Training for this year’s Olympics, Dan Bigham cycled through the mountains of Andorra. The peaks of the Pyrenees offer sweeping panoramas. But they aren’t what give Bigham his unique view of the world. His view comes from a choice he made years ago: to not choose between being an elite athlete and a working engineer.
Chasing the dream
Bigham (32) is a performance engineer with the Ineos Grenadiers cycling team, a job that brought him and his family to Andorra a few years ago. He’s also the founder and technical director of WattShop, a company designing and manufacturing high performance cycling equipment.
A mechanical engineer and IMechE member, Bigham has spent time working in Formula 1 racing and with national cycling teams. For many, this would qualify as peak career performance. But Bigham has always been in pursuit of another dream: to be a professional track cyclist.
He began chasing this dream fairly late in life, while studying motorsport engineering at university. What began as a way to get to class faster turned into a relentless passion, playing out in velodromes around the globe.
The victories came quickly. When regulations shut doors, Bigham opened them by forming an independent, self-funded team (which defied odds and beat the world’s top competitors).
In 2022, he broke the world hour record – a ‘pinnacle’ trophy in the cycling world – by riding 55.548km in 60 minutes. Two months later, with his engineering hat on, Bigham helped another rider break this hard-earned record. He admits it was a “unique situation”, but one that has allowed him to look at sport engineering from all angles.
“I’m not a child prodigy or some kind of a physiological specimen,” Bigham quips. “I’m just someone who’s applying maths and physics to the problem and trying to stay ahead of the others.”
Simulating success
Born in Staffordshire in the West Midlands, Bigham played “every sport under the Sun” while at school. With a dad who raced jet skis and motorcycles, it didn’t take long for him to fall in love with F1 racing. When Bigham thought about his future, he saw motorsports. But during his university years he climbed on a bicycle and discovered what would become his niche slice of sport engineering.
Bigham began seeing how the things he was learning in class helped him out on track. He enjoyed simulations and modelling. When his class had to try hit a target using a tennis ball fired from a ‘spud gun’, he was the only student to beat the lecturer. To win, he had to run a few strategic calculations, working out the correct angle and required pressure.
“There is a causable, tangible link between the things you learn at school and breaking world records, winning Olympic medals and going faster on a bike,” says Bigham. “I want to throw a light on that.”
Opening Pandora’s Box
As a STEM champion, Bigham hopes to drive more engineers into sport, showing that even a boring lecture can, later on, mean a 10% bump in performance. As an athlete, he campaigns for the industry to “open more doors and throw down ropes” to help engineers climb the ranks.
“There are so few people with my skills in this field. Sport has just opened this Pandora’s Box of maths and physics, discovering how much of a difference they make in the real world.”
And with the arrival of artificial intelligence, things are only getting more interesting. On top of aerodynamics, lightweight components, human power distribution and everything else that keeps performance engineers like Bigham busy, AI is adding new dimensions.
Bigham says AI takes predicting the future (based on large scale modelling) to a new level and helps teams make decisions. Think about things like tyre puncture frequency or race crashes. Knowing what to expect, with even a fraction more certainty, can help plan for races. Not to mention an AI model that can read everything ever written about sports nutrition and provide summaries to coaches.
“It’s incredibly powerful and exciting,” Bigham says.
‘Keep knocking on the door’
Preparing to face his “biggest ever race” (team pursuit) at the Paris Olympics, Bigham found himself deep in another paradox. An established performance expert and successful entrepreneur, he joined Team GB as “a newbie”. Bigham is the oldest member of the team, a father to a one-year-old son, but the only one who’d never taken part in the Olympics as an athlete.
“I’m having to learn the ropes,” he says. “There’s pressure, but I’m focused on the process. I feel most confident when I’m well prepared. I enjoy executing good, consistent training.”
To younger engineers who are also learning, his advice is to mix passion into the profession.
“Motivation is fleeting – find something you enjoy and go down that path,” he says. “You’ll come across closed doors. Keep knocking. Come with ideas, but know that sport has history, and you need to understand it before you can change it. Find your niche but develop a broad range of skills. You’ll need them all.”
To nominate an IMechE member making a difference, email profeng@thinkpublishing.co.uk.
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.