Cycle Sport April is out in UK shops now, featuring the very best writing and photography of professional cycling. This month’s edition contains interviews with Thomas Voeckler, Tyler Farrar and Tour Down Under winner Simon Gerrans, as well as our brand new column from inside the peloton, written by an anonymous professional cyclist. Priced £4.35, Cycle Sport is the best international cycling magazine in the world.

Words by Cycle Sport Staff

Tuesday February 14, 2012

Thomas Voeckler lit up last year’s Tour de France, winning the yellow jersey in the Massif Central, then, incredibly, holding onto it through the Pyrenees and Alps, all the way to Alpe d’Huez. For a few, unbelievable days, it looked like he could even win the race. While he wore the yellow jersey in 2004, under similar circumstances, he only ever looked like he was borrowing the race lead. In 2011, he visibly grew in confidence every day he defended his lead. It was only on that last summit finish that his grip on yellow was finally broken.

Everybody thinks they know Voeckler: he’s the plucky trier, the attacking dynamo, the French housewives’ favourite. But in his interview, Edward Pickering reveals a different side to the Europcar rider. Voeckler is a private individual, protective of his family life and well-being: he turned down a 380,000 euro pay rise offered by Cofidis, preferring the stability he’d found with Jean-Réné Bernaudeau’s team. Pickering writes, “Voeckler is engaged in an invisible struggle, to keep his life at home as normal as possible while leading a double life as a national hero. Watching the Frenchman is as interesting as interviewing him, if only to contemplate the barriers he has built between himself and the world. Those barriers are what protect himself and his family from his success…The most important thing for Voeckler is that his success on the bike doesn’t change him.”

Voeckler talked openly and frankly with Cycle Sport about the importance of protecting himself from his own celebrity, and also explained the unforgettable Tour he had last year. He confirms that he never thought he could win the race, but acknowledges that a terrible tactical error on the Alpe d’Huez stage probably cost him second place overall. “I’ve found it difficult to come to terms with that,” he admits. With superb portraits by Richard Baybutt, Cycle Sport shows a new side to Thomas Voeckler.

Also in the magazine…

We’ve got a brand-new regular feature in the magazine, starting this month. Our man in the bunch is an anonymous column, written by a professional cyclist, which will take you inside the peloton for a unique angle on the sport. Our anonymous insider will shed light on everyday life as a cyclist, the gossip and the highs and lows of life on the road. This month, he explains what it is like to be a new professional on a big team, with established stars. “I arrived in my hotel room to find a personalised suitcase stuffed with all my new kit. It was like Christmas day. While I rummaged through it like a toddler in a sweet shop, I couldn’t help noticing that my room-mate, an old hand in the peloton, was far less enthused. I had arranged all my kit in my wardrobe a good couple of days before he even opened his case.”

2011 was a year of terrible contrasts for Garmin’s sprinter Tyler Farrar. He endured the personal tragedy of losing one of his best friends, Wouter Weylandt, who died in a crash at the Giro d’Italia. But the American drew strength from somewhere to take his greatest triumph, an Independence Day stage win at the Tour de France. That sprint stage win was one of the most tactically impressive of the entire race – Garmin planned an ambush on Mark Cavendish’s HTC leadout, and executed it to perfection, the day after having achieved a similar feat in the team time trial the day before.

Ellis Bacon interviewed Farrar, who explained that he has more plans to beat Cavendish during 2012, with a particular eye on the Olympic road race. “Cavendish is the best, I’m not denying that,” says Farrar. “But it’s still open.”

We sent blogger Felix Lowe (you might know him better as the congenitally irreverent Blazin’ Saddles, on the Eurosport site) to the Tour Down Under, with strict instructions to let nothing, not even self-respect nor regular behavioural norms, get in the way of experiencing the colourful underbelly of the first WorldTour race of the season. He didn’t let us down, sending us his Tour Down Under Diary. Felix spent a day in both Astana and Katusha team cars, living to tell the tale, interviewed Paul Sherwen about André Greipel’s thighs (“f***ing enormous”) and crashed the post-race party, using Borut Bozic’s wristband pass. You won’t get the real story of the Tour Down Under from any other source.

While our man on the ground was abusing the hospitality of the TDU, let’s not forget that there was actually a bike race on as well, and the winner was homeboy Simon Gerrans, the national champion, who rides for fledgling Australian team GreenEdge. Gregor Brown caught up with Gerrans on the eve of his victory, and found a direct, analytical and thoughtful interviewee. Results were thin on the ground for the Australian at Sky, but he believes he has turned a corner with GreenEdge, and will go to the Ardennes Classics and Amstel Gold with the belief that he can win one of them, following his third place at Amstel last year. He’s also relishing the challenge of being a team leader, after realising that at Sky, his ambitions would always come behind those of Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins.

The merger of the RadioShack and Leopard-Trek teams over the winter was one of the most intriguing sagas of the off-season. While they seemed to take the best of both teams, including the Schleck brothers, Fabian Cancellara, Jens Voigt and Chris Horner, the recent experience of Katusha, Sky and Leopard suggests that results are hard to come by for new teams. We followed RadioShack-Nissan at their team training camp in Majorca to see first hand how the team was working together to overcome those challenges. Our photo essay shows how the RadioShack team took its first steps to possibly challenging for the Tour de France.

Jason McCartney carved out a very good career as one of the most respected domestiques to come out of the United States. He worked his way up by the hard route, racing domestically before a good performance in the 2004 Tour of Georgia won him a place on the Discovery Channel team. He then rode for Saxo Bank and RadioShack. For 2012, he’s returning to his roots, with a transfer to the UnitedHealthcare team. He explains to Joe Silva that while he’s no longer on the WorldTour, he will still be competing in some of the biggest races in the world, with the freedom to try and get results for himself, and share his huge experience with his team-mates.

The route of the 2012 Vuelta a Espana was recently announced, and the immediate reaction was that anybody who wasn’t a climber might as well not turn up. If the Giro presented a more human face, and the Tour has thrown a bone to the time triallists, the Vuelta looks even tougher than previous editions, with several very steep summit finishes. But the Vuelta, paradoxically, is also good for sprinters. Eight of the stages are as flat as any sprinter would want them to be, a deliberate tactic by the organisers, who felt that last year’s race didn’t have enough sprinters’ stages. Alasdair Fotheringham, who lives in Spain and knows the race inside out, previews the toughest Grand Tour of the year, and says, “It’s good for climbers…and Cavendish.”

Are we about to see a golden generation of Dutch climbers? Rabobank’s Robert Gesink and Bauke Mollema have already impressed in the Grand Tours, as has Steven Kruijswijk who emerged to take ninth in the Giro last year, and bag a Tour of Switzerland stage. Alasdair Fotheringham interviewed the young Dutchman, who relishes the challenge of the Grand Tours and is looking forward to a Tour de France debut in 2012.

While the road season has already been up and running for almost a month, the cyclo-cross season has come to its usual epic climax at the world championships, which took place in the sport’s spiritual home of Koksijde this year. Lionel Birnie attended the event along with over 50,000 fans, and explored the paradox of the sport growing in popularity every year while being so singularly dominated by Belgian riders. At Koksijde, the first seven riders were Belgian – dominance rarely seen in any international sport. Can cyclo-cross grow as an international sport when only a few countries take it seriously? 50,000 Belgians would say it can…

Iconic Places visits one of our favourite climbs of all time, Superbagnères in the Pyrenees. It was on this climb that Greg LeMond took the yellow jersey in 1986, the first year he won the Tour. He lost the jersey to Laurent Fignon on the same climb in 1989, the year Robert Millar won the stage. Chris Sidwells looks at the history of the Tour de France on this tough climb, and regrets that in spite of non-stop drama every time the race has visited, the race has not been back since that epic day in 1989.

Win a signed BMC jersey
Buy Cycle Sport this month, answer a simple question and you could be the proud winner of a signed BMC jersey – competition on page 24 of the magazine. If that wasn’t enough, Cycle Sport comes with a free, handy pocket-sized 2012 teams guide to accompany you through the season.

Plus…All our regular features – Graham Watson sends us a Tour Down Under dispatch; Broomwagon reacts to Contador and Armstrong, with exclusive reaction from Contador to his ban (“couldn’t they extend it a bit so I don’t have to ride the Vuelta?”); Shop Window tempts weak-willed cycling fans to raid their life savings for the latest bling bike gear; Any Questions with Bernhard Eisel (“Me and Cav argue when I leave drawers open in the room.”); Contador; Armstrong; some brand-new additions to the front end of the magazine: scurrilous rumours, Eurotrash, our new handwritten quiz and self-portrait with Garmin’s Peter Stetina; fantasy team of the month; top 10 rider superstitions; Geraint Thomas writes from the TDU; and much much more.

Cycle Sport April, featuring the very best writing and photography of professional cycling, is available from Wednesday February 15 in the UK, priced only £4.35, and later in the USA. It is also available electronically through Zinio.

IPC Media, owners of the UK’s market leading cycling titles Cycling Weekly, Cycling Active, Cycle Sport and Cycling Fitness, are pleased to announce a new Road Cycling Show for the South East at Sandown Park in Esher on the weekend of 21-22 April 2012.

IPC Media Ltd has teamed up with TCR Shows Ltd, organisers of the Triathlon Show and the Running Show, to create a new cycle show for Greater London and the South East. Taking place at Sandown Park in Esher, Surrey over the weekend of 21-22 April 2012, the Road Cycling Show aims to plug the gap in the market for a purely road orientated cycle show.

Whether you are into sportives, time trials, road racing, or simply want more advice on commuting to work, the show will offer cyclists plenty of information, advice and demos on all aspects of road related cycling.

The show will be a mix of trade and retail and the organisers are working with manufacturers, distributors and retailers to offer visitors the chance to see, test and buy the key models from many ranges. Seminars with some of the country’s top riders and cycle industry experts will also be taking place throughout the weekend as well as a focus on grass roots cycling in the Club area.

The organisers have been working with the cycling industry on many aspects of the show and more details will be announced very shortly.

Keith Foster, Publishing Director for IPC Media’s Cycling titles: “We’re very pleased and excited to launch this show. With the huge growth in cycling in the UK, especially London, we feel the time is right to take this opportunity. Feedback from the industry has been very positive and we look forward to working with TCR and the cycling industry, in creating the best road cycling specific show in the UK.”

David Townsend, TCR Shows Director is equally excited about the show, “Sandown Park is the ideal location for the Road Cycling Show as it’s less than 30 minutes from Central London and literally on the doorstep of the Surrey Hills. It is on the route of both the Olympic Time Trial and Road Race so is firmly on the road cycling map. It has great facilities for exhibitors and public alike, as proven by our other shows at the venue, and we’ve got plenty of exciting features which promise to make this an excellent day out.”

For more information on the Road Cycling Show please visit www.roadcyclingshow.com

The 2012 Sandown Cyclone Sportive in Surrey will take place on Sunday, April 22, as part of the Road Cycling Show taking place at Sandown Park over April 21-22.

Three flavours of cyclo-sportive are on offer: the 35.5 mile (57km) ‘Fun’ route, the 66-mile (106km) ‘Standard’ route and the 81-mile (130km) ‘Epic’ route.

All three routes start and finish at Sandown Park, Esher, and take in some of Surrey’s finest scenery and iconic climbs.

All routes head south-west towards Cobham and then out to the countryside. The first major climb comes after 22km (13.5 miles) where the riders tackle Coombe Bottom before descending into the picturesque village of Shere.

From Shere, it’s on to Winterfold and the ascent of Pitch Hill followed by around 55km (34 miles) of relatively flat terrain around the Low Weald between the North and South Downs. On to Cranleigh, Dunsfold (home of the Top Gear test track), Kirdford, Ellens Green and Forest Green.

On the return leg, the long route takes in Leith Hill followed by the tough climb of White Down, as festured in Simon Warren’s book 100 Climbs. Then it’s across Ranmore Common, down Tanners Hatch and one final climb up to Polesden Lacey before returning to Sandown.

Entry for the Epic and Standard routes costs £30, or £20 for Fun route. Both entry fees include admission to the Road Cycling Show, which features the latest bikes, cycling products, seminars and test ride facilities.

All sportive entrants will recieve a goody bag and medal. The event includes electronic timing, mechanical support, free energy drink and snacks, bike wash facility, and rider public liability insurance.

The event will be run by one of Britain’s foremost sportive organisers, UK Cycling Events and the official bike partner is Boardman Bikes.

You can enter the Sandown Cyclone Sportive via Cycling Weekly’s online shop.

Epic route profile

Cycle Sport March is now available in shops, featuring our annual season preview, along with exclusive interviews with Fabian Cancellara and Chris Horner. At 196 pages, it’s a bumper edition of the magazine, packed with the best writing and photography of professional cycling available. With the season now underway, let Cycle Sport be your guide to the upcoming season.

Words by Cycle Sport Staff

Wednesday January 18, 2011

A year ago, Fabian Cancellara bestrode the sport like a colossus. The reigning Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix champion looked set for an era of dominance – he looked unbeatable in the cobbled classics, and he talked up his ambitions of winning a full set of Monuments. But how quickly cycling can tear down the castles it builds. In 2011, Cancellara was outsprinted in Milan-San Remo, outmanoeuvred in Flanders and outnumbered in Paris-Roubaix, his fire quenched by Garmin’s ice-cold tactics. Even more strikingly, his time trial invincibility became fallibility when Tony Martin beat him, both at the Tour de France and then the world championships.

Andy McGrath interviewed Cancellara and found that the Swiss rider was not accepting his defeats lying down. “No way that I’m finished,” he insisted.

But is he? At the worlds, he was beaten man-to-man. As McGrath writes, “It was as if the 30-year-old Swiss was pursuing a faster ghost of himself. Suddenly it wasn’t easier any more. Time ebbed away and he became more desperate, misjudging a late corner and coming to a brief standstill, against a barrier, to eventually take third rather than second, 1-20 in arrears. It was ragged and engrossing. The same win-at-all-costs panache remained, but this was a Cancellara we’d not seen before, comfortably beaten in his most reliable domain, a Swiss watch suddenly ticking out of sync.”

While plenty of people have written Cancellara off, he still got three podiums in the first three Classics of the year. But the Swiss has high standards – in 2012 he hopes to return to winning ways in his favourite races.

Also in the magazine…

Chris Horner turned 40 towards the end of last year, but he remains as enthusiastic about racing as he ever was, and has proved that he’s still capable of winning big races. The RadioShack-Nissan rider is also renowned as being one of the cleverest tacticians in the bunch, as well as one of the chattiest. Matt Walsh went to Horner’s California home, to hear Horner’s opinions on everything, from Contador to his own long career.

Horner explained to Walsh what has kept him going into his fifth decade. “I love that moment right before the explosion. After the attacks get away, the race slows down. But then there’s a part right as the race picks up, speeds are higher, the bike starts to feel good. It’s still not chaotic, but you know the explosion is coming. You know all your training, all the months leading up to this race and now you’re in the last 10 to 20 minutes. The calm before the storm.”

SPECIAL FEATURE: 2012 SEASON PREVIEW

Our 2012 season preview is our best ever, beating the 2011 season preview, which at the time, was the best ever. We’ve constructed a multiple-level club sandwich of stats and facts, opinion, analysis, forensic research and mostly harmless snark, which will be your essential companion over the coming year.

In our introductory feature, the rebirth of the superteam, Lionel Birnie looks at the increasing dominance of a few major teams, and how the gulf is widening between the haves and the have-nots. Financial behemoths like BMC and Sky are increasingly able to dominate the transfer market, while even major teams like Rabobank and Liquigas are struggling to keep pace. With rumours of breakaway cycling leagues refusing to go away, the battle for dominance is taking on even more importance. But will the superteams lead to better racing and more money coming into the sport, or just to an elite group pulling up the ladder after themselves?

The teams guide covers every WorldTour outfit, as well as the major Continental squads. There’s a full team listing, with rider nationality, age, and a graphical representation of how many years they have been with the team. We’ve profiled the star riders, looked at the best results from 2011, discussed the relevant talking points, and still found space to mock Katusha’s rider biographies (they’re not exactly Tolstoy), conduct a socio-cultural criticism of Luis Angel Mate’s extraordinary hairstyle and orchestrated a fun spot-the-difference game between BMC and Phonak.

For the major teams, we’ve included extra features. In BMC: Big Money Cycling, Lionel Birnie looks at how the richest team in the sport has fundamentally changed the transfer market, and investigates how the three big stars of the team – Tour champion Cadel Evans, Classics king Philippe Gilbert and former world champion Thor Hushovd – can coexist.

Garmin have provided the surprise package in the last four Tours. In 2008, Christian Vande Velde finished fourth. In 2009, Bradley Wiggins repeated the feat. In 2010, Ryder Hesjedal was seventh and last year, Tom Danielson was ninth. The American team don’t have the biggest budget, but they have been innovative and creative in their approach to the sport, even if the signing of Thomas Dekker remains controversial. In Still crazy after all these years Edward Pickering interviews team boss Jonathan Vaughters about his ambitions for 2012, who the surprise packages may be this year, and the controversial Dekker signing.

Belgian cycling underwent a reshuffle in the off season, with Lotto-Belisol shrinking somewhat, but with Quick Step-Omega suddenly emerging as a potential superteam. The Quick Step organisation took on former Lotto backer Omega Pharma as co-sponsor, and got their hands on a job lot of extremely promising HTC riders, time triallists and Grand Tour hopes. In Back to the future Andy McGrath looks at their chances of success, after a few quiet seasons. In Tom Boonen, Tony Martin, Sylvain Chavanel, Levi Leipheimer and Peter Velits, they have riders with impressive careers and/or potential. But will they cohere, or is this a chaotic mishmash of riders?

