‘As a professional athlete, you have to be very selfish’: Mark Renshaw on cycling’s big egos, Tour de France

Mark Renshaw says life as a professional cyclist was selfish by definition. On the eve of Le Tour he discusses big egos, his commentating gig and why women’s racing is as exciting as men’s.

Insider: Mark Renshaw

As a professional cyclist for 15 years you raced all over the world, including in the Athens Olympics and the Tour de France. You’ll be commentating on next month’s Tour de France for SBS. You’ve come a long way from your hometown of Bathurst in NSW... It’s been kind of a huge circle for me. I left Bathurst when I was quite young and I’ve now come back to Bathurst with my own family.

In your career you went from track racing to epic road races. What does it take to compete at an elite level? I went from track races that lasted anywhere between five minutes and 45 minutes, to road cycling where you’re racing for up to six or seven hours at a time, over many days. In road racing you’re using a completely different set of muscles, and you’ve got to have much more endurance. But when you get to the end of the stage, you still have to be fast. It takes a lot of years to develop that endurance and speed, and to be able to race over three weeks.

It’s a sport brimming with egos. How hard is it to bring the egos together and still cycle asa team? My role was always as a lead-out man [creating a high-speed slipstream for the team’s designated sprinter to tuck into], but I was also a team captain. When you’re on the road, a captain makes the decisions but riding as a team comes down to recruitment. You not only recruit riders off their results, but you recruit riders off their personality, their team ethics, their motivation, and you build a team. In cycling you race anywhere from 80 to 100 days a year. You have 30 riders in a team so you have to bring those big egos together and you have to make sure that they all complement each other.

Is the Tour de France the hardest race in world cycling? Absolutely. It’s the hardest race because it has the best field on the start line every year. It has the hardest stages and the hardest weather.

How difficult is it to simultaneously maintain a cohesive family life with children and a cycling career? Really difficult. As a professional, you really have to be selfish because you have to exclude yourself from a lot of things that happen in day to day life. I missed my second son’s birth because I was in Europe racing. He arrived two weeks early. If all the plans had worked out then I would have been there. But, you know, things don’t go to plan with children. You have to make the decision to be selfish because you only get a 15- or 16-year career. You don’t get a second chance to come back to it if you just tap out.

Why has it taken the world so long to twig to the fact that the female version of Le Tour is just as exciting? I think now we have so many journalists and media that it has created more interest in the women’s event.I think more women are getting into the sport, and it has become more professional – there are extra teams coming in and now they’ve got more funding because sponsors know if they jump on board they’ll get really good coverage.

Do you still oil up the bike and go for a cycle? I probably do 200-300km a week. A few years ago, that sort of distance was only one or two days’ training. If I get that during the whole week now, I’m really happy.

Coverage of the Tour de France and the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift begins on SBS and SBS On Demand on July 1.