by Max Leonard
Actually, what I’d meant with my question was, could he remember a certain moment of racing in the mountains or on a climb that he’d found totally unbearable? Because even great climbers must find it tough. It never gets easier, you just get faster, right? Instead he’d answered with every skinny lightweight’s bête noire: keeping up with the big boys in crosswinds on the flat. I guess it figured.
Then he tells me about the Vuelta al Pais Vasco, which is notorious in the peloton as one of the hardest races in the whole calendar. The climbs in the Basque Country aren’t all that long, which means sprinters and the bigger guys can just punch their way over using reserves of power the grimpeurs don’t have – i.e. the climbs are just at that sweet spot in a Venn diagram where one circle is pain and the other demoralisation. ‘I remember going over some climbs in the middle of the race, and just thinking, I’m getting dropped and there’s still well over 100 guys in the peloton and I’m meant to be a climber. Like, what am I doing here?’ Joe says glumly.
In your first season, I suggest, you’ve got to let those moments go, and chalk it up to experience.
‘Yeah, and realise just how big a step up the World Tour is,’ he says. ‘Like, you’re not going to rock up and win the Tour de France, just chill out. Which I think the team tried to impress on me, but I didn’t really fully grasp it until I’d gotten more experience.’
I can see what he means: you can know conceptually that climbing Mont Ventoux, for example, is tough, but that doesn’t prepare you for actually doing it. And of course people will tell you a Grand Tour is fiendishly, awesomely tiring and difficult, but you can’t really feel the truth of that road until you’ve ridden it. It sends me back to a memory of our time – well, let’s be honest, his time – at the hardest Grand Tour stage ever.
There is not a single centimetre of flat road in Andorra, in the Pyrenees between Spain and France. I know because I checked. I went looking in 2015, on assignment for Strava to recce the course of that year’s Vuelta a España Stage 11, and I didn’t find one bit. The mountain principality is tiny, and is caught in a long steep valley between high rocks which, if you follow it from the capital, Andorra La Vella, at the Spanish end, takes you up over the highest road in the Pyrenees, the 2,408-metre Port d’Envalira, and down to another valley and the ski resort of Pas de la Casa. Pass through that and then you’re out. France and the Col de Puymorens (1,920 metres). That’s it. Andorra is an awful lot of uphill even if you stick to the valleys; if you branch out, you pass green terraces of land, beautiful, well-kept houses and gardens, sunflowers lashed upside down to barns to dry out, and deep dark forests on beautiful, tortuous roads that rise and fall at sometimes eye-watering gradients. Branching out is all that Stage 11 of the Vuelta does. It was designed by Andorra resident Joaquim ‘Purito’ Rodriguez of Team Katusha. In so doing he revealed himself to be both a sadist (he was tasking the pro peloton and also the forthcoming amateur ‘Purito Cyclosportive’ with some truly horrendous climbs) and a masochist (he would be riding it himself, and no doubt giving his all to win it). His route butterflied deviously in loops on both sides of the valley, passing multiple ski resorts on the way.
There have been stages of the Giro d’Italia that stand out for their combination of tough climbing and terrible weather, and there was a Tour de France stage in 1983 that featured 6,685 metres vertical gain in 247 kilometres, but this, the Vuelta’s Queen stage, with 5,000 metres’ climbing in 138 kilometres, taking riders up to a summit finish at 2,095 metres, will lay claim to packing in the most vertical metres per horizontal kilometre. Thanks to this it will be, according to some, the hardest Grand Tour stage ever.
