Boy Racer

by Mark Cavendish

  The insults kept flying, the volume kept rising, but there was nothing new coming out of either of our mouths, no apologies, and there certainly wasn't going to be any burying of the hatchet. My relationship with him was finished before it had even started. I couldn't wait until this training camp was finished, as well.

  THE 2006 season was always going to be a crucial one. I'd celebrate my twenty-first birthday in May – alone, in a flat near Dortmund, in Germany, where Ed and I were again spending the summer to gain some experience of racing abroad with Sparkasse – and, although, in theory, I could ride for another year as an Under 23, no one needed to remind me that a third year in that category is cycling's own last-chance saloon.

  I was lucky, or at least I'd made my own luck in the sense that then former (he's now returned) team GB coach Heiko Salzwedel had already approached me about a pro deal with the richest team in the world, T-Mobile, whom he was then helping with youth development. In 2005, Heiko had seen me win the final stage of the Tour of Berlin in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate, after which he'd strolled across for a chat about my plans over the following two years. He asked if, at some point, I'd be interested in a stagiaire's contract with T-Mobile, referring to the arrangement whereby top amateurs go on trial for leading pro teams for the final three months of a season. He said that, at the end of the three months, impress them enough and I might even be taken on full-time. 'Brilliant!' I gasped.

  Alas, I was panting for a different reason at the same race in 2006, which this time I rode for Sparkasse. I'd won the second stage with probably one of my most spectacular individual performances to date, spending the whole day in a break then winning the bunch sprint when we were caught. Unfortunately, I'd also crashed on the first two days then, not for the first time, wiped out into the back of Ed on the final stage. If I said earlier on that, after his crash at the Triptyque des Monts et Châteaux in 2004, Ed looked as though he'd been eaten by a shark, well, by the time I left Berlin, I looked as though I'd been in light sparring with a grizzly bear.

  One of the biggest races of 2006, the Under 23 Tour of Italy or 'Baby Giro', was due to start five days after the Tour of Berlin. Instead of focusing on training, I spent most of that time attending to my cuts, caked in plasters and bandages, drowning in antiseptic rinse, yet it still wasn't enough to get me to Italy in anything resembling my best mental or physical shape. That was one of the few races in 2006 that I was due to ride with the Academy, and I got to Italy and immediately told Rod that I didn't feel good; not only was I in pain, I'd also started developing the symptoms of flu. Rod said that I should at least try to race, out of fairness to the race organiser, and that I could pull out if things got any worse. I said, 'Okay.'

  The first stage was a strange one: a 10 km prologue time-trial up the side of a mountain. I finished second-to-last. The next morning I steeled myself and promised Rod that, if I felt good, I'd go for the intermediate sprint after 30 km; I hadn't even got that far when, having already been dropped for the second or third time, I dragged myself through the race convoy, up to Rod in the GB team car, looked sorrowfully across and said, 'Rod, what am I doing here?'

  Rod took one look at me, my pallid cheeks, my shredded legs, and nodded. 'Get in the car, mate,' was his next instruction.

  Over the next two days, the race was due to make its way north to Tuscany, and Rod and I had agreed that he would drop me off at the Academy's new base in Quarrata, near Pistoia, where I could spend a few days training and recovering. It was a good idea in principle, but after three days, to say things had started to turn ugly would be a literal as well as a metaphorical observation. Not only had my scabs not healed, they were now oozing a fluorescent orange pus, like nothing else I'd ever seen outside the Gunk Tank in Noel's House Party. The same, unidentifiable substance was also streaming from my nose.

  I briefed Rod, who in turn contacted Max Sciandri, the British-born, Italian-raised and Quarrata-based former pro who had recently been recruited by the Academy to act as a liaison, mentor and coach in Italy. Max arranged for me to see a doctor. The doctor's diagnosis was septicaemia, his prescription an intensive course of antibiotics and two weeks of equally intensive rest.

  I didn't know Max before that trip. Never the most avid aficionado of the pro scene when I was growing up, I wasn't even particularly familiar with his story, which was that of a gifted one-day rider who, by general consensus, had perhaps also been an underachiever, a bronze medal in the Olympic road race in 1996 in Atlanta notwithstanding. Now nearing his forties, Max still had the thick, golden curls and athletic physique of a much younger man, and the lifestyle of someone whose wealth predated his career in cycling. In common, we had a taste for expensive cars, clothes and watches; the only difference was the side of the window on which we could afford to do our shopping.

  Ten days or a fortnight after I'd arrived in Quarrata, the other Academy lads had come back and left again for another race, and my symptoms were slowly improving. Max even suggested we go out for a little ride. I accepted with a clear proviso: 'Max,' I said, 'you've got to remember that I'm still sick. I've got this shit coming from my nose and ...'

  He interrupted. 'Cav, don't worry. It's fine, we'll just go easy, okay?'

