The crash had seemed innocuous, remembers Xavier Disley. “I was riding along in the group and we came off a long section of sand towards a different sector,” he relives the Battle on the Beach off-road race in South Wales from April 2022. “It all bunched up on the uphill and I didn’t unclip in time because someone slowed down in front of me. I went sideways and toppled into the grass.” There was no sign of any injury. “I didn’t think anything of it and finished the event,” he says.

Twenty-four hours later, however, and back home in the Malvern Hills, Disley began to feel some strange sensations. “On my bike, my back didn’t feel quite right. I had an open TT on the Saturday, and come the weekend my leg and back were so messed up that I was in too much pain to race.” Unbeknown to Disley, owner of Aerocoach and one of the country’s foremost cycling aerodynamics experts, he would never again ride a bike without discomfort. An apparently minor tumble had permanently damaged him.

Almost three years on, Disley is still enjoying success on a bike – only now it often comes in para-cycling. “We’ve all got barriers to becoming a winner: niggles, injuries, limited time to train. It just so happens that my little barrier is some issues with my leg,” the 39-year-old tells me by phone, speaking from his Malvern home. “It was a one-in-a-million thing that happened but it’s not stopped me from riding and competing.”

This article was published in Cycling Weekly magazine in January 2025. You can read the full article here.