Andorra is the mountain Monaco or the mini-Switzerland: its banks are notoriously discreet and until recently it had no income tax. The shops lining Andorra La Vella’s streets alternate between those selling cut-price alcohol, cigarettes and electronics, and high-class boutiques selling Italian shoes or cigars, these latter mainly to walnut-skinned septuagenarians in smoked-glass shades and fawn mohair jumpers. There is also a surfeit of marble-bedecked spa hotels, which at this season of the year are almost empty, and so the photographer and I have snagged a rather good lodging for cheap. It happens to be where Team Astana and La Française des Jeux are staying for two nights – Andorra is also where the Vuelta takes its first rest day. The night we arrived we watched them – from the plush sofas of the lobby as we used the hotel Wi-Fi – troop in dispiritedly in a midnight thunderstorm after a five-hour bus transfer, and we watch them again on the rest day from the same sofas as they do the things bike racers do on rest days: use the Wi-Fi, talk to journalists, go on an easy spin, travel up and down in the palm-filled lobby’s glass elevator. The muzak is unremittingly soft and relaxing, but the mood among the riders seems to be, let us say, tired and edgy.
Joe is staying in Soldeu, a ski resort at 1,825 metres, 800 metres above Andorra La Vella. His team’s hotel is a rambling modern building, all glass and double-height spaces, which contrasts with the claustrophobic marble caverns of the luxury hotels downtown. Correspondingly, he seems more relaxed, ambling up to where I’m sitting in jeans shorts and a hoodie. This Vuelta is his longest race yet and first Grand Tour, and it’s also the first time he has pinned on a number since his Tour of Utah win. There were nerves, he admits, jumping into the unknown of a Grand Tour, and in his telling the first week contained more flats and side winds than he was truly comfortable with (or the average punter gives the race credit for: the public is by and large convinced that the Vuelta is a hilly race without much else to balance that out). But now, 10 days in, it seems he is coming into his element and any butterflies are gone. Well, all the butterflies except tomorrow’s.
The team plan was that Joe ride for Dan Martin, their designated GC contender, and Martin started the Vuelta strongly. But a big pile-up in Stage 8 left him with a shoulder injury that forced him to abandon his third place in the overall rankings, and that has given Joe latitude to ride a bit more for himself when he thinks he might have a chance. He admits, cautiously, that before the race he picked out tomorrow’s stage as one that might suit him, which leads to an interesting conversation conducted in semi-specifics and with a definite lack of overstatement. Clearly, he does not want to talk himself up too much – I’m sure he’s worried about being over-presumptuous – and if it were me, the day before a big challenge, I’d keep myself to myself, for fear of jinxing it. Nevertheless, if you don’t take the initiative … ‘You pick your days and you pick your battles,’ he says, and smiles. ‘If you’re coming into it with the mindset that this is an opportunity for me, then you have to stay focused on that and devise a plan.’
But how do you prepare for such a difficult stage, I ask.
‘I think going into it knowing it’s going to be hard is obviously part of the preparation,’ he says, and doesn’t elucidate more. I think, actually, that a good part of his preparation involves trying to stay as relaxed as possible, and not agonising and losing sleep over the big stages. Taking it easy when it isn’t essential to be working hard. His growing stage-race experience – from the Baby Giro through to that moment being dropped at Tirreno-Adriatico and on to California, Suisse, Utah and others – has given him the nous to race a little more cleverly. For one thing, by cutting out wasted effort trying to gain seconds that will, paradoxically, hold him back from achieving something big. He explains: ‘My thinking was that on a number of days here I’ve conserved energy. I’ve gone into it with the mindset of really targeting the second and third week, because there’s some really good stages for me,’ he says. ‘I could have tried to ride for the GC, but it’s my first Grand Tour, and do you try and do that, and fight tooth and nail to finish 16th …’
His point being that this won’t receive much recognition or reward.
‘Right,’ he continues. ‘Would I rather try and do that or try and win a stage? The danger is, if you sit in that 8- to 10-minutes-down territory, fighting tooth and nail to finish 16th on GC, it really
limits your ability to win a stage, because then you don’t have that leash you would otherwise.’
If you’re too close to the top positions then, should you get in a break, teams will ride against you and the break will be doomed to failure. And the big stage tomorrow, for those wishing to contest the stage win, is all about making the right break.
‘In the breakaway it’s easier than being in the peloton, because you don’t have to fight for position,’ he says. ‘There’s not the surges, and up front you get as many bottles as you want, as much clothing, food, all that. Your car’s right there.’
