Ian Boswell was one of the most exciting prospects in world cycling when he signed for Team Sky after a dominant underage career. He was carving out a successful professional career when his world was turned on its head (literally) in a crash.
He was faced with the choice to continue in the sport he loved while risking his health or forge a new path.
A fascinating story.
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Hello, roadman, welcome back. I hope everybody is enjoying their Easter week end. I have all you got a serious treat in store for you today. Today's guest is Ian Boswell. If you don't know the name Ian Boswell, you're not a massive cycling anoract like me. Ian Boswell was one of the most talented, up and common under 20 tree riders in the world. Blitz the U-23 ranks before making the world to remove over Team Sky, really one of the first U23 non-British riders to sign for Team Sky. He's ridden all three Grand Tours, he moved from Sky over to Katusha before he had a life change in crash and it was his sixth concussion hit the head and he had a question, do I take a World Horror contract again next year or do I decouple my identity from cycling and try and find my own path in life. I'm not gonna spoil it for you. I'm going to jump right into it, but before I do a couple of messages from our beautiful sponsor, JUVE. If you jump on over to JUVE, J-O-O-V-V dot com forward slash A1 coaching, they're going to hook you up with a free gift when you get your unit. If you don't know what JUVE is at this stage, you must have had your head under a rock. Every single premiership player is using JUVE. Every single NFL player, NHL player, all the pro golfers, everyone is using JUVE already. It's going to take so like them by storm. The benefits are increased testosterone, production, better skin health through collagen, better sleep, mood regulation. It's an absolute game changer. I've been using it for a few months now and anyone who follows me on Instagram knows how much I love the thing. So jump on over to JUVE.com forward slash A1Coulchen and I'm going to hook you up with that gift. And the second shelf sponsor who I want to plug today, it's actually just ourselves. At a time when a lot of companies around the world are struggling, a lot of people are going back to the wall and their lane employees off, we've really tried to double down, especially on this podcast, double down and bring you guys better guests, better show quality. Obviously, all this comes at a cost and we do have a new Patreon which I would love if you guys went over and checked out the patreon over at patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. So I know we're in lockdown at the moment but if you'd be willing to buy me a point, if you'd be willing to buy me a coffee to just say, you know, I'll thanks for the work you're putting in on the podcast. I would really appreciate it if you jumped on over to Patreon and extended that same core to see if it keeps this channel floating and it keeps me open that production quality and able to bring you top quality guests week after week. The big question is this, how do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness, and our long changes? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Ian Boswell, welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's going to be a pretty cool chat. I'm excited about it. Ian, I'm going to jump around all over the place in this chat because I always hated when I was reading the neurobiography and page one, started with soul. I grew up in Bend Oregon. My mom was... So, I'm going to start with your crash. I suppose when you look at your career, it punctuates his boy that crash. Train out Adriatico and it changed the course of your life. You want to talk to me about that? Yeah, it did. You know, we're 12 months past the incident. But yeah, it was a relatively normal, normal stage. You know, nothing about the crash was really of any, you know, extreme danger on the course or anything. I crashed and suffered a pretty severe concussion. It was one of a string of concussions that I've had over my career. Just due to the lingering symptoms and actually being properly checked out by doctors and then eventually coming back to the US and being rung around the medical system. There was some things found that were just like, hey, this is a lot more serious than I had thought it was at the beginning, in the first days following the crash. I think I was actually just on a call before speaking to you with the North American riders and you're trying to implement a more up-to-date protocol and one of more comprehensive protocol for concussion and cycling just because a lot of information is lacking. Personally, I could have benefited had I had more information on hand in those first days in weeks following my crash. But obviously, yeah. Did I read it right? That I read it right? That I read it right? That was just your sixth conclusion?
