As a teenager Brendan Johnston had a fairly common dream, turning his sporting passion into a profession, but what wasn’t as common was that he also had the talent and commitment to make a life as a pro-cyclist a realistic proposition. Though, just as the 17-year-old the multi-discipline rider hit the stage when he could chase the international opportunities in earnest, a cancer diagnosis led to a quick and unavoidable deviation.
“I had to mature real quick as a person and also as an athlete,” the 31 year old Johnston told Cyclingnews when looking back to that period of his life. “Having your health is taken for granted and I didn’t really consider so much that as an athlete you need full health and no one really, I guess, appreciates that until it goes away.”
Before he was diagnosed with testicular cancer Johnston’s complete focus as a teenager had been on making it as a cyclist, with the rider getting set to represent Australia in junior category at the cross-country mountain bike race at a home World Championships in 2009. He determinedly went on to race in Canberra, just a couple of weeks after surgery, before then settling into an extended period of fighting the disease.
It was unsurprisingly a perspective altering experience for the young rider who had been so used to relying on his impressive power and endurance to take him to the front of the field. That stark reminder that something as important as optimum health can’t always be taken for granted meant the focussed Johnston added another career option. It was one which, as he put it, meant that he could “be somewhat set up at least and didn’t have to be a high-performing human to do it”.
That didn’t mean the end of the journey toward becoming a professional cyclist, just a longer more winding path to make it to the same destination.
“I’m pretty grateful for the decisions I made at that point,” said Johnston who has spent the last 12 years working full-time as an electrician. “I kind of did the best I could with what I had and now I’ve found myself in a position where I can, after how ever many years – 15 or 17 – finally call myself a pro.”
That realisation of Johnston’s teenage dream of riding his bike full-time overseas has come thanks to the evolution of a discipline barely on the radar back when he started out – gravel.
No longer a side hustle
Johnston may have deviated from his initial cycling plan of going all out to pursue an international cycling career, either on…
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