Joe had a long, fairly hard rest day ride, to keep the pipes open and recce a couple of the climbs; I went out for a twisty, turny and up-and-downy drive, so we swap notes on the course. Climb one is called the Collada de Beixalis and it’s a real stinker. Although the road book says it averages 8.7 per cent over six kilometres, that average hides some terrible switchbacks where the road is barely a car’s width and the gradient is easily at 15 per cent. And those bits come right at the bottom. ‘The road’s so narrow and so steep at the bottom that it’s about positioning,’ is Joe’s verdict. ‘If you’re out of position you’re not going to be able to do it.’ The second climb is not so bad, but the third and fourth are both over 10 kilometres long, and that fourth one, the Collada de la Gallina, steep too: an HC after three category 1s. Climb five is short and steep, and then the finishing climb to Cortals d’Encamp is not so short and still steep: 9 kilometres at 9.5 per cent. Phew.
Tom Dumoulin of Giant-Alpecin is leading the general classification, while Purito, the stage designer himself, is only 57 seconds behind in second place. It being only Stage 11, and only the first real mountain day, Joe is pretty sure that the GC battle will not ignite. Who might take the stage, I ask. Says Joe: ‘My prediction for tomorrow is there’s a breakaway of really strong climbers who are out of GC, and it goes to the line and one of those guys wins. And shortly behind that is the GC group. I kinda think Froome might … I mean … Purito is obviously always good, and it is his stage!’
Which, it seems to me, is saying that it’s anybody’s guess and that it’s going to be chaos.
It is a measure of the respect in which the veteran Spanish rider Rodriguez is held that he has been allowed to programme a stage of his home Grand Tour. As climbers go, he is at the other end of the spectrum from Joe. Short and steep are his thing, and he has won the hilly Il Lombardia and the Flèche-Wallonne one-day races, the Tours of Catalunya and the Basque Country, as well as individual stages at all three Grand Tours, GC podium places and the Vuelta’s mountains jersey. His nickname, Purito, refers to a type of small cigar that looks like a little stick of dynamite, and by extension to his explosive style.
If every rider got to design a stage, what would they do? And, broadening that thought out, I begin to wonder about the art of designing stages in general.
How the peloton plays a Grand Tour stage is a product of many things: GC positions, the composition of the break, individual rivalries, who feels good on that particular day, the weather and many more factors less tangible than that. But beneath it all is the basic composition of the stage, and that is decided by the race’s directors and technical officials. Stage starts and finishes are often fixed long in advance and for commercial reasons, with towns paying large amounts of money for the prestige (and the boost to the local economy) that they bring. How the start and finish are connected is an art, one that relies on deep knowledge of bike racing, geography and local cycling contacts all around the country. These race directors are the spiritual heirs to Henri Desgrange and Alphonse Steinès, and their work is particularly in evidence during the mountain stages. Anyone who has ever ridden an Étape will understand that, at their best, mountain stages are not just a misshapen succession of random climbs: they are a carefully thought out sequence of challenges with an inbuilt rhythm and logic. If the race directors programme the stages well, there will be ebbs and flows, interweaving melodies and harmonies and moments of drama, from the Grand Tour’s overture to the coda of the final ceremonial stage. Get it wrong and the symphony will sound flat, and the orchestra’s soloists won’t be able to show their virtuosity.
The mountains make a difference. That is to say, in cycling the characteristics of the venue itself substantially affect the contest, but in this the sport is not unique. Trail running, rally driving and other races that take place in the real world rather than a stadium also ‘feature’ the course, and even in a marathon the course can have a big bearing on finishing. But in road cycling, with its huge range of terrains and the collective nature of the race – the fact that, unlike in trail running, say, all the competitors stick together most of the time – the mountains assume the stature of an additional opponent. It is not simply one cyclist or one team against another, jumping when he knows the terrain suits him best, or testing his opponent when he seems at his weakest. It is both cyclists against the mountains. Every man for himself, and the mountains against them all.
