Brad Mills - Tough as teak
by Rupert Guinness
After a recent crash left him with multiple fractures, Brad Mills has returned — as tough and determined than ever. Sitting down with Rupert Guinness, he reflects on survival, recovery and mental resilience, his near-podium ride at the 2025 World Gravel Championships, a long awaited breakthrough win in the Trophy Race at Heffron Park, and why community, competition and unfinished business continue to drive him forward.
For most Sydney cyclists, a quiet Sunday roll through Dee Why on the Northern Beaches is as routine as the morning coffee that usually follows. But as Brad Mills was reminded in mid November, cycling has a way of turning the ordinary into the unexpected — and in a blink.
“The lights changed, but not in a way you’d ever think you’d have to stop for,” Mills recalls of the experience that left him in hospital with myriad broken bones and internal injuries.
Mills, speaking two weeks after the crash, describes how he and Dan Bonello rolled through the traffic lights when a car coming the other way began a right-hand turn into their path. He shifted left to avoid it — Bonello did the same — when somehow their wheels or handlebars tangled. One second he was upright, the next … down — no warning, no chance to brace, no time to think.
“I’ve had crashes where you get a few seconds to adjust or prepare,” Mills continues. “But this one … one moment I was up, the next I was down. Just instant.”
The outcome was brutal — and painful. Mills, who until then had been in near-peak condition and form, sustained a broken collarbone, six fractured ribs, a cracked pelvis and bruised lungs.
He was rushed by ambulance to Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, where surgeons plated his collarbone with eight screws and stabilised his pelvis with another large screw.
“They wanted me in a wheelchair for six weeks,” Mills says.
“Yesterday [November 26] I got the green light to put partial load on the pelvis. I’m getting rid of this chair in a week, onto crutches, and I’ve already started riding on the trainer.”
Mills’ surgeon told him he was “fucking crazy” for getting back on the bike so soon. Despite the feedback, he still rode for 40 minutes.
“It felt really good,” he laughs. “Good for the head.”
Since then, Mills has ramped up his recovery even further — and remarkably so — from increasing his time on the home trainer to two hours a week later, to getting back riding on the road.
Amazingly, on December 9, he raced at Tuesday Night Heffron … and on a gravel bike.
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​Brain game at the 2025 World Gravel Championships
Mental strength has always been Mills’ quiet superpower, but he admits that watching Round 5 of the 2025–26 Tuesday Night Heffron criterium series at Heffron Park following his crash— and from his wheelchair a week later — was both uplifting and torturous.
The Easts Cycling member races in the black-and-red jersey and grey knicks of the Gutter Rats team. He has spent 28 summers racing at Heffron Park. But sitting on the sidelines in recent weeks, rather than racing, was difficult — especially knowing the form he had carried into the Gravel World Championships in South Limburg in the Netherlands, where he finished fourth from a field of 250 starters.
His result in a stacked international field was no lucky strike. It was the reward for six months of hard, quiet graft: gym work, long gravel miles, structured sessions and belief that he could podium.
It deservedly earned him the Easts Cycling 2025 Ride of the Year Award.
“I did everything believing I could podium,” he says. “I worked harder than I had in years.”
Three weeks out from the world championships, Mills feared he might be short of the condition needed to produce his best. But any self-doubt was allayed when he hit his straps following a series of tough training sessions that included three hours on the bike, followed by the Hill Chop in Centennial Park to simulate the intensity of the world title race.
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​It worked.
​Mills says the race was “ridiculously hard — way harder than I expected. You’d look down and see 500 watts, look up and you’re already braking into the next corner”. Some sections were so tight and rough that Mills says the race was almost in “full BMX mode”, with his “elbows out, weight back, praying for traction”. Other sections were long drags on loose stones that “felt like someone grabbed your rear wheel and was holding it”.​
Mills compares the whole race to being like “the last lap of Heffron … but for four hours”
“Every corner was an interval. You were either doing 400 or 500 watts out of the turn, or freewheeling into the next one. There was no rhythm … no let-up..
“When people say ‘World Championships pace’, that was it — absolute survival.
”The moment he nearly cracked came in the final 30 kilometres when his legs seized with cramps.“ It was like someone hit both hamstrings with a hammer,” Mills recalls. “I thought, ‘That’s the podium gone.’
But you can’t back off. The second you hesitate, five guys come past.”
The cramps may have cost Mills a medal — a problem he attributes to nutrition or hydration — but he still rates the experience as one of the best, most complete races of his cycling career.
And yes, he wants more. The 2026 World Gravel Championships are in Australia, in Nannup, Western Australia, and Brad plans to qualify again in May.
​“I’ll be there,” he says simply.
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​​​Breakthrough win in the 2024 Trophy Race
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​It is at Heffron Park where Mills’ real cycling home exists. It was there where, until 2024, he had chased the one win that had eluded him across 26 attempts — the Christmas Trophy Race - a race he felt had always been his to win, but which kept slipping away.
“It might sound cocky, but I’ve always felt my name should be on that trophy,” Mills says.
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Before his breakthrough win in 2024, Mills’ closest call came in 2013 when he finished second to young gun Harrison Bailey, who now races in France.
Mills’ error then was racing too conservatively, allowing Bailey to take the initiative in the
finale, hoping it would set him up for the win — a mistake he did not repeat in 2024.
That year, Mills lined up with a different mindset. He was calm, focused and composed. After
making the winning break, he entered the finale exactly where he wanted to be, then struck.
