Boy Racer

by Mark Cavendish

Stage 8: Figeac–Toulouse, 172.5 km

  * * *

  1. Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team Columbia 4.02.54 (42.61 km/h)

  General classification

  * * *

  1. Kim Kirchen (Lux) Team Columbia 32.26.34

  143. Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team Columbia 45.15

  STAGE 9

  Sunday, 13 July 2008

  TOULOUSE—BAGNÈRES DE BIGORRE, 224 KM

  WHAT does it feel like to win? Why do people want and need that feeling so badly? What makes it so beautiful and necessary that, on Stage 9 of the Tour de France, Riccardo Riccò was willing to take drugs, endanger his health and risk a prison sentence just for a taste of that oh-so-special something?

  I can only speak for myself, of course, and by now you might be taking with a grain of salt the opinions of a guy who seems to live his life on an emotional tightrope. Why would you take the word of someone like that for anything? Or any twenty-three-year-old's for that matter? And is it not just obvious, the more stories I tell, that, just as Lance Armstrong's manager said about him, my will to win comes purely from anger and resentment?

  If you really are asking yourself that then I must have done something wrong. By now, I hope you'll see that, with me, any anger or resentment which boils over in the heat of the moment has less to do with winning than it does with losing. When I say that I'm a natural born winner, that's not exactly what I mean, when I say that I'm a natural born winner, what I really mean is that I can't stand, can't tolerate, can't abide losing.

  The nature of professional cycling is such that you'll always lose more than you win. In 2008, I won more elite races than any other rider, seventeen, but that still worked out at fewer than one win for every six days of racing. Most riders and especially non-sprinters are happy to finish the season with two or three wins.

  Given what I've just said about hating losing, you might say that I'm in the wrong sport. Maybe. But when I talk about 'losing' what I really mean is losing a sprint when I've been in the position to win. And even then, the big issue isn't 'losing' in the sense of missing out on the egotistical act of crossing the line in a blaze of glory. That's a shame but that isn't what keeps me up all night.

  I'm not exaggerating: when I lose a sprint, it stops me from sleeping at night, and that's because of the guilt I feel at having let down my teammates. That guilt eats me alive. I can't stress this enough: it eats me alive. If you can call that feeling of shame and self-hatred a motivation then I very definitely am in the right sport, because a fear of those emotions allows me to do things that an SRM power meter or a 'rig' test tells you I shouldn't be capable of. Every sprint I lose gets replayed over and over in my head until every little mistake has been deconstructed and mentally corrected for the next time. I said earlier on that Simon Jones's perfectionism about the team pursuit became an obsession; what I didn't mention is that when it comes to losing sprints I'm almost as bad. It's no coincidence that, if I don't win a sprint and I'm to blame, 99 times out of 100 I'll win the next one.

  Both Scheldeprijs in 2007 and the whole of the 2008 Tour perfectly illustrated my point about not losing being more of an incentive than winning. At Scheldeprijs, I simply couldn't allow myself to lose after what Bernhard Eisel had done for me in those last two kilometres. In the same way, halfway through the Tour, I looked at the faces in the team bus or at the dinner table and saw the physical and mental toll of hours spent not just finishing every gruelling day but also acting as my personal butlers – driving at the front to pull back breakaways, chaperoning me through the bunch, fetching my water bottles. By stage nine Marcus Burghardt, the teammate whose commitment I'd questioned the previous year, looked ill, positively sallow. The guy was 150th on general classification, an hour and eleven minutes behind Kim, who was in the yellow jersey and had all sorts of pressures of his own to deal with. Every single thing that Marcus had done all Tour, he'd done it for me, Kim or the team.

  You may say my motivation can't come solely from a selfless need to repay my teammates. You're right: there does need to be another driving force, a hunger, an element of ego, because otherwise you'd be nuts to take on the burden. If it's true to say that a Tour stage win can change a rider's life then it can also mean thousands of pounds in bonuses for his teammates, as well as a priceless sense of gratification. That's a lot to gain but also a lot to lose on a teammate's behalf.

