RIDE BEYOND LIMITS AERO OVER ADVERSITY

Left impaired by a freak crash, Xavier Disley refused to surrender his racing ambitions, hears Chris Marshall-Bell

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The crash had seemed innocuous, remembers Xavier Disley. “I was riding along in the group and we came off a long section of sand towards a different sector,” he relives the Battle on the Beach off-road race in South Wales from April 2022. “It all bunched up on the uphill and I didn’t unclip in time because someone slowed down in front of me. I went sideways and toppled into the grass.” There was no sign of any injury. “I didn’t think anything of it and finished the event,” he says.

Twenty-four hours later, however, and back home in the Malvern Hills, Disley began to feel some strange sensations. “On my bike, my back didn’t feel quite right. I had an open TT on the Saturday, and come the weekend my leg and back were so messed up that I was in too much pain to race.” Unbeknown to Disley, owner of Aerocoach and one of the country’s foremost cycling aerodynamics experts, he would never again ride a bike without discomfort. An apparently minor tumble had permanently damaged him.

Almost three years on, Disley is still enjoying success on a bike - only now it often comes in para-cycling. “We’ve all got barriers to becoming a winner: niggles, injuries, limited time to train. It just so happens that my little barrier is some issues with my leg,” the 39-year-old tells me by phone, speaking from his Malvern home. “It was a one-in-a-million thing that happened but it’s not stopped me from riding and competing.”

Permanent damage