  So off we rode. Out of Quarrata, on gentle terrain, at a gentle pace, until we hit a climb. Max pressed a little harder, his ego inflating and mine responding; I may have been ill but my pride wouldn't allow an ex-pro to drop me. He kept accelerating, I kept straining, until finally, I couldn't push any more; I saw Max disappearing up the hill, made one final lunge and, as I did so, called to him to slow down. I never paid any attention to the SRM power meter fixed to my handlebars but I knew that, on a normal day, on this kind of climb, I'd be scoring in the high 300s, whereas now I was barely edging above 200 watts. In between huge, rasping intakes of air I tried to explain this to Max. 'Max,' I wheezed, 'I think I'm about to pass out.'

  I was expecting sympathy. Instead he shook his head.

  'Cav, there's something wrong with you, you know. You've got this big engine and you want to turn pro next year, but you don't eat like a pro, you don't act like a pro, you don't train like a pro. What do you want? You want people to help you, but you've got to help yourself ...'

  I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

  'Max, I'm fucking sick. Can you not see that?'

  'Nah, Cav, you don't get it ...'

  I kept protesting, but the more I talked, the more Max thought I was verifying his theory: I simply didn't want to learn. We finished the ride together, still speaking but with conversation now as stilted and uncomfortable as the motion of my empty legs.

  There was still friction over the next few days, but it eased slightly over a gorgeous meal at a villa owned by one of Max's friends, a famous architect. That evening, any worries about Max were lost in the luxurious surroundings, plus there was the novelty of David Millar's company to keep me entertained. Dave had confessed to doping in the summer of 2004, for several months thereafter plunged into a spiral of booze and despair, but had since vowed to come back to the professional scene and do it without drugs. His ban was due to expire a few days before the start of the 2006 Tour; this trip to Tuscany would be one of his last training binges before that race.

  I'm not the first person and I won't be the last to say that Dave Millar wasn't your typical pro cyclist. The son of a Scottish airline pilot, he'd been born in Malta, raised in England and Hong Kong, and had the kind of quirky, bohemian outlook on life you suppose could only come from that upbringing. Bizarrely, I'd met him years earlier, in June 1999, when he'd come to the Isle of Man for International Cycling Week and I'd asked for his autograph. That day, I also asked him how he thought he'd get on in the 60km time-trial held on the same circuit as the Isle of Man TT motorbike race, and was shocked and awed when he responded 'probably shit' – then qualified that by quoting a time around ten minutes better than my personal best at the time. I still have the Cofidis team cap that Dave signed for me that da
y, while Dave has a photo immortalising the meeting which, to his total amazement and bewilderment, I dug out and gave him as a gift a couple of years ago.

  A few days after our posh dinner with the architect, Dave, Max and I were supposed to go out riding, only Max opted out at the last minute, leaving just me and Dave. By now, I was well into the course of antibiotics, and generally feeling much better, so much so that I could follow Dave without too much trouble. Admittedly, he was on an 'easy' training day, but still, there was a world of difference between this and the ride with Max a few days earlier. At least that's what I thought until, at one point, Dave turned to me and, in a tone of voice that sounded both ominous and very similar to the one Max had used a few days earlier, he announced that he 'needed to have a chat'.

  'Look, Cav,' he said. 'Max and I have been speaking, and you've got it all wrong. Look at you: you're not lean.'

  By now my arguments were as well rehearsed as his and Max's were flawed, as far as I was concerned. 'Well, I'm the leanest I've ever been, and I've been winning races with Sparkasse all year.'

  'Yeah, but you want to be a pro, you've got to act like a pro ...'

  'Er, no Dave, I'm an amateur, so I'm going to train like an amateur. It's not a case of if I get a pro contract – it's when I get a pro contract, and when I do, I'll change. In winter, I'll train longer and harder. I'll train like I need to train to win pro races.'

  'Cav, it doesn't work like that.'

  'It does, Dave. I'll prove to you it does.'

  Dave sighed and shook his head, again exactly as Max had a few days earlier. He was right – he had tried – and, perhaps unbeknownst to him, he'd also reinforced my belief that there were some people who, for whatever reason, may not have wanted me to fail but certainly expected it.

  Most importantly, as if I needed any more motivation, Dave had just given me a brilliant incentive to make my doubters eat their words.

  IN MARCH of the same year, 2006, I'd won the points race at the Commonwealth Games. In April I'd gone to the track worlds in Bordeaux, quit the scratch race and finished fourth in the Madison with Rob Hayles because I made a pig's ear of the final sprint. In June I'd quit the Baby Giro. In August I started my trial with T-Mobile. In October the season finished. Throughout the whole time I had zero contact with Simon Jones.

  The Federation now knew my feelings about Jonesy and also about the team pursuit. They were also adamant that I had to keep proving myself in the Madison if I wanted to ride that event in the Olympics in 2008. A training camp in Perth, Australia, in the autumn of 2006, was, apparently, another rite of passage if I wanted to make it to Beijing.

  The agreement before the camp was that I wouldn't be made to take part in the team pursuit training; I was about to start a road career with the number-one team in the world and a good base on the road was essential for that. Dave Brailsford said this was fine. So, while the team pursuiters did a couple of hours on the road in the morning, I did four or five; while they did intensive run-throughs on the track in the afternoon, I waited in the centre of the velodrome and jumped on to do motorpacing whenever they took a breather.

