Winds Of Change

“Chris Boardman’s new wind tunnel,” as it has become almost  universally known, has its long-awaited opening later this month. James Shrubsall got an exclusive tour from the man himself.

- James Shrubsall

I ’ve done it. You’ve almost certainly done it. Chris Boardman has definitely done it — in his case to great success. I’m talking about getting aero. Whether it’s simply tucking into the drops to gain an extra mile an hour, or spending hours of expensive wind tunnel time in pursuit of Olympic medals, if you’re a cyclist you know what it is to cheat the wind. But very few of us know what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, or even if it’s doing any good. Thankfully Boardman, for whom aero advancement has been a life’s work, is about to have if not the last word, then the first word in a game-changing conversation that affects, and benefits, us all.

The Boardman Performance Centre (BPC), due to open at the end of this month on a small retail park in a quiet corner of Worcestershire, looks every inch a Boardman product from the outside, all snazzy wood cladding and stylised logos, but as anyone who’s been caught out by a rogue liqueur chocolate knows, it’s what’s inside that counts. And at the heart of the BPC beat the blades of a 2.2m fan that drives a wind tunnel that for the first time in, well, forever, puts affordable high-fidelity aero testing at the hands of the average club rider.

“I don’t get overexcited, I’m careful about using superlatives, but this will revolutionise cycling in Britain,” enthuses Boardman, looking through the construction fence at his new baby. “You’ve heard the figure a lot, you know, 80 percent of your energy’s pushing air out the way, but you test power to the watt, speed to the tenth of the km an hour. And then for aero you’ve got hearsay and articles in magazines. It’s absolutely frickin’ crazy,” he protests, sounding almost offended that people haven’t had affordable access to the best aero advice.