But the Quick Step merger was nothing compared to that of RadioShack and Leopard-Trek during the off-season. The new team, RadioShack-Nissan, looks formidable, with the Schleck brothers, Andreas Klöden and Chris Horner offering serious firepower in stage races, and Fabian Cancellara in the Classics. In A marriage of inconvenience, Andy McGrath questions whether the elements of the team will combine effectively. Johan Bruyneel’s cultivated a reputation of being the best Grand Tour manager in cycling history, but then, most of his wins have come through Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador. Working with perennial Tour runner-up Andy Schleck, on a Tour course which favours time triallists, might be a different experience.

Team Sky have never been shy about setting huge goals for themselves, but their aims for 2012 are ambitious by any standards. Can they do what most people think is impossible these days, and mount a successful assault on both green and yellow jerseys at the Tour? In Mark Cavendish they have the reigning world champion and green jersey at the Tour, and in Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome, they have burgeoning yellow jersey contenders who are suited to the Tour route. Lionel Birnie, in the Sky’s the limit points out that Wiggins and Cavendish may work fine together at the Tour, it’s the selection of the other seven riders which will dictate the balance of the team and its chances of success.

There are also interviews with GreenEdge’s manager Shayne Bannan, and Rabobank’s Erik Breukink, and a profile of Saxo Bank boss Bjarne Riis.

Our race calendar looks at each WorldTour race, along with the major races on the Continental calendar. Our unique guide explains the culture and tactics of each race, along with great photography from previous editions.

We’ve also previewed the 2012 women’s calendar along with profiles of the big stars. The women’s side of the sport is growing fast, and in Marianne Vos, boasts one of the truly great and dominant athletes in any sport.

Iconic Places visits the St Bernard Passes, an Alpine double act which the Tour de France has often used to traverse from Switzerland, through Italy, to France, and last appeared as recently as 2009. The Grand St Bernard and Petit St Bernard are two of the most scenic and challenging climbs of the Alps. Chris Sidwells looks at the history and culture of the two climbs, and finds that they have been the scene of some of the Tour’s classic battles.

Finally, Pro Performance looks at the current trend in cycling teams doing outward bound-style training camps, and takes a look back at the origin of training camps, from team leaders and their entourages going on ski-ing trips through the 1950s and 1960s, to full team-get-togethers in the mountains, culminating in today’s assault courses and route marches.

Plus…All our regular features – Graham Watson showcases his best pictures of his favourite sprinters; Shop Window showcases a sparkling smorgasbord of bling kit; Broomwagon welcomes Alejandro Valverde back into the peloton; Any Questions with Johnny Hoogerland “I live in the south-west of Holland, not in Hoogerland.” ; Contador: the saga continues; Wild Giro wildcards; Top 10 Tour riders in 2012; Geraint shares his aches and pains, and much much more.

56,000 words, 405 pictures, 274 cups of coffee, 196 pages, 43 pints of beer, six pie charts, two nervous breakdowns, 1.5 litres of sweat and one Johnny Hoogerland went into this edition of the magazine.

Cycle Sport March, featuring the very best writing and photography of professional cycling, is available from Wednesday January 18 in the UK, priced £4.95, and later in the USA. It is also available electronically through Zinio.

We’ll be uploading some of the best of Cycle Sport’s features from the year over the Christmas period. Sit back on the sofa, grab a mince pie and glass of cognac, and enjoy reading the best cycling writing available.

Mark Cavendish interview: Centre of attention
Cycle Sport was the first magazine to run an in-depth interview with BBC Sports Personality of the Year Mark Cavendish following his world championships win in Copenhagen. Here is the feature, from Cycle Sport December.

All aboard the magic bus
Cycle Sport spent a week embedded with the Sky team at the Critérium du Dauphiné, watching Bradley Wiggins win the race from the inside.

Classic Races: Tour of Flanders 1992
The 1992 Tour of Flanders followed the usual pattern – an escape going early in the race. But did the peloton know what they were doing by giving unknown Frenchman Jacky Durand a 22-minute head start?

Fumiyuki Beppu interview: Japan’s rising son
Japan is full of bicycles and kerin racing is huge, but Fumiyuki Beppu is one of only four Japanese road riders competing at the top level.

Seconds from disaster: how Garmin won the Tour’s TTT
Team manager Jonathan Vaughters explains to Cycle Sport how Garmin-Cervélo won the Tour de France’s team time trial.

Words by Edward Pickering

Pictures by Graham Watson

From a distance, the team time trial looks as smooth and predictable as the swinging of a pendulum. An unbroken line of riders, the first burrowing a hole in the air for the others to rush through in his wake, pulling off after his turn is done, then slipping backwards to join again at the rear. The image is similar to the impression gained from watching speed skaters gliding over ice. It’s hypnotic and relaxing to watch.

But actually, it’s nothing like that at all.

“What you need to know about the team time trial is that each and every one of the guys you see riding it are within about one per cent of completely falling to pieces at any one moment during the race,” Garmin-Cervélo manager Jonathan Vaughters tells Cycle Sport.

“From the outside it looks nice and comfortable, but when the guys are coming to the back, they’re barely catching the last wheel, every time. It’s always just about to fall apart.”

Look more closely, or watch from the roadside, and you can get more of a sense of what Vaughters is talking about. The riders are virtually sprinting at the front, punching through to the head of the line, taking themselves right up to, even slightly over, the redline, before pulling off. Pulling off is not easy – the riders have to recover from their effort, but maintain enough speed not to be dropped, and virtually sprint for the back wheel again, get up to speed and try to save as much energy as possible, while moving forward through the line and finding themselves on the front again. It’s far more aggressive than it looks – even though they’re not sprinting like at the end of a race, the process involves a very difficult combination of extremely hard riding and pace judgement. The standard is so high now that a single lapse will put a rider off the back, and once there, there is no chasing back on.

Garmin were the winners of the Tour’s TTT, a short, straightforward, almost out-and-back circuit starting and finishing in Les Essarts in the Vendée. The best teams finished astonishingly close together – BMC, Sky and Leopard-Trek separated by fractions of a second, four seconds back, and HTC-Highroad another second behind. RadioShack, at 10 seconds, and Rabobank, at 12 seconds, were not far off. Six teams lost half a second a kilometre or less to Garmin – the margins were incredibly tight.

In any fantasy cycling team line-up, you’d pick many of Garmin’s riders for your team time trial squad. But the victory was far more than just having the nine best riders. Vaughters insists that the level of detail in their planning, and its application, made the difference. That’s not to say that none of the other teams were applying a similar level of hard work to the team time trial, but Garmin had enough of an edge, in planning, organisation, riders and execution, to win.

The geek squad
Vaughters is a geek, and the team time trial rewards geekery. He’s also built one of the closest-knit teams in the WorldTour, and the team time trial rewards teamwork. He was at pains to point out before the Tour that seven of his nine riders had been involved in the Slipstream team project since it joined the top level in 2008.

The team time trial was where Vaughters planned for the team to win its long-awaited first stage win at the Tour, and he went about it properly. Along with the team’s aerodynamicist/sports scientist Robby Ketchell, the event was planned in both minute detail, and with an eye on the bigger picture.

In fact, according to Vaughters, the single biggest difference between Garmin and other teams is Ketchell.

Ketchell is the cleverest guy in the room. Vaughters tells Cycle Sport, “I would put my hand in the fire on this one. I can guarantee that Robby has produced more marginal gains in one person than their entire marginal gains team has in many years. I’ve never met anybody as smart as him.”

Ketchell was working at the Fort Collins wind tunnel when Slipstream did their aerodynamics testing there in late 2007. Now he works full-time with the team. A former racer, Ketchell is a jack-of-all-trades. Crucially, he’s also a master at most of them.

“I have a background in computer science, engineering, mechanics and physiology,” he says. “I raced bikes from the age of 12, and did it my whole life, until I realised I’m more of a nerd than a talented bike racer.”

Ketchell’s approach is counter-intuitive – it is not to specialise. Instead, he tries to work in the overlap between all his areas of expertise to work out how best to apply them to cycling.

“Whenever anybody asks me what the number one factor is that contributes to performance, you can’t really put your finger on it. But you can say that it’s about the intersection of everything, how it all comes together and how you organise it,” he says.

And in the team time trial, he had the perfect pet project: “This was my Superbowl.”

The three Ts
The three major aspects of the planning were training, Tour selection and technique on the day. Obviously, there was more to it than just this. The mechanics had a lot of work to do, and the Tour wasn’t just about this one stage – the riders had to be prepared for 21 stages, not just the team time trial. But Garmin’s gains in the TTT were mainly focused around these three phases.

1) Training
“We only did a day and a half of specific training,” Vaughters says.

“Our guys have got a lot of experience, and what I learned from 2009 [the last Tour TTT] was that overdoing the specific training actually makes it worse.

“You have to have a plan, and riders who can understand and execute the plan. We made the team selection, we went to do a basic recon of the course, and then you do certain parts flat out.

“The aim in our preparation was to try and break the team. We tried to push them so far that riders would fall off the wheel, and the formation would break. We’d look at the mistakes and practice again, but the point was to ride hard enough to break the system, because then you can see where it breaks. Throw it on the floor, pick up the pieces, then see if you can put it together better.”

Once the team was used to riding together in formation, and all understood the capacity of the whole team, Vaughters backed off.

“My guys have done a lot of team time trials, and they’re experienced bike riders. If you overdo it, you start going worse again. You’ve got to let bike riders be bike riders. For the final three days before the Tour we didn’t touch the TT bikes.”

2) Tour selection
Garmin’s Tour team was based around supporting a strong challenge in the GC (this turned out to be Tom Danielson, but Ryder Hesjedal and Christian Vande Velde had also finished in the top 10 before), the anticipation of putting Thor Hushovd close to the yellow jersey in the first week (which was successful) and the TTT was key to both. There was also the unrelated, but equally significant challenge of supporting Tyler Farrar in the sprints, which also turned out well, with a well-executed stage win in Redon the day after the team time trial. In case that wasn’t enough, they left with the overall team prize as well.

For the team time trial, the squad was broken into sections. Five riders would be the “core”. The plan was for these five to be the only ones left at the end (the TTT’s time is taken from the fifth rider across the line): David Millar, Vande Velde, Hesjedal, Danielson and Hushovd. Two more – Ramunas Navardauskas and Julian Dean – were at the front for the opening kilometres, while Tyler Farrar and David Zabriskie were to work for the main body of the race.

3) Technique on the day
Ketchell’s planning for the day actually started the day the Tour route was announced, in November.

“Back in November, I’ve been charting the wind patterns every single day. I looked at the last 20 years for the week of the TTT, and then within that time frame, I examined the minute data to figure out if that would help us make a small gain.

It reminds us of Team Sky’s failed attempt to outwit the weather in Rotterdam last year, but while that was about trying to guess when it would rain (very tricky in a maritime climate), Ketchell was more concerned about the wind.

“The weather was almost exactly how I expected it to be. The wind died down more in the afternoon than I had expected, but I knew it was going to. I knew it would be easier for the teams that went later.”

The wind on the day was very strong – cross-tailwind out, and cross-headwind back, and it did die down. But Ketchell didn’t just think about how the team would ride in the wind. He knew that it was important to try and set off as late as possible, which meant getting a good result in stage one, for the first three riders at least. The teams were sent off in reverse order of team GC after stage one.

“We thought about whether we needed to finish with our guys towards the back of the main group, or trying to get them all at the front, depending on what we thought the weather would be,” he says.

Also crucial: the order of riders on the line. Vaughters explains how the riders lined up at the start was dictated by their plan for the stage.

Remember that we described the course as “straightforward”? It mostly was, except for two technical sections with corners – one out of town straight after the start, and one coming back in, with the added complication that the final two kilometres were downhill.

“Our starting order was based on how we could do the first kilometre’s corners at the fastest speeds, with low risk, but nine riders doing it quickly,” says Vaughters.

“Look how we lined the guys up. The five guys who finished together were Millar, Ryder, Tom D, Christian and Thor. In front, we had Navardauskas and Julian Dean. Then behind, Tyler Farrar and David Zabriskie.

“I was always expecting the ends to fall off, and that the core would go on together.”
Cycle Sport expresses surprise that David Zabriskie, one of the best time triallists in the world, was not one of the core, but Vaughters felt that the best use of the American was outside the core.

“He wasn’t riding for GC, so we could could use him to cook his engine much harder far out on the course. Second, he doesn’t corner incredibly well, so with those final bends in the route, I wanted him to be done by the two k to go banner,” he explains.

There’s more.

“Through the start, Julian and Ramunas are good at cornering, so they got us out of town fast. Then David Millar sets the speed for the rest of the race. Why? Because he’s the fastest rider on the team.

“I put Ryder behind David. When David comes off, the team is going as fast as it is going to. So what’s Ryder’s job? He’s not as good at the TTT, so his job is to keep that same speed until the moment his rear wheel is in front of David’s front wheel. Whoosh, and then he’s off. Tom Danielson: the same. Just keep the speed up and off.

“Then Christian – he can do a longer turn than Ryder and Tom.

“Notice how I always put Tyler Farrar in front of David Zabriskie. David is one of our fastest guys, so when Farrar comes off the front, David is pulling, and we’re going very fast. What happens?”

Cycle Sport answers, “Tyler’s coming to the back of the line.”

Vaughters: “And given that the speed is very high with David on the front, what’s he going to have to do when the back rider comes past him?”

CS: “Sprint for the wheel.”

Vaughters: “And what kind of rider is Tyler?”

Bingo.

Trade secrets
Vaughters thinks that Garmin rode as close to the perfect race as the team could have done on the day. The margins were tight, although the dropping wind in the afternoon did make their time vulnerable.

“The big race of the day was between Sky and ourselves. By the time BMC and HTC went, the wind was a lot less strong,” he notes.

But there’s even more to the team time trial than all this. Vaughters makes CS switch off the Dictaphone when he explains a couple more things the team did, which were staggeringly simple, but turned out to be very effective. He doesn’t want all their TTT secrets out yet.

Vaughters has made a considerable investment in terms of building team spirit over the long term. And he reaction of the team to their first Tour stage win, in Vaughters’s favourite event, was diametrically opposed to the discipline and hard work that went into it.

“I basically screamed like a little girl when we won,” he says.

Afterword: foundations of a win
The team time trial had a minimal effect on the final general classification of the Tour – five riders who finished in the top 10 actually finished in the second half of the TTT, showing that a poor performance there wasn’t an impediment to doing well. At the same time, if the times for the event were stripped out of the final GC, the top 10 would still be in the same order, although Samuel Sanchez would only have finished four seconds behind Alberto Contador.

The main effect of the event was to negate Philippe Gilbert’s superiority in the uphill sprints and to put Thor Hushovd in yellow for the best part of a week. It also gave Cadel Evans important momentum – the Australian was in the top two both on the Mont des Alouettes and at Mûr de Bretagne, and BMC were second in the TTT. He gained insignificant time on his main rivals in these places, but looking back, the solidity of his challenge was built on the foundation of these early days.

Team Time gap Highest GC rider
1 Garmin-Cervélo - Tom Danielson (9th)
2 BMC 4sec Cadel Evans (first)
3 Sky 4sec Rigoberto Uran (24th)
4 Leopard-Trek 4sec Andy Schleck (second)
5 HTC-Highroad 5sec Peter Velits (19th)
6 RadioShack 10sec Haimar Zubeldia (16th)
7 Rabobank 12sec Robert Gesink (33rd)
8 Saxo Bank-Sungard 28sec Alberto Contador (5th)
9 Astana 32sec Rémy di Gregorio (39th)
10 Omega Pharma-Lotto 39sec Jelle Vanendert (20th)
11 FDJ 46sec Arnold Jeannesson (15th)
12 Europcar 50sec Thomas Voeckler (4th)
13 Ag2r La Mondiale 53 Jean-Christophe Peraud (10th)
14 Quick Step 56sec Kevin De Weert (13th)
15 Liquigas-Cannondale 57sec Ivan Basso (8th)
16 Saur-Sojasun 1-02 Jérôme Coppel (14th)
17 Lampre-ISD 1-04 Damiano Cunego (7th)
18 Katusha 1-04 Vladimir Gusev (23rd)
19 Movistar 1-09 David Arroyo (36th)
20 Vacansoleil 1-15 Rob Ruijgh (21st)
21 Cofidis 1-20 Rein Taaramae (12th)
22 Euskaltel-Euskadi 1-22 Samuel Sanchez (6th)

This article first appeared in Cycle Sport September 2011

Words by Edward Pickering

Portrait by Mina Ushida, race pictures by Graham Watson

Chigaseki is a seaside town located on a broad sweep of sandy beaches about 50 kilometres down Japan’s east coast from Tokyo. The Tokaido Main Line, one of the busiest railways in the world, which connects Tokyo to Kobe, runs through the town. The train journey from the capital runs through endless, contiguous metropolis – Tokyo, Yokohama, and then across to the coast at Chigaseki.

The city is a funny mix of commuters and surfers – while the gaze of the working population turns to the north, towards Tokyo, the city also looks east across the ocean. It’s one of Japan’s best breaks, and the beachfront road alternates cafes with surf shops. It’s packed with souvenir-buying townies in summer, and deserted and breezy in the winter.