Yeah, I mean, six that I really know about and all cycling related, just various crashes over the course of my career, racing, training, playing around on a bike. But yeah, it's obviously concussion and all sport is a hot topic right now and you've seen major American sports address it more seriously. And even rugby was on a call with a doctor in Ireland, actually, a couple weeks back just about how the culture of concussion in rugby has changed. And not that I'm a big advocate of trying to bring something to cycling. It's definitely become a little bit of a passion project for me just to bring more awareness to it. But regarding my crash, it was an unforeseen end to my professional road career. And it was something that I had no intentions of, stopping my career at the age of 28, but just given the circumstances. Do you know how dangerous concussions were at the time? Like when you're five concussions deep, do you have an understanding of the effect of cumulative concussions? No, not at all. I mean, and I follow sports relatively regularly. So I'd seen different articles about CTE and stuff in the NFL NFL and boxing, but as an athlete, you're oftentimes ignorant to your personal well-being. You're so focused on one thing that you ignore that, like, oh, it's not going to be me. You read all the time about a ride or crashes. There's the death of a rider last year in tour Poland. Crashes happen all the time, but it's something that you never really think about until it actually affects you and you know we as athletes just yeah ignore it because you know you can't have those thoughts in your mind when you're racing. I texted a buddy of mine to try and partner to let him know that you were coming on the podcast and he just texted me back. Oh head injury friend I was racing I'd never got to near standard U.R. but I was racing continental in the U.S. with a team of Stellis oncology and I wiped out in a bunch sprints like towards the end the season Labor Day weekend. I thought it was so cool because it was like a weekend where I didn't have the whole team with me and I was just getting to do my own thing, sitting on the back of the healthcare, trying to get the mixer open the sprints and pocket the prize money. I was having great fun on the Saturday, got up pocket at a few quid, same on the Sunday and I raced in Detroit on the Monday, huge crashing to punch sprints and I went down, bust myself up pretty good, broken shoulder, broken ribs, broken nose, concussion. I, Mike Barry Canadian guy, did you ride with first guy? Mike? I was never on the team at the same time as him. No, I think he left the year before or two years before I joined the team. Yeah, but Mike was coaching me at the time and I remember just talking to him and just saying, you know what, I'm done with this. It's just the risk to reward, especially at continental level for me, it just didn't make sense. But talk me through that risk to reward decision you had to make because you had to draw a pretty firm line under it because you had a contract offer and you decided to sign out with it. Yeah, I sat on the fence for a long time. My crash was in March and I was at Catusia last year. The team was very supportive of the process. I think medically they were a bit, I don't say absent, but they, I decided with the team to come back to the US just because I felt like I could have better medical care, just having someone drive me to doctor's appointments. And oftentimes, team or cycling doctors, they don't specify in head trauma. So the team was supportive for me coming back and taking the time that I needed so all the while in my head, I was really questioning what am I gonna do? Am I gonna go back to racing? And obviously in the first couple months, there was no question that I was gonna get better and go back to racing. But kind of as time drew on and I started to speak to more doctors and seek out more specialists to kind of evaluate where I was in my career and knowing the process by which it takes to be a professional athlete and the sacrifices you make. I think having that almost sabbatical away from racing kind of allowed me to realize that just through that process, something in me had changed. And I didn't need that, like I said, just wasn't willing or wanting to go back to that world that I knew. And I didn't have a career where I didn't win the Tour de France or Liège Bessin on the age. But I feel like I had accomplished enough to realize that at some point, I'm going to come to the end of my career.
And I've already been through a lot of the mental difficulties of being out of the sport to go back in and realize in three years time, or five years time, whatever it was that I was going to have to go through that whole process again. It was actually pretty frightening. What's that do to your sense of identity? Like, you've most seen yourself as, look, I mean, Boswell, cyclist. And now when you can't do this anymore, how do you reconcile that? Yeah, and there's really like a lot of kind of things that happened subsequently around the crash. You know, my wife and I got married last year, so that changed my perspective. Yeah, thank you. You know, we also had moved to rural Vermont, and we're in a relatively small, actually a very small community, more like a, you know, a village setting. And we actually live outside the village center. Cool. And just the kind of the change internally that happened moving here and, you know, the sense that people here are not, you know, they're not cycling fans. They don't know much about the sport and that kind of my identity had already begun to change, you know, away from being this, you know, professional athlete in, in you're up where there's a lot of attention drawn to you because of your achievements, your status. So kind of internally, that process to realize that my actions as a human and part of my community are gonna outweigh my ability on a bike. So like I said, multiple things kind of went hand in hand to make me realize that there's a lot more to life than being a professional road cyclist and spending most of my day focusing on myself and what I'm doing. You summed that up pretty nicely, but I'm guessing that's a pretty hard journey. I remember post-concussion for me. I played soccer before I was a cyclist, and I probably had two or three documented concussions as cyclists, but fuck knows how many more as a soccer player before that. But I know I went through some pretty low points with the concussion. been out of bodies wet and then just like just social anxiety, the noise, the mood swings, all the goals were to. Yeah, you know, and I've spoken a little bit about it before to different, you know, publications or articles, podcasts, but yeah, there was, you know, there were definitely a lot of hard times. You know, there was times when I would just