‘There is no cycling without mountains, in my opinion,’ Michele Acquarone told me. I had decided, since my mind was focused more on the Giro d’Italia than the Vuelta a España, to contact the Giro organisers, and eventually I found myself with Signor Acquarone at the end of a Skype line. Acquarone was the overall boss of the Giro for the organiser, RCS Sport, from 2011 to 2013, and he worked closely with Mauro Vegni, the technical director in charge of the race route in those years, to give the race shape and balance. And on shaping the race Mauro said this: ‘There are three considerations to be taken care of. The first is that you need to consider the mountain not in a standalone stage but how it is placed in the general project of the whole race. You cannot think one stage at a time, you always have to think it through. The second consideration is the position of the climbs compared to the finish line. I’ll give you an example. You can put the Stelvio in a stage, but if the finish line is well after Prato di Stelvio [the town at the bottom of the descent], riders will have all that time to recover from the climb itself, and so the technical factor of the climb will be diluted. This is absolutely a consideration that needs to be taken care of. And then of course the final consideration is how hard it is, the difficulty that the climb presents.’fn1
I asked Mauro if he had developed a particular approach to creating mountain stages. Dare I call it a philosophy? Yes I could: this was a conversation with a continental European, after all. ‘There is absolutely a philosophy,’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s made of two parts. The first part is tradition: it’s incredibly important to consider the tradition of the climbs because the history of this sport was built on the most traditional climbs – like the Stelvio, for instance. On the other side is innovation. I’ll give you a very precise example: think about Zoncolan. You can consider it as a traditional climb now, but you need to remember that it was introduced at the beginning of the 2000s. So at the time it was innovating. The Zoncolan immediately became an instant tradition. Another one to consider is Colle delle Finestre. It’s considered already a traditional climb, but last year was only the second time they were racing it, so it was innovative. We’re always mixing tradition and innovation.’
If you’re not totally up to speed with the history of the Giro then I’ll explain. The Passo dello Stelvio is the most famous climb in Italy. At 2,757 metres, it is regularly the highest point the Giro crosses and it is famous for the profusion of switchbacks stretching up and down two tight valleys near the Swiss border. The Zoncolan, meanwhile, which was where George II was heading when I met him, was actually first used in the Giro Donne, the women’s edition of the race, in 1997, but it rose to fame in the men’s 2003 Giro and quickly became a favourite with the fans. The west side is 10.1 kilometres at a horrific average gradient of 11.9 per cent. The Finestre is another brutally steep road, but this time with the added attraction of eight kilometres of gravel at the top. Since 2005 it has appeared three times; it has had the likes of Alberto Contador, Danilo di Luca and Mikel Landa slip
ping around on its rocky surface, just like their illustrious predecessors a century before, and it will surely feature again. Acquarone considers crossing the Zoncolan one of the highlights of the modern Giro. He liked the Finestre too, but not as much.
The other innovation Mauro and Michele both push – and here might be one of the Giro’s competitive advantages over the Tour de France – is that over the last 20 years or so the Giro has looked to include mountains right from the start of the race. The Tour de France cannot quite do the same, or at least in the past it has mostly chosen not to. Much of this stems from the Tour de France being more wedded to its grands sites than either the Spanish or Italian races. A Tour without any one of the Tourmalet, Galibier, Alpe d’Huez or Ventoux is very unusual, and if there were two consecutive years they didn’t appear traditionalists would be in uproar. These enforced stops oblige it to cleave to a route with substantial time in the Pyrenees and the Alps every year, with a couple of transition stages along the Mediterranean usually between them. It also regularly visits its heartlands, Normandy and Brittany, the Centre region (where, take it from me, some towns have nothing else to live for outside a Tour visit every few years) and Paris, none of which are very mountainous. This all contributes to the Tour’s traditional three-week, three-act drama. Italy, on the other hand, is more flexible: with fewer must-visit places and more mountain ranges to play in right across the country, the organisers can be faster and looser with the action.fn2