“In the last couple of years, the hormone treatment has really tested me,” Allan Peiper says. Prostate cancer’s grip – sometimes loose, other times firm – on him is approaching its decade anniversary. “The radiotherapy has been really hard; chemotherapy has been an absolute nightmare. It has a big effect on your mental and emotional state.” The daily cycle has often gone something like this: “In tears all of the time, not wanting to get out of bed, not enjoying life, struggling with everything because your system is totally shut down. You’re a mess as a human being. No one wants to live like that.”

The Australian, a constant figure in the upper echelons of cycling since the 1980s, has on occasion questioned whether he wanted to live at all, he says: “There have been moments in the middle of treatment where my body has been falling apart and I’ve thought, ‘you know what, I’m just up the hill from the railway tracks. If I just went there…’” The 63-year-old pauses. “It’s not like I was ever going to do that, but it’s the sort of thing you think about because your mind gets so clouded.”

It was November 2014 that Peiper – a winner of 20 professional races during his career – was first diagnosed with prostate cancer, the most frequent type of cancer in men. “It was earth-shattering. It was disbelief, apathy. Then grief. I felt like the rug had been pulled from under me. How long would I have left? So many questions and I didn’t understand anything. It was very scary.”

This article was published in Cycling Weekly in February 2024. You can read the full article here.