Dear Lowndesy

Dear Lowndesy / Lown-Town / Lown-dez,

We first met each other in Quebec, Canada. You had been there racing (and winning) all year; I was in town for the weekend to race the GP Quebec. Lachie Norris — my teammate who you knew well — was meeting you for a ride, to catch up and check out where you had been living all year. I came along for ride too.

The first thing I remember seeing was your big and impossibly wide smile. A smile that never seemed to fade. And then your arms, outstretched by your side, your hands open wide as if you were ready for an embrace.

“Boys!” you yelled, as you rode towards us.

I remember feeling your energy as soon as you arrived; it was like an electric spark, a contagious sense of joy radiated from your tall, muscular frame. In a matter of seconds, you lifted us all up.

I didn’t know you, but you rode straight up to me — smiling, of course — and shook my hand, introducing yourself.

“I’m excited to be teammates next year man!” you said.

I found myself suddenly excited too, even though I had only just met you. But you had that effect, I soon discovered, on everyone and everything in your life.

From that very first moment I met you, I noticed how you managed to squeeze everything out of life like a sponge, ensuring that you got the most out of every moment and every second, until the very last drop.

That was you. Living life to it’s fullest.

The next year we were teammates. Your overwhelming positivity, your love of life and of people, and your sense of adventure, continued to shine through with the more time that I spent with you. Even when it was a seemingly tough time for you, you managed to keep positive: there were silver linings to everything, life is great after all, you’d say, and there is no time to get too down about things.

You didn’t have any time for the bullshit in life, and that’s what I loved about you. You wanted to have fun, and didn’t want to get stuck on the little negative things that most people let consume them. You had an outlook on life that I know so many people envied, and it was one that made the world a better place.

One night last year, we were rooming together in the team house in Belgium. It was still 35 degrees at 11 pm. You were sick as a dog, coughing up god-knows-what. The room was sticky with sweat and it felt like we were suffocating on each other’s breath.

I complained and said how shit it was being there in that weather. How terrible the bunk beds were. How it was a joke that there was no airconditioning… And you just smiled back at me.

“Come on mate,” you said, “it could be worse.”

You then started playing music, got up, and began dancing around the room. It was 11pm and everyone else was asleep. At the time, I thought you were mad. But that wasn’t the case at all. You were just finding those silver linings, grabbing hold of that joy in moment when I couldn’t see any.

Above all, mate, you knew what was important in life. As I got to know you more through the year, I realised that, more than anything else, your family was the most important thing to you. They were your whole world, and I am sure you were and still are at the centre of theirs. My thoughts and love goes out to your whole family in this unimaginably tough time. You loved them more than anything else, and I am sure that gives them strength.

You’ve touched so many lives in such a short time. From all those in the cycling world: the incredible community from your hometown of Bendigo, to your adopted European home of Girona — a city and its people that you fell in love with, and which embraced you with open arms in return. No matter who you’ve come across, or where you’ve been, you have left such an important and indelible mark on all those lives and all those places.

Only last week we managed to catch up at the Super Crit in Melbourne. You greeted me with your trademark smile and that electric energy. We traded our stories from the year. You reminded me that I am batting way above my average with my girlfriend, as you always used to do. You told me how you met a girl in Spain, that you can’t wait to get back there. You said I should come over next year, catch up and hang out just like last year. “I’ll try,” I said, “maybe I will make an extra effort to come over if you win today.”

Then you had to go and warm up with your teammates. The race was starting soon. We shook hands again and nodded to each other.

“Catch you soon mate,” you said.

And then we raced together one last time.

It breaks my heart that we can’t create any more memories together. It fills me with so much anger and sadness that you’ve been taken from us far too early. These things shouldn’t happen. Yet, I am happy and feel so lucky to have had you come into my life, if only for the last couple of years. It is those memories I’ll cherish forever.

Goodbye mate, we’ll fucking miss you x