‘I couldn’t put my socks on but I was still training’ – cyclist Joe Truman hoping his two-year career-threatening injury nightmare is finally over

The 24-year-old Hampshire-born sprinter was in the thick of the selection fight for the Tokyo Olympics – rivalling Jason Kenny’s times on track – when he began to feel back pain in the summer of 2019.

Initial scans failed to identify the problem before the pandemic threw Truman another curveball as access to support was dramatically reduced.

‘It got to the point in July last year where I physically couldn’t put my socks on, but I was still training,’ he said. ‘Obviously on my part that’s pretty stupid, but I was so motivated by getting to Tokyo that I looked past it.’

A fresh scan in November 2020 finally identified the bulging disc at the root of the problem and Truman underwent surgery.

Though he still feels some minor discomfort, he looks better than his old self already, setting a personal best in training this summer.

‘I think I was so used to training with the pain that as soon as I was training without it, I could almost go to another level of technique because I wasn’t scared of that pain anymore,’ he said.

The mental battle has been just as hard as the physical one.

‘As an athlete you always think it’s not going to happen to me,’ Truman said. ‘As soon as I started realising the injury could potentially end my career, that it was a defining moment, it hit me pretty hard.

‘The physios said they’d never seen an image of a spine like mine, that I needed to get the surgery or retire, really.

‘That was tough because we were building up to the Olympics. I was pretty close to beating Jason up until the injury, so then there was the regret of continuing when there was still pain. There was the hindsight that I shouldn’t have gone so hard.

‘That was mixed with lockdown. That was tough because everyone else was at home doing their training but I was missing out. That was pretty grim.’

Truman competed in his first event in more than 20 months when he raced at the European Championships in Grenchen, Switzerland a little over a week ago, part of a team sprint that finished fourth while taking 12th in the individual event.

With much of the Tokyo team taking a post-Olympic break, Truman now heads to Roubaix as the senior rider in a young sprint squad that also includes Ali Fielding, Hayden Norris and Hamish Turnbull.

‘Every race is a bonus now,’ he added. ‘At one point I genuinely thought I wouldn’t be riding anymore.

‘At the Euros I really just went out there to enjoy it. I think it was the first team sprint day I truly enjoyed. In the past I always worried there were others who could go faster, but this time I treated it as a bonus.’

Petersfield-born Truman – who won Team Sprint silver at both the 2016 European Championships and the 2018 Commonwealth Games – only took up cycling in a bid to improve his football fitness.

He was a member of US Portsmouth youth teams and was a good enough left winger to have had trials with Pompey and Reading.

‘When I was playing football I was spending three or four nights in Portsmouth every week training,’ he told The News last year.

‘I was quite fast in terms of sprinting, but I kept on getting tired towards the end of each half. I took up cycling as a way to get myself a bit fitter and found I enjoyed it.

‘I ended up at the Mountbatten Centre and joined the Portsmouth School of Cycle Racing. I had trials for the Under-16 British team, I kept progressing, and in 2015 I was offered a place on the British Academy team in Manchester.’