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Image: Supplied
Image: Supplied

SportsFebruary 23, 2022

An early retirement from Cycling NZ

Image: Supplied
Image: Supplied

Track cyclist Jordan Castle left the New Zealand team last year. He tells Henry Rounce how he found hope in moving on from elite sport.

In August 2021, Jordan Castle sold everything he owned. He was moving overseas and only needed one thing: a track bike.   

Castle had been part of the Cycling New Zealand team for the past seven years as a sprinter who specialised in an event called the keirin. Most people will recognise it as the one where a motorcycle that looks like a Dominos delivery bike zooms around the velodrome, with up to six riders following closely behind.

The motorbike gradually increases its speed, and with about two-and-a-half laps to go, it swings off and everyone fights it out to be the first across the line. It’s frantic and physical, like rugby on bikes, and Castle is a former Oceania champion.  

The 26-year-old has only known one path – around a velodrome – since he was a teenager. But in the middle of last year, that round track led to a crossroads. Castle had been training himself into the ground, without getting to compete in any races, as international events ground to a halt for the New Zealand team during the pandemic. At the same time, he’d been offered a fruitful contract for a brand-new keirin league in Japan.

Japan is the mecca of keirin. The event was developed there in 1948 for betting purposes and has spawned into a multi-billion-dollar industry. It’s a bucket list item for cyclists looking to make a buck.

Castle decided to go. It had always been a dream of his. It meant leaving behind the elite environment he’d surrounded himself in, riding away from his emotional support network, coaches, funding, everything.

He packed up his newly-purchased bike, and in August, headed to the airport. With the world spread out in front of him, he boarded the plane and found out his long-time friend and fellow cyclist Olivia Podmore had died in a suspected suicide. 

“We’d had our fair share of friendly tiffs and spats, but when push came to shove, she was always there. Every video I have that cracks me up on my phone, Olivia’s doing something stupid in it or laughing in the background. She’s been there for a lot of the big moments,” he says.

Podmore was a talented track cyclist herself and competed at the Rio Olympics. Her death left Castle “pretty messed up” for the first six weeks of his new life overseas. He was away from his support network and strangely distanced from the reverberations that followed her passing in Aotearoa. 

“It was really tough, but I used it almost as a challenge to myself. I thought if I’m here, I’m just going to live 110%; because I can, because I have the opportunity, because I wished Liv was there,” he says.

Looking forward, he wanted to say yes to everything that came his way. It was an extension of the freedom he felt after leaving Cycling New Zealand. 

“The majority of my experience there was pretty good, there’s some great people on board and I wouldn’t be here today without them. But at the same time, I really struggled with how controlled we were. To leave and be like ‘everything’s on me now’, yeah it was daunting, but it was also liberating,” he says.

Image: supplied

He left behind an organisation under intense scrutiny, with Cycling New Zealand the subject of an independent inquiry following Podmore’s death. In the months that followed, a crucial sponsor pulled out, and the chief executive, high performance director and sprint coach resigned. 

Away from Cambridge though, Castle could now race wherever he liked, whenever he liked. There were events every weekend across Europe and he helped himself. 

Just when he was getting up to speed, he hit another crossroads. His Japanese keirin deal, the main reason for his overseas trip, was cancelled due to Covid-19 complications. His income for the next eight months was gone. It was a “spanner in the works” that threatened to send him home. 

Instead, he shifted to Palma in Spain with a friend who had also gotten stuck in Europe on his way to Japan. They set up their own training base: booking out track and gym time and creating their own programme. It was just the two of them, grinding and growing in the pursuit of their craft.

Without any funding, it wasn’t easy to survive. He started moving wedding furniture for a guy he met on the island, and the prize money from local races helped too. His loyal sponsor Treadlite in Cambridge had his back, while close friend and Tokyo Olympian Holly Edmondston set up a GoFundMe while he slept to keep him going. 