Chigaseki is where Radioshack’s Fumiyuki Beppu grew up. I’m trying to place him in the context of his hometown, but he doesn’t fit. He’s neither hardworking salaryman nor beach bum. It’s just as difficult to place him in the context of the country in which he grew up – he sees himself less as a Japanese person than a citizen of the world these days, having lived in France for the best part of a decade.

“I sometimes forget my nationality,” Beppu says. “I lived in France, and I rode for international teams. I became very European and I forgot my nationality, except for one moment last year, the Japan Cup.

“There were 30,000 people cheering us. It made me cry with happiness, and at that moment I felt like I was Japanese again.”

Beppu’s one of three Japanese riders who are currently riding at WorldTour or Pro Continental level, along with Europcar’s Yukiya Arashiro and Skil-Shimano’s Yukihiro Doi. That’s rare enough to be striking.

Cycling isn’t a big sport in Japan, although bikes are one of the primary methods of getting around town – men, women and children alike ride heavy shopping bikes known as mamacharis, and pavements are generally shared between pedestrians and bikes, with no friction whatsoever. The keirin scene is huge – trillions of yen are bet every year on track racing. But road racing is way behind the biggest sports – yakyu (baseball), soccer and sumo – in terms of popularity. Hardly surprising, given the population density of all but the mountainous spine of the country – racing on open roads is impractical, and most road races take place on purpose-built road circuits (of extremely high quality and variety, incorporating hairpin climbs and descents, rolling terrain and smooth road surfaces). It’s a niche sport, but three professionals is still two more than when Beppu signed with Discovery Channel in 2005.

Beppu is renowned as being one of the nicest people in the peloton, almost too nice. He’s universally known as as ‘Fumy’, and allows himself to be photographed cuddling small dogs, while Twittering enthusiastically in three languages. He roomed with old Classics hacker Roger Hammond in his first training camp with Discovery, who reported back that Beppu was literally bouncing off the walls with happiness at having turned professional, and making up for his almost complete inability to use the English language by constantly repeating five of the words he did know: “Roger, I am so happy.”

But Beppu is no pushover. He makes up for being nice to the world by being hard on himself. As an Under-23, riding for the high-profile French team VC La Pomme, he finished 13th in the U23 Paris-Roubaix. Soon afterwards, he crashed heavily, necessitating 30 stitches in his face, and smashing his nose open.

“It hurt, but I had no broken bones and I could ride my bike,” he says, laconically.

It’s a bit of a Japanese thing. Gaman is one of the most important parts of the self-perception of Japan – it translates literally as “endurance,” although it’s broader than that. It involves dealing with adversity, not giving up, and most of all, not letting down one’s peer group. Beppu was determined to show gaman after his crash.

Three weeks later, he was down for the Japanese U-23 national championships, and he had been telling everybody, and himself, that the race was going to be the crux of his career. After two seasons in France, he was determined to turn professional, and prove to himself that he was good enough to do it. In order to do that, he had to prove he was the best rider in Japan – why try to be the best rider in Europe, if you can’t even be the best rider in your own country? Instead of postponing the decision until he’d recovered from his injuries, it made him even more certain that he had to win.

“I said to myself that if I didn’t win the nationals, I’d stop cycling. Finish,” he says, and I think he means it.

“I rode for the first time a week after my crash, with bandages over my face. I looked like a mummy. But my legs felt fresh. I wanted to go back, and win by five minutes, to show how much better I was than the riders in Japan. If I didn’t win, I was going to stop cycling, go back to live in Japan and get a job in a restaurant.”

He travelled to Hiroshima, to the rolling 15-kilometre circuit where the nationals would take place. The local riders, including future professional Yukihiro Doi, watched him, and followed.

“I was smart – I waited while the attacks went. Then I attacked with Doi. With 45 kilometres to go I dropped him, and rode the race like a time trial,” he says.

“I won,” he adds with satisfaction, “by four minutes and 50 seconds.”

Then he went back to his base in Marseille, where the VC La Pomme management, having heard his threats of giving up, were worried they’d never see him again.

Beppu’s route into cycling was an unusual one. He tells the story of how a friend of his father Yasufumi once cycled the 20 kilometres between their houses when he came for a visit. This was an epiphany for Beppu’s father, who on the spot decided that he and his family would get bikes and go for regular rides.

Yasufumi, a night-school teacher and frustrated creative who dabbles in pottery and calligraphy, encouraged his three sons, Hajime, Takumi and Fumiyuki (to whom he gave half his name), to ride and race mountain bikes.

Beppu was a natural athlete – unusually, he was able to run well at both short and long distances. At the age of 14 he ran 11.9 seconds for the hundred metres, and a 4-35 1,500-metres, en route to winning his age group area championships.

At Japanese schools, every child signs up to a more or less compulsory cultural activity known as the “kurabu” – a transliteration of “club”. Clubs differ from school to school, but sports, music and artistic pursuits are the most common. At Junior High, Beppu was in the track and field club, but when he graduated to Senior High, he joined the cycling club. Older brother Takumi had already gone to Europe to race by this point, and Beppu knew that he wanted to follow.
Beppu’s talent outgrew Japan fairly quickly.

“I joined the Fujisawa cycling club, and trained every day. I won the Asian Games as a high school student, the nationals, everything. I went to race in Canada, and came up against the Dutch national team, the French, real racers,” he recalls.

“Kenny Van Hummel, Koen De Kort. Their style of racing was so organised.”

A Japanese expat in France, Akira Asada, who’d raced as a high level amateur in Europe and still works as a cycling manager, offered to help Beppu make the trip. He suggested he joined VC La Pomme in Marseille, where Remy di Gregorio, Philip Deignan and Remi Pauriol would be his team-mates.

It can’t be overstated how difficult it was for Beppu to transplant himself to France at a time he spoke no French, and there were teething problems. The free-thinking, anti-establishment culture of Marseille and Provence were antithetical to the general conformity and order of Japanese culture. Even after 10 years living first in Provence, and now in Beaujolais, he’s good-humouredly incredulous about the Mediterranean attitude to timekeeping.

“I learned that when they said ‘two minutes,’ they meant 20 minutes. Or an hour,” he laughs.

Beppu hasn’t yet won a race as a professional, He’s one of those riders who falls down the cracks between various disciplines. He’s neither climber, nor rouleur, nor sprinter. But he does have the fourth and most essential skill of any cyclist: eternal optimism. In every bike race, there are 200 riders. And when the terrain isn’t completely against them, all 200 start the race thinking they can win.

“I love cycling because it is three things: it’s Formula One, chess and a marathon, all mixed together. You have to think and use good tactics if you want to win,” Beppu says,

“Running a marathon is simple, but cycling is not simple. Breakaways can succeed. Everybody has a chance to win. Physically we are all almost the same…” he trails off.

Then he looks directly at me. “I can win a race. I’m ready, physically and mentally, to do it. My trainer has measured me holding 6.3 or 6.4 watts per kilo for 20 minutes – you can be a team leader at that level.”

The closest he has come was second place on a stage of the Tour of Romandy in 2007, when he was in his third year at Discovery Channel. He got in a break with Matteo Bono and Marco Pinotti, and they were left more or less alone by the peloton. Beppu rues not winning, and suspects Bono and Pinotti not exactly of helping each other, but maintaining one of those unspoken, subconscious national alliances which sometimes exist in cycling. In Beppu’s eyes, one Italian – Pinotti – attacked near the finish, and once Beppu had chased him down, the other Italian – Bono – was able to come off him and win the sprint.

“I almost won – I was strong enough to win the sprint, but it was too late. If the race had been 10 metres longer, I’d have overtaken Bono,” he says.

On a sporting level, Discovery Channel might have seemed a strange place for a new professional from an obscure cycling country. It was one of the biggest teams in the world, used to hiring potential Grand Tour winners as domestiques, rather than obscure Under-23 riders.
But Discovery management wanted a Japanese rider, and at that point, Beppu was their only option. Bruyneel called Beppu up at the end of 2004, and after initially persuading him that it wasn’t a practical joke, signed him for the team. There were rumours that Beppu had difficulty adjusting to life on the team, and that he had been forced on the squad, but they were either exaggerated, or he changed their minds, because after two years at Skil-Shimano following Discovery, Bruyneel signed him back for RadioShack.

“Life was straightforward on Discovery,” he says. “We could concentrate on cycling and competition. Afterwards, everything was done for us, so there was no stress. It wasn’t easy, but it was straightforward,” he clarifies.

He experienced a different atmosphere at Skil, where he rode in 2008 and 2009.

“Skil was a small team which still got in big races,” he says.

“I thought it would be good for my career. I wanted to be in the bigger races. A smaller rider in a big team sometimes has problems doing that, but I thought that being a bigger rider in a smaller team, I could get a better programme.”

Beppu rode the 2009 Tour de France with Skil. It was probably the highlight of his career so far. When the field famously split in the crosswinds at La Grande Motte on stage three, Beppu was there. And not only Beppu, but five of his team-mates.

“I showed my experience,” he says proudly. “I lived in Marseille, I knew the wind would be strong, and I told my team-mates all to be at the front. There was a big, big fight, and we got lots of riders in the first group. One of our riders had Contador on his wheel when it split – he was the last to get on, and Contador was dropped.”

The overhead television shots of the stage prove Beppu right – as the road turns and Columbia formed an echelon in the crosswinds, you can see a Skil rider madly sprinting to make it on to the back of the group. The junction made, he can ease up, while the gap, now established, yawns between the two groups. Skil rider Cyril Lemoine was third on the stage, while Beppu was eighth. And the Japanese rider also came seventh in Aubenas, after the field had split on the second-category Escrinet climb.

Happy memories, but Beppu’s memories of the team are not so good.

“On a small team…” he begins.

Generally, Japanese people are less direct than people in western societies, although there is a broad range and some overlap. There is a saying in Japan, ‘the nail that sticks up gets hammered down’. But Beppu’s been in Europe long enough to have lost any inhibitions about speaking out.

“On a small team, you are always fighting with team mates, about races and about the race programme. It was war,” he says.

“The directors were critical, and the gossip was terrible. There’s always gossip on bike teams, but this was worse.”

Beppu leans forward and switches off the Dictaphone.

During 2009, Beppu made a decision which had serious consequences for himself. With another year on his contract with Skil allegedly still to run, he signed a contract with Radioshack. The resultant legal battle almost cost him a year of his career, and the resolution was protracted.

“It’s like [RadioShack manager Viatcheslav] Ekimov told me later. Never flick a Dutchman,” Beppu says later, laughing.

This is Beppu’s seventh season as a professional, and he has big ambitions.

“My goal is to go to the Tour and win a stage,” he says.

“It was a dream before. Now it’s an ambition.”

This article first appeared in Cycle Sport June 2011

Words by Lionel Birnie

Pictures by Graham Watson

There were ten minutes to go until the start. Riders were beginning to roll to the start line in the square in Sint Niklaas, which was crowded and buzzing with anticipation. It is a characteristic of the Tour of Flanders that it is not just the riders who are preparing for a day-long race across the countryside. Many of the spectators were poised to dash for their cars so they could catch the action at multiple points through the day. All of them were better prepared than Jacky Durand.

The 25-year-old Frenchman, who rode for the Castorama team, needed help. The previous evening, he had changed the cleats on the bottom of his shoes but when he got on his bike and tried to clip into the pedals, he found he couldn’t. The screws he had used were too long and the cleats wouldn’t snap into place. Durand’s own mechanic didn’t have any so Durand had spent ten minutes running from team car to team car, with no luck. Finally, he reached the car of the Swiss Helvetia team. The mechanic searched around in a tool box and came up with some screws that were the right length.

With the clock ticking down and the voice of the commentator on the public address system reaching fever pitch, Durand, who was all fingers and thumbs by this point, re-attached his cleats. By the time he got to the start line, he’d already burned plenty of adrenaline but he wove his way through the riders who had already massed for the start so he could be near enough to the front to see what was going on.

Thomas Wegmuller, a 31-year-old Swiss rider with the Festina Watches team, was also up at the front. A fortnight earlier, he had helped his team mate Sean Kelly lay the groundwork for that incredible pursuit and capture of Moreno Argentin on the Poggio at the end of Milan-San Remo. It meant the Irishman was wearing the World Cup leader’s jersey. But the day was more significant than that. At 35, this probably represented Kelly’s last chance to win the Tour of Flanders, one of the few races to have slipped through his net.

“My work was to go in the breakaway,” says Wegmuller. “They told me in the morning, before we left to go to the start. When Sean says ‘go in a breakaway’ you don’t argue about it. You have to be in it. The tactic was very simple. If I am in the lead, it means Sean can say to the others ‘Look, I have Tommy in the lead, so I can’t chase’. It takes all the pressure off him and the rest of the team. The thing with the Tour of Flanders is that you know you are going to lose guys. The first hill you maybe lose two guys, because they are too far back and they can’t get up to the front again. The next hill, maybe you lose another guy. So, having me in front means that when the bunch catches the break, Sean already has at least one guy to help him, whether it’s for a couple of hills or 40 kilometres, it all helps.”

Durand wasn’t thinking in terms of winning the race. He was a third-year professional, ranked 217th in the world. The Tour of Flanders wasn’t even his team’s biggest priority that day. Cyrille Guimard, the Castorama boss, wasn’t in Belgium. He’d gone with his A-listers to the Grand Prix Rennes in Brittany. It may sound astonishing that any team would favour such a small race over De Ronde, but the GP Rennes was winnable. It meant something to the team’s sponsors, a chain of DIY stores, and would mean a decent show in L’Equipe. Besides, Flanders was not a happy hunting ground for the French. Only two Frenchmen had ever won the race, Louison Bobet in 1955 and Jean Forrestier the following year.

“In Flanders we didn’t have much hope of winning. There were only five or six of us who started. Only two or three of us – François Simon and Dominique Arnould – were even motivated for the race. The others were sent there for punishment. The management used to send them to the Tour of Flanders to learn about racing.”

The previous year, Durand had ridden the race and made it as far as the second feed. This time his goal was to finish. A place in the top 20 was the height of his ambitions. He knew that to be involved in the second half of the race, he had to get ahead. He wasn’t au fait with the roads like the Belgians. He didn’t know every hump and hollow on the cobbles. He couldn’t tell you which order the 14 climbs were crossed. But if he was safely up the road, it would take a good deal longer to sink to the bottom than if he hit the climbs at the back.

**
“It was a hell of a battle to get away,” says Wegmuller. “The first hour of racing, we covered 50 kilometres. Phew. You start to feel pressure when you know it is your job to be in the break. You have the big Dutch teams, Buckler, Panasonic and TVM, watching everything because they don’t want the wrong guy to get away. It was attack after attack and I had to mark each one of them.”
Durand’s team talk had been minimalist. With Guimard elsewhere, Bernard Quilfen was in charge.

”Thierry Marie was going to be our leader but he crashed on the last day of the Three Days of De Panne and broke a rib, so Quilfen said we had no leader and that we had carte blanche. Do your best.
 “There were lots of attacks and I got in two of them but we got brought back. The third one, I can’t even remember who attacked first but me and Wegmuller followed it and we were away.”

There were four of them, the others being two Belgians – Patrick Roelandt of the tiny Assur team and Herve Meyvisch of Carrera. They got their gap after 43 kilometres but it wasn’t easy. “We had to ride incredibly hard,” says Durand. “We spent about 20 kilometres with just 10 or 15 seconds’ lead. The peloton was chasing hard. And then they stopped and we had no idea why. We were away. We spent the next few kilometres riding at 35 kilometres an hour, just so we could recuperate. I was nearly dead and there were still 200 kilometres to ride.” Actually it was 217, but no one was looking as far as Meerbeke just yet.

Wegmuller’s presence was the reason the peloton refused to let the rope go slack. Neither Buckler nor Panasonic wanted someone that strong to get away but, after a ferocious initial effort, the two teams cancelled each other out. One would not sacrifice riders to the chase if the other would not commit. The TVM team held the balance of power but they didn’t want to do the bulk of the work either. No one was willing to compromise. So the peloton eased up and let the gap grow.

“Wegmuller was a concern,” says Edwig Van Hooydonck, twice a winner of the Tour of Flanders, who was the leader of the Buckler team. “But no one was worried about the other three. The two Belgians would not make it to the end, we were pretty sure. No one seemed to know much about Durand. He was not well known at all then. Maybe we should have asked around. Normally you can let a group get 15 minutes, maybe even a bit more if there’s a headwind, but it got out of hand. But there was never a point when I thought we wouldn’t catch them.”

**
There was a feed zone at the 102-kilometre point, with 36 kilometres still to cover before the first hill, the Tiegemberg. The four leaders were working well together, without damaging themselves, and the gap had grown to 22 minutes. They rode on mostly in silence but when the motorcycle pulled alongside them with the latest time gap Wegmuller did a little calculation and said to the others: “This is turning in our direction now. If we can keep a big lead before the hills, we might have a chance.”

“I don’t think anyone believed me but I knew that once we got into the hills, it would be difficult for the peloton to be organised. You can’t chase efficiently because you have the pave and climbs that disrupt the rhythm.”

That was precisely Van Hooydonck’s concern. There had been a concerted effort to chip away at the quartet’s advantage before they reached the hills. By the time the leaders reached the second climb, the Oude Kwaremont, the gap was down to 15 minutes. “I was trying to work out how much time they would lose,” he says. “I was still sure we would get them. It is very tiring being in front all day. There’s no chance to get any rest, and soon they would be down to three, then down to two and then maybe there would be one survivor, and that would make our job easier. The one thing no one wanted to do was panic because if you panic and start making a silly effort you could harm your own chances.”

