Leigh Egan: The storied life of Shepparton’s first BMX star turned business owner

The towering cyclist first picked up a BMX (bicycle motocross) in the late 1970s.

For the next couple of years, Egan fell in and out of interest with BMX until he reached 15, when his passion for the sport and work ethic kicked in, creating a competitive, title-winning beast on two wheels.

Winning a world title in 1982 — before he even won an Australian title — Egan’s life soon changed as he helped grow BMX in Australia, became one of the first riders to turn professional and was inducted into the Australian BMX Hall of Fame for his contribution to the sport in 2016.

However, Egan’s storied tale can’t be brushed over with a quick wrap of his sporting achievements and a career highlight or two.

Taking us back to the start, Egan remembers his early days in BMX.

“I was a competitive freak,” Egan said.

“Luckily, the government built the track out at the velodrome, so we just started riding out there when I was 13.

“Tracks started springing up all over the place, so you started travelling.”

Egan quickly built a reputation as one of the hardest workers and toughest riders in the BMX community.

Those two qualities, combined with his competitiveness, created a hurricane with wheels on the track, with Egan scorching his opponents in races.

From the dedication and hard work, the trophies and achievements soon followed.

After junior Australian and world titles, one of Egan’s crowning achievements was winning the Australian Open Class title in 1985.

However, the sporting world moves on quickly, as Egan remembers the pressure he felt to back up and defend his title.

“BMX is a weird sport; to win the world title and Australian title, it’s one race,” he said.

“It’s not like (MotoGP) or Formula One where it’s over the year; it all comes down to one race, and that is pressure.

“You would win an Australian title and then that 12 months would go so fast and all of a sudden, you’re back defending it.

“The whole year you were up and about and then all of a sudden, ‘Man, I am back here again and I’ve got to win it again’.

“(1986) was probably the hardest (title to win), and ’85 was probably the best.”

Countless state titles, three consecutive Australian Open Class titles (1985-87), one Australian Pro Class title, World Open Class and World 17 Class titles.

It’s quite the resumé.

After spending nearly a decade at the top of his game, travelling the world and burning through countless pedals, cranks and sprockets, the end of Egan’s BMX career became visible when the injuries started to accumulate.

“The reason I hurt myself was that I should have retired about 12 months prior,” he said.

“I had lost the passion to compete at that level.

“Because I had lost the passion and was overthinking everything, I was back in the field instead of out in the front and, when you are back in the field, you get caught up and crash and do all sorts, and that is exactly what happened.”

The crash left part of Egan’s finger severed, which meant he was out of the sport for an extended period of time.

Long enough — for better or worse — to get some of his excitement back.

“When you are injured, all you want to do is get back,” he said.

“I came back, but I was never the same; mentally, I was scarred and physically, I was probably just as strong, but I think BMX is 80 or 90 per cent mental.

“There’s not too many sports where it is about 40 seconds of complete perfection; plus, you have another seven guys trying to knock you off the track.

“To be able to get that right, you have to be spot on, and I wasn’t.”

During his time at the top of the BMX game, Egan opened his business, Leigh Egan Cycles, in Shepparton.

The security of his business meant that when the world of professional BMX riding closed on Egan, he had another avenue to put his passion for cycling, work ethic and competitiveness into practice.

Egan has run that business for the past 34 years, becoming the go-to place for anyone in the Goulburn Valley for their cycling needs.

A parent buying their child their first bike, a young gun getting his cycle serviced or an oldie who just recently joined a morning cycling group — Egan has seen and served them all.

After nearly three-and-a-half decades, Egan recently decided, like with BMX, that the time was right to move on to his next chapter.

Earlier this year, Egen sold the Leigh Egan Cycles (renamed a couple of years ago to Leading Edge Cycles) business to his long-time friend and Olympic gold medal-winning cyclist Brett Lancaster and his wife Ally.

With the business handover officially complete, Egan is keen to move on with his life.

What that next step may be, Egan isn’t too sure just yet, but he is excited to take it.

“There is a tinge of anxiety,” he said.

“Having done something for so long, this is my identity.

“I have two girls that play football; Grace, my daughter, plays for Richmond in the (AFLW), and Holly, my youngest daughter, is going into the AFLW Draft this year.

“If Holly gets drafted and goes interstate, maybe we will follow her, or maybe stay here and do something else, maybe open another business, I don’t know.”

Egan’s family has been a cornerstone in his life.

His wife Sue — who has a long history of running hairdressing businesses — has been there for Egan throughout all his ups and downs, supporting and assisting him wherever and whenever he needed it.

“She raised four children while I was racing pretty much full-time,” he said.

“She helped me run the business — a big part of any success that we have had.”

Egan has successfully instilled the same principles that led to his success in his children.

The father of four shared his pride in how hard his children work to get ahead in life.

