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Charles Pile – one of Barbados’ best

by Barbados Today
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The Pine has produced eminent sportspersons over the years in several disciplines and Barbadian cyclist and Olympian Charles Pile is one of them.

Born in Plantation Road to be exact, not only did Pile have the distinction of representing Barbados at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, but he was also the flag bearer.

Just 27 years old at the time, Pile was Barbados’ lone representative in cycling at the Olympics that year. And as the person tasked with leading the Barbados team during the opening ceremony, Pile got an amazing opportunity to see Gina Owens, the granddaughter of renowned four-time Olympic gold-medallist James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens.

“It is a very proud moment for any athlete to experience. One to reach that level of performance and to be able to represent your country. It was even more meaningful to me because I was the flag bearer and there is not much that matches the pomp of an Olympic opening or closing ceremony for that matter. Also, I believe that Los Angeles would have been one of the first Olympics to really get into this showmanship.

“Of course it was in Los Angeles next to Hollywood so a lot of big stars were there. And I got to see the granddaughter of Jesse Owens who is very revered to the athletics world. She actually brought the torch into the Stadium. So, it was emotional, it was rewarding and a very proud moment. I totally enjoyed it and cyclists tend not to like opening ceremonies because of the length of time you have to stand. So it had to be a big honour for me to say ‘yes I would stand for an hour or more before the competition’,” Pile said as he fondly reminisced.

Charles Pile

The ultramarine, gold and black featured prominently on the cycling track as Pile competed in the time trial race which was a 1000m and clocked 1:08 for eighth position overall from a field of 30 riders.

During those times at the Olympics, it was a handheld start but in this modern age, there is a machine that holds up the riders. The objective is to ride the kilometres in as quick a time as possible.

He also featured in the match sprint and rode in what is termed the A final. Once competing in the A final of the match sprint, if you are beaten once that is it and unfortunately for Pile, he clocked 10.98 seconds but was pipped on the finish line by Matsuyoshi Takahashi of Japan.

His overall fastest competing in a sprint time trial was 10.7 seconds competing in St. Christopher, Venezuela, at the 1977 World Cycling Championship. In fact, it was one of the fastest times recorded for that year and one that Pile shared with Daniel Morelon of France as the two men were inseparable.

Today the International Olympic Committee no longer has the kilometre race on their program. For Pile, it was truly a prestigious event and the only track cycling event that came close to it was the match sprint.

Besides the Olympics, Pile now 64-years-old also represented Barbados at the Central American and Caribbean Championship, Pan American Championship and Commonwealth Games.

But interestingly, Pile did not see himself as a track cyclist but as an endurance rider and preferred doing so for long hours on the road.

He was so determined to be a distance rider, that one day Colin Forde, an exceptional Barbadian cyclist and Olympian who was the coach and fitness trainer at the time, convinced Pile to focus on sprinting. But that did not stop Pile from doing endurance cycling where he continued to train for long hours.

Pile credited both his coaches Forde and also  Kensley Reece another two-time Barbadian Olympian who taught him the mental and tactical side of the sport. Forde and Reece represented Barbados in cycling at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

“Although I was a sprinter, I liked the road and I enjoyed the long-distance riding. So, my aspirations were towards that end of things, riding like the tours and the stage races. That was foremost in my mind even before the Olympics. But then when I realised you’re not going to make that, you need to be a sprinter, you need to concentrate on sprinting, then the Olympics came into focus,” Pile said.

But the story behind how Pile really got into cycling he described as an interesting one. Pile used to run track but after picking up injuries with the arches of his feet, he was advised by his medical doctor to find another sport and lo and behold he turned to the bicycle.

“The doctor I was visiting at the time said to find another sport and I didn’t take it seriously. But then I just decided that I would probably stop running because it was becoming painful. And one day while sitting on my mom’s veranda these three to four cyclists came out of an adjacent road and one of them was a guy named Michael Stoute. I said to myself my God these bikes look so pretty and I said boy I would like to try that sport.

“So, I basically bamboozled my parents into giving me a bike because they were both teachers and all about academics, didn’t particularly pay attention to sport and weren’t enthusiastic about giving me a bicycle. But then they changed their mind and eventually did,” Pile said.

At the age of 15 which today is considered old as there are riders who start much younger, Pile began his journey in cycling. A true competitor with a determined spirit, he went on to join a club called British West Indies Airways Sunjets and at the age of 16 Pile graduated from road racing to cycling on the track at the National Stadium and eventually competed in the A-class.

As a young man growing up, Pile needed to chart his way in life and what better way than tertiary education. But during his time scholarships in cycling were hard to get and through the support of his parents Pile managed to attend North Carolina University. It was an institution that had a very good cycling team and also allowed him to pursue a degree in Business Administration and Economics with a minor in Computer Programming.

A former student of Combermere, Pile spent most of his life in information technology and worked as a programmer at the National Cash Register now called Massy Technologies.

He was also a business analyst for years at T Geddes Grant working as a manager of commercial services and also enjoyed time at the United Nations doing finance and logistics. Pile also served this country as a soldier in the Barbados Defence Force.

Today he does the auditing for a company but his true passion was to become a meteorologist. He also enjoys photography and if it was possible he would have also done media production.

Pile is a proud father of two, daughter Carleigh Pile (28) and Chè Pile (25) who followed in his footsteps and represented Barbados in cycling. Both children currently reside in Canada and according to Pile are doing extremely well.

Sharing his thoughts on cycling in Barbados, Pile said he finds that discipline is an area that is lacking. He explained: “Not only discipline in terms of what you have to do to get fit and to prepare yourself for competition but general discipline. Two, the up and up realisation that cycling is one of the most expensive sports you can get into. A cyclist who is serious has to drop anything from four thousand up on a road bike and four thousand is the bottom end, so you are looking at easily BDS$8, 000 for a bike. Then your feeding and stuff like that is pretty expensive.

“My thing is if you have the dream you need parents or people that are going to support you. I will tell you that cycling has changed tremendously over the years. Back in my day, you had the amateur athlete who basically had to earn less than US$200 a day to be considered an amateur.

“And then there were the professional cyclists back then, I never got a chance to be in competition with them and they were paid salaries. Nowadays it is just elite and everybody rides with everybody.

So, now there is no such thing as an amateur.”

The Olympic Association gives a stipend to athletes, something that Pile noted he had never gotten during his day.

Pile stated that since Barry Forde, the formula for Barbadian riders is to go overseas. Additionally, for the last six to seven years the cycle track at the National Stadium has not been in use.

“Track cycling in Barbados is all but dead. We don’t have sprinters anymore, we got endurance riders. The difficulty with the endurance riders is that it is harder to medal in the endurance arena than it is to medal in the sprint arena. We always got our medals from sprint events, but we need a track to do that and that is why Trinidad is now flying high and got world rankings because they got a world-rated track,” Pile said.

Despite cycling in Barbados is not where it should be right now, the former national top cyclist believes there is hope and took time to commend the wonderful work being done by Olympians Barbados and president Freida Nicholls.

“The association is there and all of us Olympians are very thankful for the efforts of the secretariat to keep the memories of the past and also give encouragement for the future,” he said.

morissalindsay@barbadostoday.bb

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