His winning move came at the precise spot on the course he now considers the only place
where a race can truly be decided: the final right-hand bend leading into the finishing straight. He knows the corner and its characteristics in detail — slightly off-camber, with the wind usually ripping across. His move is more instinct than calculation.
“I hit that corner first, kicked as soon as I straightened the bike, and knew straight away … if
you’re leading out of canteen corner and you’ve got the legs, it’s over,” Mills recalls.
Just like that, 26 years of racing compressed into one explosive second of triumph.
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The moment did not pass without added drama. Just after crossing the line, a gust hit him from the right and his celebratory salute turned into a tumble. Video of the fall made him an unwilling YouTube sensation — clocking more than nine million views.
For Mills, it mattered little that a career highlight reached global attention for the crash that followed. He never read the comments and has no intention of doing so.
“All I wanted to do, for so long, was win that race,” he says. “I don’t care what anyone says.”
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Where and How the Journey Began
Mills’ cycling story began in the Central Coast city of Gosford when he first encountered a
bike — in his case, a yellow “girls’ bike” that he repainted black. “I had 16-inch wheels. I got a can of oil-based paint out of the garage and painted it all black,” he says.
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​In the years that followed, Mills competed in triathlon, BMX and mountain biking before discovering the Central Coast Cycling Club, where he met people who remain part of his life.
One such person was Paul Craft — ‘Crafty’ — who steered Mills from BMX and triathlon
into criterium and road racing in 1996, eventually leading to starts in some of Australasia’s
biggest races, including the Commonwealth Bank Cycle Classic, Herald Sun Tour, Tour of
Queensland and New Zealand Cycling Classic.
The 1999 Commonwealth Bank Classic was an eye-opener. As a leg of the then amateur
World Cup series, it attracted future stars of world road racing.
Mills describes the race — run by St George Cycling icon Phil Bates — as “a baptism in
surviving Aussie racing — tough roads, tough riders, and zero hiding places”.
Off the back of an impressive eighth place at the 1999 Australian road championships, Mills
raced the Bank Classic for the Caravello-Australia team led by national championship runner-
up Bart Hickson.
He raced the Herald Sun Tour in 2002 for FRF Couriers — won by Baden Cooke — and
again in 2005, when Simon Gerrans triumphed. In the latter edition, Mills rode for the
Davitamon–Lotto team alongside Henk Vogels and Nick Gates.
The major takeaway for Mills was learning how to compete under pressure — from long days
in breakaways to reading echelons and managing fatigue while lining up to do it all again the
next morning.
“You learn what your engine can handle — and you learn it fast, or you go out the back,” he
says.
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The Heffron connection
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But it is at Heffron Park where the foundation of Mills’ legacy has been built over 28 summers.
“I’ve evolved along with the bunches … and changed the way I race to suit them,” Mills says, whose racing journey is far from over.
“Heffron forces you to adapt. Every generation that comes through has its own rhythm, its own speed, its own way of hurting you.”
What type of rider is he? Mills struggles to label himself.
“I’d say I just know how to ride around here,” he explains. “I know where to put myself, and I ’m strong enough to sprint. It’s turned into a sprint from the corner now.
“It’s a long sprint, which works in my favour. I’ve kind of managed to manipulate the racing here to suit that.
“In hard races I’ve always done well. I wouldn’t say I’m a pure sprinter, but I’m pretty tidy when I need to be.”
Mills had no illusions about his career. Racing alongside Vogels and Gates in races like the Herald Sun Tour highlighted the gap between where he was and where he would need to be. Still, the cycling’s European heritage left an indelible mark on his love of the sport.
He watched the Tour de France roadside once in 2005 while training in the Pyrenees during a racing stint in the Netherlands. “That’s really the only time I’ve seen the Tour,” he says. But when asked which riders have inspired him most, Mills shows he follows the sport closely.
“You can’t go past watching Mathieu van der Poel going head to head with Wout van Aert in cyclo-cross, or in races like the Tour of Flanders — they don’t hold back,” he says.
“Peter Sagan was always entertaining too. Going further back, someone like Claudio Chiappucci had flair and a deep love of attacking.”
So what advice does he offer a newcomer to Heffron Park?
“If you’re not in the first 10 wheels, you’re wasting energy or you’re about to get gapped,” he says.
“Heffron punishes bad positioning more than any other criterium circuit. Everyone feels the hurt. The trick is staying in the fight one lap longer than you think you can.”
“Sitting at the back teaches you nothing. Get in the wind, get uncomfortable and learn how the race moves.”
Whatever condition he is in, Mills turns up at Heffron Park almost every week. He enjoys the grind — and misses it when injury sidelines him.
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Away from racing, he balances his commitments as a project manager for Toki Construction with family life. He has two children, Viv and Elke, both 15, and is now in a relationship with cycling chef Lilly Fasan, who also races at Heffron Park.
“She’s an awesome woman,” he says. “We became good friends in the last 18 months. It’s turned into something pretty special.”
His recent injury lay-off, watching Tuesday Night Heffron from the sidelines reminded him of
the strength of the Easts Cycling community — from volunteers and racers to supporters and
shared stories.
“I’ve always felt connected to the club. Without it, this wouldn’t exist,” Mills says. “It’s more than racing. It’s a community you grow up with, grow old with, and always come back to.”
Photos Stuh Baker
Brad Mills and the Gutter Rats team are proudly supported by:
Attaquer | Shimano | Lazer | Cervélo (gravel) | Factor (road)