“As far as the kids are concerned, I didn’t suffer mediocrity with them; I thought if we were going to do anything, we would do it properly,” he said.

“I am proud of them all; they are all successful.

“Hannah is a nurse at Goulburn Valley Health.

“Aaron works for a company over in Papua New Guinea; he is setting up offices over there and he played good level sport here as well.

“Grace, my third child, plays in the AFLW for Richmond, and no-one knows more about hard work than Grace and getting to where she needs to be.

“Holly is on the precipice of, hopefully, following Grace (into the AFLW) and I think she is athletic enough and good enough, but nothing is a given — the rent is due every day.”

The Egans are a tight-knit family.

They strive hard for success, but always have each other to lean on.

Importantly, they were there for Egan when tragedy struck him and the Shepparton cycling community.

“I remember the day Scott walked out of the store to go training the next day,” he said.

“I remember the door closing behind him and I never got a chance to say, ‘See ya’ — it’s one of those things.

“I knew when he didn’t turn up for work at 12 o’clock that something was wrong.”

In December 2006, while training on the Maroondah Highway at Merton, up-and-coming cyclist Scott Peoples died after he was struck by a car.

Peoples’ death sent a shockwave through the Australian cycling and Shepparton community, and as the 20-year-old’s mentor, it tore Egan apart.

“It’s been nearly 20 years and I am probably just getting over it,” he said.

“They say, You know you’re not over it when you still get upset, and I got upset everytime I would do an interview with someone in the past.

“Scott was an extension of me — I was his coach and also his boss here at the store.

“The cycling community and the world was robbed of a ripping kid.”

After Egan finished his BMX career and was running his business, the gun rider started competing in road cycling.

Where — as you could guess — his competitiveness and work ethic again led him to success.

Egan competed in road racing from 1991 to 2010, racing at a high level throughout that period.

Part of the time he spent in road racing was through his mentorship of young gun Peoples.

“When young guys are coming through, they are pretty cocky and step to you, and so you try and squash them, but I woke up to the fact that (Peoples) was going to be someone, so I took him under my wing,” he said.

“I thought, ‘You know what, I will mentor this guy and see where we can go with him’.”

Although hard on him at the start, Egan said his connection with Peoples only grew as the veteran rider was able to sit back and marvel at what a talent this kid was becoming.

“He was as good as I have seen coming through,” he said.

“Everyone talks about, ‘This guy is gonna be this,’ but he was really the next thing from Australia.

“He could have gone to Europe — it’s easy to say that now he is gone, but I have raced with a lot of good cyclists and athletes and he was the full package.

“He could climb, he could sprint and he had a toughness about him — all those things you want from an athlete.

“He was about to step into the big time — hopefully — but unfortunately, he never got the chance.”

Following Peoples’ passing, Egan said his business became somewhat of a shrine for people to come and reflect on Peoples’ life.

Although Egan could understand the goodwill and reasoning behind the gestures, it made it hard for him to move on and started to take a significant toll on his mental health.

“We couldn’t escape Scott’s death,” he said.

“Even people that hadn’t seen us for 12 months after his passing would come in and bring it up again because they hadn’t seen us.

“We had to relive it all the time, every day, every month.

“I was really unwell there for quite a bit of time, and I probably won’t be the same, and that’s okay; you have got to deal with it.”

Egan said that running the business then, at what felt like the epicentre of Peoples’ passing, was incredibly tough for everyone at Leigh Egan Cycles.

“The people that did live it at the time, they never came back,” he said.

“The business was hard for a long time because people didn’t want to face it — that was hard.

“We don’t hold it against those who couldn’t handle it; people deal with things differently.

“One thing that I did learn: communities are good when stuff like that happens, but eventually, they need to go back to their own lives because otherwise, it takes its toll.”

Nearly two decades later, Egan’s selling of his old business will allow him to start fresh for the next part of his life.

However, moving on from something like Leigh Egan Cycles/Leading Edge Cycles, which has been front and centre of Egan’s mind for 34 years, is a major life decision and something he didn’t treat lightly.

“I’ll be honest with you, I am a little bit scarred from the whole journey,” he said.

“It hasn’t been easy; when it was good, it was good.

“But there comes a time where you just have to sit back and take a couple of deep breaths with your family and say, ‘What direction are we going to head in?’

“I don’t want to just fade off into the distance; I know I have more to offer, and once people get to sit down and get to know me, they will see that.”

What the future holds for him and his family, the former BMX star is — for now — leaving that part of the story up in the air.

However, Egan has undoubtedly become intertwined with not only the fabric of BMX, but also the Shepparton region itself.

Knowing the competitive drive, work ethic, mental fortitude and ability to succeed that appears to be built into Egan DNA, there is no doubt he will ride, head down, bum up, into whatever the next chapter of his life entails.