skin and you empty the contents into
your body
that’s not sport and yes it’s a gateway
i won’t forget the first time i did it i
was in some shitty hotel room in france
and the team doctor was showing me
an older rider encouraging feels more
sadness looking back
it was a form of sadness then so
although i was clean
i was being taught the tools of the
trade and deep down i knew there was a
certain inevitability to my situation
i was becoming a respected name in the
sport i was on my way to becoming a
genuine tour de france contender
i could feel the weight of expectation
and it was a burden that
i was finding heavy to carry
i was so deep into professional cycling
now i didn’t have anything else in my
life
i perhaps isolated myself too much i
didn’t even have a home to go back to
hong kong
wasn’t just far away it was distant and
incompatible
as for the uk i hadn’t lived there in
over a decade and buried my
port in the storm while it was no longer
a hideaway my tour de france success had
erased my anonymity
the irony is i’d never been better known
and yet i’ve never felt so alone
the following years tour de france this
is 2001 i was 24.
i crashed heavily on the first stage
i ended up quitting the race on stage
my team saw seized their opportunity
and sent me to italy to prepare properly
for the tour of spain
i knew what this meant it was time for
me to grow up to become the professional
i was destined to be
i couldn’t fight it anymore the optimism
i’d had had been withering like an
unwatered plant and
it was made clear to me that it was
impossible to win the tour de france
clean
i couldn’t beat them so i decided to
join them i gave up
in italy i stayed at the family home of
an older teammate
a tuscan villa like something out of a
movie
that’s where i did epo for the first
time
for those of you unfamiliar with epo
it is to endurance sport what steroids
are to sprinting
instead of building muscle it increases
your blood’s oxygen carrying capacity
it’s like having altitude training in a
syringe
i won more races i continued on my
journey towards ultimate tour de france
success
except it wasn’t my journey anymore from
the outside it looked like a smooth and
upward trajectory
yet on the inside sirens were going off
warning lights flashing dials going
haywire
i’d lost control where once there had
been optimism and hope
now there was just shame guilt regret
and lies so many lies
and the joy i’d once had it was gone
it was just relief now when i won relief
that i’d fulfilled my objectives relief
that
i justified the risks i was taking i
became world champion
in 2003 i was 26.
on june 24th 2004 i was arrested by
french police
and beerus and locked up in a cell
on my own for two days i was intimately
interrogated by parisian drug squad
it was horrible yeah i felt like i
deserved it
what i’d done was wrong towards the end
of the 48 hours i had a moment of
clarity
all that time alone in the cell had
forced me to really look at what
happened to me and
imagine that kid back in hong kong and
think geez
i uh i realized from the outside it
could look like i had everything
i hadn’t had anything for a while even
my love for cycling which i loved so
much
i never hated i blamed it for what i’d
become
the person i become and so in that
moment i decided nothing to lose so i
told them everything
i wish i could say that was a low point
it was another year from that moment of
confession until i hit rock bottom
and it was in that process that i
learned something
the struggle is in the fall because when
you’re in that descending spiral
all you do is look down into an abyss
and want
wish it to end and then it does stop
you do hit rock bottom and you have to
make a decision do you lay there broken
or
do you dare look up do you risk standing
up
well somehow i found the courage to look
up and there it was a ray of light a
glimmer of hope
and that’s where my true life journey
began i decided to stand up
i was 28.
