‘Fitness Is the Foundation of Everything I Do’: Gordon Ramsay

Five weeks prior to our cover shoot, Gordon Ramsay was on social media pointing out the damage done to his body when his bike cartwheeled through the air with him attached to it. In the video shared to his millions of TikTok, Instagram and X followers, he can be seen lifting his chef whites to reveal a huge Barney the Dinosaur-coloured bruise covering the entire left side of his stomach, his hand trembling. By all accounts, he’s lucky to be here at all.

Now, all that remains from his accident is a small haematoma, barely visible underneath the shorts, cycling jersey and wetsuit he’s wearing today. That’s perhaps a little surprising given that the cycling jersey in particular is, he says, ‘so fucking tight, you can see my religion’. The vulnerable, shaken man from his crash video has vanished, too. He’s back to his confident, sweary self.

The only concern the 57-year-old has to deal with today is whether he’ll be the oldest guy to grace the cover of Men’s Health. (He’ll be relieved to hear he’s not – Arnie and Samuel L Jackson were both older, 75 and 67 respectively, when they appeared beneath our masthead.) He’s also eager to hear about our recent cover stars. When he learns he’ll be hitting news stands just a couple of months after Adam Peaty – a man who’s currently dating his daughter, Holly Ramsay, and is in Adonis-like shape, he laughs, and his response is perfectly on brand. ‘What the fuck?’

But back to the cycling accident. Though he displayed his injuries to his social media followers, little has been said about what actually happened. Ramsay was galloping down a hill on his bike when his front wheel hit a crater-like pothole. The bike spun 180 degrees and he was catapulted through the air. With hindsight, he can say what he did next was stupid. He tried to put the chain back on and continue riding. But when he came to fix his helmet back into place, he realised it had split completely. Looking back, it was probably the reason he was still alive or, at the very least, why he was still conscious. In that moment, his vision blurred and there was blood everywhere. ‘I honestly thought I was going to pass out,’ he says. Ramsay managed to contact his assistant, Justin Mandel, who got him an ambulance to hospital. CT scans followed; thankfully nothing was broken. He jokingly puts that down to his hardy Scottish bones.

Since the accident, Ramsay has been enduring daily lymphatic drainage massages and physio to reduce the significant swelling. At the beginning, he says, ‘I couldn’t even put my fucking socks and pants on. Justin, he used to dress me in the morning. I felt like a fucking 95-year-old man. Asking a 30-year-old kid to put my fucking underpants on was embarrassing.’

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He’s now well on the road to recovery. He’s even returned to training, too – swimming and, yes, cycling. His accident is firmly in the rear-view and is now just the latest in a long line of challenges that have forged the foul-mouthed, big-hearted, supremely talented chef and successful businessman people know as Gordon Ramsay.

Baptism of Fire

Scottish by birth but raised on a council estate in Stratford-upon-Avon, Ramsay’s first ambition was to join the Royal Navy. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, he didn’t have the grades. His next and perhaps real ambition was to play football for Glasgow Rangers. In his early days, he was a talented, Stuart Pearce-style left back, who trialled for the club’s youth ranks. Rangers’ all-time top goalscorer Ally McCoist was a contemporary of his, and when quizzed about Ramsay a few years ago remembered him as a ‘competitive so and so’. Unfortunately, unlike the legendary Scottish striker, who wound up playing 581 times for Rangers and scoring 355 goals, Ramsay was dealt a career-ending injury: a torn cruciate ligament put paid to his football dreams before they had ever really begun.

With football off the table, Ramsay moved in with his sister and ‘fought to learn something’ that could get him away from the tough environments he found himself in throughout his younger years. His sister lived in a council house on what he describes as ‘one of the most notorious estates in Banbury’. It was in that unlikely setting that he was put into contact with Banbury Round Table, a charity that clubbed together to buy him his first set of chef whites and knives.

What came next were the moments in his early career that went some way to creating the Ramsay we know today. At 19, he persuaded the hottest young chef in the country – the man dubbed the enfant terrible of English cuisine – Marco Pierre White, to take him on at his rock ’n’ roll London restaurant, Harveys. Over the course of three years, he was transformed from a lowly vegetable-chopping commis into a skilled chef, trusted to run White’s kitchen.

At 22, he left Harveys and, after accepting a few palate-cleanser positions – including a stint in the kitchens of the landmark London restaurant Le Gavroche – moved to France to work and study under Guy Savoy and Joël Robuchon, both Michelin-starred chefs. ‘Getting dropped in the middle of Paris, not a pot to piss in…was one of the most exciting things I ever did,’ Ramsay says. Moving to France was also one thing that White never managed, so it allowed Ramsay to further distinguish himself from his original mentor. Not that working conditions were much easier in France than they had been in south London. ‘Every time you listened, you got bollocked, you got bollocked and you listened,’ says Ramsay. ‘But you just left with this incredible knowledge that you tucked away and stored. You didn’t know when it was going to come back out, but you just needed to have that in your coffers for future reference.’

By 40, he was one of the most accomplished chefs in the world. But if there was one lesson that had been served up to him time after time throughout his 20-year career, it was that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. ‘I was seven days a week. Restaurants were opening all over the place; Michelin stars coming out my arse and, all of a sudden, my life got consumed.’ At his heaviest, he was 18st – overweight and losing control. He also didn’t have to look far to see where the path he was on could lead if he wasn’t careful. His dad, Gordon Ramsay Sr, was an abusive alcoholic who, to his family’s detriment, wouldn’t give up on his forlorn ambition of becoming a musician. He died of a heart attack aged 53 – just a few years younger than Ramsay is today. Then there’s his little brother, Ronnie. He’s only 15 months younger and the pair used to sleep in a set of bunk beds when they were kids. But while Gordon grew up to be Gordon Ramsay – world-renowned chef, accomplished businessman and celebrated TV personality – Ronnie’s life has been blighted by heroin addiction and substance abuse, with the younger Ramsay being jailed in Indonesia for possession in 2007.