Over the Patersberg, Hotonde, Kruisberg and Taaienberg they went. The gap was shrinking, of course, but they were doing a good job of plugging the dam. On the Eikenberg, the seventh climb, with seven remaining, they were still 11 minutes ahead.

They lost Roelandts on one the Varentberg, the ninth climb. “He hadn’t been helping very much anyway, so we didn’t wait for him,” says Durand. “Meyrisch was very courageous. We lost him with about 40 kilometres to go. He was dead. He said to go on, but he pulled his share right until the very end.”

Wegmuller was conscious of his tendency to do too much of the work and, as the best rider of the three, he shouldered that responsibility without overdoing it. “We tried not to damage each other, especially on the hills. There was no point,” he says. “If you make someone suffer they won’t work when they can. I just wanted to keep it together and ride as efficiently as possible. We could worry about the finish later on but for now we needed each other.”

“A lead can melt very quickly in a race like that,” says Durand. “My aim was still only to finish the race. I had felt very good at the start of the race and again when we were on the first pavé climbs. But at 60 kilometres to go, I had 20 very bad kilometres. I couldn’t ride. I said to Wegmuller ‘Sorry, I just can’t,’ and he could tell I wasn’t lying. He continued on the front – some riders refuse to work if you aren’t but he was fine with it.”

**
Thirty kilometres to go. Just the Muur and the Bosberg left. This is the end game, no matter what has gone before. Now the peloton knew they were in peril. The big names were having to grit their teeth and do the chasing themselves. Van Hooydonck, Argentin, Maurizio Fondriest, Frans Maassen and Rolf Golz swapped turns at the front. Durand and Wegmuller were still four minutes up the road.

The gap had come down enough for the race organisers to pull most of the team cars and the VIP vehicles out of the gap between the leaders and the chasers. The narrow roads meant they could easily become an obstruction and common sense said that the advantage was going to tumble rapidly. That meant neither Wegmuller nor Durand had access to their team cars for what felt like a long time.

“We had no drinks or food for a long time,” says Wegmuller. “They pulled all the cars out because they thought we were going to be caught. The Castorama car managed to get through but mine didn’t. Durand’s sports director gave me a bottle of water. Before that we had shared what water and food we had because we didn’t know how long it was going to take for the cars to get to us.

“On the Muur, I felt like I was the strongest,” says Wegmuller “I looked at him and then went to the front and I pushed hard but not so hard that I would kill him. There was still some way to go and it was dangerous to go on my own. Besides, I was confident I could beat him in a sprint. I didn’t know him but I knew that in a head-to-head sprint I could beat most people. I was not the very quickest but if I went from a long way out I could keep going and going until they had nothing left. Besides, there was the Bosberg to come and that was where I planned to attack.”

Durand reached the top of the Muur and, for the first time, allowed himself to believe he was going to finish the race. “I assumed Wegmuller would ride away from me but I was able to stick with him. I even felt okay. This was good but I still wasn’t thinking of winning. I knew that a group of names, with Fondriest, was coming up, and we didn’t know how far ahead we were. We’d stopped getting information.”

Back in the chase group, the frustration was setting in. Everyone was getting tired. No one wanted to burn their last remaining matches on the chase and leave nothing left to contest the win. But without completing the catch, they were riding for third place at best.

Approaching the Bosberg, the Festina car finally got through to see Wegmuller. “My sports director [Domingo Perurena] told me that Sean was not in the chase group so I had to give it full gas. We had one-and-a-half minutes left so it was very close. I took a bottle from him and drank it straight down. Yuck! It was all glucose. So sweet. I was so thirsty that I just drank it all down without thinking. It was a big mistake. Immediately my stomach felt bad.”

That hampered Wegmuller’s plans. “I was planning to drop one of my bombs on the Bosberg, make an explosion and then continue over the top. I was certain Durand wouldn’t come. Maybe he’d match me on the climb but the top is very difficult. It is not flat, it keeps rising and it is very open. I went to the front and started to make a good tempo so he couldn’t attack. Then suddenly, he went faster. I asked my legs for more power but it didn’t come.

“I didn’t panic. I knew my qualities. A little while after the Bosberg it is downhill and flat all the way to Meerbeke. I was a good time triallist. I could ride at a fast speed and maintain it. I was sure I would catch him. But he found the turbo. The gap wasn’t closing. I could see him, or rather the cars and motorbikes behind him, but I couldn’t get any closer.”

Durand was now in front, with just over ten kilometres to go. He put his head down and went for it. He barely looked up, just followed the line in the middle of the road. “I still didn’t think I was going to win,” he says. “I didn’t see where Fondriest’s group was. I looked round on one of the long straights and I could see riders but I wasn’t frightened. If I got caught, it looked like I was going to get my dream top 20 place. Somehow I found the strength to turn my 53×12. I don’t know how I was able to do that but I found the force from somewhere. I was riding so strongly that the Fondriest group only took 20 seconds out of me from the top of the Bosberg to the finish.”

Van Hooydonck and Fondriest went clear of the rest on the Bosberg. They were still a couple of minutes down but they still believed.

“I know how difficult it is to ride from the top of the Bosberg to the finish knowing that everyone is trying to catch you,” says Van Hooydonck, nicknamed Eddy Bosberg because that was where he laid the foundations for his two victories. “But the gap didn’t close. We were giving it everything but we weren’t going to catch them.”

Three kilometres from the finish, the race director’s car pulled alongside Durand. Eddy Mercxk leaned out of the window and said: “Petit, tu as gagné le Tour de Flandres.”

“And I believed him. When Eddy Merckx says you have won, it’s definitive. The final three kilometres were pure happiness. As I went under the flamme rouge I asked myself ‘What is this?’ ‘What is happening?’ There was no pain in my legs. When you ride the biggest classic in the world in the peloton, your legs hurt. When you’re about to win it, your legs stop hurting.”

**

In the finishing straight, it’s fair to say the Flandrian crowd was underwhelmed but they showed respect. “I remember the faces of the Flemish fans, watching me. They clapped but they looked surprised. Who is Durand? Jacky who? They’d been expecting Wegmuller, or Fondriest. But a Castorama? A Frenchman?”

Durand had spent 217 kilometres at the head of the race. The Tour of Flanders was only his second victory as a professional. But he had form for this sort of thing and the peloton had paid the price for underestimating him.

“The year before I won the Grand Prix Isbergues in a 200-kilometre break. I went from kilometre zero, with three others, and won by a long way.”

Wegmuller too rued allowing complacency to seep under the door. “I was too sure that I would be stronger than him. This made me do some efforts that I should have saved for the final stages,” he says. “I was not angry because he had worked. He was not sitting back thinking ‘Ah, Tommy will drive us to the finish’. I was disappointed to come second but it was not a bad experience. I was still on the podium in one of the great races. Compare it to Paris-Roubaix, four years earlier. I was certain I was going to win. A two-man sprint, me and [Dirk] De Wolf. Normally I’d never lose that, but I lost it because of shit. A plastic bag blew into my derailleur and I couldn’t change gear so I had to sprint in the wrong gear. At least this time I lost fair and square. I had no complaints.”

For Van Hooydonck, third place was frustrating. “I said ‘congratulations’ to Durand. He won a great race, but I was very, very frustrated. Normally, I could have won it. Normally, we would have caught them. But they were too strong. They were very, very strong, and no one realised.”
Over in the Breton town of Rennes, Guimard was celebrating victory too. Castorama’s Jean-Cyril Robin had beaten two Belgians – Frank Van den Abeele and Rik Coppens. But the following day, it was Durand who graced the front page of L’Equipe, not Robin.

Cycle Sport’s eyewitnesses

Jacky Durand
Winner
French breakaway specialist who also took three Tour de France stage wins in the course of his career, and Paris-Tours in 1998. Now works as a pundit for French Eurosport.

Thomas Wegmuller
Runner-up
Swiss all-rounder who was capable of top 10s in races as diverse as Paris-Roubaix, the Tour of Flanders and the Tour of Lombardy.

Edwig Van Hooydonck
Third
Two-time winner of the Tour of Flanders, who also got two podium placings in Paris-Roubaix, and took four wins in Brabantse Pijl. Now works as a salesman for a windows and doors company in Belgium.

1992 TOUR OF FLANDERS TOP 10
1. Jacky Durand (Fra) Castorama in 6-37-19
2. Thomas Wegmuller (Swi) Festina at 48sec
3. Edwig Van Hooydonck (Bel) Buckler at 1-44
4. Maurizio Fondriest (Ita) Panasonic same time
5. Frans Maassen (Ned) Buckler at 1-57
6. Jelle Nijdam (Ned) Buckler
7. Marc Madiot (Fra) Telekom
8. Jesper Skibby (Den) TVM
9. Franco Ballerini (Ita) MG Boys
10. Dirk De Wolf (Bel) Gatorade all same time

This article first appeared in Cycle Sport May 2011

Words by Lionel Birnie

Illustration by Dwayne Bell. Racing pictures by Graham Watson

***

When you watch ants go about their business, you see them all rushing hither and thither, all part of some bigger plan, all with a specific job to do. A cycling team is a little like a colony of ants – you have to get very close up to see how they work together and who does what in order to appreciate their individual roles. Cycle Sport spent a week with Team Sky at the Criterium du Dauphiné in the French Alps to see the Happy Ants do their thing, while keeping a close eye out for the appearance of any Inner Chimps.

TEAM SKY’S RULES
Written on a poster inside the bus

We will respect one another and watch each other’s backs
We will be honest with one another
We will respect team equipment
We will be on time
We will communicate openly and regularly
If we want our helmets cleaned we will leave them on the bus
We will pool all prize money from races and distribute at the end of the year
Any team bonuses from the team will be split between riders on that race
We will give 15% of all race bonuses and prize money to staff
We will speak English if we are in a group
We will debrief after every race
We will always wear team kit and apparel as instructed in the team dress code
We will not use our phones at dinner – if absolutely required we will leave the table to have the conversation
We will respect the bus
We will respect personnel and management
We will ask for any changes to be made to the bikes (gearing, wheel selection etc) the night before the race and not on race day
We will follow the RULES

**
SATURDAY

The Best Western Alexander Fleming in Chambéry is typical of the hotels in which professional cyclists spend their working lives. It is stuck next to a roundabout on an industrial estate near an autoroute junction. There aren’t little cafés or bars buzzing with humanity nearby. Instead there’s a DIY superstore and a dreadful chain restaurant. The hotel is tidy but functional, with furniture and décor chosen by head office and staff on autopilot.

Late afternoon is giving way to early evening. The car park outside has been taken over by the Sky and Ag2r teams, who each have a fleet of vehicles positioned strategically in a land grab formation. Mechanics are working on time trial bikes for tomorrow’s prologue. The generators hum and the hoses run. If you were a guest at the hotel you might find the presence of two cycling teams dominating the car park and the dining room annoying.

Sky’s what-you-see-is-what-you-get head coach Shane Sutton is reclining in one of the armchairs in reception. He is talking to Juan Antonio Flecha. It is a surprise to see Sutton here. The previous day he’d sent a text saying he would be arriving a few days late after being struck down by a bug at the Bayern Rundfahrt race in Germany. A food poisoning outbreak is dominating the news and the Germans are blaming Spanish salad.

“I nearly didn’t make it,” he calls over. “I thought it was a dodgy cucumber.”

Sutton is not the type to be laid low for long. He has been with Bradley Wiggins every step of the way this season. He’s a mentor and a minder and at times he must feel like a babysitter too. Last year, as Wiggins wilted under the pressure of leading the multi-million pound team while trying to repeat his fourth place in the 2009 Tour de France, Team Sky battled, and failed, to keep him from derailing.

This year Sutton and Tim Kerrison, the team’s head of performance science, have been assigned to work closely with Wiggins. Sutton takes care of the mind, Kerrison works on the physical conditioning. As Sutton says, Wiggins needs to be loved, bolstered, encouraged and bollocked. The key is understanding which is necessary.

Kerrison has the appearance of a youthful university professor. Neat hair and a serious manner. He is sitting in reception, working on his laptop. To the uninitiated, the screen shows a jumble of charts and numbers but the Training Peaks software plots every effort Wiggins has made on a bicycle this year. “We really didn’t have much of a picture of Brad as an athlete,” he says. “The first job was to build up an accurate picture and then tailor his training to the demands of the event.” Every time Wiggins has ridden his bike this year, whether on the road or the turbo, in a race or training, he has recorded his power output. Kerrison, who previously led the revolution in Australian swimming, has analysed it all and knows to the watt how much work Wiggins has done.

This attention to detail and level of scrutiny might feel suffocating had Wiggins not bought into the idea.

“The bottom line is, we know what happened last year,” says Sutton. “We’re not going back over it again but we’re not repeating the same mistakes either. We don’t want to focus on the negatives and drag it all up again but basically he didn’t do the work last year. He might say he did, but we know he didn’t. If you print that, I’ll kill you.” Sutton need not worry. Later in the week, Wiggins will admit as much.

**
The room list is stuck on the wall next to the lift. Eight riders are supported by 16 staff. It is apparent that, barring disaster, this group will be the bulk of the Tour de France team. Last year the Tour team prepared in completely different ways and some arrived for the start virtual strangers. Wiggins, Michael Barry and Steve Cummings rode the Giro, Edvald Boasson Hagen and Geraint Thomas did the Dauphiné while Flecha, Simon Gerrans, Thomas Lofkvist and Serge Pauwels rode the Tour of Switzerland.

TEAM SKY RIDERS ROOM LIST
Juan Antonio Flecha & Edvald Boasson Hagen
Simon Gerrans & Christian Knees
Geraint Thomas & Bradley Wiggins
Rigoberto Uran & Xabier Zandio

STAFF
Shane Sutton – Head coach
Sean Yates – Sports director
Nicolas Portal – Sports director
Tim Kerrison – Head of performance science
Richard Freeman – Doctor
Bob Grainger – Physio
Sebastian Paepcke – Therapist
Chris Slark – Bus driver
Rajen Murugayen – Mechanic
Igor Turk – Mechanic
Alan Williams – Mechanic
Mario Pafundi – Carer
Maarten Mimpen – Carer
Klaus Liepold – Carer
Soren Kristiansen – Chef
Oli Cookson – Assistant

**
The riders sit down for dinner an hour before the staff. Chef Soren has spent the afternoon in the kitchen. No chef’s whites for him, his uniform is black with the Sky logo in large pale blue letters on the front of his apron. The Dane is calm and quietly-spoken, combining the role of chef with that of an attentive maitre d’.

As the riders come down for dinner, their starter is already waiting for them. “It’s important there’s something for them to eat immediately,” he says later. “The riders don’t come down at the same time because some might be having their message but when they come down it’s because they’re ready to eat.”

Most of the staff settle for whatever the hotel kitchen is serving up, although some cast envious glances at Soren’s tender-looking steaks and wait until the riders have finished eating before polishing off the left-overs. The hotel’s meat course is a bit of a mystery and, judging by the concerned looks around the table, I’m not the only one wondering what it is. Surely it can’t be chicken? Chicken shouldn’t be served pink.

Nicolas Portal, the team’s French sports director, asks the waitress.

“Lapin,” she says. Rabbit.

Portal’s English is still stuttering past the beginner’s stage and his mis-translation has knives and forks clattering onto plates as everyone stops, mid-chew. “Chicken,” he says, before realising his mistake.

Unlike Soren’s food, which has vanished, much of it goes back to the kitchen uneaten. You can see why some teams employ their own chef.

**
SUNDAY – Prologue, St Jean de Maurienne

It is a couple of minutes past eight in the morning when Team Sky’s bus, truck and camper van head for St Jean de Maurienne. On the way, an aggressive sky cracks and the rain is heavy for a while.

We stop for fuel and Chris Slark, the bus driver everyone calls Slarky, puts in 350 litres of diesel. It costs 504 euros. “That’s only just over half way,” he says in a gentle West Country accent. The tank holds 650 litres and Slark will be buying more fuel in a couple of days. Team Sky has two of these buses, each costing around £750,000 to purchase and customise. They are thirsty beasts and today, when parked up for eight hours with everything running while the riders wait for their start times, it will burn around six litres an hour. “Because of the distances involved, it’s difficult to be a green sport,” says Slarky, who has worked in Formula 1 and has done everything from driving the bus to changing tyres and refuelling in the pit lane.

After pipping the Quick Step bus to a stretch of pavement on one of the little back roads in the town centre, the staff quickly get to work pulling out the awning on the bus, setting up the turbo trainers and fencing off an area for the riders to warm-up in with smart Sky-branded panels.
It’s about an hour before the riders arrive. They get changed and set off to ride the course. It’s still drizzling although the forecast is for it to brighten up later. Because of the changeable weather, Sky have decided to put Geraint Thomas off first, with Boasson Hagen in the middle of the order and Wiggins their last man to tackle the 5.4-kilometre circuit.

The roads are still damp in places so when Thomas rides so he has to be cautious through the corners and over the white road markings, which can be perilous when wet. Wiggins gets into the passenger seat alongside Yates. Any clues he can gather now will help him later.

It is not a surprise that Thomas sets the fastest time when he crosses the line. It withstands David Zabriskie’s effort a minute later but later falls to Maarten Tjallingii of Rabobank. Flecha is Sky’s next rider, one of the few to ride with a radio earpiece. The Spaniard pushes down the starting ramp and swings left, then right up the narrow hill. It is a lung-busting climb that will take the fastest riders a minute or so.

Yates follows in the team car. He’s frequently on the radio, offering encouragement and information.

“That’s it Flecha. That’s good. Come on now.”

“Careful on this corner, it might still be wet.”

