Teachers were telling me, ‘You’re never going to be nothing.’ I remember being behind the shed, in tears, like, ‘I’m not going to be anything.’ And believing it for a split second.” Even today, he can still list the specific teachers who reinforced this message. “Look, when I was at school, I was dyslexic and struggling like hell,” he says, “and one of the only few Black kids in my school, being put in the lowest classes and never given a chance to progress or even helped to progress. Proving people wrong has been a persistent theme in Hamilton’s life. “I’ve been more consistent than I ever was in the past. “I mean, I’ve won five world titles since then,” he points out. Instead he found his energy levels smoothing out and his skin clearing up. The physical demands of elite racing are extreme, and doctors advised him that he would struggle to get enough protein. He’s now been plant-based for about five years, a change triggered by a vegan friend he met in New York who opened his eyes to the realities of food production. Hamilton, who’s 37, tells me that veganism wasn’t even on his radar when he was growing up just north of London.

It’s my go-to thing every day.” Just one totem, it will become clear, of his relentless search for a better way. “I used to look at hummus and I was like, ‘No way would I ever eat hummus!’ ” he says. The first time we meet, it is for lunch at a Moroccan restaurant, Cafe Mogador, in Manhattan’s East Village, across town from an apartment he owns here. “I’ve never loved being told what to do.”

“Since I was a kid- rules,” he says, shaking his head.

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