Thinking I had nothing to lose, I gambled everything on that bend. I held back, saving myself for the final minute of racing. When I reached the sharp left-hander I came to a virtual halt like everybody else, but once I was through it I was probably the only man in the race with the reserves to re-accelerate for the drag up to the line. That bend, along with race experience and better legs than I’d thought I had, got me the victory ahead of Abraham Olano of Spain. It was a welcome highlight in what had been a difficult year.
Two days later and still in yellow I was tucked in behind teammate Eros Poli, who was dragging me to the front for the final 50 km of the stage to Cork, when I blinked and found myself staring at the ceiling of an ambulance. OK, I thought, lying there and trying to get a grasp on the situation, I’ve clearly been in some kind of an accident. I’m wearing a neck brace. Wiggle my toes; yep, they work, so not spinal. I wasn’t in the Tour de France, was I? Arm and face burning, I know that feeling – skin-loss and sweat. I wasn’t in the yellow jersey, was I?
I’d never been knocked out before and it took a fair bit of this self-interrogation before I mentally bridged the gap between my current reality and the last bit I remembered. Roger was there, but as soon as he saw I was coming round he disappeared back to the team car and sped off to rejoin the race. I was no longer the golden child, the overall contender that they’d hoped – and were paying – for.
It had been a freak accident. One of the riders in the line had flicked left around a cats-eye in the middle of the road just as I was passing his rear wheel. The front of my bike had been wiped out from under me and I’d gone straight down on my face.
I’d only had three serious crashes in my career and they’d all been in the full glare of the media spotlight in this race. Denis Roux took me to hospital in Cork where the medics insisted on cutting off the leader’s jersey, which then disappeared. I’m told it is now up on the wall. The next day, having had the ragged skin around my left eye stitched up and my fractured wrist put in a cast, I headed home without fanfare. Then I sat in the lounge in front of the TV and watched the Tour de France explode.
A week before the race, French police had arrested the Festina team’s masseur, Willy Voet, at the Belgian border and confiscated what were later confirmed to be performance-enhancing drugs, part of what had been a systematic doping programme in the team. Further arrests followed, confessions were made and the team containing some of France’s biggest stars was thrown off the Tour.
I felt sorry for the race director, Jean-Marie Leblanc, a genuinely lovely man who was suddenly faced with a scandal that threatened to destroy the sporting monument he was in charge of. The Tour limped on, amid sit-down protests from the riders and more police raids. Cycling is still dealing with the fall-out today. What people thought was a single catastrophic event turned out to be the tip of an iceberg.
As grim as the situation was, I paid little attention to it. I had a much bigger crisis to deal with at home. I’d always been an obsessive, applying myself to whatever I was fascinated by to the exclusion of all else. At the beginning, Sally had put up with my compulsive character, had even enjoyed being involved. She’d coped with playing second fiddle to my needs and wants for years. Now, the disappointment and frustration of not being able to progress – of actually regressing – had made me moody and unpleasant to live with. Where previously I was dedicated, now I was simply self-obsessed, uncaring of the people around me and morose. And she’d had enough.
It wasn’t an instant thing, Sally was – is – a strong and loyal person. She’d been telling me she wasn’t happy for years but I just hadn’t been listening. A turbulent few months followed and this time it was cycling that took a back seat as I tried to recover what I’d belatedly realised was the most important thing in my life.
By the time of the 1998 World Championships in the Netherlands Sally and I were still together but things were very raw and fragile. She came out to Valkenburg along with Pete Woodworth, who was due to meet with Roger. Whether I was ready for it or not, it was time to renegotiate my contract with the team.
I’d been thinking long and hard about whether to continue as a professional. Retiring was a definite option because even though I’d only done five years I knew the desire to explore my capabilities was all but gone. To simply stop, though, would have been a huge life-change, and with everything else that was going on I realised it was too much of a leap for me to make. I decided to sign another two-year contract, taking me through to the end of 2000, knowing it would be my last.
Fully aware of my waning performances, I was prepared to sign for half of my current salary, so I fought to keep a straight face when Roger suggested ‘Same again?’ at our meeting. ‘Er, OK,’ I replied, deadpan, and left hastily to let Pete finalise the details before Roger could change his mind.
From my narrow perspective I had viewed my worth only in terms of race results. It hadn’t occurred to me that my public reputation could have a value, or that I might have been part of a package Roger had already promised his new sponsors to get them to sign on the dotted line. I was relieved to have concluded the deal in advance of the time trial where I finished 11th, almost two minutes off the pace. Roger put this down to my personal life but I knew that was only half of the problem.
Two days after posting my worst ever result I started my second task of the championships, this time not as a bike rider but as a broadcaster. Since I wasn’t scheduled to ride the road race, the BBC had asked if I’d give my expert opinion during their coverage. It wasn’t something I was particularly interested in but I was there anyway and it didn’t involve any preparation so I agreed.
It was wet and gloomy when I met up with lead commentator Hugh Porter on the morning of the race at our microphone position facing the finish line. I’d known Hugh to say hello to for many years. He was, quite simply, the voice of cycling in the UK. When I replayed my gold medal ride from Barcelona, in my head even, I heard his commentary.
