Cyclist tells of battle to beat bulimia

OLYMPIC cycling star Craig MacLean has revealed he suffered from eating disorder bulimia as he struggled to break into the sport's top ranks.

Desperate to succeed in his early 20s, the Scot, who will find out next month if he is in the British squad for the Beijing Games in China, would regularly binge-eat and then go through several days of starvation to keep his weight down.

MacLean, who has since won nine medals in cycling events, including Commonwealth gold, tells of his bulimia in a new book Heroes, Villains And Velodromes. Extracts are being published by Scotland on Sunday today.

The Highlander becomes the latest in a long list of sports stars, including fellow GB medallist Chris Boardman and racing driver David Coulthard, to confess to eating disorders in their quest for sporting glory.

Earlier this year, former deputy prime minister John Prescott also confessed to bulimia while serving in the Government.

MacLean, from Grantown-on-Spey, first came to prominence as a young BMX rider. Although he dropped off the competitive cycling scene in his late teens and early 20s, he returned to the sport in the early 1990s.

One of his supporters was David Hoy, father of Scots Olympic gold medallist Chris Hoy, who told the author of the book, Richard Moore, that he was impressed by the way MacLean was restricting his diet as he prepared for road and mountain bike races.

"When David Hoy's praise is put to him, MacLean winces a little, because his close attention to diet, though it might have been interpreted as a sign of his commitment to his sport, actually masked a serious problem," Moore writes.

"Partly because I got into cycling to lose weight, my diet was something I was into," MacLean says. "But it became something quite detrimental. It developed into an eating disorder."

MacLean was at the time trying to make a name for himself on the long-distance road-racing circuit where the weight of riders can be crucial, unlike the short-burst sprint track events that he later became famous for.

"I was kind of reluctant to specialise in track cycling, to be honest – road racing was my main thing, mountain biking as well, because weight was a key thing to me.

"But I was fighting genetics, because I was never particularly light and I struggled to keep the weight off. It just turned into a bit of an issue for me."

MacLean, who is now 36 and still one of the best cycling sprinters in the world, says that in 1993, although he had switched to track events, he was in the grip of the eating disorder as he still hoped to make it as a road racer.

"It was a form of bulimia," he says. "It was never diagnosed, and it's not something I've ever talked about; I just know myself that's what it was.

"I would starve myself from two to three days, not having any food whatsoever, and train at the same time. When I eventually admitted it to myself, I got control of it. But it took a year and a half."

The 1993 season, he says, was "probably the worst" of his life. "I was doing a little bit on the track by then, but my performance suffered. I would starve, binge-eat, starve, binge-eat.

"My form fluctuated and my weight actually increased as well. There was a point in 1994 when I realised I had a problem.

"I was at the British Track Championships, which were a week long, and because I had to cook, buying in the food I needed, I got to grips with it. I had to set myself some rules and targets, telling myself what I can and can't do. It still took a long time."

By 1995, when he started concentrating on track events – track cyclists can afford to be more muscular and bulkier – he was overcoming the disorder. His natural build, combined with the muscle type most suited to short bursts of acceleration, were what he needed for a successful track career.

He was first picked for the GB squad in 1996 and has now enjoyed more than a decade at the top of his chosen sport. He became one of the 'Sydney generation', the cyclists who began the current run of British success on the track at the 2000 Olympic Games.

He will take part in final squad trials for the 2008 Games early next month – he missed out on the World Championships earlier this year through injury.

MacLean has now won praise for being open about his bulimia, as it will help other men to acknowledge their condition. Up to 12% of people suffering eating disorders in the UK are male.

Mary George, the spokeswoman for Beat Eating Disorders, said: "Anything that raises awareness of this condition, particularly among males, is a good thing and we would applaud Craig MacLean for talking about it openly in public."