  As I stood there, watching, it became clearer to me why they'd stopped improving. Jonesy had a team of guys with massive aerobic capacities, real thoroughbreds who could go and go at 60 kilometres an hour, but that was as quick as they got. To make matters worse, he was training them over a longer distance than the four kilometres they'd have to ride in competition. He was then inputting all this data and technical information into computer programs, doing a minute analysis of everyone's position on the track as they moved through and off, yet the one thing that never seemed to occur to him was the simplest of all: he needed them to go faster.

  I looked at him bashing away on the laptop, scratching his head, then burying it in his hands. I almost felt sorry for the guy. Then, just when the pursuiters finished one effort and I thought I could finally get back on to the track, he'd keep them on the track giving them the third degree about where they were going wrong with their technique. And that's when any sympathy I might have had turned to frustration.

  That whole camp was tense. Jonesy was stressing out and he wasn't the only one; we were all lodged in little houses in the middle of nowhere – young guys like Geraint Thomas and Ed Clancy, older guys like Chris Newton and Paul Manning, blokes who were tidy like Chris, lads whose rooms were a bomb site like Andy Tennant. Those houses were like tinderboxes – and sometimes the explosions were spectacular.

  My relationship with Jonesy was the biggest timebomb of the lot, but initially we did a good job of avoiding each other. Then, though, from second-hand sources, I started hearing comments he'd apparently been making. Comments like 'Cav's only interested in poncing around in his T-Mobile kit', and 'If he says he wants to train, why isn't he doing the pursuit sessions with us?' – this despite the fact that, right from Bordeaux the previous spring, I'd made it clear that the team pursuit didn't inspire or even interest me in the slightest.

  It was all bound to boil over and, finally, dramatically, it did, one afternoon when the other lads were in their rooms resting and Jonesy and I found ourselves in the swimming pool. An uncomfortable silence was broken when he turned to me and asked what was clearly not an innocent question. 'So, Cav, what do you want out of cycling?'

  I frowned at him. 'Er, I want to be a road pro, win stages at the Tour, and be world champion ...'

  'Well, you're not hitting the numbers to do that.'

  'Hitting the numbers', always fucking 'hitting the numbers'. It was more than a mantra – it was every other sentence.

  I took a deep breath. 'Look, Simon, I'm riding on the track, I'm happy to do that, but all you're concerned with is the team pursuit. You're getting obsessed with it, Simon. All you need is four guys to go fast. At the minute, you're trying to create these diesel engines. You need sprinters. You need fast guys to do the team pursuit. You can't teach a diesel engine to sprint, but you can develop a sprinter's endurance. You can't train a diesel engine to have speed ...'

  A quick explanation: the team pursuit is based on four riders taking advantage of each other's slipstream to propel the quartet as quickly as possible over four kilometres. In other words, the team rides in a rotating line with each man taking maybe thirteen- or fourteen-second turns on the front, when they're riding at maximum capacity and the other three are able to recover slightly as they 'draft' on the wheel in front. In crude terms, my argument was that you needed men to ride really fast in their stint on the front, rather than four men who could maintain a consistent pace for all four kilometres.

  As I tried to explain this to Jonesy, I was getting louder and louder, more and more animated. 'Look Simon, you're ignoring me because I don't want to do it, and I don't want to do it because of people like you. You need guys like me. You need fast guys in the team pursuit, or you need to get these guys training fast. You need to make them go overspeed.'

  Like our previous argument in Majorca, this was leading nowhere; we were never going to see eye to eye. Our latest spat further poisoned an atmosphere which was already turning toxic, so much so that one of the pursuiters, Steve Cummings, couldn't take any more and moved out of the communal accommodation into a house on his own.

  After the row in the pool, I called Dave Brailsford to tell him what had happened. He said we'd discuss it when I got home. First, on our way back, there was a World Cup track meet to ride in Moscow. Ironically, Steve slipped in the toilets during a stop-off in Dubai and I got brought into the second of our two pursuit teams. We actually did okay, not that Jonesy paid any attention to what was effectively a 'B' team.

  We got home and, as promised, Dave Brailsford and I had our conversation about Jonesy. He asked me what I thought of Simon.

  'I never want to have any contact with him again,' I said. 'I can say hello to him and perhaps be civil but I really can't stand the man.'

  In the end, I didn't have to be civil: within a few weeks, the coaching team had 'restruct
ured' and Jonesy left the Federation.

  IN THE year and a half after Simon Jones left the Federation, the pursuit team's approach was revolutionised and so were their performances. In the same way that the Australian team that won in Athens in 2004 sacrificed technical perfection for speed, gradually, between the spring of 2007 and the Olympic final in Beijing in 2008, the pursuit team discovered that the only limit to their potential was how far and how fast they could push themselves. Their winning time in China was three minutes, 53.314 seconds – a massive ten seconds faster than they'd managed in that World Cup meet in Moscow in December 2006.