“Last two kilometres. Push, push, push. It’s nearly over.”

“Good work, Flecha.”

It is good work. Flecha’s time is a second quicker than Thomas.

Radio Tour, the channel that gives out race information to all the team cars, confirms that Sébastien Hinault has set the fastest time on the hill despite being one of the slowest overall. Hinault rides for the team sponsored by Ag2r, the insurance company, and its base is in Chambéry. “Christ, he gave it everything on the hill to get the king of the mountains jersey and then blew up big time,” says Yates.

Morning gives way to afternoon and drizzle stands aside for the sunshine. Wiggins completes his warm-up and gets ready to go to the start. “Brad hasn’t prepared specifically for the prologue,” says Sutton. “Of course, he wants to be up there but yesterday he did five hours. He’s training for the Tour de France, not for a five k effort.”

Wiggins has the best time when he crosses the line but only for a few minutes. Lars Boom, the Dutch rider with Rabobank, beats it and wins the stage. Then Alexandre Vinokourov nudges Wiggins down to third.

He gets back to the bus, disappears inside for a moment and comes out holding his futuristically silver Bont shoes. He hands them to Raj, the mechanic. “Can you check the cleats? The left one isn’t in the right place. And the gears were slipping a bit too.”

The time trial bikes use Shimano’s manual gears, while the road bikes are all equipped with the remarkable electronic system Di2 which has made changing gear like flipping channels on a television set. Switching back to the manual gears and their idiosyncratic ways can prove an issue. “With the gears on the TT bikes, you have to push the lever then pull it back ever-so-slightly otherwise they can slip,” says Alan.

Most of the riders have headed back to the hotel in the team cars after completing the course. Boasson Hagen has waited and plans to ride the 80 kilometres or so with Wiggins, who has gone to dope control.

While we wait, Oli Cookson gets chatting. Apropos of nothing in particular, he says: “I just wanted to say I didn’t get this job because of my dad.” His father is Brian Cookson, president of British Cycling and a board member of Tour Racing Limited, the company that owns Team Sky. “In fact, I nearly didn’t get the job because of who my dad is and how it might look.”
It’s a fair point. Last year, UK Sport and British Cycling commissioned the auditor, Deloitte, to examine the relationship between Team Sky and the national federation. Cookson previously worked as a landscape architect and urban designer in Madrid but spent some time on last year’s Tour with Sky. He fitted in well and then worked on the Vuelta a Espana, partly because he is fluent in Spanish.

The team was rocked by the death of Txema Gonzalez, one of the carers, during the race. Gonzalez was taken ill when he contracted a bacterial infection, which worsened and entered the bloodstream causing damage to his internal organs and bringing on septic shock. It was a terrible time. “I was one of the only people on the team who could speak English and Spanish,” he says. “I was translating at the hospital and then I was translating between Dave and Txema’s family. It was absolutely terrible. We were all in tears.”

Cookson’s role on the team is broad. He helps lug the riders’ mattresses from hotel to hotel.

“People joke about it, but having a good night’s sleep is one of the most important parts of recovery,” he says. “It also helps minimise the risk of allergies.”

Cyclists’ lungs are put under stress every day and can be susceptible to irritation. Breathing in dust from a hotel mattress every night can exacerbate any breathing problems. “Some hotels are fine but you go into others and you wouldn’t want to sleep there. During the Giro, the carpet was so dusty I could write the word ‘Sky’ on the floor with my finger. We seal up our mattresses and transport them with us for big races.”

Cookson also helps plan logistics and he translates for Zandio and Uran, who joined from Caisse d’Epargne during the winter and are picking up English slowly. Portal also speaks Spanish having ridden with Caisse d’Epargne, so between them they can get the message across.

**
It is a quarter to six by the time Wiggins and Boasson Hagen arrive back at the hotel. Their ride, partly done behind a team car driven by Sutton, has taken a couple of hours or so. Wiggins hands his SRM computer to Kerrison to download the data for analysis. Kerrison likes where he sees. “Brad recorded his peak power for the season during the prologue,” he says.

“Here, listen to this,” Sutton says. “Did you hear what happened in Luxembourg? The guys were showering in a railway station after the last stage – don’t ask me why they were showering in a railway station. Anyway, [Ian] Stannard comes out of the shower and his suitcase is gone. No sign of it. The other guys go out of the railway station and they find a policeman and tell him what’s happened. A hundred metres down the street they see this guy, he’s a local nutcase. He’s got the suitcase and he’s wearing a Sky jersey and shorts over his clothes and he’s got a pair of Oakleys on. He was wearing Stannard’s stuff!”

**
MONDAY – Stage one Albertvile – St Pierre de Chartreuse

Sean Yates is sitting in one of the Jaguar team cars, engine idling, clock ticking. It’s 5.27am. Cookson arrives, puts his bike on the roof and gets in. They wait another three minutes. The clock hits 5.30 just as the car park’s automatic gates open to let in a delivery truck. Yates sees his chance and drives through. Three minutes later, he gets a text. It’s Portal. “Where are you?”
Yates and Cookson drive south. The park up and ride the last 40 kilometres of the day’s stage. They want to see the final climb, a second-category hill that rises to the Alpine village that nestles between the twin peaks of the Col du Cucheron and Col du Coq.

“Hey, where were you?” Portal asks Yates when they get back. “I came down at 5.33 and no one was here?”

“We said we’d roll at 5.30, not 5.33,” says Yates with a smile.

“Oh well, I got another couple of hours’ sleep.”

**
The breakfast table is groaning with cereals and sauces, pots and jars. Soren sits waiting. When a rider arrives, he heads to the kitchen and returns with a large bowl of porridge, little pieces of chopped fruit stirred in to add an interesting flavour and texture.

He makes batches of his own juice every day. Fruit in the morning, vegetable in the evening. He places a jug on the riders’ table and then brings over a smaller beaker to the staff table, placing it down with a conspiratorial flourish, as if to say: “You shouldn’t be getting this, but…”

Soren used to work for the Danish embassy in London and he’s worked in ‘proper’ restaurants too but for the past seven years he’s catered to the specific requirements of professional cyclists, first for CSC, now with Sky.

He calls each hotel a few weeks in advance, lets them know he’s coming, places an order for ingredients. The menus are actually drawn up by the team’s nutritionist, Nigel Mitchell but, as Soren says: “It’s a compromise. Nigel knows that writing the menu in Manchester is fine when you get to the race you might have to drive 300 kilometres to the next hotel, which might be in the country, 30 kilometres from the nearest supermarket.”

Soren’s priority is to check the quality of the produce. “If something doesn’t have a date on it, I don’t use it. You can tell if the meat is good quality. If not, I buy my own.”

He has ten boxes of his own equipment and ingredients and he notices if this puts noses out of joint with the hotel’s chef. “I have to ignore it. Some hotels are great but others are like ‘What, is our food not good enough for your precious riders?’ It’s not that the food isn’t good, it’s that we want to know what’s in it. The salt, the fat, the ingredients. I’ve seen every type of hotel and I’m the only member of the team who gets to see behind the scenes. Sometimes you wish you hadn’t seen but I don’t say anything. I am a guest in their kitchen.”

Every evening meal comprises meat and fish, pasta or rice. “You have to make the food look good because people eat with their eyes first. In a Grand Tour, after three weeks of wet pasta, the riders almost feel dead inside, so a bit of colour makes a big difference. Usually I use chicken or turkey because it is low in fat but steak puts a smile on everyone’s face.”

Last night’s dinner was chicken in a curry sauce that tasted so good it’s impossible to believe there was no cream or butter in it. “Just water, spices and a little milk,” he says.

**
Team Sky’s bus ensures the riders travel to the race in first-class comfort. There are nine seats for the riders and they take up the front half of the vehicle, with the back reserved for a little office-style compartment. The seats are wide, comfortable and recline. Each rider has storage space for their laptops and a satellite dish on the roof means they can all watch their own Sky channel. No arguing over what to watch in here.

There are about 45 minutes to go until the start. The riders are in various states of readiness. Knees is in his shorts but has not yet put his jersey on. The colourful tattoo of a naked woman that dominates the upper part of his right arm is particularly striking.

The big screen at the front of the bus slides down and Yates begins to give his team talk. Portal scrolls through the visual presentation put together by Cookson, a mix of maps and profile diagrams from the organisers and photos from Google Earth and Streetview. Having ridden the climb this morning, Yates is able to give the riders more information than the photographs can provide. He explains that the final few hundred metres to the line kick up unexpectedly. “Edvald can be there at the finish. Rigo, Xabi, keep it together on the last climb. Brad, don’t don’t feel you have to go with anything, just pay attention and if the gaps open close them gradually, don’t get sucked into going after everything.”

Cookson has superimposed Sky logos on the pictures. “Have they painted Sky on the roads already?” asks one of the riders.

“No, I think that might have washed off now,” deadpans Yates.

**
Sutton stands a little way from the bus, so his cigaratte smoke does not blow near the riders. “It’s about the riders taking ownership now,” he says. “It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this is your Tour team right here. Well, most of it. There’s one or two we want to take a look at but basically this is the group we want to work together.

“One guy who really impressed me at Bayern is Christian Knees. I’d not seen him much before. He’s strong, he’s run 20th in the Tour before, and he’s big. He’s one of the few guys who can shelter Brad in the wind. Brad’s 6ft 3 and although he can get low, you want someone who can protect him on those windy stages.”

**
The stage has finished. Jurgen Van den Broeck of Belgium has won, Boasson Hagen was sixth and returns to the bus wearing the white jersey. Wiggins got tailed off slightly on the run-in and lost a handful of seconds to Cadel Evans and Vinokourov. As soon as he gets back to the bus, he puts on a long-sleeved jersey and rides his bike on the turbo trainer for a quarter of an hour.

“It’s something we’re trying out,” explains Kerrison. “When you think about it, you warm down after a prologue time trial that might be a six-minute effort or after a short track race. You’ve just ridden four hours, with an intensive burst at the finish. You’ve maybe ridden hard for half an hour, with accelerations and then you just come to a halt and get on the bus. It doesn’t make sense.”

**
TUESDAY – Stage 2, Voiron – Lyon

The rain is heavy in Voiron. We shelter in the team cars and watch as the riders make their way to the start line before edging out behind them. We’re barely out of the neutralised zone before a gendarme pulls alongside Yates and gestures to put his seat belt on.

With Wiggins lying fourth overall, we’re fourth in the convoy, close enough to see the back of the bunch. As they climb the hillside, we see that three riders have got a little gap. Jurgen Van de Walle, of Omega Pharma, Tjallingi of Rabobank and Brice Feillu of Leopard are in for a long and ultimately fruitless afternoon.

“I can’t work out why they’re bothering,” says Yates. “Okay, Feillu’s riding for a Tour place but Omega and Rabo have won stages already.”
A text message arrives. Gossip from David Millar’s book launch in London the previous evening. I read it out. “Cavendish is joining Sky, according to the grapevine.” Silence. Then Yates says: “That’s the gossip is it?” I turn to look at him. He looks straight ahead. The effort not to give anything away is perhaps showing.

We’re not in for a rivetting day. The break is established early, the gap goes out to a few minutes and the bunch settles in for a wet trudge towards Lyon. Talk turns to how the role of the directeur sportif has changed. We talk of Cyrille Guimard, who on hot days would drive the team car barefooted wearing only a tiny pair of shorts. “When I was racing for Peugeot in the Midi Libre, Jean-Pierre Danguillaume, who was one of the directors, stopped the car, took a bike off the roof and rode up into the bunch to talk to one of his riders,” says Yates. He laughs. “The commissaire was going mad. They don’t like that kind of thing.”

Fifty kilometres pass. The sandwiches (ham, cheese and cornichons) have been eaten. Yates gets on the radio to Portal, who is driving the second team car, which is perhaps a kilometre behind him in the convoy. “Nico…”

“Yes.”

“How’s it going?”

“All in my car are sleeping. The doc is sleeping.”

We hear the doc, Richard Freeman. “Just resting my eyes.”

Knees and Gerrans drop back for fresh rain jackets and bottles.

And then we come over the brow of the hill. Yates sees the brake lights too late. The road is slippery. He stamps on the brakes. The wheels fight desperately to grip but it’s inevitable. We hit the Omega Pharma car.

“Shit,” he says. “No crashes in 12 years, then two in a month. I ran up the back of someone in the Giro.”

Marc Sergeant and his colleague get out of the Omega Pharma car. “Are you alright,” asks Yates. Sergeant inspects the bumper theatrically then wags his finger playfully, before holding his neck in mock agony.

Maybe a minute goes by. The radio sparks into life.

“Sean?” It’s Nico.

“Yes.”

“Did you have a little push? News travels very fast.”

Over the next hour, a couple of other team cars pass. Lorenzo Lapage of Astana passes and peers at Yates then shakes his head. The pair worked together at Discovery Channel. “I’ll get a reputation,” says Yates before pointing out the man in the back seat, one of Astana’s soigneurs.

“That guy used to box for the Soviet navy. Imagine how hard he must’ve been.”

**
Just like the car crash when a momentary lapse of concentration caused an incident, so the least eventful days can suddenly turn on their head.

There are just 22 kilometres to go when we pass through the village of Chavaille. A couple of Quick Step riders are on the floor and Yates picks his way past them and threads the Jaguar through the narrow, winding roads. The television on the dashboard has kept cutting out but we see Sky’s riders driving the pace. “Are we on the front?” asks Yates. Soon we realise that the bunch has split and that a group has got away. Vinokourov is in it, Sky are chasing.

Yates wants to get up to the group containing the Sky riders but we’re stuck behind the third group. The road narrows and then there’s a central reservation. We pass Boasson Hagen, who hit a pothole on a fast descent, puncturing his front tyre and shattering his rear wheel. Uran gave him his front wheel but the Norwegian had to wait for the neutral service bike to replace the rear. Yates passes him, there’s no way back now.

Wiggins is on the front now doing a big turn before settling in behind his team-mates who close the gap. At the finish, Wiggins is alert and racing. There’s a split. By the time the next group has crossed the line, Wiggins has gained six seconds on Evans. A small advantage but an encouraging sign to Sutton. “He’s taking responsibility. You see that gap, it was hardly anything but the time isn’t taken between the back of one group and the front of the next. So a small gap on the road can me five, six, 10 seconds gained or lost.”

**
Dinner is nearly done. It’s 10.30 but some staff still haven’t appeared for dinner. “Where are the carers?” asks Sutton. “Where’s Klaus?” Klaus is still at the massage table, working on Geraint Thomas.

After the finish, the riders’ recovery drinks were not ready and waiting in their seats on the bus as they should have been. A small but vital detail had been overlooked.

Sutton gathers the staff around him. “Listen guys, we’re a team, but Klaus is still up there working. Today we had a problem with the recovery drinks. They have to be there for the riders. I don’t care who was supposed to do it but work it out between you, okay? Take responsibility. If you’ve finished your work don’t just fold your arms, see if there’s something else you can do. If you see a bloke who’s struggling and you’re all done, ask him if you can help. The riders are really pulling together and I want to see everyone do the same. Don’t let your mate fail.”

**
A little later, Sutton and Kerrison are talking about the Tour team, how it should be selected and when it should be announced.

“What are we going to do?” asks Sutton. “Ring every rider that’s not in it first so their feelings aren’t hurt? We’re picking a team to do a job. You tell the guys who are in it first. If you don’t get a call, you’re not in it, surely?’

Kerrison doesn’t quite agree with Sutton’s old school approach. “The riders we’re not selecting are still part of the organisation.”

“I’m surprised Simon hasn’t asked yet,” says Sutton. “He usually wants to know what’s going on.”

**

WEDNESDAY – Stage 3, Grenoble time trial

It’s raining again, so Flecha is the only rider who opts to ride round the time trial course in the morning. He heads out with Sutton. The others take a trip round in the cars.

This course will be used again at the end of the Tour de France. It’s 42.5 kilometres and it climbs almost from the start. The profile provided by ASO makes the first hill look easier than the second but, in fact, everyone agrees it’s the other way round.

Out on the course, HTC’s Tony Martin is paying particular attention to the flat section at Saint-Martin-d’Uriage and the technical, cobbled left-hand turn. I watch him ride that stretch a couple of times.

Later, I take a taxi to the start. “I’ll jump in with you,” says Sutton. On the way, we discuss Wiggins’s chances. “It’s a good course for Brad. It isn’t really technical.” I mention Martin’s detailed reconnaisance. “He’s here for the stage, isn’t he? He lost a load of time the other day so he’ll go all out to win today. We’re not worried about the stage. I think Brad will be top three but we’re here for GC. The whole goal is to do as well as we can on GC. Brad knows that. But this time trial in the Tour will be very important. Brad could take minutes from some of the climbers. If he’s 12th he could move up to ninth. If he’s ninth he could move up to sixth.”

Talk turns to the continual evolution of Team Sky. “We need more guts in the team, you know? Guys like Mat Hayman have got guts. The team will look a lot different next year. We need more climbers and we’ll have a couple.”

Who are they?

“One guy you’ll never guess. He’s not even a pro yet.”

Is he Colombian?

“How d’you know that?”

There aren’t many places you can find untapped, unsigned talent, and there have been rumours since the spring that Sergio Henao, who won the Vuelta a Colombia last year, has agreed to join Sky after Uran vouched for him.

**
The clock over the finishing line counts down. Wiggins is not going to beat Tony Martin’s time. At the second checkpoint, before the long descent and run-in to Grenoble, Wiggins was level on time with the German. But then it began to rain and he conceded 11 seconds.