find myself in like, you know, a puddle of tears crying for no specific reason or, you know, my wife would say something and they would just set me off and, And part of that was from the crash and just the brain chemistry of hitting your head at high force. But a lot of it was also just the fact that I was very much lost as a person and realizing that if I'm not a professional athlete, who am I? What am I doing? What am I going to do next? I'm 28 years old. I've almost completely immersed myself in this world that is really hard to get out of. and a lot of my friends were in that world. And yeah, it's a challenging time for anyone to stop, high level sport. And I'd actually, Philip Dignon was actually the one who came to pick me up from the hospital. Really after my... It was pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, and Phil's, he's been a good friend of mine for a long time, he raced at Skye together. And yeah, he drove 14 hours to come pick me up, which I was blown away because he, as a rider, he wasn't, we're all selfish to a degree. for him to drive, you know, spend an entire day coming to pick me up. I was like, wow, that's a dude. Yeah, that's impressive. Um, well, it's beyond impressive. It's extremely kind, but, you know, to realize that a lot of these friends and, you know, acquaintances you make, you know, they do extend beyond cycling and kind of speaking with him a little bit and just the process of, of retiring, it's, it's not easy because you do, because I'd lose some, some of your identity and who you are. And, um, yeah, it's not a, not an easy process for anyone. and rebuilding that identity as something new now. How are you finding that? Like I noticed there, you said you stepped away from being a top, I can't remember exactly how you phrased it, but you stepped away from top performance sport. Do you see gravel as a little bit of a side step for you? Are you taking the corner Peter's step? No, like that, they would look pumped for it. Yeah, he's fallen into it. You know, I spoke to Ted King about this. I very much see myself as a retired athlete or a tired professional. So I still love riding my bike and that was another thing I realized in that time away was that cycling for me is a lifelong sport and something that I always want to do.
And I didn't want to end a career with any sort of animosity towards cycling or my bike. And you see a lot of athletes in the sport of cycling retire and don't touch their bike for five years. and it's like I did not want to do that. I still love writing my life. I'm just like amazed and athletes. I remember I backed up at the story of Stony and Mike Barry because he was coaching me at the time and I remember I was all recovered from that crash and I talked to Mike and he said, don't make a decision when you're injured, get back face and then make a decision. So I got back face and I said, like, I'm done with this full-time cycling business. It's just too dangerous. And he said, cool. And he texted me like two days later, he was like, you gone for a ride. I was like, what are you on about there? I just told you like I'm done. And then he's like, yeah, you're done racing. You didn't like you're not done cycling. We all started cycling because it's fun. No one started to make a paycheck. Yeah, when I think kind of that's where that's where I'm at now, you know, and I, you know, still love riding my bike and gravel racing riding is a nice balance of, you know, you can take it as serious as you want. And obviously there are a lot of athletes now, you know, treating it as a profession. And you know, I'm fortunate to have some good partners that provide me the equipment I need to continue to do that. But at the same time, I have a full-time job at Wahoo. So I'm entering the workforce with the first time in my life. It's not like... It's awesome. They're a brand that I've been close with for a long time. They came to Skye when I went to Skye in 2013. It's an American brand. I was one of three Americans there with Dombrowski and Danny Pate. So I've always stayed in close contact. They were at Kautusha as well when I was there and they're very, you know, being a brand in the endurance sports space, you know, they're very understanding that, you know, it's, it is, it is like a challenging transition. It's not just something that, you know, you go from, you know, riding your bike 30 hours a week to sitting at a desk 40 hours a week. So, you know, I'm working remotely for for them. They're based down in Atlanta, Georgia, and I'm appearing Vermont. So it's extremely fortunate to have a role where I'm able to still live where I want to live, ride my bike, but also have a nice transition into the workforce because it's completely different than being a cyclist when you operate on your own time schedule. I would argue, because as a cycling fan, it's cool even talking to you. I heard you in one of your interviews talking about how you still look back at US Postal documentaries and stuff. I feel this on the podcast all the time. Like I tried to Steven Roach one and I was like, Oh, I'm standing Steven Roach. How is this even real? This is insane. But do you have an awareness at the moment of just how big that gravel movement could be? Because I see you, Lachlan Morton, Alex Haus, Peter Stettner, probably missing someone. But there's not many of you guys. You know, if you go world tour, there's a hundred you guys and you're all beasts on the bike button. It feels different. It feels detached. It feels like you're someone on the TV. Somehow, gravel feels more accessible. I feel like all I need to gravel, boy, can I can go and ride with you guys when it's like, it's like I'm playing the premiership or playing with Cristiano Ronaldo, the sort of France guys. Yeah, well, and that's something that I've always, you know, it didn't challenge me as a pro rider, but there's a distance between, you know, the athletes and the fans. You know, some teams keep that barrier higher than others. And that's one thing, for example, you wrote me on Instagram and I responded. I've always kept that just thought that we as our, myself as athletes and other athletes, we are here because we have fans. And so making sure to allow time to speak to those people and engage with people is something that I really enjoy. I have met a lot of good friends who people just reached out to me somewhat on a whim and you build connections with people. I think gravel more so than road is a larger community of people who are all in it together and doing the same thing. You line up at these races and to be honest, I haven't done many of them yet. You're on the start line with 3,000 people and some of them might be training as a pro athlete. be, you know, this is their first ever bike event that they, you know, signed up for and it's in their hometown.