His dedication was rewarded in November, when he was picked for the new UCI Track Champions League. It was track cycling’s attempt to modernise the sport: slashing the usual weekend of racing into consumable one-night events across Europe. Only a selection of elite riders were invited to take part in the glitzy five-round series, which thrummed with energy and played out under bright lights and swirling electronic music.  

“I got to meet some of my heroes, I got to race against some of the fastest guys in history, every week for a month. It was just this amazing atmosphere of top-tier racing, but everyone was just so stoked to be there that you couldn’t help catch the buzz,” he says.

It was easy to get caught up in the hype. He staggered off his bike and collapsed from exhaustion after one race in London, stumbling around with the elegance of a new-born giraffe. The results didn’t go his way, but it didn’t matter, because he was having the time of his life. 

As the Champions League flashed by, he started mapping his future. The Oceania Track Cycling Championships were coming up, along with the Commonwealth Games.

He’d been in touch with Cycling New Zealand about returning to the team. He wanted to find out what their selection policy was for the Games and how he might be able to fit in. He was after a list of boxes to tick, so he could go hunting for a pen.

They couldn’t give him a straight answer. Castle thinks it might have been because they didn’t have a high-performance director, or a head coach, or a CEO. Covid-19 had also destroyed any racing plans for the foreseeable future. Graciously, he doesn’t think it’s anyone’s fault.  

“I had to sit back and think about my future. Did I want to essentially fight a system for the next three years, all for a big fat maybe because of Covid? Or did I want to be happy?” he says.

There was no one at home inspiring him to return, he couldn’t race in Japan, and moving overseas had opened his eyes to a life he didn’t know existed. Living and training by himself for the past eight weeks had given him plenty of time to think. In the end, he chose retirement.

His last race was in Portugal at the end of January. He tried to soak up as much as he could and spend time with the people who’d helped him out along the way. The sprint didn’t go so well, and he got knocked off in the keirin. As he’d done all trip though, he got back up and walked away with a smile on his face.

The track bike has now been sold, and he’s moving to Whistler in Canada. Before he picks up a snowboard, he wants to look back. His time in elite sport was often rocky, but he wants to acknowledge some of the people who helped him out at High Performance Sport and Cycling New Zealand. 

“It wasn’t all great, you only have to read the newspaper to keep up to date with some of the shit that’s gone on, but there’s a lot of good and a lot of growth. There’s a lot of things I got to experience that no one else will, and for that, I’m super grateful,” he says.

As he leaves cycling behind, his message is one of hope.

“It doesn’t matter what sport you’re in, or what your situation is, if you really want it you can go and make it happen. My heart goes out to my team-mates back in New Zealand who have no real direction. If I could tell them anything, or if I could tell Liv anything, it would be you can create your own happiness, you can chase your dreams. It’s all doable.”

Keep going!
All Blacks captain Richie McCaw and PM John Key have a beer following a Bledisloe Cup match, 2009 (Photo: Ross Land/Getty Images; additional design by Tina Tiller)
All Blacks captain Richie McCaw and PM John Key have a beer following a Bledisloe Cup match, 2009 (Photo: Ross Land/Getty Images; additional design by Tina Tiller)

OPINIONSportsFebruary 1, 2022

World Rugby’s beer problem

All Blacks captain Richie McCaw and PM John Key have a beer following a Bledisloe Cup match, 2009 (Photo: Ross Land/Getty Images; additional design by Tina Tiller)
All Blacks captain Richie McCaw and PM John Key have a beer following a Bledisloe Cup match, 2009 (Photo: Ross Land/Getty Images; additional design by Tina Tiller)

Rugby and alcohol sponsorship have been linked for decades, despite problem drinking being prevalent among players. It’s time for World Rugby to pick sides, argues Dylan Cleaver.

This story first appeared on The Bounce, a Substack newsletter by Dylan Cleaver.

