Owen Vermeulen is one of the most honest voices on addiction and recovery in cycling — a South African gravel pro who went public with the full arc of teenage heroin use, a professional skateboarding career, opioid relapse after a sport-ending injury, and the five-year non-linear road back into endurance sport. His perspective matters because it cuts through the highlight-reel pro mythology and reframes addiction as a biological response, not a moral failing. For Roadman's audience — many of whom know someone, or are someone, navigating dependency — his story is one of the most useful ones the show has run.
The major positions Vermeulen is known for in cycling and endurance sport.
Every appearance by Owen Vermeulen on The Roadman Cycling Podcast — 2 episodes in total.
“the power of those pills I've never experienced a chemical pull like that in my life and I knew after like three days of taking things was like these are going to get me like I'm not strong enough to withhold like my willpower is just not strong enough to keep me away from these”
“with oxycotton the doctors were giving them out like candy because I think they didn't know exactly the extent of how bad those were and then they could just they would just cut them off cold turkey and so a lot of these guys didn't have any other resource other than to go to the streets and get street drugs to compensate for you know their withdrawals”
“I went into my first race and I think I had no idea how to race I just went out there from the gun and just rode as hard as I could didn't know what the hell I was doing ended up winning by like 3 minutes and I was like oh okay this is fun”
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