When Gordon’s daughter Meg, 26, graduated from university, he took her to Stratford-upon-Avon to see the house where he and Ronnie grew up together. He explained that the six of them – mum Helen Cosgrove, dad Gordon, Ronnie and their sisters, Diane and Yvonne – all lived in a tiny little house, a world away from the mansions in Los Angeles and London that he calls home now. He also explained to his daughter how he and Uncle Ronnie used to sleep 12 inches apart from each other. ‘It was just that moment [I thought] shit,’ says Ramsay. ‘Ronnie could have been me and I could have been Ronnie.’

Keeping Pace

Ever since his early forties, Ramsay has used fitness to manage the intensity of his workload and stay in control of his life. He wishes he’d started sooner. Nowadays, he signs up to at least two events every year – ‘an Ironman, a marathon, just something’, he says – to keep him going when the rest of his life is chaotic. Ramsay also needs to stay fit and well to play an active role in his children’s lives; his youngest, Jesse James Ramsay, was born in November 2023.

‘I think about the pace I work and the responsibilities I take on,’ says Ramsay, ‘then I think about the drive that I have; fitness is the foundation. You’re on your own, up a mountain, on a bike, trail, run, swim. I find training relaxing because it just gets me out of that fast lane.’

Ramsay ran his first marathon in the early 2000s. He finished with a respectable time of 5:50. Although, not everyone was impressed. He tells the story of being overtaken by a hippopotamus, while a spectator standing on a bridge called him a tit and threw a sports bar at him. Harsh, but, in truth, not too dissimilar to the kind of droll abuse he’s dished out over the course of his career. For Ramsay, it provided inspiration, and he has since cut his marathon time to an impressive 3:30, gone on to compete in the world’s toughest Ironman competition in Hawaii and been awarded finishers’ medals from other endurance events, including multiple marathons, ultramarathons and Half Ironmans.

His accident has slightly curtailed his training for now, but in normal times, Ramsay begins every day of his working week with a workout. He’s usually woken up by his youngest sons, Jesse James and Oscar James, 5, at about 5.30am. After that, he does a quick run, stretch and a little bit of core work before heading off to work, which right now is taking him in and out of London’s Savoy hotel for tastings all day long. By 9.30pm, he’s usually back home having a quick bite to eat before heading off to bed. Although sometimes the pull of the Wattbike is so strong that he adds in another session. Weekends give him the time he needs to really push himself, usually with a 90-minute or two-hour session, he says.

And how does the hard-to-please chef fuel his training? During his early days in professional kitchens, Lucozade and Mars Bars were what gave Ramsay the energy to get through the long 16- or 17-hour shifts behind the line. Today, his daily diet consists of a protein shake in the morning, followed by scrambled eggs for lunch and something poached – chicken or fish – for dinner. He stresses that whatever protein source he chooses is always poached and not boiled. ‘Boiling it is going to give it a texture like fucking Gandhi’s flip-flop,’ he says. He’s also learned to eat small and stay nimble. ‘You’re lethargic after you’ve eaten, right? You’ve got to stay on your toes. It’s like a ballerina – tiny little mouthfuls, tiny little tastings,’ he says.

Ramsay’s passed on his fitness obsession to his family, too. His wife, Tana, completed her first Ironman 70.3 in Staffordshire in 2015, raising money for the couple’s charitable foundation in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. ‘I couldn’t believe what she did,’ he says. Then, to celebrate the birthday of their older children, they gifted the twins, Holly and Jack, 24, marathon places. ‘While a lot of our friends buy their kids cars and fucking iPads, we got our kids marathon places for their 18th birthday. You’re running the marathon for Great Ormond Street. Here’s your bib. Now move your arse,’ he says.

Cooking up a Storm

In February 2025, Ramsay will introduce the world to what he’s describing as one of his most audacious projects yet. He’s taking over the top floors of 22 Bishopsgate, the second tallest building in the UK after the Shard and a skyline-dominating location. ‘It’s going to be one of the tallest restaurants in Europe,’ says Ramsay. ‘There’s an academy opening there, a restaurant called Ramsey at the very top and a beautiful Japanese open garden. It’s 35,000 sq ft. It’s a £25m investment. My balls are back in a vice again.’

You get the impression he wouldn’t have it any other way. Because while he admits he’s made plenty of fuck-ups, he doesn’t believe in self-doubt or backwards steps. ‘I started with nothing,’ he says. ‘I grew up with Mum and Dad not even owning their own house, so you don’t obsess over money, and you don’t get spoiled. I love luxury. I love cars, but fuck me, do I work hard for them.’

At 57, he’s truly at the top of his game. Yes, there have been challenges, his recent, potentially fatal cycling accident being a prime example. But nothing that’s happened in his life so far has been able to throw him off course. His confidence is something he’s passed down to his kids, too, who are all pursuing their own distinct passions, imbued with the typical Ramsay family fortitude. Jack’s serving in the Royal Marines. Meg’s ‘putting a stab vest on every night to walk the streets of London as a police officer’, he says. Holly’s in fashion. His other daughter, Tilly, has just earned her degree in psychology. And Oscar is happy just ‘swimming his heart out’.

For most men, this would all be a recipe for retirement. But for Gordon Ramsay, the easy life has never been on the menu. ‘I could sit back, put my feet up, buy a boat and fuck off to the Caribbean, but I have no interest in that,’ he says. ‘I love the jeopardy… and I can do that because I’m fit. I can do that because I’ve got the drive. When I haven’t got the drive, then I’ll decide to hang up the hat.’

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