Dowsett delivers for Trek-Livestrong

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UK time trial champion Alex Dowsett (Trek Livestrong) testing his legs at the San Dimas Stage Race.(Image credit: Jon Devich)

British rider Alex Dowsett joined the Trek-Livestrong team for the 2010 season following his impressive seventh place in the U23 time trial at the 2009 world championships. The 21-year-old spoke to Procycling's Ellis Bacon about living with haemophilia, almost chastising Lance Armstrong and Pippo Pozzato being nice to him.

In Qatar, I was in a break for 25km on the third stage before they brought us back. I think they were a bit scared, as the race-winning break had gone the day before. And then in Oman I was in the day-long break on the second day, which was really hard. I managed to pick up some time bonuses along the way, which bumped me up the overall classification, but then I was so tired that I lost it all the next day.

AD: It's funny - I found that the bigger and better the teams and the riders were, the nicer they were. The smaller teams were the ones who were a bit more aggressive. Maybe they saw us as more of a threat to them. Filippo Pozzato and Tom Boonen, in particular, took a lot of time to talk to us. And Bernhard Eisel pointed out things to me a couple of times that I was doing wrong, and explained why, too, which was really good.

One day in Qatar, my timing transponder had twisted up on my chainstay so that my foot was kicking it with each pedal stroke. Pozzato came up and told me to stop pedalling, and started pushing me while trying to kick the transponder back round, so he had his foot, like, centimetres from my rear wheel. I was, like, "No, no - just leave it - I'll stop and fix it myself." He didn't need to do that, but it was massive for me. Probably not so much for him, I'm sure!

AD: They're a really good bunch of lads. We all got together at the same Tucson training camp as RadioShack. There were a heck of a lot of good riders there - Gert Steegmans, Levi Leipheimer... And then Armstrong popped in one day when we were eating dinner and took us by surprise. It was the first time I've ever been really star-struck, I think. And then we all rode together on the last day of the camp.

AD: If it wasn't for the Haemophilia Society, I wouldn't be here. I owe them a lot - and the National Health Service. It's quite a fickle kind of a disease. If it wasn't for the way my parents handled it, I could be in a lot worse position. I've got it as bad as you can possibly have it, but I know lads who don't have it anywhere near as bad as me, yet they've got fused joints and stuff, and that's very life-changing.

I'd say I'm as healthy as anyone else, I think. But it's about bringing awareness to that - about how best to cope with it. My parents took a proactive role when I was young, and asked the doctors what they could do. They said they should get me swimming, so they had me swimming five times a week, in five different towns. It's good for the joints, and keeps you fit. It's stuff like that that benefits you long-term.

It's not just about the medication - it's about how you grow up, and how you treat it outside of the medication. As a kid, I had to go into school often on crutches or with my arm in a sling, but it's hard to explain to other eight-year-old kids why your arm is in sling but you don't have a cast. They think that you're faking it. But you can't explain to them that you're missing the clotting factor so you get internal bleeding.

I played a limited amount of football (soccer) when I was a kid, and didn't touch rugby, or many other contact sports, but I didn't really mind as I was useless at them anyway. I used to go to the doctor's for check-ups every six months, and one day I told them that I'd taken up cycling. They said they'd rather that I'd taken up playing chess or playing a musical instrument, but that they weren't going to stop me. So I suppose I will just cross any bridges when I come to them.

I have to inject Factor 8 - that's what's missing from my blood. And it's interesting as a bike rider having to do that - the whole stigma. It's a difficult one - I still don't know whether to hide the fact that I'm having to give myself intravenous injections every other day for fear of someone saying that they've seen me injecting myself and thinking I'm on something. I've got needle marks on my arms, and I'm sure they get noticed, but I've got nothing to hide. I just hope that as I hopefully progress, people will become more aware of it, like with Armstrong's cancer. OK - at least I hope I can get to his level one day! [laughs]

AD: I've had a bit of a shaky start, as I've lived at sea level all my life, and Boulder is at five-and-a-half thousand feet! Soon after I got there, I went for a ride up in the hills and got very ill. I'm not one to make any excuses, but my preparation for this season has been nothing short of terrible. It was a bad winter in England, and then at our training camp in California they had the worst storms in five years, so we were on the turbo trainers all week. And then in Boulder I had to take it easy because of the altitude.

But certainly joining a team like Cervélo, HTC, Sky, Quick Step or Saxo Bank would be amazing. They're all just so well drilled. I think I've just picked all the biggest teams there! But I think I would prefer a more English-speaking type of team. I've heard stories of some teams where if you're a foreign rider it's quite difficult, but a team with a real mix of nationalities, like Saxo Bank or HTC, would be great. I have three goals for this year: to turn pro, to win the European time-trial championships and to win the U23 TT worlds.

I would love to be world champion, and I think it's possible this year. OK, so as it's my last year as an U23, I wouldn't be able to wear the rainbow jersey next season, but to say I was world champion would be enough. Before that, I've got the Euro TT champs and the national TT champs, too. I've won that twice, including last year, but British Cycling didn't make me a national champ's skinsuit last season.