i believe in second chances fortunately
others do
too my fall from grace or rather crash
and burn had been an existential crisis
in the truest sense
yeah instead of taking everything away
it gave me everything back
being offered a second chance was like
having a rope thrown down to me
a couple of years after that rock bottom
moment i was speaking at an anti-doping
conference and somebody asked me
the how and why of me turning it around
and i said without thinking
love because that’s what it had been
it was a human condition at its very
best
people choosing to take the hard option
choosing to support me
choosing to take pools in that rope and
help me climb out of the darkness
each of us has to define our purpose
our reason to stand up mine
was to prevent what happened to me
happening to others
and i knew if i was going to do that i
was going to go back into the sport
do it differently and try and change
everything
i started by approaching anti-doping
agencies federations race organizers
telling them i wanted to share my
experiences educate them try and change
their perceptions in the hope that they
could start to change things
i answered every single media request
and told my story over and over and over
again
for the same reason in order to try and
educate the wider public of what had
happened to me
that it wasn’t black and white that
within professional cycling we had a
fundamental cultural problem that was
causing the doping
my first race back after my two-year ban
was a tour de france probably not the
easiest way to go back to but
um in the days leading up to it one of
the biggest doping scandals in the
history of the sport came crashing in
like a tsunami
i became the de facto spokesman uh not
because i wanted to jesus no
but because no other writer would talk
about it i was crushed
to realize that nothing had changed but
this time it didn’t affect me
i i had made my decisions i was going to
do it differently this time
i was going to do it the right way i was
going to do it clean i had my moral
compass essentially welded
due north i had no needle policy on
myself
i decided that syringes were never going
to touch me again unless it was a
medical emergency
i had an off-the-shelf multivitamin a
day my teen doctor thought i was insane
my teammates was just baffled i finished
that first tour de france respectfully
if not gloriously i then went to the
tour of spain
and i won stage 14 a time trial in the
post race press conference the first
thing i said before
even answering a question was
i want young writers to see this and
believe me when i say this
i did this clean i did it on bread and
water it’s possible
i said that because it’s what i needed
to hear when i was younger
it would have given me the hope it would
have fueled my optimism
because without hope there is no
optimism
courageously uk anti-doping nominated me
as their candidate
to the world anti-doping agency’s
athletes commission
this was unheard of definitely
unprecedented as ex-dopa as well
we’re villains we’re pariahs we’re
jettisoned and
forgotten about amazingly wide accepted
my
candidacy and instead of the two years
mandated i was sat from the seat for
four years
during that time i was able to introduce
the no-needle policy into the wider code
i did this in some unorthodox manner we
had a meeting in lausanne and while the
rest of the committee went to lunch
i went to a pharmacy and bought 12
syringes 12 needles 12 amples of saline
solution
on their return from lunch they found
all the medical paraphernalia laid out
in their places
the discomfort was palpable i then
taught them how to build a syringe how
to snap the top off a glass ample
siphon the contents out roll their
sleeve up tourniquet their bicep and
imagine
injects in their forearm i said this is
not sport
no athlete should ever have to do this
this should only be for medical
emergencies
after my ban i won the stages in all the
grand tours
i was the first british rider to wear
all leaders jerseys i won national times
titles and road time trial track i
captained world and olympic teams
and yet for me my proudest
accomplishment is that
is bringing in the no needle policy i
just wish it had been done before they
taught me
2014 was my final year racing
uh apart from the racing and the
anti-doping crusade i’d also written two
books
made two films uh founded and co-owned a
cycling team that pioneered internal
anti-doping
got married had kids i was a bit tired
everybody kept asking me what’s the next
chapter
well here we are full circle the the end
of the beginning
that kid who didn’t think he was
creative enough that choice i didn’t
take to art college
i decided to be that version of myself
and in 2015 i founded a company called
chapter three
after all it wasn’t the second chapter
this is the final act i wanted to create
a company and brand
that could operate differently within
the cycling industry be more creative
make things better do things differently
we have no exit plan
all these things i’ve told you they are
my way points
they are better ways of knowing me as
somerset mum said
and i hope it will allow you to believe
me a bit more when i say this
nothing is impossible
now it took me a while to grasp that
concept
the little boy who had hide away in his
own bedroom at his own birthday party
well around that time
my grandma took me aside and she said
david
i want you to remember something i don’t
want you to ever forget this
she said nothing is impossible nothing
is impossible for you
i thought she was crazy i was of course
things were impossible
and then a couple of months ago i was
putting our boys to bed they’re six and
eight years old and one of them said
daddy that’s impossible
and without realizing what i was doing i
pulled them over and sat them down
either side of my bed
either side of me on the edge of the bed
and i put my arm around and i said guys
i want you to remember this you must
always believe it
nothing is impossible their faces
lit up they got it instantly in the way
i think my grandma had hoped i would 36
years before
the thing is as we get older we find it
difficult to believe that anything is
possible let’s learn that nothing is
impossible
yet more often than not it’s in crisis
when we lay their broken rock bottom
and we dare look up and imagine a better
future
that we rediscover it because without
imagination there is no creativity
as the old saying goes the darkest hour
is just before the dawn
i’m going to leave you with this final
picture i remember my little sister
she’s now the ceo of the world’s
greatest cycling team
this is her congratulating one of her
riders going thomas
she did with him and she’s worked with
him since he was 19 years old
what she couldn’t do for me he won the
tour de france
and he did it clean nothing is
impossible
thank you