And, you know, that got them out riding and they might not even know who the big athletes are. And that's awesome. I heard I'm not sure it was one of the gravel guys. I heard them describe it as, you know, if you're trying to describe to a friend who's not into cycling, like what the tour of France is, and you're like, yeah, we raced for three weeks. There's this one race, it's the classification but then there's a race every day. And then we've these mountains, classifications, we sprint classifications and you can just see their eyes glazed no over. Where's he talk about gravel and it's like, yeah, it's kind of, it's six hours and you got to bring your own snacks. Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, it's kind of back to the, back to the basics and, you know, like you said, we all got into biking because we loved it. And I've always had a competitive side, you know, even when I was young, you know, racing neighborhood kids around the block. So it's, it's nice to ride fast. And I think, you know, something within me wants to always ride faster. But there's just less, there's a lot less pressure in gravel. You know, if you're out there and you have a poor day and you said, you know what, I'm I'm just going to cruise with a group that's 30 minutes behind. That's fine. And you're still out there riding the bike, and the experience is so much different than that of road racing where it's a high performance sport, and the performance kind of dictates your mood and your mentality. And even kind of going back to reasons of walking away, a lot of your daily happiness, and you probably can attest to this, is based off of how your training ride went. you get back and you didn't hit your training numbers and you're upset for the rest of the day and you're questioning, oh, what's wrong? Am I sick? Did I eat not enough? Did I knock enough sleep? Am I dehydrated? And it's like maybe you just felt bad. So are you still training your gravibike? I actually did just get a power meter for my gravel bike. I don't have a coach or anything more just out of interest. I don't have a training plan or anything. I have one because it's something that, you know, it's a tool and it's something I can look at, but it's not something that I'm, you know, kind of living or dying by. And, you know, there's oftentimes rides when, you know, I'm just, I'm just, you know, more or less just riding my bike, which is awesome. You know, I have it in the records, what I've done, but, you know, having not having the race season kind of postponed this year, you know, I haven't been training specifically for anything because I'm just enjoying riding my bike. What's the training week looking like for you at the moment? It's a bit all over the map, to be honest. Like I said, I am in the workforce now, so I was actually over in Nice at the end of February for work, but just with the time difference, I had a lot of free time during the day. Yeah, I felt like a world tour rider again for a couple of weeks. I did a couple, I think, two, almost 30-hour weeks. Big boys and girls. Yeah, well, I was just there by, you know, I was there and all these riders. I'd kind of just do everyone's long endurance day because I don't have a training plan. It's like, cool, I can do everyone's, you know, five, six hour ride, catch up with old friends. But back home, it kind of just depends on the week and the weather and, you know, what's happening. But I try to, try to ride most, most days, probably, you know, five or six days a week. And if that just means jumping on my Wahoo kicker for an hour or something with my wife before dinner time or something. Just because I enjoy sweating and staying active. So when those big rides do pop up, then I know I have a level of fitness to be able to handle them. Have you dived in to the Zwift? I've done a little bit of Zwift. Yeah. It's something actually indoor training for me was never something I really enjoyed. And then my wife and I moved to Vermont in 2017 and we have pretty severe winters here. So indoor riding is something that I've become more accustomed to. So Zwift, then also there's a platform called the Sufferer Fest which is more specific. It's pretty good. Yeah. So I've done quite a bit of that because I know, cool, I can jump on. This is a workout. I like it's 45 minutes and you can get a lot of work done in 45 minutes and I can be at work by nine o'clock and still have gotten to work out in the morning. So what have you loosened back on a world tour?
