I was born in July 1986 in a family with a sporting background. My father (Joseph Muscat) was a cyclist. His two brothers also practised this sport since they were young and one of them (Charles Muscat) even represented Malta in the Moscow Olympics.

Having cycling as a family tradition it was not surprising that I started on the same path at the age of six. Since I was a little boy I used to watch professional races on TV after school and in summer when the Tour De France would be on its way, stage after stage to Paris.

It just made me want to ride my bike because I wanted to be like the riders I used to see on TV. So at the age of six my dad decided to give me a start on BMX. It was a very good idea because I learned a lot on how to handle a bike, although at the beginning, falls were a regular habit.

The bike was becoming my best friend and the satisfaction to my appetite for speed which had become almost an obsession. I always wanted to go as fast as I could. I still remember the day when my dad let me ride my bike from my family’s farm to our house.

This later developed into habit where I would race against my dad’s van. Many a time I was the winner, thanks to the usual traffic congestions.

When I was eleven, my dad gave me my first road bike, to replace the BMX, so that I would be able to practise the same discipline as the professionals.

I succeeded in winning my first ever cycling race and from then on never looked back. However, winning was never easy and it took me hours of hard training before I went to school and even after school.

My father used to plan my training schedule for me thanks to his experience in cycling. He was never a great cyclist, but he surely knew how to teach me to ride my bike well. He had learned the hard way, from the mistakes of his cycling days. He is the one that wakes up with me at about 4.30 in the morning irrespective of whether it is warm or cold or raining to accompany me on the motorbike on my training runs.

At the age of 14 he took me for a week’s racing in England. It was my first experience abroad, and this led to an invitation from a close friend of the family to go back in the summer of 2002 after I finished school.

I would say that this was actually the beginning of the road to my becoming a professional cyclist. It was something new for me at the age of 16 to be travelling on my own with my bike. All I wanted to do was to race, and being on the road alone, away from my parents, taught me a lot.

That same year I took part in the three-day Manchester International Youth Tour, where I finished fourth overall and won a stage. In 2003 I got invited to go to Ireland, to participate in the Junior Tour of Ireland and to raise the funds required, I had to go to work during June and July, so that at the end of July I could travel to Ireland.

In that tour, I finished eighth overall and second in the first year junior category.

While I was in Ireland, my parents were looking for sponsors, so that I would be able to go to the World Cycling Championships in Canada. It was very hard to find sponsors, but finally I made it, thanks to the enormous help of the Maltese community in Hamilton/Canada. It was the place to be, the place where the whole world could see me.

I happened to be a new boy for the world championships, because Malta does not often take part in the Worlds. In fact my participation there was only the second time in about ten years.

Although I did nothing special in this competition because I was still a first year junior, it did get me an invitation from Belgium to join a team there for the following year, after having been focused upon by a Belgian TV station and newspaper.

It was great for me to go to a country that was the hub of cycling. In 2004 that was what I decided to do, to move to Belgium with my new team, and that was an unforgettable year in my cycling life.

It was just great to win five races in France and Belgium in only three months, with the last race that I won being the Liege-Bastogne-Liege for juniors, which is the Cup of Belgium on the junior calendar.

Such a win made me bigger than I ever was in the junior world of cycling. It was the race that changed everything for me. Being a rider from Malta is like being from the moon for the cycling world. In fact when I used to win a big race, like an interclub (highest level for a team), the journalists were always impressed when they found out that I was from Malta, because I was the first rider from this island they had ever seen.

Win after win made me more and more respected in the cycling scene. Although my successes abroad never seemed to make any impact on the local sports media, I become even more determined to win and to be a world class rider.

For me it was never enough to win in Malta and to be the national champion. It is not enough if one wants to be a real champion.

The year 2005 might be my hardest year, due to many reasons but mainly because I happen to be first year among the elite and I would be competing against riders more experienced and older than me: in some cases, even 15 years older.

I feel now it is the real test because one has to be strong-willed to survive, if not, then it is better to hang up one’s bike. However although it is hard, it makes me stronger in my will to become the rider I would like to be. To become a professional rider is my childhood dream, and although it is not yet accomplished, I believe I am on the right track as I am already in my first year as a semi-professional rider. Being with a team in Belgium and to be in the big races is the way I can only fulfil such a dream.

Sometimes it is hard due to the problems I face, but it is still the dream I want to achieve no matter how hard it may be. My family has always been constantly behind me, supporting me in my endeavours and, it is to them that I owe my success.