‘ Please take this thing seriously '

Sports medicine specialist Dr Laurence Gant understands better than most why cyclists should be cautious about Covid-19

- David Bradford

Having spent 20 years caring for the critically unwell, Dr. Laurence Gant now specializes in looking after the obscenely fit. Team Sky riders were his main professional focus in 2018 before he transferred his talents to football as head of medical for Tottenham Hotspur’s youth academy. When Covid-19 arrived, it presented little threat to the teenage prodigies under Gant’s care. Besides, all games were off.

“When football shut down in March, I went back to work in the NHS,” he tells me by video call from his home in Woodford Green, London, recounting how he was tasked to care for a subset of seriously unwell patients for whom mechanical ventilation had been ruled out. For these patients, in the early days of the pandemic, there were no proven therapies. “It was horrible,” he says bluntly. “Everybody I looked after died.”

Once the pressure on the NHS stabilized and football kicked off again, Gant returned to his regular job – and got back on his bike. Commuting to and from Spurs’ academy HQ, 40km a day, is the bedrock of the 54-year-old’s schedule, plus group rides at the weekend. He was steadily closing in on a target set the previous year, to hit an FTP of 300W. What was the motivation?

“My wife!” he laughs. “Her FTP might not beat mine, but she’s a hell of a lot quicker up hills.” He recounts being trounced by wife Cathy up French cols while on holiday in 2019. “I knew at that point I had to do something.”

The hard-pedaling doctor consolidated his fitness gains through autumn and was, because of his close involvement with aspiring Premier League footballers, being tested regularly for Covid-19. All came back negative – until 21 December.