8th May 2012: Mark Chadwick’s life has always revolved around bikes. He rode them growing up and is still fanatical about riding them today. Chadwick has fixed bikes to earn a crust, and he now sells them for a living. Try tearing him away from watching any kind of cycling competition at your peril.
Chadwick is also the husband of Australia’s best track cyclist, and one of the country’s most high-achieving athletes, Anna Meares. At the top of that job description he nominates a hazardous requirement.
“Emotional punching bag” are the first three words that come to the mind of a man who has ridden his wife’s thrills and spills.
“I’m the person she bounces ideas off first,” Chadwick says while breaking from his job of selling equipment and warranties for German bike manufacturer Focus from its Adelaide distribution hub.
“With any complaints she comes and lets you have it, lets you know. And then it’s all about … trying to explain to her what the other side of the story is before she has to say something to a coach or something like that.”
“She tends to get frustrated if her form’s not coming on when it’s a big competition, but every year it’s the same. I guess she’s one of those perfectionists. She needs to feel like she’s riding flat-out before a big championship so she feels confident. But normally the coaches have got it dialed now that just before the comp she hits form.”
With a coach or a teammate an athlete might not always want to divulge insecurities, Chadwick says, but with a partner it’s almost always warts and all.
“They don’t have to put on a face, they can say how they feel.”
Surely all this makes him something of an expert in sports psychology?
“Oh, Anna psychology, I guess,” Chadwick says. “I know her pretty well now.”
“Sometimes I’ll do something at home and I’ll know what she’s going to say about it, so then I’ll do a fake Anna voice and mock what she would say. That makes her laugh. I’m the clown at home. That keeps her laughing.”
Chadwick, 33, rises most days at 6am – “too early in the morning for Anna,” he needles, giving a hint of the clown act. He cycles for up to 1½ hours five days a week before work.
He was once an aspiring professional cyclist and spent two years in Europe trying to make the big time on the road. He returned to Australia deflated that he didn’t have the stuff to crack it, but that sporting loss proved Cupid’s gain as he and the young woman he took a shine to through training with the Rockhampton Cycling Club got serious. Then, as the relationship developed, Meares became the regular traveller.
Chadwick has attended some major track meets, and counts the overseas adventures as the biggest perk of his support job. But mostly he has to observe from a distance and having costs covered is an exception rather than a rule. Even at the March world championships in Melbourne he and Meares stayed at different hotels, and catch-ups were often fleeting out the back of the arena.
“It’s hard, like when she lost to Vicky [Pendleton] in the sprint semis,” he recalls of the night recently when Meares lost a world title she was desperate to defend. “I could see she was pretty annoyed with herself. Those are the times you want to have a chat to her. But she sorted it out and got going again.”
In the grandstands, Chadwick is an ever-enthralled cycling nut who never wants the racing to end. That is until his wife takes to the track and he becomes a nervous wreck.
Chadwick wasn’t at the World Cup in 2007 when Meares came horribly close to death in a crash.
He received a phone call while at work that was deliberately light on information. Then, after picking up his wheelchair-bound wife from Adelaide airport, he nursed her back to full health.
“I did a fair bit of housework, looking after her, showering her and badly combing her hair. She still goes on about me combing her hair,” Chadwick says laughingly.
As frightening as the experience was, Chadwick, like Meares, had no doubts about her returning:
“She was more leaning towards retiring after Beijing before the crash, but sitting out while she was injured then convinced her that she could keep going because she didn’t enjoy sitting out and she wanted to get back on the bike really bad, so I was happy for her to get back on.”
Back to his own sporting pursuits, Chadwick is training for cyclocross events – very popular in Europe – that involve riding on dirt and occasional jumping of barriers.
In this cycling event, Chadwick is clearly top dog in the house. Long distances and rough terrain is not Meares’ scene.
“I always say it’s like getting Usain Bolt out to do a 10-kilometre run or something,” he says. “They’re not designed to go long distances, track sprinters.”
A couple for the best part of a dozen years now, Meares and Chadwick married in 2006 after the Melbourne Commonwealth Games.
She kept her name but has floated the idea of taking her fella’s once she’s done with track cycling. When that will be neither Chadwick nor she knows. London awaits and, just like his wife, the emotional punching bag is primed.
Useful links :
Chun Wing Leung Wins Men’s Points
USA Cycling Celebrates Major Taylor
Former Track Cyclist Wins MasterChef
UEC European Junior Track Cycling Championships 2015
Track Cycling World Championships 2012