This article was originally published in Issue 115.
Charlie Craig went to bed on January 20, 2017 after a perfectly normal day at school in the village of Hayfield, in the heart of the picturesque Peak District. It had been an unremarkable day, apart from the notable inauguration of Donald Trump as the US’s 45th President.
His mother Sarah went into her son’s room the following morning to rouse the 15-year-old budding cyclo-cross star. She wondered whether he was having a lazy Saturday morning, but it was most unlike this very active young man. Charlie did not wake. He had suffered a fatal heart attack during the night, the result of an undiagnosed pre-existing heart condition.
Just one week later, Tom Pidcock led an unprecedented Team GB clean sweep of the medals in the juniors’ race at the World Cyclo-Cross Championships. As Ben Turner, Dan Tulett and Pidcock – all friends and team-mates of Charlie in the tight-knit British cross scene – approached the finish line in the snow and ice of Luxembourg, they pointed to their black armbands. Tears flowed on the podium. They raced for Charlie.
At the funeral one week later, an overflowing church congregation comprising family, schoolmates and cycling friends from across the country heard what we already knew about Charlie from grief-stricken speakers. Charlie was a special kid: brimming with life, creative, chatty and bubbly, always with a ready smile.
And much like his dad Nick, a multiple national champion in cyclo-cross and mountain biking, a very handy bike rider too, who shared his father’s sense of adventure on two wheels. It wasn’t all about racing for the Craigs. Packing a bag and tent and heading off to explore the mountains was how the father and son would often spend their holidays.
Young friends at Charlie’s funeral sported mini knitted pom-poms on their lapels, in honour of his favourite headwear. His smile was never broader than when peeking out from beneath a big bobble hat. Hayfield’s knitters had been frantically producing hundreds of woolly orbs that decorated St Matthew’s church that day.
Five years on and the pain for Sarah and Nick, and Charlie’s brother Thomas – also a talented racer in the British Cycling system as a junior – remains undiminished. Time does not heal when you have lost a child.
“You can’t compare child loss with losing anybody else: mother, father, auntie, uncle,” Sarah tells me. “We were told that, and we know…