You're obviously obsessed with food, especially coming through to a scholarly machine. Have you dialed back that strictness on joyous or have you removed that guilt around food? Yeah, it's something that I'm, I just enjoy being healthy. I obviously don't need to be 70 kilos anymore. I don't weigh myself anymore either, so It's something, you know, the last three weeks my brother's been here. And yeah, we've just been, you know, I've been riding less because he's been out and we've been doing other projects and, you know, drinking a bit more beer than normal. And I started to sit down and saw like a little, a little fat rolling in my wife's like, Ian, you're still really skinny, but I'm like, oh man, like, you know, I got to, I got to watch what I, you know, not watch what I eat, but just be, be cognizant also because I'm not, not burning calories like I was. And, you know, I just hope to always maintain, you know, A decent level of body composition, but no, I'm not not crazy about it. You know, I definitely enjoy my Ben and Jerry's ice cream every night. You're in the home of Ben and Jerry's as well, aren't you? Yeah, yeah, we can get it for like $3 a pint, so it's cheap. It's not a good mix though, like just because we're in full lockdown here at the moment for the COVID, so we're only live 2K from the house. Yeah, so yeah, people are getting pretty creative and riding like 20 8K loops, 2K from the house, but restricted movement of Ben and Jerry's is not a mix you want to take lightly? No, it's not. And it's something that throughout my career I never really had, I never had a struggle losing weight. I put on weight just fine in the off season. Both my wife and I, we have a pretty healthy diet, but we don't, we eat relatively normal me always have, you know, we don't skimp on things. We, you know, bacon and ice cream and cheese. And you know, we're, yeah, I think it's just a matter of, you know, being aware of what you're eating. And it's not like I said, I just enjoy, I enjoy feeling healthy. It's got sort of one of the whole goals of the podcast is we try to figure out when I had my, I had a bit of a reset there. I quit cycling two years ago and then I came back last season. And I said the reason I'm going back is I want to figure out how I have a more sustainable relationship with cycling. How do you use cycling? It's kind of like a tool to achieve like health, happiness and longevity. What I can see is a lot of amateur athletes, you know, cat two guys, cat one guys. Like, you know what they can ride their bike, but they're not proud. They're not wearing it, they're living from it. But they take it just so serious because they're just obsessed with cycling news. You know, old doctrines like Sean Kelly never stand if you can sit, if you can lie down, if you can lie down, go asleep. But what that does is, it just erodes the quality of life they have an every-order aspect of their life. It seems like you've got a real balance off the bike now. I've seen your take, like woodwork and plumbing and electrics and your quite the hand-to-hand one. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's something that I've always kind of kept throughout my career. You know, I was never one. You know, you definitely take rest periods. You know, over the course of my career, I'd definitely developed a habit of napping, which I don't have as much time for anymore. But I think being active is, that doesn't necessarily mean exercising, but just being active in your life and doing things and being a relatively social individual, whether it's going out to dinner or when I was in Nice, going to the beach with someone. People oftentimes use the analogy, like your car is like, or your body's like a car and a gas tank and you gotta save your fuel and energy. And it's an analogy that works, I was never one to fully buy in and think that everything you do has to be centered around your racing and your fitness. And there are definitely times throughout my career when leading up to a grand tour when the two or three weeks before you're extremely focused. But the balance for me in life was always part of importance to keep a life outside of just thinking all day of riding riding your bike and stretching and napping and what you're going to eat. Well, that's got to ease the transition as well for you. Yeah, it definitely has. Well, I mean, if anything, there's all these things that I always wanted to do that I just didn't have time for. Now I have more time to do that, which is part of the reason why I'm not always riding as much as I would like.
