The path to a career as a professional cyclist is a road less travelled and also a notoriously gruelling one. For many, moreover, it can become a search for the self, the pursuit of an identity, which raises the stakes way beyond the promise or reality of whatever material rewards come with success.

Rerouted into cycling by a running injury at age 17, Northern Irish rider Marcus Christie found himself on a fast track towards the pro peloton that soon turned into a white-knuckle ride. Over the next decade, Christie faced debilitating injuries, crippling insecurities, an eating disorder and – parallel to, or maybe underlying all of this – the key existential question of how to live within cycling or whether to try, as the years ticked by, to contemplate living without it.

Inspired by the soul-bearing first-person account that he shared with us in 2020, Supersonic is Marcus Christie’s story.