We Got The A-Team Out That Day

Michael Broadwith tells James Shrubsall how his towering End-to-End record success was built on support from family, friends and even Gethin Butler, the man whose time he obliterated.

On the eve of his now feted Land’s End to John o’ Groats record attempt, Michael Broadwith sat on the seafront at Sennen Cove, Cornwall, and stared through a beautiful June evening at the horizon. Cradling his eight-month-old baby girl Poppy, he considered the enormity of the task ahead and felt, above all, grateful. Grateful because in the background his wife Helen and a selection of close friends and relatives were busy in a last-minute meeting, talking, planning — all for him.

“I’m well aware how lucky I am to have that network of people around me to make it happen,” he says two months after the attempt, in which he took nearly 40 minutes off Gethin Butler’s 17-year-old record for a new mark of 43:25.13. “We got the A-team out that day.”

“Anyone who knows Mike will tell you he’s a really amiable guy,” says crew member and Broadwith’s team-mate at Arctic-Tacx Tim Bayley. “Lots of different people came together for him from different aspects of his life and everyone was there because actually they really genuinely like him.”

The meeting finished, Broadwith sat down to dinner with his crew, ate sausage and mash, drank beer, and retired to bed.

Originally from a rowing background at Oxford University, it was only a two-wheeled graduation present from his parents that turned Broadwith on to cycling.

“I went down to the track at Welwyn, just five minutes from where my parents live,” he recalls. “Welwyn Wheelers got me into track racing, which I still love, it’s one of my real passions.”

But it wasn’t long before Broadwith discovered a talent for time trials. Riding for Arctic-Shorter Rochford, he did well at distances from 10 miles upwards, though 100 seemed to be his best.