It's been riding with quite a few masters writers who have families in a full-time job and still can ride a bike extremely well and fast. Those people are almost more of an inspiration to me than some of the world's riders, because these people are balancing a lot, and they're still, whether it's one or two hours a day or a longer run on the weekend, that's the time when they get to just go out and suffer and they love it. It's cool to see people with that desire to just go out and push themselves. Well, out of my last podcast guest, I had a dude called Ed Ville. I'm not sure if you heard of me, he was on the Canadian pursuit team, but he's just moved across to piloting their tandem for Para. But he's 43 years old. He didn't break into Canadian national team until he was 37. But what he did just has crazy balance in life. Because I've a coaching company and I talk a lot of the time with dudes who were assessing their goals. And they always put a limit on what they achieved because they think, oh, I can't go all in on this. like you don't need to go all in. You can get pretty fist and still have a very balanced life. Yeah, definitely. I think a lot of pro or con that there's so much media now and you can follow riders on Strava and see power files. So a lot of amateurs, masters, juniors, see what pros are doing and they get worked up to thinking that's what they need to do. But the reality is that a lot of pro riders probably train more than they actually need two, it's oftentimes a circumstance of having the time to do 30 plus hour weeks. Is that really necessary? In most cases, it's not. But they have the time for that. But you can, as a coach, you can reach a really high level of fitness doing 15 hours a week. If you're in structured work, then you can get pretty darn fit. Oh yeah, for sure. You know, as I said to you, we're in lockdown over here at the moment. And I chant the buddies and just reflect on it myself and diary and then meditating and stuff like that. What it seems like the world is going to show at the moment, it's just nearly every unprecedented pause. And everyone's getting a chance to reevaluate what's important to them. It's not things like cars because we can't drive them here at the moment. It's not things like material goods because we mainly can't use them. It's mainly health, it's family, it's just the ability to sit still and be quiet in yourself. And these things are super important. You got to press pause big time with the concussion in that period between the concussion. And when you said no to the contract, was it big pressing pause? Looking back at your career from then, were you happy with how it was planning out up to that point? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely. And I think, you know, having that moment to actually press pause and, you know, like you said, to be able to make that choice that I wanted to stop racing myself, you know, that was a big decision that I made, but having the ability to decide that it was kind of under my, you know, it was very much my choice and I had the opportunity to keep racing and I chose not to, you know, that that's something that I'm really happy with that, you know, I, a lot of athletes don't have the opportunity to choose when their career ends and, you know, I was able to, to make it happen. that choice. But yeah, I mean, I think for a lot of athletes taking a pause is something incredibly important. And this current circumstance, when athletes, it's not something that they're necessarily going to be as stressed about as an injury or something. It really is an important time to reflect. And I hadn't, looking back on my career, I raced from the World Tour for seven years, I raced with some of the best athletes. And it wasn't really until I decided to stop that I kind of reflected on what I did and what I achieved. And I was a kid who grew up in Oregon, riding bikes around my neighborhood. And I got to race at Team Sky and racing the Tour de France and race with guys like Wiggins and Froome and Garrent Thomas. And yeah, it's crazy how, like you said, you've got to speak with Stephen Roach. And the other day I was on the phone with Conchilara for a podcast. You sometimes take it for granted that you're in this world and and you're speaking to these people that are legends of the sport. Your dad was a professional triathlete, am I right? He was, yeah, back in the mid-80s. So I guess coming up and then you were just, you and Joe Dombrowski were just insanely good U-20 trade riders.
