At the track cycling world championships in 2011 Shane Perkins beat Sir Chris Hoy to win the keirin title. Fast-forward 11 years and Perkins was back on the podium… of his second sport, bodybuilding.
– By Rob Arnold
The sporting career of Shane Perkins has had many twists and turns. The former track sprinter was a regular in the Australian Cycling Team after winning both the sprint and keirin titles at the junior world championships in 2004. He would go on to represent his country at elite world championships, the Commonwealth Games and Olympic Games, regularly featuring on the podium of the sprint, keirin and team sprint.
At 35, he is back in winning shape… only now it’s in his second sporting career, bodybuilding.
The ICN WA (‘I compete natural’) Facebook page featured the former cyclist this October, as Perkins took to competition again, only this time showing off his muscles rather than using them to take on the world’s best sprint cyclists.
“WA has some new pro athletes amongst the ranks,” reads a post on ICN WA’s FB page. “Starting off with our Olympian Bodybuilder @perkoperkins! He won our state overall and then backed it up with a win and Pro card at Nationals! Welcome to the PRO ranks Shane!”
Yep, he’s been in the gym… a lot! He’s been working on building his body and getting some definition that has impressed the judges, so much so that he’s scored himself another gold medal in a national championship.
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Shane and his wife, Kristine – the sister of multiple Olympic champion Ryan Bayley – have swapped bikes for weights, and racing for posing. The muscley couple enjoyed success in a range of bodybuilding competition this October; Kristine won the ‘Fitness Model’ category at state and national level, meaning #TeamPerkins added a few more gold medals to their collection.
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It’s not cycling but it is interesting to see what this sporting family is up to a few years after opting out of the quest for Olympic gold on the velodrome.
The keirin world title in 2011 is one of the highlights of Shane’s cycling career, beating Sir Chris when the Scotsman was in his prime.
“It was great to win,” Perkins told RIDE Media about the race in Apeldoorn. “It was definitely a class field and now we know Sir Chris is beatable… he’s great to race against and off the bike he’s such a nice guy who is so humble. For a man who has done so much, it’s great to see someone behave the way he does.”
Perkins beats Hoy to win the 2011 keirin world championship. (Photo: Yuzuru Sunada)
In 2012, Perkins teamed up with Scott Sunderland and Matthew Glaetzer to win another rainbow jersey, this time in the team sprint in front of a home crowd in Melbourne. That set him up for a ride in the London Olympics (where Australian finished fourth in the team sprint, won by Hoy along with Jason Kenny and Philip Hindes) but, in the years that followed, he fell out of favour with the Australian Cycling Team.
Non-selection for the Rio Olympics forced Perkins to consider the future of his cycling career and eventually he opted to change nationalities and join the Russian team in the hope of competing in Tokyo in 2020.
Chris Hoy congratulates Shane Perkins on his win in the keirin in the world championships of 2011 Apeldoorn. (Photo: Yuzuru Sunada)
The pandemic delayed the Games and, by then, Shane and Kristine were spending more and more time in the gym while the track bike was collecting dust. Eventually, lifting weights became more appealing than cycling and the Russian project was scrapped in favour of focussing on establishing Perkins Training in Perth.
“We encourage all our clients to take control of their training and nutrition and understand the facts on what it takes to get the results they are looking for,” says the blurb on the Perkins Training homepage.
He continues to follow cycling but admits that the relegation of the Russians in the Tokyo Olympics team sprint (because of a false start) gave Shane a sense of relief that he didn’t continue that quest.
“To be honest I was like, Thankfully I wasn’t involved in that,” he told RIDE Media after watching Denis Dmitriev botch the ride off for fifth place against Germany. “I would have been pissed at Denis.”
So, 10 years after his stunning keirin victory in the Netherlands, Perkins was starting out in his second sport. It began with Shane and Kristine hoping to pass on some knowledge to clients of their personal training business and, this month, the couple reached another milestone with their respective Australian titles in the ICN Nationals – the second successive win for Kristine and the first of Shane’s new career.
“What next?” Shane asked after posting a shot of himself with his bodybuilding gold medal. We await his answer. In the meantime, maybe we should check in with Sir Chris and find out if he’s interested in trying to beat his old keirin rival in a different kind of showdown.
– By Rob Arnold
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