He thumps the gear levers on his tri-bars in frustration. He may not have won the stage, but Wiggins has taken the yellow jersey.

There’s no sign of either of the carers, Maarten or Mario. Has there been another oversight? The UCI’s chaperone is here to escort Wiggins to the dope control but Wiggins is irritated to be without a helper.

“Where’s my soigneur?” he asks.

I ring Sutton. “There’s no carer here for Brad.”

“He said he was coming back to the bus, no matter what.”

Back at the bus, the chaperone has caught up with Wiggins and takes him, together with the doc, to give a sample.

“He’s just had a go at me in there,” Sutton tells Yates. “He said ‘Where were my time gaps to Tony Martin?’ and I said ‘You can cut that bullshit for a start.’ We told him he was level at the last time check, what more does he want? There weren’t any more time checks to give him.

“He got to the time check level with Martin and then he gets to the finish and he’s frustrated he hasn’t won the stage, which is understandable, but this wasn’t about the stage win. It was raining on the descent and the most important thing was that we took no risks.

“On the descent, he made this gesture to us with his hand. I thought he was saying he had a flat tyre but what he meant was ‘Talk to me.’ He wanted to know the time to Martin but we didn’t have any more time checks.”

As for the absence of a carer at the finish line. “He said he didn’t want one. Then he wonders why there isn’t one.”

“There’s never a dull moment with Brad,” says Yates. “You’re either laughing your head off or tearing your hair out. Or both at the same time.”

Sky’s bus is the last one in this back street. Most of the spectators who had waited for Wiggins have given up. It’s well past 6pm.

Wiggins arrives, the yellow jersey on his back, a Crédit Lyonnais lion under his arm. “Payback for Albi,” he says, a reference to the 2007 Tour when Wiggins finished fifth in the time trial won by Vinokourov just a few days before the Astana rider tested positive for a banned blood transfusion.

**
The atmosphere at dinner is bright and light. There are smiles and laughter at the riders’ table.
After he’s finished eating, Flecha sees an opportunity to wind up Slarky. Time trials pose a logistical challenge and it isn’t possible for every rider to be followed by Yates or Portal. So Slarky drove a team car behind the Spaniard. With his experience changing Formula One car tyres, Flecha would be in good hands.

“Hey, Slarky, you know I got a fine today? One hundred Swiss Francs.”

It transpires that midway through the ride, Slark pulled level with Flecha and offered him a bottle, which is strictly prohibited in time trial stages.

“Yeah, the commissaire was going to penalise me two minutes as well.”

Slarky’s face drops until he realises he’s having his leg pulled by Flecha, who seems to be in permanent possession of a smile.

Alan Williams, one of the mechanic, says there was a near miss with Knees too. “Bob [the physio] was waiting to jump into a neutral service car with a pair of wheels for Christian but ASO said there wasn’t one free,” he says. “So I grabbed the wheels and gave them to the guys at Movistar, who were going out behind Christian. If he punctured, he’d only have to wait a minute to get a wheel. Yeah, it’s a lost minute but it’s a lot better than DNF-ing.”

**

THURSDAY – Stage four, La Motte Servolex – Mâcon

With the yellow jersey to defend, Sky are in for a challenging day. There’s more than the usual attention around the team’s bus in the morning but this is nothing compared to the Tour. The atmosphere is relaxed, the sun is shining and music is blaring out of the bus. Even though it’s not to his taste, and he agrees it sounds like a bad holiday in Benidorm, to the doc, this is a good sign.

“It means they’re up for it,” he says. “I have to say, some of the lyrics are a bit much. During the Tour, Dave had to ask them to tone it down a bit.”

Yates, who currently has an Eagles CD on a loop in his team car, steps out of the bus and leaves them to it.

I get into the car with Maarten and Mario, the two carers who are heading to the feed zone. They are like chalk and cheese. A laidback Dutchman and a hyper-active Italian and the journey is enlivened by their double act.

The feed zone is on a long, straight road, as they often are. Maarten picks a spot and pulls over.
About an hour before the riders are due, Maarten hangs eight musettes on the car’s tailgate and begins to load them. Three energy gels, two bars, a small rice cake wrapped in foil, a bidon, a little can of coke. Mario goes off to talk to his friends at Liquigas.

“You wanna be careful,” Maarten tells Mario when he comes back. “It looks bad for you. I do all the driving, then I do all the work while you go and chat. You’ll be sleeping next.”

“No, no, don’t write that,” says Mario, before launching into the best Shane Sutton impression I’ve ever heard from an Italian, although in truth it sounds more like the drawling Marlon Brando in the Godfather. I mention this and Maarten says: “Mario is from the south of Italy, Salerno. He’s almost Mafia.”

Mario used to race. He was a promising under-23 with the amateur Vellutex team at the same time as Yaroslav Popovych but says he became depressed and gave up racing. He begins to talk about his depression but his English is not quite good enough to explain the nuances and it leaves him frustrated.

The bunch passes through and the bags are grabbed without incident. Wiggins and Boasson Hagen do not take the risk of trying to take their bags, so Mario passes them to the team car. One of the riders will drop back for them later.

**
We’re in the bus, watching the race on the pull-down screen. Sutton is playing a cricket game on his iPhone. “I’m trying to beat New Zealand.”

He seems able to concentrate on two things at once. “The finish is a bit like a mini version of Bordeaux, isn’t it? You come into the town, over the bridge, right-hander, then quite wide roads.”
We watch as Team Sky set up Boasson Hagen for the finish. Thomas puts in a big effort to open the gap for the Norwegian but he just mistimes his effort and is pipped into second place by John Degenkolb, the HTC rider who won two days ago in Lyon.

“Shit,” says Boasson Hagen when he gets back to the bus, but there are no recriminations.

“Thanks man,” he says to Thomas when he arrives.

“No problem. Happy to do it.”

The riders head off to the hotel by bike but Nicolas Portal’s Jaguar is not going anywhere. The automatic gearbox is faulty. “It’s only using two gears and it won’t go more than 90 kilometres an hour,” explains Alan, who laughs when I suggest he should get under the bonnet. “I’ll stick to bikes.” At the Tour, Sky have a Jaguar mechanic with them in case the cars go wrong. “I’ve rung Jaguar,” says Alan. “But it’s not going to be fixed before the weekend.”

**
The Hotel L’Escatel in Mâcon is not the best. If you arrived here on holiday you’d probably consider sleeping in the car. There’s a mangy looking cat curled up on a chair in reception. It wakes up and hops down onto the floor and walks, with a slight limp, into the dining room.
There is a wonky table tennis table pushed up against the wall and an old babyfoot table. The little wooden footballers are chipped and jaded. The idea of lugging eight mattresses for the riders begins to make more sense.

Fortunately, I don’t have to. Because the hotel is full, with Garmin and Saur-Sojasun also staying, a couple of us are down the road in another hotel. It’s no better, although Garmin’s Dan Martin refuses to believe it’s any worse than the L’Escatel, when I bump into him.

On the other side of reception is one of those novelty massage chairs where you insert a euro and the thing wobbles about for five minutes curing aches and pains.

“You could save a fortune on soigneurs,” I say to Tim Kerrison.

“Have you used one of those chairs? They’re actually pretty good. Maybe we should get them on the bus!”

Wiggins is the last rider to arrive, having been delayed by the podium presentations, press conference and dope control, the holy trinity of responsibilities that mark you out as an achiever.

We walk across to the hotel and Wiggins explains that he’s feeling confident about tomorrow’s finish at Les Gets. “It’s not that hard,” he says. “Saturday is the big day, but the team is so strong I think we will be alright.”

In reception a couple of journalists from a French newspaper are waiting for him.

**
FRIDAY – Stage five, Parc des Oiseaux – Les Gets

Last night, Wiggins lit up Twitter. “Anyone fancy working as a press officer for me out here? Getting pulled left and right, need help?”

The response is predictable. Dozens of people, from PR specialists to eager fans volunteer to get on the next flight. A few say they relish the opportunity to “crack a few journos’ heads.”

Earlier in the day, Sutton had said that if he had his way, he’d ban the riders and staff using Twitter. “You make a negative story if you ban it so it’s not worth it. But last year a few things got said that weren’t the image we wanted to project. We’ve told the riders, you’ve gotta be careful.”

The Dauphiné is hardly a pressure cooker and it doesn’t bode well for the Tour if he is struggling to cope with a handful of approaches a day but he says he was only joking. “This was supposed to be a dry run for the Tour in every respect but the press officer couldn’t come here because he’s on holiday,” he says with a roll of the eyes.

Sutton knows that the media is Wiggins’s Achilles heel. “It’s something you have to cope with at the Tour. Everyone wants you if you’re doing well. I remember at the Worlds when Nicole Cooke won the junior road race and she reacted a bit strongly when there was one camera in her face and I pushed a guy away to give her a bit of space. The next day I saw Jan Ullrich and he was absolutely surrounded. There were hundreds of them and he could hardly move but it was like he didn’t see them. He just blocked them out.”

**
Dave Brailsford arrived last night and after the race rolls out from the start, he travels on the bus to the finish at Les Gets. On the way, he makes and receives a dozen or more calls as the bus becomes his office, discusses the cost and timetable of some crucial repairs the buses will need later in the year, and then outlines his vision for a more appealing, televisual and investment-friendly sport.

As we drive through the péage, one of the toll booths on the autoroute, the Katusha team bus veers across in front of us. Clearly the driver hasn’t seen us and Slarky has to drive into the layby to avoid a coming together.

“That’s payback for Swifty, that was,” says Brailsford, referring to the signing of Ben Swift when he was under contract with the Russian team. “Actually, no, payback will be worse than that.”

**
The team hotel in Les Gets is an attractive, if stereotypical mountain chalet. The mechanics and some of the other staff have already arrived and are tucking into pizza and beer. This is a rare afternoon when the punishing and repetitive schedule eases slightly. A hotel two minutes from the finish line offers the chance to get a proper lunch and get on with the work.

Wiggins defends the yellow jersey comfortably. The French rider Christophe Kern takes the stage and Wiggins is alert and composed in his yellow jersey.

He arrives back at the hotel to find his turbo trainer and bike have already been set up in the little wooden porch of the hotel.

The hotel owner’s ageing labrador dozes next to the bike. Someone has balanced a Sky baseball cap on the dog’s head but he doesn’t seem to mind. He only opens an eye when Wiggins gets on the bike and the turbo whirrs.

Sky’s terrier-bulldog cross, Sutton, is by Wiggins’s side as he warms down.

“That was great today,” he says.

“I felt shit at the start. It was full on at the start, like the old days, but on the climbs no one is doing anything ridiculous. They’re attacking but then they just stay there,” says Wiggins.

“That’s what’ll happen. They’ll get 30 metres and that’ll be it so there’s no need to panic,” says Sutton. “Even when G was on the front, they weren’t getting anywhere. The package is there, just stay calm mate. Even if you feel you’re coming down a bit, don’t worry because they’re getting tired too.”

Gerrans, as chirpy as ever, walks through reception. “The first 100k were ridiculous. It was like a criterium with attacks going left and right. We couldn’t control it, no one could. If too big a group went, we shut it down. The problem was, it was on big roads so it was really hard for a break to get away. On smaller roads you can control more because you can brake through a corner and let the gap open. But when it’s big roads everyone’s trying to go across, the group gets too big, so you shut it down. Then the attacks start all over again. A hundred kilometres for one guy to get away?” He shakes his head. “Pfft.” The lone escapee was Jason McCartney of Radioshack.

**
In the evening, Carsten Jeppesen, the team’s head of operations arrives. Perhaps it is the configuration of tables in the restaurant’s little dining room but from this point on there seems to be more of a subtle split between the management and the staff. Whereas earlier in the week management and staff ate at one big table, now there appears to be more of a hierarchy. Brailsford, Sutton, Jeppesen, Kerrison and the doc are at one table; everyone else is at another.
Yates does not appear for dinner. He popped down earlier, saw no one was there, didn’t particularly fancy raclette for dinner and went back to bed. Considering he is usually up at dawn to go for a ride and is training hard for the upcoming national 50-mile time trial, it seems unthinkable to miss a meal after a hard day behind the wheel.

**
After his dinner, Wiggins sits down to talk. He explains the difference between last year’s faltering season and his current demeanour, which seems a world away.

“I wasn’t leading the team in any sense and I was becoming quite withdrawn,” he says. “I felt I needed to change and I let people start to help me a bit more. I feel confident to lead this team now, confident to tell people what to do. Last year I just couldn’t. It had been such a drastic change. I went from going to the Tour to help Christian [Vande Velde] to finishing fourth. I don’t think I understood what a change that was going to be. I was the underdog and if I’d cracked in the last week and finished ninth, no one would have said anything. I made a few cock-ups last year, media-wise too.

“When I came to Sky, Rod Ellingworth was designated to coach me. I just said ‘Yeah, okay.’ But I didn’t have faith in Rod’s coaching. It wasn’t anything to do with him but I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me. I don’t think he had that rapport with me. I was very good at telling him what he wanted to hear and convincing him of what I needed to do.”

So, Wiggins was steering things rather than the coaches?

“I think so, yeah, and I take full responsibility.

“Shane never lets me cut corners or shy away. He just cuts the bullshit out. Last year I didn’t ride the Nationals because I didn’t feel I wanted to get out there and race a week before the Tour. Instead, I went and tested on my local climb in Girona and set a record up it so I thought I had the form. But I had nothing to back it up.”

**
SATURDAY – Stage 6 Les Gets – Le Collet d’Allevard

The doc is in the hotel’s bar, laptop open, phone pressed to his ear, looking concerned.
Rigoberto Uran has been suffering with breathing difficulties for the past couple of days and Dr Freeman is trying to get a Therapeutic Use Exemption for a drug to treat him.

“It can be very tricky, especially at the weekends,” he says. Yesterday, Dr Freeman contacted the race’s anti-doping doctor and put the case for a TUE. The drug is a steroid that can mimic a corticosteroid in the urine and can be misused.

“Rigo has got a chest problem,” he says. “With most asthma patients, you will never find out specifically what causes it. We’ve tested for pollen and in Rigo’s case it doesn’t appear to be that.

“The ADAMS [World Anti-Doping Agency’s Administration and Management System] website can be tricky. Your worst fear is that you’re stuck in the mountains with no internet connection but we would not give anything that’s on the list to a rider until we had everything confirmed through the proper channels.”

Could he not use the ADAMS hotline and make a phone call? “That works well Monday to Friday but not so well at the weekends,” he says wryly, acknowledging that the onus is always on the athlete and the team doctor to ensure everything is done properly.

It took a few tries but eventually, he got through to Dr Mario Zorzoli of the UCI and gained the necessary permission.

But isn’t there an argument that if Uran is unwell and his breathing is seriously affected, he should pull out of the race? “He may well do that. But he’s an ambitious young man who wants to support Bradley and he wants to secure his Tour team.

“We are not talking about performance-enhancement here. The TUE is designed to enable an athlete to take medication that a normal human being would be prescribed by a doctor. It cannot be right that you and I could go to a doctor and be prescribed something that an athlete with the same condition could not use.”

Dr Freeman used to work for Bolton Wanderers Football Club before joining Sky. He’s also worked on golf’s European Tour. Despite the challenges of being away from home for so much of the year, he enjoys the role.

I ask what he makes of the UCI’s new no-needles policy. “I think it’s fantastic,” he says. “It takes away a large window of opportunity for a lot of products. It means that there are no short cuts to proper rest and recovery. And it also removes that ladder of progression. If riders get used to vitamin injections as a matter of routine, it makes it easier to not question what’s in the syringe.”

**
This is the crucial day of the Criterium du Dauphiné. If Team Sky can defend Wiggins’s yellow jersey over the Col des Aravis, the Col de Tamié, the Col du Grand Cucheron and on the hors-categorie Collet d’Allevard, he will clinch the biggest road race win of his career.
Yates delivers his team talk in his usual sparse fashion. The riders are not overloaded with information. “There’s a lot of guys in the hurt box. I watched the highlights yesterday and Bradley was riding fantastic and doing things super coolly and clever, which bodes well. I think you can see that Bradley is in super form and that is great for our confidence.”

He talks them through the stage, warns them of the dangerous descent on the Aravis. “The break should go on the first climb. Yesterday it took a long time to go so if we are a bit on the edge, it’s not the end of the world if seven or eight go.”

“I think we need to take advantage of the villages,” says Gerrans. “If you could tell us when the villages are coming up, we can let a group go just before and then let it go away as you go through a few corners.”

Yates finishes his talk reminding the riders to pay attention to their eating and drinking. “When it’s up and down all day it’s easy to forget so just make sure you are keeping fuelled. And more importantly, make sure Bradley has everything he needs because if he runs out, we’re all fucked.”

He hands over to Brailsford.

“All I’d say is I thought you rode f***ing great yesterday guys. You deserve a huge pat on the back,” he says. “At the finish yesterday, Johan Bruyneel came to find me, and I get on well with Johan, and basically he said: “You know what, your guys, your team there were f***ing brilliant. You were super strong and everyone’s saying it.” I think you should take a lot of pride and confidence from that. When one of the best guys in the world at what he does says that, you should take a big pat on the back. Now you can raise your game, you’ve got something to ride for, you’ve got purpose.”

**
Driving up the Collet d’Allevard is a shock. The climb is much harder than even the race manual led you to believe. There is barely any respite.

Brailsford gets into the bus with Jeppesen. “That is a very hard climb. Harder than Alpe d’Huez, I’d say.”

There’s a crash on the descent of the Grand Cucheron when a couple of cows wander into the road.