Hugh was accompanied by his wife Anita, herself an Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer, who sat in the wings and handed him cards containing each rider’s career highlights. She seemed to be the responsible adult of the pair. When Hugh got stressed or flustered, they’d bicker and squabble silently as only a totally devoted couple can. I liked them instantly. Throughout the event, Hugh kept picking out riders with extraordinarily difficult-to-pronounce names and, soundlessly laughing, tried to manoeuvre me into having to articulate them live on air. I quickly developed the knack of referring to ‘the Czech rider’ or ‘the team mate of …’ It’s a technique I still use today.
The season over, I set off with Sally and the children for what was becoming a family tradition: an autumn break in an enormous, castle-like house just outside Hawick. Everyone was excited as we headed north on the M6 towards Scotland, the Verve playing on the radio and the kids piping up periodically with ‘Are we there yet?’ In the rearview mirror I noticed how unusually quiet the motorway was.
At the same moment the traffic news came on the radio, reporting that the northbound M6 had been blocked by an accident on the Thelwall Viaduct which we’d crossed a little earlier. ‘A vehicle has shed its load causing a number of shunts and it’s likely to be several hours before the scene is cleared and the motorway is reopened.’ We’d just missed it, I thought. That was lucky. I looked again in the mirror. Where was my bike? And where was the bike rack? A mile of silence followed before we pulled over and I phoned the police to report them as lost. The staff at Borders Cycles in Hawick were surprised to see me the next morning and even more surprised that I wanted to hire a bike for a week, but they were happy to oblige.
When we’d first holidayed in Scotland I thought that as visitors from England we’d be given a cool reception. The reality couldn’t have been further from the truth, everyone we encountered was happy and welcoming. The hospitable atmosphere that allowed us as outsiders to slot straight into the community was one of the main things that made the area so appealing
and kept us coming back year after year.
Each day, I’d head out on my mountain bike and ride for hours though the spectacular Borders countryside, often without seeing a soul. The kids and their cousins, who usually joined us for the week, explored the huge overgrown gardens and dammed the river that ran across the grounds. In the evenings we ate around the enormous table then sat in front of a knackered old telly next to a roaring fire. It was the start of my love affair with Scotland.
Two weeks later, I went to Knutsford police station to pick up the remains of my mountain bike and three penalty points for failing to secure it safely to my vehicle. The parts could have fitted into a shoebox.
CHAPTER 13
The Jens
It was a hot July day in the south-east German city of Karslruhe. Jens Voigt and I were sitting in the back of a VW Camper van, manhandling bottles of fizzy water. Shake. Pause. Quarter turn of the top – just enough to let out the gas without spraying the contents all over ourselves. Repeat. Another ten minutes of this and we’d have enough still water to see us through the 72 km of the 1999 Breitling GP two-man time trial.
The van belonged to our race support team, a crack outfit of enthusiastic local retirees assigned to us by the event organisers. Their main qualifications for the job seemed to be their availability and their access to a vehicle capable of ferrying us to and from the airport with our bikes.
Having stepped straight off the plane into the summer heat on the morning of the race, we’d asked if they had any supplies of water for us to fill our bidons from. No, but they were happy to run off and get some, returning with four large bottles. They hadn’t asked us whether we wanted still or sparkling; it hadn’t occurred to us we’d need to specify. Team Sky we weren’t.
We looked at the start list, all giants of the sport. ‘Oh my god,’ said Jens – he started a lot of sentences that way – ‘We are going be dead last.’ He drew out the ‘e’ in the word dead to emphasis his point. He did that a lot too. Looking at the sheet, I couldn’t help but agree with him, the majority of the invitees had been battering us all year. We were getting a healthy start fee for this event but it looked unlikely we’d be receiving a share of the prize fund.
I’d first met Jens at the end of 1997. He had arrived for his first training camp with the team ready to ride. His bike was the only one of 20 with mudguards, the tips of which, as he proudly pointed out, were the ‘regulation ten centimetres from the ground’. I wasn’t sure whose regulations he was referring to but we all scoffed … until it started raining. A massive tussle followed as riders scrambled to be directly behind him on the group ride, the only place that it was safe from being sprayed with muck.
Jens’s arrival on the team was a revelation. He was like a big puppy who saw everything as a game or adventure: whether it was a cup of coffee or an eight-hour bike ride in the rain, it was all to be savoured. His attitude to life was the perfect antidote to the sullen expressions of the management. I ended up rooming with him for his first season as a pro, which was pretty tiring; his batteries never ran down and he didn’t seem to have an off switch. Even when I was showering he would insist on shouting a running commentary through the bathroom door on the cartoon he was watching on TV. His favourite was Cow and Chicken.
His enthusiasm for life was infectious. It was impossible to be glum when Jens was laughing at things like how he’d had a ‘hunger flat’ a hundred kilometres from home: ‘Ha, ha! I was soooo bad I was asking people to just shoot me!’ This was another favourite expression. On hearing that I had four children, he proclaimed that if he ever had that many he would gladly shoot himself.