I guess you probably had that expectation that, this is pretty easy. I'm gonna go into World Tour and carve this open a couple of years. Yeah, I was thinking about this actually the other day I was on the ride and just thinking about I would go to the state championships, the national championships, and for whatever reason had a lot of confidence when I was younger, it's something I definitely lost as I got older in my career and was racing against a wider pool of riders. But yeah, there's a lot of good memories from racing and something that those are still with me and I've met a lot of great people doing it. Because the transition, it's such a transition from U23 where I suppose your team leader, your own man, but also age group, it's just going to limit the amount of quality there. So it's you and Jodem Broutsker, obviously, that head and shoulders from what I can remember, both the rest of the U23 guys. But then you're stepping up to world tour level where all of a sudden that restriction is off. So you've the best U23 riders from the last, what, like 10, 15 years, all still core racing. That's got to be pretty intimidating when you get into that set and you have a team skoyger as you in your back because there's the extra expectation there. Yeah, definitely. My first two years at Skye really struggled. The first couple months I went into the team and I was fairly confident I just moved over to Europe and had good results my previous year as under 23 riders. I was obviously, Sky saw something that I, I guess, talent. But I definitely lost that, especially in my first year. I kind of thought, oh cool, I can just kind of skate by and the world tour can't be that much different than under 23 racing, then I couldn't have been more wrong. What was the difference? We're just everything. The speed and just the danger in the bunch and the ability to move around the bunch and just the endurance required for longer races. And a big part of it as well was I'd moved over to Europe and was living in a foreign country on my own. And just trying to set up a life there and still train and not really fully realizing in those first couple of years how much of exterior stress can translate to stress on the bike, just cutting rides short. I was almost more focused on trying get my life set up than I was, you know, my training and some athletes at the complete opposite. They're able to, you know, kind of put everything in life on hold and just focus on the training and on the opposite. Like I, if I have a bunch of emails to get back to or text messages or something, you know, I'm going to wait until I get all that taken care of before I go ride. And the Sky give you an infrastructure to kind of facilitate that move across. Or you very much on your own. They will. So Dombrowski and I were kind of the first people to be a part of that project. we had moved to NICE and I moved actually out in December of 2012 and Sky was just kind of starting to set up their base and kind of service course or you know a kind of athlete service course outside of NICE Monaco. So by the time we had gone there, there wasn't much in place as far as support, you know it was happening, it was being developed. But at the time you know Joe and I were the first foreign riders, I guess Puccio had gone there, but we were some of the first riders to come to the team as Neo-Pros from non-European backgrounds. So not to say we're at all an experiment, but the team learned a lot from us just as far as how they could best support athletes coming to the world tour from the under 23 ranks. Do you think it was too big a mirror of looking back? No, I mean, I never really questioned having gone to Skye Noite other offers, and I actually did a stoggier with Argos, which is now Sunweb. Maybe my career path would have taken a different role. Maybe I would have entered a team with more opportunities as a young rider. But I learned a lot from that team and I met some great friends on that team. The opportunities that I had and just what I learned there definitely helped to excel me as an athlete, but also just having time with Brailsford and Fran Miller and Kerasin and picking those people's brains just on organization and progress and the evolution of sport but of life and applying those lessons learned to life in general was something that I wouldn't have done any differently. It seemed to me as a fan, when you went there, you and Jordan Brodsky were two of the biggest, most explosive talents in the world of Saikulan.
I'm not sure if it would have happened Anyway, elsewhere, maybe it's the process of molding someone from a raw passionate energetic U23 router to a professional, to a seasoned pro. But it seems like they nearly held you back that obviously you didn't get the opportunities to lead the team like you would, you know, go into a smaller team. But they really drilled you into that domestic role. And I suppose your build definitely led to that because you could get over the mountains and and then still gossiped in the valleys. Would you have liked to have more opportunity there? You know, there was definitely my, like times in my career when I thought that, oh, it would have been better had I gone to another team, but you know, I definitely, just with my personality as well, I slotted into that role as a doma-steak and actually really enjoyed that. And you know, the higher up, you know, kind of the totem pull you get the more, there's a lot of pressure for, you know, especially a rider at Skye. And the few times in my career that I did have opportunity to ride for myself, I really enjoyed. But there's a lot of pressure in a role like that. So yeah, like I said, there were riders that I raced with as under 23, who I was very competitive with, who went on to win a lot of races, Lutzenko or the Yates twins, Michael Volgren. These are riders who are at the top of the sport now, who I was competing with and beating as under 23. So, you know, our career definitely took a different trajectory, but it's hard to say it was that, you know, a result of the team or is that a result of just, you know, kind of development at different stages in our life and kind of physical maturity. And again, you never know the real true, but looking from the outside end, the move to Catucius looked like a great move to you. It looked like even your relationship with the press, you seemed like you had that kind a swagger back in your step again, like you were back to nearly where you were before you joined Skye, a little bit of confidence. I don't want to say arrogance, but a little bit of a