The race reaches the bottom of the Collet d’Allevard and Vinokourov’s Astana team come to the front.

“He looks good, eh?” says Jeppesen, referring to Wiggins, who is in the perfect position.

“Let’s see how he is at the top,” says Brailsford. “I think Brajkovic could be good today. We need to be wary of him.”

With 8.5 kilometres to go, Brajkovic is dropped. “You see, this is why I am sitting here in the bus rather than down there in the car!”

Boasson Hagen puts in an astonishing turn and shreds the lead group. When Joaquin Rodriguez attacks, Wiggins rides sensibly. He uses other riders to help him close gaps and he refuses to get sucked into matching those who are more comfortable with the frequent changes of pace.
At the summit, he hasn’t just kept his yellow jersey, he’s extended his lead over Cadel Evans to 1-26.

**
The race has come full circle. We’re back at the Best Western in Chambéry, where the week began, except this time there’s a wedding taking place. How the bride and groom feel about sharing the hotel with a cycling team is anyone’s guess.

Jeppesen drives Wiggins and Sutton back in his unmarked Jaguar, the only one that isn’t plastered in Sky logos. Wiggins takes a phone call and talks quietly. I just about hear him say:

“Yeah, it was good… Bloody hard, though. Bloody hard.”

Wiggins arrives back at 7.40pm. Because of the late finish, the nightly text message from Nicolas Portal makes grim reading for any of the staff with a rumbling stomach. Dinner isn’t until 9.45. Portal sends a text every night listing the evening’s dinner time, what time the riders have to wake up and have breakfast the following morning, when their suitcases must be in reception and when they leave for the start. It also details the dress code, which alternates between white shirts and black.

Tonight is a white night and Thomas is wearing black. Brailsford calls over to the table and says: “We’ll take this into account when it comes to contract negotiations, G.”

**
SUNDAY – Stage seven, Pontcharra to La Toussuire

Brailsford and Sutton are in the hotel foyer at 7.30, drinking a black coffee and ready to ride. Jeppesen has left his cycling shoes in a team car and has to wake one of the mechanics to get them out.

We’re going for a ride all the way around the lake at Aix-les-Bains. It starts off civilized enough. The sun is up early and glints off the lake but as we begin to climb, Jeppesen and I are in trouble. Sutton drops back and offers some stern words of encouragement. When we get over the top he asks how much riding I’m doing. I answer honestly but get the feeling he doesn’t believe me. I need to lose a bit of weight to cope with hills, I say.

“Losing weight is an endurance event, mate. I say to anyone who wants to lose weight – it’s simple. Prepare to feel f***ing hungry.”

Once the climbing is over, it’s a flat-out run back to Chambéry on rolling roads. Sutton, who is 53, rides at the front the whole way. “The bulk of my riding the last ten years has been like this,” says Brailsford. “No breakfast, just a black coffee, and an hour and a half or two hours sat starting at his backside.”

Back at the hotel, Jeppesen looks like I feel. His face is red and his accountant’s haircuit unusually ruffled. “That little smoking f***er,” he says. “Twenty five kilometres he rode on the front and no one gave him a turn.”

**
At the start, despite a two-and-a-half hour ride, there’s a spring in Sutton’s step as he bounds back to the bus with a pile of pizza boxes under his arm. “The boss must be knackered. He wants pizza.” Some of the staff tuck in under the shade of a tree.

Brailsford has an easy manner about him this morning. He asks how the week has been and I reply that it’s been illuminating.

“There’s nothing going on here,” he says, answering a question that hasn’t really been asked.

“Absolutely nothing at all. I know that’s not good enough for some people. It’s like the no-needles policy. I think that is absolutely great but how’s it being enforced? I’ve spoken to Pat [McQuaid, UCI president] and I told him the UCI needs to get out here and enforce it. Where are they? They need to be on the buses. There are 20 teams, how hard can it be to have an observer on each bus? That’s your window of opportunity for recovery there, between the finish and the hotel, so get someone on the buses.

“The doctors are scared, you know. Okay, so if you give someone something to go uphill faster, that’s one thing. But very few people are prepared to risk going to prison to make someone go uphill faster.”

**
I’m in the second team car with Nicolas Portal. We’ve barely got underway when a break of 11 gets clear. In it are Andrey Zeits of Astana and Alexandr Kolobnev of Katusha. Team-mates of Vinokourov, who is a potential threat, and Rodriguez, who although three minutes down, might try a long attack from the Col du Glandon.

Yates is on the radio asking the Sky riders to let the gap go out to about five minutes “just in case Katusha are thinking of getting Rodriguez away so he can bridge across to Kolobnev”.
A few kilometres later, Yates is on the radio again. “McGee [Bradley, the Saxo Bank sports director] has come alongside me and said they don’t want it more than five minutes because they want the stage for Chris Sorensen. So let the gap go a bit more and they’ll ride.”
Tactically, the stage begins perfectly. Sky are in control. Early on the climb of the Glandon, which turns to reach its summit on the Col de la Croix de Fer, riders are in trouble. We see three Movistar riders call it a day and turn round in the road to descend against the direction of the race.

But by the summit, Wiggins has just Uran for support, and he is hanging on. Boasson Hagen has been dropped.

We’re back with Flecha and Thomas and will follow them all the way in, even though they are destined to finish outside the time limit, while listening to Yates’s updates on the radio.
The doc tells a story about yesterday’s stage. “Flecha and Xabi were riding up and a group of Spanish fans clearly said something because Flecha stopped pedalling and gave them a bit back. I asked Flecha what they’d said and it was: ‘Look at these fat arses’.”

Over the top of the Glandon, Yates’s tone is reassuring. His voice is never raised, it’s just the same languid register. “Perfect, perfect. Remember, we’ve got Kanstantsin if we need him,” which suggests some sort of agreement has been made with the HTC rider, Siutsou.

**
Even before Wiggins had won the Dauphiné, some journalists and armchair experts were predicting that he had come too good, too soon. The assumption is that a good Dauphiné usually leads to a bad Tour.

But Kerrison is adamant they’ve got their planning right. “I am 100 per cent convinced there’s more to come at the Tour.”

He talks through some of Wiggins’s numbers. “The first 30 minutes of the Collet d’Allevard, his power was 430 watts, average. That tailed off to 408 for the last seven minutes. His cadence also tailed off a bit. The first 15 minutes of the Grenoble time trial, going uphill, he was doing 480 watts.

“There were two reasons I was nervous about riding the Dauphiné for GC. Firstly, if he had to go super deep to defend the jersey. But the first five days were not at all stressful. The last two were hard but today is short. I’m not worried. We didn’t want to put him into a hole we couldn’t get him out of in time for the Tour but we haven’t done that. Secondly, it will increase expectations. Last year he had all that expectation and he didn’t perform well. This year, he’s been under the radar and he’s done well.

“But the Dauphiné has been carefully planned. Winning it is fantastic – or would be fantastic,” he says, careful not to get ahead of himself. “If it had been planned as a peak, then sure, it might have been difficult to get back up for the Tour but it wasn’t. He didn’t back off after Bayern and taper. He raced well at Bayern, then had a good week of training. He came here already fatigued. He’s not come into this race fresh, so it’s been good to see what he can do in a race on the back of a block of work. After this we’ll do four more days at altitude in Sestriere and then taper for the Tour.”

In May, Wiggins and a few other riders spent time in Tenerife, training at altitude. “It’s the best, most productive thing I’ve ever done,” he says. “Last year I suffered when the Tour went high and it goes higher again this year. I basically lost 100 watts every time it went over 1,500 metres. After ten days in Tenerife I had that 100 watts back. It’s not just about being at altitude, it’s about training to perform at altitude.”

As Kerrison says: “People underestimate the impact of being at altitude.”

**
Yates is on the radio. We’ve still got seven kilometres to go, following the riders who are outside the time limit but up ahead, the race is won.

“Nico… On a gagner.” There is barely a hint of elation in Yates’s voice.

“Have you opened the Champagne?” asks Portal.

“Red Bull for me.”

We pass a group of British supporters, from Yorkshire judging by the accent.

“‘As he done it?” they ask.

Portal doesn’t understand at first, so the doc explains.

“‘As he done it,’ they asked. So you reply. ‘Yes, ee ‘as done it.”

“Yes, eee has done it,” says Portal in the closest you’ll get to a Frenchman doing a Yorkshire accent.

“That concludes today’s English lesson,” says the doc, who is now on great form. As we draw alongside Thomas, he hands him a bottle and says: “Beautiful scenery, isn’t it G?”

Thomas looks to his right at what is, admittedly a stunning view, although with sweat pouring from his brow and his jersey zipped to the waist he’s probably not in the perfect frame of mind to enjoy it. “Yeah. Lovely!”

**
There’s an end-of-term feeling at the top of La Toussuire. Everyone is packing up to go their separate ways. The riders will head to Sestriere and will celebrate Wiggins’s win with a pizza and a glass of wine. Raj and Alan, the mechanics, will drive back to the team’s service course in Mechelen, near Brussels. The satnav tells them they can be there by 3am if they don’t stop for long. Raj will set off again tomorrow, to drive to the south west of France for the Route du Sud. Yates will drive his Jaguar all the way home to southern England. Probably without stopping.
It all seems very low-key, considering this is the biggest win Team Sky has enjoyed so far.

But that’s life on the road. Once the job is done, another one is there to be started.
For Alan the mechanic. That means a week prepping the Tour bikes. As we descend La Toussuire in one of the Mercedes vans a thought suddenly strikes him.

“I didn’t even get to say well done to Brad.”

**
Wiggins is a mass of contradictions. He can say one thing to the press one day, and something else the next. It’s difficult to know what he really thinks.

During the race, he told French television that the Tour couldn’t have been further from his mind and that he was concentrating simply on the Dauphiné. A few days later, he tells me that the Dauphiné was just part of the plan for the Tour. When I point out the apparent conflict in the two statements he explains that it’s possible to live in the moment while working towards a longer-term goal.

But there was no feeling of relief or joy after the Dauphiné. “It still hasn’t really hit me,” he says. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel from it really. It was about going there and racing hard and building form into July.

“I knew I was in great shape but I never felt like I was in great form. I was actually quite tired off the back of six weeks of hard work. I’m still in the middle of it, I’m going to a training camp rather than going home to have people tell me how great it was.

“I’ve always raced fresh but this was about building the conditioning to cope with the demands of a three-week race. Last year I went to the Giro and won the prologue but I had no depth. This year I’ve had five days off since Roubaix. At the Tour of Romandy I was 70th in the prologue and everyone’s asking what went wrong but I’d done five hours each of the two days before. It is hard to explain to people and they just think you’re making excuses.

“People will say I’ve peaked too soon but imagine this, if I’d been a minute slower in the time trial, or if I’d sat up one day and lost a bit of time, and then raced the last three days exactly as I did – following the wheels – people would have said: ‘Oh he’s well on track for the Tour, there’s more to come. You can’t win really. I know where I’m at.

“I think the whole team shone. Christian is like an old school Sean Yates. He does things instinctively without being asked. I thought ‘I could do with a bottle’ he’d turn up with ten up his jersey. Edvald’s climbing was brilliant, G did a lot of work. I think as a team, that’s the best we’ve ever ridden, and it’s taken 18 months to get to that point.”

Critérium du Dauphiné final top five
1 Bradley Wiggins (GB) Sky 26-40-51
2 Cadel Evans (Aus) BMC at 1-26
3 Alexandre Vinokourov (Kaz) Astana at 1-49
4 Jurgen Van den Broeck (Bel) Omega Pharma-Lotto at 2-10
5 Joaquim Rodriguez (Spa) Katusha at 2-51

This article first appeared in Cycle Sport August 2011

Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cyclesportmag

Words by Lionel Birnie

Portrait by Richard Baybutt, race photography by Graham Watson

Friday December 23, 2011

As he speaks, Mark Cavendish sub-consciously wrinkles and then smooths the rainbow jersey that is draped over the arm of the sofa. It is Saturday evening, the night before the final French classic of the season, Paris-Tours, and we’re in the lounge of a Novotel hotel in Chartres, to the south west of the capital. The way his fingers brush and tease the fabric is a little like the way a child might play with his security blanket, every touch reassuring him it’s still there.

Two weeks have passed since Cavendish won the World Championships in Copenhagen. Paris-Tours will be his first race in the rainbow jersey and this weekend will give him an idea of what life as world champion is going to be like. Already he can tell it is going to be even more hectic than before. He’s used to being in the spotlight. Winning five stages of the Tour de France meant that for almost a quarter of the race he was the man in demand. The podium presentations, the television interviews, the press, the camera flashes going off in his face, dozens of requests for autographs.

That is the double-edged reward for winning. However, being a sprinter, the chaos calms down a bit when the stage races meet the mountains and he is no longer centre stage. There are still autograph hunters and photograph requests but the space opens up around him and he can at least move without having to wheel his bike over anyone’s foot.

But now, as world champion, every time he appears in public will be like that. The jersey attracts people like moths to a flame.

He’s only been at the hotel a few hours, having arrived a day after his HTC-Highroad team-mates because of other commitments. Every time he’s ventured from his room journalists and fans have been waiting. The hotel lobby has been stalked all day by reporters, television crews, teenagers in cycling jerseys with autograph books and pens at the ready, and the ubiquitous middle-aged man with a scrapbook and team issue postcards, arranged in alphabetical order, no doubt.

Before dinner, Cavendish spends an hour and a half granting a handful of the many requests for his time. He does a few television interviews, accepts an award from the Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad, which has made him international Flandrian of the year, a very prestigious honour, for the second time. He then sits down to talk to just two print publications. Cycle Sport is one of them.

We’ve been told he has refused every request for a photograph but as out conversation ends, I explain that our photographer has set something up outside that will look great and it’ll only take a couple of minutes. “No, I’m not doing any photos today.”

I show him a picture on my iPhone of what it’ll look like. He glances at it and says: “I don’t want to get changed.”

We don’t want you in your cycling kit, we want you as you are. He’s dressed in a grey jacket with the sleeves pushed up to reveal an expensive-looking watch, with a collarless white shirt and grey jeans tucked into the top of a smart part of black leather boots. The outfit is a bit too Miami Vice for my taste but it’s got just the right amount of an Eighties retro feel to fit seamlessly onto the pages of Esquire or GQ. He looks cool without being self-conscious.

“Kristy,” he says to HTC-Highroad’s press officer, Kristy Scrymgeour. “I’m going to do this quick photo, look after me jersey.”

Then he says to me: “Where is it? I don’t have to walk through reception do I?

For a moment, his reluctance to walk through the most public area of the hotel, where it seems everyone is sitting waiting for a chance to approach him, threatens to scupper the deal. It’ll be fine, I say, just pretend we’re in conversation.

As we walk, Cavendish doesn’t talk. He just walks with his gaze fixed on an interterminate point in the middle distance. He’s avoiding eye contact, wary of the inevitable approach. It’s easy for those of us who do not have to cope with this level of attention to overlook what it means to be public property. What’s the big deal about someone asking for a photo or an autograph, it only takes a second? What’s the big deal about politely declining an interview, they’ll get over it? But what is it like when those requests come over and over and don’t stop? At the airport on the flight from London to Chartres. At the airport in Chartres. In the hotel lobby. In every hotel lobby. At the start of the race. At the start of every race. That’s what being world champion means.

Outside it is cold and dark. I’m shivering and my jacket is thicker than Cavendish’s. Our photographer has set the picture up brilliantly. The lights are in place, the bike is ready. All Cavendish has to do is climb up on it, balance with his feet on the top tube and handlebars and pose.

Kristy looks nervous, despite the fact that after this week, with the HTC-Highroad team evaporating, Cavendish will cease to be her responsibility.

If this goes wrong and he falls, we’re all in a lot of trouble, I half-joke.

Instinctively, Cavendish understands the idea behind the photoshoot in a way that few professional sportspeople would. Sports people play sport. When cast in the role of style or cultural icon, few know what to do. It comes naturally to David Beckham and a handful of others. Modelling, assuming a persona, playing a part, projecting a feeling or an idea to the viewer, these are skills you expect of actors and musicians.

But Cavendish gets it. He strikes up a relationship with the camera. It is that ability that has already elevated him above many of his contemporaries and made him an attractive client for the Wasserman Media Group to represent. For Wasserman, think Jerry Maguire. The firm acts for some of the biggest sports stars in the world.

As Cavendish hops down with a nimble, light-footed grace that perhaps owes much to spending his teenage years as a dancer, I hold my breath, imagining we’re going to have to explain to Dave Brailsford why he’s missed six weeks training with a badly sprained ankle.

I ask Kristy whether she’ll miss working with Cavendish. She smiles a smile that says yes and, occasionally, no. “He can be a joy… or he can be a challenge.”
Before we know it, Cavendish has disappeared inside, to run the gauntlet in reception.

**

Winning the World Championship was not an accident. It was planned and plotted with the precision of a heist on a Las Vegas casino. The only difference being that everyone knew the plan. British Cycling may as well have published their tactics online a fortnight before the race for all that their strategy surprised the opposition. But knowing what someone is going to do and preventing them from doing it are two different things.

Rod Ellingworth never reached the professional ranks. He didn’t ride the Tour or the Giro. The furthest he got was racing as an amateur in France, for the UV Aube club. But he has a racer’s heart and a work ethic that inspires others. He understands the mechanics of bike racing better than some who have spent a decade in the professional peloton. And he is not a linear thinker. He doesn’t believe something must be done the way it’s always been done until he’s exhausted his search for a better alternative.

