He discovered cycling when his mother told him to watch the television coverage of the individual pursuit final of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, which Briton Chris Boardman won. She explained it was one of the events at which his father had been successful. He watched the rest of the Olympics and fell in love with cycling and the Olympics itself. In 1992, aged 12, he entered his first race, the West London Challenge 92, on the unopened A312 dual carriageway in Hayes, west London. Later that year he broke a collarbone in a road accident. He received £1,700 compensation for his injuries. He gave his mother £700 and used the rest to buy his first racing bicycle. "At 12", he recalled, "I told my art teacher, I'm going to be Olympic champion, I'm going to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour." He joined the Archer Road Club, where his father had been a member in the late 1970s. He raced at Herne Hill Velodrome and on the road around Crystal Palace National Sports Centre. He gained domestic sponsorship from Condor Cycles's Olympia Sport and then Team Brite. He represented Westminster in the London Youth Games as a teenager, and in 2010 he was inducted into the London Youth Games Hall of Fame. At 16, he won the time trial at the 1996 junior national track championships at Saffron Lane sports centre in Leicester. Selectors invited him to train at weekends at Manchester Velodrome. After leaving school he enrolled on a BTEC foundation course in business studies, but left due to cycling commitments. At the 1997 junior national track championships he won the one-kilometre time trial, individual pursuit, points race and scratch race. He was the only British competitor for the 1997 junior track world championships in Cape Town, coming 16th in the individual pursuit and fourth in the points race. His breakthrough came in June 1998, winning the three-kilometre individual pursuit at the junior track world championships in Cuba, aged 18. The following week, he retained his titles at the junior national track championships in Manchester. He represented England at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, finishing fourth in the individual pursuit, and was a member of the team that won a silver medal in the team pursuit, his first senior medal. He became a full-time Lottery-funded athlete, with a grant of nearly £20,000 a year (equivalent to £ in 2020). In 1999, he began training with the Great Britain team pursuit squad and rode the PruTour – now known as the Tour of Britain, his first stage race at that level.