stroke going on. Yeah, it was definitely like a boost of confidence to go to a team. Jose Alsoveto was the general manager there. He and I had spoken a little bit when I was under 23 because he was a track or radio shack. So he'd known who I was and kind of known my under 23 pedigree. So he was definitely brought me onto that team to be a writer who had the potential of leading the team and then in a race like the Tour de France, helping Zacharind who has been a proven grand tour writer. So it definitely took a lot of confidence in that first year. It was a big change going from Team Skye to Katusha, just the infrastructure and the support. It was different, but I had taken all that I needed from Skye and was able to look after myself because I knew kind of the process by which Sky was approaching it. It kind of feels like I'm from a Rocky Bob Always camp over to Ivan Dragos camp that maybe I made. Yeah, it was a change for sure. And the last few years of Kautushina, the team was far different than it was when it initially started in 2009 or 11 or whatnot. But then I had kind of the resources and the knowledge to do what I needed to do on my own. But yeah, I didn't have some opportunities there. And I wanted to ride the Tour de France, and that was a big objective of mine since a young age. So the move to Catouche was largely driven towards the fact that I wanted to ride in the Tour. And Circle, back and finishing off, full circle. I know the trends with race organizers in the last few years is making these crazy spectacles for the fans, for after all, it's on TV, but balancing that, the guy is racing this. There's somebody's brother, there's somebody's husband, there's somebody's son. How do we get that balance? That's hard, you know, and I think, you know, as athletes, we, I know within the Peloton, people complain a lot, but not much changes. You know, there's the amount of times we're on a start line like, oh, this is a stupid stage of these weather conditions are awful. We shouldn't be racing, but we always seem to go ahead and do it. You know, I think racing as a whole has also changed, you know, just the dynamics of racing and the team tactics. So I think, you know, race promoters are definitely in a position where they're trying to find a way to kind of bring that, you know, excitement back to racing that is unpredictable. And like I said, you know, the athletes in many ways are, you know, a guinea pig for that and their show ponies, but at the same time, you know, is there less collegiality between the guys?
Are they looking out for each other or less? I would say yes. You know, that's just part of the risk and the peloton now and the kind of the stakes at hand for racing and the kind of, again, the risk reward, you know, it's one of the things in cycling. You know, I was said over in February, I was over in Nice and just speaking to staying with Larry Warbas and the amount of potential for your life to change in one six hour race is immense. You can go into a race like the age best on the age and you're a rider on minimum wage on a continental team and your team gets a start and you get a top 10 or you get a podium, like your whole life changes in the span of six hours. And there's, I mean, obviously there's the work that goes into that, but that's one of the very unique things cycling still is that one good day can change your whole life. And I think that keeps a lot of athletes going and realizing that so much can change in such a short period of time. But also we have on the flip side of that coin one bad day changes your life as well. Well, that's true. We got this crazy fucking dynamic going on there at the moment. Yeah. Like I said, you really have to ignore the bad and keep dreaming of the good. To finish off, looking back on an amazing career, tree, ground tours, ridden with some of the best roighters in the world, lived every kid's dream. What's the one standout memory you have? I would still have to say the probably the 2018 Tour de France, you know, that was, I really did just have such a good, a good time then. I guess it was one of the few races that I actually realized what I was doing, like in the moment. I'd been obviously done other grand tours and classics and ridden with all sorts of big names of the sport. But I think for whatever reason, just realizing where I was and the whole process to get there throughout that race, having reflections of watching the tours a young kid or having people give me a little piece of memorabilia. If they went to visit the tour when I was young, just that full experience of realizing what I'd accomplished was a highlight and... Goosebumps on the Champs-Elysé? Yeah, well I had enough good response because that road is in terrible condition. That's a rough road. But yeah, just finishing that. And I think it was at one point, I think it was on stage eight, 19, we were down to four riders and we attacked up the tourmalade and I kind of set up Zachary and for an attack and just realized that like, wow, I'm at the Tour de France, like attacking on the front, Like that's a long journey from being a young boy in Oregon, watching this race on TV. Drayam is doing home true. And it was a pleasure. For listeners, where can they find you? I know you've got your own podcast. You wanna get that plug? Yeah, so I'm on Instagram at Ian Boswell and my podcast can be found at wahoofitness.com forward slash frontiers. It's called Breakfast with Bos. It's on most major platforms. However you listen to your podcast. going to go binge listen to it now I'm stuck in so I don't it's whiffed well there's yeah a lot of episodes coming out soon so yeah you have plenty sweet and you're a gentle appreciate it what a man Ian Boswell not many people have walked away from a world tour contract he must have the distinction of being one of possibly only a handful who have ever done that really enjoyed that episode of a pile more top quality guests, world tour writers, world class performers lined up over the common months. If you guys jump on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh and please take a look and if you'd be willing to buy me a point, if you'd be willing to buy me a coffee, just to say you know what, I've enjoyed listening to these yarns, I've enjoyed this podcast, that's your chance to do it and the show really really appreciate it and it helps the production quality and it helps me fishing for those guests and bringing you top quality content week after week that's it and back next week with another amazing guest
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