Ellingworth created the British Cycling academy in late 2003, after pitching the idea to Peter Keen, Dave Brailsford and the other key figures at Manchester velodrome. With the Athens Olympics a few months away, Keen was concerned it would divert attention and resources away from the important business of winning medals. Ellingworth told them to give him a modest budget, around £100,000, and promised they would not hear a peep out of him until after the Games. Then, if they didn’t like what he’d created, they could scrap it.

The tales of Ellingworth’s regime are becoming legendary. He took on the combined role of sergeant major, foster father, older brother and best mate. He created a timetable that immersed the young riders in cycling without making them one-dimensional. He made them take responsibility for themselves and their equipment. He taught them some tough but vital lessons and he gave them a grounding that would make them the best bike riders they could possibly be, as long as they put the work in.

Ellingworth wanted to create bike racers. He talks of “getting out on the pushie” (push bike), of “getting stuck into the bike race” and of “skills and drills”. Everything they did served a purpose – to prepare riders for the life of a professional. Ten hour days, laps of a ‘punishment circuit’ for discretions major and minor, French lessons, bike maintenance, Madison training on the track. On trips to races, he would get the riders to decide what time they needed to leave to be on time. He’d get them to read the map. They would discuss the tactics and would have a say in setting the plan for the race. No one was spoon-fed anything. “I’d set them assignments like write a 1,000-word essay on Madison tactics or the history of the Tour of Flanders, or whatever it was,” says Ellingworth. “I wasn’t interested in the content. I didn’t read them all but the task was to write 1,000 words. Most of them did it on a computer so it was easy for me to do the word count. Mark wrote his out long hand. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t count every word but it came up short and I had a right go at him. He took it well, he didn’t complain because he understood he’d not done what he’d been asked.”

Of the British Cycling academy’s initial intake of six riders, three have made it. Cavendish, the Olympic team pursuit champion Ed Clancy and Matt Brammeier, who now races for HTC-Highroad and Ireland, is Irish champion and is heading to Quick Step next season.

Cavendish, who gave up his job in a bank to join the academy, arrived overweight and struggled terribly early on, to the point where it looked like he might not survive. British Cycling had been reluctant to take him on in the first place because he didn’t produce the required numbers in the various laboratory tests. But he was a bike racer and he won more often than many of his contemporaries because of his sprint. Progress was rapid. He learned like a sponge. In April 2004, just four months after he’d been struggling over every hill within 80 miles of Manchester, he won a stage of the Girvan, a tough race for amateurs in Scotland. He was dropped on the final climb but fought back on. Ellingworth did not give him any help at all. There was no sitting on the bumper of the team car, no sticky bottle. Cavendish hauled himself back to the leaders and won the sprint.

**
After dominating the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008, Brailsford and Ellingworth turned their attention to the men’s elite road race at the World Championships. No British rider had come close to winning it since Tom Simpson’s victory in 1965. Dominance on the track was one thing but the critics were quick to point out that road racing is a different animal.

Ellingworth devised Project Rainbow Jersey. The goal was to win the Worlds. Each barrier to British success was identified and slowly overcome. By spring of 2009, Cavendish had proved that he could win a Monument. Everyone said it would be too long for him, that the pace on the Cipressa and Poggio would be too hot. But he won Milan-San Remo with that desperate lunge for the line to pip Heinrich Haussler. That convinced Ellingworth that Cavendish could win the Worlds on the right course. Mendrisio in 2009 was ruled out as too hilly. Melbourne in 2010 was a possiblility but it might still be too lumpy and a year too soon. But Copenhagen, now that was an opportunity.

The other major issue for Great Britain was that unless they could qualify enough places they would start the road race with fewer riders than Italy, Belgium, Australia and the other nations.

So Ellingworth gathered together all the British professional riders at a number of short training camps during the season. They were a chance to get together, build a team, embrace the idea of winning the Worlds and prepare their two-pronged strategy or securing enough places in the race and planning their tactics for the race.

When we sit down to talk, Cavendish is quick to counter the idea that Project Rainbow Jersey was built around him. “It was built around the idea of creating a team that could win the Worlds,” he says. “I just happened to be the one to cross the line first. We knew about the course. We knew it would be a sprint. No, we knew we could make it a sprint. It wasn’t a case of going there and waiting for the sprint to happen.

“Rod pulled the team together and did an incredible job. Three years ago everyone was riding on different teams. There were some older guys, some younger guys. Some guys got on well together, some people didn’t get on. Rod made everyone believe in something.”

Of the seven riders who rode for Cavendish in Copenhagen, six rode for Team Sky (Bradley Wiggins, Steve Cummings, Chris Froome, Ian Stannard, Geraint Thomas and Jeremy Hunt). Only David Millar (Garmin) and Cavendish rode for other teams.

“The younger guys have grown up together and have come through the same system together. I think the key thing is that everyone on that team just loves racing their bikes but there’s no real ego. Well, every bike rider has got an ego but being British we’re quite lucky. We’re a proud nation and wearing that British jersey is something we’re all proud to do.”

Cavendish is always quick to thank his team-mates for their efforts. The cynic might suggest it’s simply a good way to ensure they continue to help him but if it were a calculated, insincere tactic people would surely have seen through it by now.

But he is also aware that he is the figurehead, the one who bears the weight of expectation and the takes the flak if it goes wrong. “I am the one who gets to wear this jersey,” he picks up the rainbow jersey. “And if it goes wrong I get the brunt of it. That’s why it’s worth taking the risks and the pressure.

“There were 14 of us who met at a training camp before the National Championships. We sat down and went through different scenerios of the race and how we should attack it. It wasn’t just the riders who rode the race, it was everyone. They all brought something extra to it, a way of looking at the course or thinking about how it might go, whether we’d need two guys to ride at this point of the race, or how we’d keep it at a high tempo at the end.

“In the end the eight-man team kind of picked itself but Adam Blythe, for instance, he didn’t ride but he won one UCI World Tour point. That meant we got eight guys in the race instead of seven. That one point by that one guy made a massive difference. Most people won’t realise that. The first missed call I had when I turned my phone on after the Worlds was from Dan Lloyd. Everyone deserves a bit of this jersey.”

**
Cavendish arrived at the Novotel in Chartres early on Saturday afternoon dressed in a casual pair of grey Nike jogging pants, a blue Nike sweatshirt and old school Nike trainers. He comes over to say hello. How does it feel to be world champion?

“I don’t know yet, I’ve not raced in the jersey.”

It’s getting on for three o’clock by the time he emerges from the hotel in his rainbow stripes for a short, solo training ride. Minutes earlier he Tweeted a picture of himself in the kit with the words “A dream come true.”

Rob Hayles tells a nice story about Cavendish’s first world title, on the track in Los Angeles in 2005. Hayles was supposed to ride the Madison with Geraint Thomas but the Welshman crashed heavily in training a couple of months before the Worlds and had to have his spleen removed.

Cavendish rode the scratch race in Los Angeles and finished fourth, just missing out on a medal behind Alex Rasmussen, Greg Henderson and Matthew Gilmore. He was disappointed, particularly as the British squad was on a high that week. Hayles had been part of the first team pursuit squad to win the world title.

Hayles and Cavendish had never ridden a Madison together before. “The first handsling we did was on about lap three,” Hayles says. Hayles was tired after the team pursuit but as they got up to leaving the changing rooms, he slapped Cavendish on the shoulder and said: “Come on, let’s go and get you a stripey jersey then.”

The British pair didn’t win a point all night but they gained a lap, which was enough to win the race. Afterwards, they were interviewed by the BBC, and as the 19-year-old Cavendish told the reporter that winning the rainbow jersey was something he’d been waiting for “all his life”, Hayles couldn’t help but smile.

Cavendish won a second Madison title in Manchester in 2008, partnering Wiggins to an extraordinarily comprehensive victory. Their dominance was such that they were hot favourites for gold in Beijing. However, Wiggins was on his last legs after gruelling team and individual pursuit campaigns. Cavendish was the only British track rider to leave the Games without a medal. He’d quit the Tour de France early for this. The pain burned for quite a while over that.

He rolls out of the hotel car park for his training ride, followed by two cars and L’Equipe’s photographer on a motorbike. The sky over Chartres is dark and moody but the rainbow shines brilliantly. Throughout his ride, he is photographed and filmed from the cars and the motorbike.

He overtakes two boys on mountain bikes, who do a double-take as he goes past. Later a club cyclist tries to stay on his wheel, to no avail. Cavendish is cruising along, in no difficulty whatsoever. The club rider is hunched over the bike, rocking from side to side. Eventually he concedes defeat and sits up.

A group of club riders comes the other way. They spot the HTC-Highroad that’s pacing him first and wave. Then they spot the rainbow bands and almost crash into each other as they slam on the brakes to get a better look. They cheer and wave. One man takes his hands off the bars and applauds as Cavendish rides past.

**
It’s early evening when Cavendish walks down into reception. A film crew has lit the foyer and Cavendish is asked to stand in the spotlight. Guy Fransen, editor of Sportwereld presents him with an attractive bronze sculptor. Cavendish is international Flandrian of the year. He has a look of boyish innocence and genuinely touched as he accepts the award and listens to the plaudits he must know are true. It’s a far cry from the post-race scowl, or the withering look he sometimes gives in press conferences, a look that suggests he thinks everyone in the room bar himself is a blithering idiot.

“Thank you very, very much,” he says to Fransen. “It’s one of the biggest honours I’ve received off the bike. To be recognised by the Belgian people… for me it’s the heart of cycling and it’s my favourite place to race.”

Sportwereld is the sport’s section of Het Nieuwsblad, the newspaper that created the Tour of Flanders and still runs it to this day. Fransen has presented awards to everyone from Eddy Merckx down. He explains that the Belgian people love Cavendish because he ‘has the grinta’. “He is so fast in the sprint you shake your head and you rub your eyes,” he says. “Did he really just do that? At the World Championships the gap was not as big as on the Champs-Elysées but did you see how far back he came from? And Milan-San Remo… whooosh…. like that. He is also a student of the sport. That is why the Belgian people respect him.”

For all that winning matters deeply to him, Cavendish is a romantic at heart. He understands the sport’s traditions. When he first turned pro, he and Ellingworth wrote a list of the races and honours he wanted to win. World Championships. Green jersey. Tour, stages, Giro stages, Vuelta stages. Points jersey in the Giro. Milan-San Remo. Ghent-Wevelgem.

During our conversation we talk about the rainbow jersey and what it means. I tell him that when I was a child, my mum knitted me a jumper that looked just like it, because you couldn’t buy them in the shops. I tell him how I obsessively checked to make sure she knitted the five rings of colour in the correct order. As soon as I start telling Cavendish this, I begin to regret it until his eyes light up. “Have you still got it? That’s one thing I’d love, a plain woollen version.

“There’s something about these solid bands,” he says. “It’s every bike rider’s dream. It is arguable what’s bigger – the yellow jersey or the Worlds but I can’t win the yellow jersey at the Tour so this is the biggest thing I can get.

“When I crossed the line… you remember when I won my first Tour stage in Chateauroux and I did that celebration. I didn’t plan it but I just touched my head with both hands. It was metaphorically like ‘Wow, I can’t believe what I’ve just done.’ It was the same. I thought ‘Oh my god, I’ve just won the World Championships.’ I never normally do that. Usually I just want to cross the line first, it’s my job, you know, but Chateauroux and Copenhagen are the only two times I’ve had that moment where I’ve sort of realised what I’ve done.”

After the World Championships he spent a week appearing on television and radio, explaining the importance of the rainbow jersey to a wider audience. He also attended a gala dinner with many of the great and good of British Olympic sport and went with his girlfriend Peta Todd to watch the singer Rihanna in concert at the O2 arena in London.

“I think if I want to raise the profile of the sport in Britain, the last few weeks were crucial,” he says. “There were a lot of people who were interested, a lot of people watched the race and now a lot more people know what these stripes mean.”

Now he wants to honour the jersey. “It comes with responsibility. I want to do it proud. You know me, I don’t look back at what I’ve done. It’s not like I’ll be riding round thinking I don’t need to do anything for a year. Look at Thor [Hushovd]. He was a worthy wearer of the jersey and I want to do the same.”

But he knows that being world champion will not win over all his critics. He accepts it might, in fact, attract more.

“You’ll never prove everyone wrong,” he says. “I was talking to my soigneur and he said about people always saying I hold onto cars, that I shut them up because I won the Worlds but it won’t shut everyone up.

“When they said you couldn’t win Milan-San Remo but you did it was still blah, blah, blah. You win the green jersey, blah blah blah. He’s holding onto cars, blah, blah, blah. Everyone’s tried to say something but I have got this jersey now, I don’t think there’s any doubt about my ability.

“I guarantee you this… It’s the same people who say before the race that the course is too hard or that Cavendish can’t win an uphill sprint who say after the race that the course must’ve been too easy. You can’t please everyone. That’s part and parcel of being a sportsman. Some people will like you, some people will hate you. I’ve always said, as long as the people who are important to me don’t doubt me, that’s what counts.”

**
In the days leading up to the road race in Copenhagen, Cavendish looked uncharacteristically nervous. The fact that there might not be another opportunity to win the world title for five, six or seven years was obvious. Then Britain’s Lucy Garner won the junior women’s road race.

“We did a big training ride that day and Rod stuck his head out of the car window and said one of the junior girls had won. We got back from the ride and I was in the car park chatting to [Thomas] Löfkvist and, as usual, tinkering with me bike. I saw her get off the minibus in the rainbow jersey and I stood there and gave her a round of applause. It was impressive to see.”

Great Britain made it look so easy in Copenhagen. The biggest question in the race’s post-mortem was why didn’t someone try to stop them? Why did the other nations seemingly sleepwalk into a sprint finish? The only explanation is that they couldn’t do anything about it. The pace set by Wiggins on the last lap was so fierce no one could break away.

For Cavendish the joy of winning was that they identified the potential problems, eliminated many of them and body-swerved the rest.

“Normally, if you do everything right you won’t fail. Most races are so regimented but the Worlds is a complete… not a lottery, but it’s a more open race. All you can do is fuck up. You can’t stick to a plan because anything can happen.”

Cavendish’s strategy was simple but clever. The British team rode at or near the front for almost the entire race. Every time they hit the only serious hill on the course, Cavendish and Jeremy Hunt would stick it in the little ring and drift backwards, saving their legs. “Even though you are eight men back you are still using a lot of energy staying there,” he says. “Every time on the climb, Jez and I sat up and drifted back. It did two things: it saved energy on the climb but also the only real headwind section was after the climb so I was nicely back in the bunch for the headwind, then when we changed direction, Jez took me back up to the front. We did that every lap until eight to go. We planned to do it until six to go, which was 90 kilometres to go, but then they all started attacking.”

Like all of significant his sprint finishes, Cavendish has almost complete recall of every subtle movement. Before arriving in Copenhagen, he thought the ideal place to be around the final corner was third or fourth wheel. Having seen the other races unfold, they realised he needed to be further back, around eighth or tenth.

“Watching the other races convinced us,” he says. “We knew it would be a sprint, it’s just that you’re sprinting at 56 kilometres an hour instead of 76. It was a hard finish, it was pretty steep uphill but it was also a wide road. You lose a lot of speed on the uphill and I realised that no matter how fast you were going, if you went early, people were going to come from behind.

“But it’s not just about positioning. You have to be on the right wheel. That’s why, if you watch it, you’ll see I let Gossy [Matt Goss] go through on the last corner. Like, I boxed Gossy off his team-mate’s wheel with 1,300 to go but I knew he’d come back at me round the last corner. I knew he’d try to come underneath me and I waited for it because I didn’t want anyone fast behind me. I let him come by so I could be on his wheel. I wanted to be on him, not the other way round.

“It takes patience to do that. It takes balls to go round the last corner of a race and allow yourself to lose positions. But in the finishing straight the wind was coming from back right so I knew the peloton was going to go left. We didn’t know that until we were in the race but the wind is absolutely crucial. I am giving away a bit more than I should here but I think about the wind so much. I knew the peloton would go left so it would open up on the right. That’s why I came up the right side of the road.

“But it didn’t go left as early as I thought it would, which is why I got boxed. I didn’t panic but I did think ‘fuck’ when I got boxed. I expected it to go left so I could use that as a lead-out but it stayed. Ideally I wanted to go with 150 metres to go but the gap opened with 200 to go and I knew I had to go then or the chance might be gone.”

**
Cavendish once told Cycle Sport that he’d win Paris-Tours four times in his career (one more than his sprint guru Erik Zabel) but that was a few years ago. The race has slipped down the list of priorities a little and after two hectic weeks he was only likely to have a chance if the race panned out perfectly.

In Voves, the tiny village that hosted the start of this year’s race, Cavendish found how concentrated the spotlight can be. There are many more fans and journalists at the Tour de France, of course, but here all the attention was intensely focused on one man.
Before Cavendish emerged from HTC’s bus, Brian Holm’s usually placid, reserved voice is heard raised. “Two days before Paris-Tours and you’re at a Britney Spears concert? Do you think Francesco Moser would’ve done that?”

More than likely it’s a last-minute attempt at reverse psychology. Holm knows that Cavendish performs best when he’s a little angry, when he feels he has a point to prove. Deliberately mistaking Rihanna for Britney Spears was just part of the process.
On this occasion Holm’s tactics didn’t work. Had he not won the World Championships, Cavendish’s season would have already been over. Paris-Tours was just an opportunity to give the press and the public what they wanted, a chance to see the new guy honour the jersey.

This article first appeared in Cycle Sport December 2011

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