SMELLED LIKE TEEN SPIRIT

lot of teenage boys can say their world turned with a kiss on a dancefloor or perhaps the first guitar chord they ever heard from a soon-to-be favourite band but not many would attribute the same life-altering potential to a cycling magazine. Yet I still remember the place, Lichfield WHSmith, and the date, April 1999. Serendipitously, it was the same day I was being interviewed for an EU-funded programme that would take me to work in Italy for the first time - another future-defining event in my then 18-year-old-life. But it was upon locking eyes with a photo of Marco’s launch issue (Pantani: “Being mad is what keeps me alive”; “Ullrich in Mallorca: Fat Boy Slims Down” - very much strap-lines for another age) that, I know this sounds sad, I felt resonance for the first time.