There was a guard of honour for Dan Bigham as he exited the track on Friday night, having raced the final four minutes of his journey with the Great Britain national squad.
The 33-year-old retired with a smile on his face and a bronze medal around his neck, won in the individual pursuit, the event he first raced at the UCI Track World Championships in 2018.
As he strolled towards his final round of media interviews, a handful of GB staff formed a tunnel, holding bike wheels in the air for him to walk beneath. It was a small tribute, but a touching one, for a rider who leaves the elite level with a world title, two European titles, and an Olympic silver medal.
“It was emotional, definitely emotional,” Bigham told Cycling Weekly post-race. “When I was warming up, I didn’t feel great, but I’ve done enough of these damn things that you drag yourself kicking and screaming through it. It’s literally the last four minutes I’ll ride at this level, on this stage, and you just look up and you’re like, ‘It’s pretty damn cool.’”
It was fitting, too, that Bigham’s bronze medal ride-off would come against Charlie Tanfield, his long-time teammate and career nemesis in the individual pursuit. The pair finished their final dance with a back-slapping hug, to the applause of the Danish crowd.
“I’ve ridden countless IPs against Chaz, and it’s probably 50-50. I should probably check back and find out for sure,” Bigham said. “The first one was at Nationals, in 2017, we qualified one-two, [Ethan] Hayter was third, one-two in the final. The next year, he kicked my head in. The year after that, he kicked my head in. In 2020, it started to swing the other way, but it’s been tit for tat the last seven years.”
Over the course of that time, Bigham’s relationship with the national team has swung back and forth, too. He parted ways with the track squad in 2018, after his debut IP appearance, when he was told he’d have to choose between his passion for engineering and being a rider. Four years later, he returned to the fold, guiding the team pursuit squad to the world title.
“It’s a shame that when you exit, you’re at the fastest you’ll ever go, the most knowledgeable you’ll ever be, the fittest you’ll ever be,” he said. “But also, the game’s moving forward.”
In the moments before giving his interview, Bigham hung over the fence in the track infield, willing on Josh Charlton in the gold medal ride. The 21-year-old, 12 years his junior, broke the world record in qualifying, but lost out on the title against Italy’s Jonathan Milan, who himself bettered the benchmark in the final, clocking 3:59.153.
“The level’s gone up. It keeps going up. It’s not going to slow down. Everyone keeps asking, ‘Where’s the limit?’ And there isn’t one. It just keeps going,” Bigham said, smiling. “I wouldn’t be surprised if these guys in the next [Olympic] cycle are doing .56/57 [seconds]. It’ll probably happen.”
It was characteristic of the Brit, a man driven by the pursuit of speed, not to lament his own retirement, but rather be excited by the next generation. He, too, hopes his story – the tale of an engineering master’s graduate who went to the Olympics and won a silver medal – will leave a legacy.
“Physiologically, I’m not shit, but I’m also not a specimen, and that’s what it takes to be at this level,” he said.
And yet, in a sport of other-worldly talent, Bigham proved that mortals can graft their way to the top with tireless dedication. “I hope I can champion that,” he said. “Hopefully I can be an inspiration, nonetheless, to all those people, especially at the younger ages, because you can influence so much over time.
“The biggest learning I’ve found is that aerobic power, which is the biggest thing for every cycling event, takes time. Not just a little bit of time, but years and years and years of building up,” he continued. “There’s nothing better than when you’re 18 to have that in front of you to know that’s the case. When you’re 33, I don’t have the years in front of me to do that.”
Instead, Bigham is dedicating the next years of his life to helping others get faster. He’ll start a new role as head of engineering with WorldTour team Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe next year, and already he’s brimming with ideas to test out. Earlier this week, he sent off a 6,500-word project specification, outlining just some of his plans.
“There are certain things in engineering that I’ve wanted to commit to in my whole cycling career, but I haven’t had the time because of the selfishness of wanting to ride my own bike,” he said. “Now, freeing up 20-30 hours a week is going to give me a lot more time to action those engineering ideas, and to do them before other people do, and hopefully bring a whole lot of performance to everybody else.
“All the knowledge I’ve accumulated, it’s so much easier for me to pass that on than it was for me to learn that. And that’s part of the art of life, isn’t it? People have mentors, they learn from those who’ve gone before them, and that’s the role I’m going into, that’s what I’m looking forward to.”
And so, with his black and fluorescent pink Pinarello bike in tow, Bigham closed a chapter in the wide-ranging book of his career. The next one, he hopes, will be equally as exciting.