Last week saw the release of the World Rugby-commissioned NZ Rugby Health Report, carried out by AUT University and subtitled “the health of retired NZ male rugby players compared to non-contact sports and the NZ population”. It’s an interesting document that I can’t give full justice to in this space (spoiler alert: it doesn’t once mention CTE) but I want to hone in on what I view as rugby’s paradox.

Broadly, the results of the study showed that during their playing career, higher percentages of the rugby groups reported having sustained concussions – 94% of elite players had been concussed, 82% of community or grassroots players had, while just 26% of those in non-contact sports had.

Nearly three times as many elite rugby players had injuries requiring hospitalisation compared to non-contact sport participants; nearly three times as many rugby players had suffered career-ending injuries when compared to non-contact sportspeople.

There was more than a one-in-three chance that elite rugby players would develop osteoarthritis, compared to a little more than one in 20 for non-contact sportspeople.

In terms of general health, however, all sportspeople, including rugby players, reported better health, were more likely to be in long-term relationships, generally had higher incomes and were less likely to smoke cigarettes compared to New Zealand males in general.

But that’s not what I want to focus on.

Instead, I point you to this finding:

Rugby players had higher levels of hazardous alcohol consumption (38% elite, 40% community) in retirement than non-contact athletes (25%).

This is a developing narrative within rugby circles and it is hugely problematic for the sport.

My most dedicated readers might remember my sneering cynicism at World Rugby’s brain health initiative that pointed to the 12 factors associated with dementia, while never once pointing out that only one of them was a common factor in all cases of CTE – head impacts.

The subtext, read by those at the coalface fighting for those players who are suffering from early-onset dementia and probable CTE: it’s not rugby that caused you or your loved one’s condition, it’s lifestyle issues (read, drinking).

This is admittedly a simplistic way of looking at it, but what else are you meant to take out of it when it is launched at the same time as rugby’s administrators are facing a lawsuit that argues they did not adequately inform their players about the risks of head impacts? There is a chance, possibly even a likelihood, that there is a synergistic effect between repeated exposure to head impacts and binge drinking that increases further the chances of developing dementia illnesses but again, it doesn’t take away from the fact there is only one common factor in CTE – repeated exposure to head impacts.

This latest study could feed into this narrative, but here’s the problem for World Rugby: they can’t have it both ways.

They cannot on the one hand say, “dementia among our former players is tragic, alcohol is a factor” and on the other hand go to the market and say, “Asahi has replaced Heineken as the official beer sponsor of the Rugby World Cup”.

Steinlager has been the name on the side of the All Blacks since 1986.

England’s premier rugby competition was, for years, the Guinness Premiership.

Europe’s premier rugby competition was, for years, the Heineken Cup.

It’s hard to imagine the Highlanders without Speight’s, or the Springboks without Castle Lager.

Rugby and beer are inextricably linked yet alcohol abuse has been cited as an issue in rugby players since the mid-90s. There have been academic papers written on it.

In their article ‘Alcohol Sponsorship and New Zealand Regional Rugby Unions: Crisis Point or Business as Usual?’ (Gee, Batty & Millar, 2020), the authors state: “It is undeniable that beer and sport are key signifiers of masculine identity. The sport of rugby has a long association with drinking culture, hegemonic masculinity, and alcohol sponsorship. Historically, rugby was [a] male-dominated and male-defined space where men confirmed their masculinity through physical combat [and] the consumption of alcohol.”

This latest study, authored by professors Patria Hume and Alice Theadom, associate professor Gwyn Lewis (all AUT) and New Zealand Rugby chief scientist Dr Ken Quarrie, graphically illustrates the high levels of “hazardous” drinking of former players. Two in five players are problem drinkers as defined by the World Health Organization.

World Rugby itself has implicitly stated that alcohol use is a contributing factor in dementia in former players.

Surely the answer is simple then: either stop taking alcohol money, or stop trying to shift the blame for the long-term cognitive issues suffered by players away from where it really lies – with repetitive head injuries. At the moment World Rugby is trying to use alcohol when it suits them, and blame it when it suits them.

But wait there's more!