A couple of years ago, Archie Atkinson sent an email to one of his old school teachers. He wanted her to know she had inspired him – but not in the way she might have hoped. “This teacher told me that cycling would never get me anywhere in life and that I should focus on my education,” he recalls. Atkinson, 17 at the time, took it as an ultimatum: it was either cycling or school. He made his decision straight away. “I told her, ‘I appreciate your feedback’, and I never went back to school again,” he says. It was the last the teacher heard from him – until the email.
Atkinson sent the update just as he was about to travel to Paris for the 202