In one early season race, we lined up at the start in temperatures hovering just above zero and as we set off it began to sleet. This is pretty much the maximum allowable misery in cycling: any colder and it turns to snow meaning the race is usually cancelled. Many in the peloton, including me, had already started to think about warm team cars and hot showers. Only one rider thought the conditions were the perfect excuse to attack or ‘smash ourselves!’ Jens did smash himself – a gloriously futile solo break followed by a predictable collapse. Some hours later, one of the last men on the road and nearly half an hour down, he finally crossed the line, where the team soigneur almost had to lasso him to get him to stop.
On the way back from a small race in Normandy – the Duo Normand two-man time trial – we found ourselves stuck overnight in an Ibis hotel at Charles de Gaulle airport. We’d been victorious that day so we dumped our bags in the room and headed down to the bar where Jens spotted they had draught Grimbergen, a particularly noxious Belgian beer. He’d never tried it before and decided to spend the evening putting that right. I cautioned him against this course of action, to which he just laughed, smacked his chest and said, ‘I can handle it, I-am-a-man!’
Later that night I was thankful for his fastidious German nature, which compelled him to clean up every last trace of vomit before he left for his early flight. When we met up for our next race I asked him how it was that he’d managed to make it to the bathroom – which in an Ibis is about the size of a wheelie bin – but still failed to reach the toilet bowl.
‘Oh my god, man,’ he said, ‘I was already happy to have made it to the bathroom!’
With such a chaotic lifestyle, constantly on the road and changing hotels every night, it’s not surprising that pro riders like to room with the same person. You become like a married couple, but without the sex. When the UCI introduced its longitudinal medicals – regular blood tests to create profiles for every rider in the peloton – it was natural that Jens and I went for our first test together.
We’d been given the address of a clinic in Paris, where we were to stop on the way to our next race and have samples taken. Simple enough. Having navigated our way though the narrow streets, we arrived at the specified location, a majestic and ornate six-storey building. As we passed through the big oak doors the noise of the busy streets was cut off and we were left in a silent foyer without a person in sight. We set off down an echoing corridor in search of help and eventually found someone who looked as though they might work there. In my pidgin French I told them we were there for the blood test and asked where we should go. They shyly mumbled directions and pointed down another passageway.
When we finally found the waiting room there were a dozen men already there. ‘Hi!’ said Jens to no one in particular as we entered. No response. Some minutes of gloomy silence later we were ushered into an old-fashioned office where a stern doctor sat behind his desk. He directed us towards the two chairs in front of him and waited for us to speak. I reiterated that we were here for the blood tests. ‘Which one of you?’
‘Both of us.’
‘You are both infected?’ he asked.
At this point the sequence of events since we’d entered the building rotated slightly, clicked together and formed a picture I didn’t want to see. I decided I’d better spell it out. ‘We-are-here-for-the-cycling-blood-tests. Part-of-the-longitudinal-medical-scheme.’
‘But this is a clinic for sexually transmitted diseases.’
We left the office swearing we would never speak of it again to anyone.
It was Jens’s never-say-die attitude that turned the tables for us halfway though that edition of the Breitling Grand Prix. On a long straight stretch of road running back into the city he caught sight of the favourites, Laurent Jalabert and Abraham Olano, up ahead in the far distance. That glimpse was all he needed. Like a homing missile he went after them, with me in tow trying to match his ferocious desire to hunt them down. When Jens was in one of those moods it was visible in his body language. He rocked as he wrestled his machine, every muscle fibre pressed into service. Following behind, our support team pensioners also sensed the resurgence and gunned the engine of the camper van to bring them alongside, where they enthusiastically offered us the last of the now-only-slightly-fizzy water.
In the end we won the event by ten seconds and found ourselves laughing on
the podium, both at the absurdity of the day and just how wrong we’d been in our pre-race pessimism. We each got a very nice Breitling watch for our efforts. I wear mine to this day and smile every time I look at it.
Jens rode professionally until he was 42, attacking for the sheer enjoyment of it right until the end, before being cheered into retirement as probably the most well-liked rider in the world. He lives happily just outside Berlin with his wife Stephanie, their six children and a menagerie of pets. To my knowledge, he has not yet shot himself.
I’d thought that signing my final contract would give me the stability and certainty I needed to concentrate on racing for my last two seasons, but my body had other ideas. In January 1999 a set of routine blood tests at the team’s winter camp had produced some worrying results. I was low in testosterone and other metabolic hormones, and since recovery had been a consistent issue in my career I was advised to have this looked into.
Further tests back in the UK led to an appointment for a scan at the Royal Liverpool Hospital. That revealed I had low bone density, something quite unusual at my age except in people with depressed testosterone levels. It was suggested that the condition was almost certainly being exacerbated by my chosen career as an endurance athlete, constantly breaking down body tissues with high volumes of work. The standard treatment was hormone replacement therapy, which I was advised to start straight away.
Triumphs and Turbulence Page 16