  Certain other riders who are far more talented than I am just don't seem to want this responsibility. I've often wondered this about my old mates from the Academy, Ed Clancy and Geraint Thomas. Both are unbelievably talented, unbelievably loyal, unbelievably skilled yet, so far, have achieved plenty on the track but much less than me on the road. This is partly because they're not out-and-out sprinters or mountain climbers or time-triallists and therefore have to be a bit more creative when it comes to carving out their opportunities; basically, they have to win in breakaways. But that doesn't explain everything. Rod says I'm wrong – that I shouldn't expect other riders to have my drive, my need, that I'm almost unique in that sense. While I know what he means, it doesn't stop me from getting frustrated. I don't get annoyed for myself, but because I'm desperate to see those lads fulfil their potential.

  Gee rides for the South African-sponsored team Barloworld. Like Ed, he's one of the best team pursuit riders in the world. They both won gold medals in the team pursuit in Beijing. In 2007, when I'd already started winning races, I told Gee that I'd love to have him with me at T-Mobile and that we could build a career together on the same team. I told him not to renew his contract with Barloworld until he'd spoken to me. A few weeks or months later, one day, matter-of-factly, he mentioned that he'd re-signed with Barloworld. When I asked him why, he said it was because he wouldn't be guaranteed selection for the Tour with T-Mobile. Good enough reason, right?

  You see this is where I struggle. Rod would say that Gee is building a good career with Barloworld and that he's happy, which is true, but I still struggle. I said to Gee at the time: 'Hang on, you say that you wouldn't be guaranteed a start at the Tour with T-Mobile, but do you think I was guaranteed to start the Tour when I joined T-Mobile? Of course I wasn't. On paper I didn't have a hope in hell of making the team. I had to make sure I was picked ...' What I didn't also point out, but I will now, is that it made no sense whatsoever to just 'go' to the Tour; if I went, it'd be to pursue a dream, to win, to work to guarantee success. Why go with a modest team? Why not go with the best team? Again, Rod would say that I shouldn't expect other people to have the same mentality as me. Unfortunately, that doesn't make it any easier for me to understand why their mentality isn't a bit more like mine, especially as we're talking about riders at least – if not more so – naturally talented as me.

  I suppose I make the same mistake as a lot of people: when I talk about 'talent', I instinctively think only in terms of physical potential. Now Ed is a guy with phenomenal physical potential; in 'rig' tests he's phenomenal. But he'll also be the first to admit that he 'can't' race on the road, although he's actually a lot better than he thinks. Part of his problem is tactical, so once, at the Academy, I thought I'd try to help him by teaching him how to play chess and, later, speed chess, in the hope that it'd improve his decision-making under pressure. Ed's a smart lad and a fast learner. He was such a fast learner, in fact, that before long he was beating me. Needless to say, that was when I stopped playing.

  So Ed's problem clearly isn't intelligence or talent. What is it then, if indeed it is a 'problem'? I just ask myself whether Ed doesn't lack another type of hunger that Geraint possesses in spades – the ability to suffer.

  Throughout this book I've made reference to pain. What I haven't explained so far is that there's a difference between hurting yourself and suffering. A track sprinter like Chris Hoy can hurt himself more than any road rider but he doesn't suffer; for about one minute – the maximum duration of his full-on effort in a keirin or team sprint or an individual sprint, Chris can go 110 per cent into his reserves, but ask him to g
o at 80 per cent for ten minutes and he can't do it. It's the same with Ed: as a pursuiter, he should be the opposite to Chris, but actually, I think Ed can hurt himself like a sprinter, though not suffer like a road rider. Ed thinks he can suffer but I don't think he can. I hope he'll prove me wrong one day but, at the moment, I think Ed needs more hunger if he's going to succeed on the road.

  To me it's all interlinked – hunger, the ability to suffer, the hatred of losing – and the thread that weaves those things together is passion. When you have passion, the ability to suffer is automatic. Suffering can't be measured in the laboratory: it's not a physiological state you enter when you go over a certain heart-rate or power output; it's not knowing your limits and pushing them; it's riding and hurting as much as it takes to get you over a mountain and inside the time in the Tour de France; it's riding and hurting as much as it takes to earn you the success which your passion makes you crave.

  As for where my passion comes from, who knows? Part of it is the snowball effect of success, which makes you more and more motivated and more and more passionate the more you achieve. You start to develop an image of yourself as the 'best' – whether it's in maths lessons at school or in the last 100 metres of a bike-race. You succeed because you're passionate and you become more passionate because you succeed.

  And, yeah, a big part of it is ego. I do crave that success for myself – not just for my teammates. I don't do if for the money or even the adulation, otherwise I'd have focused on the track, which is a much surer route to fame in Britain; I do it above all because I'm passionate about riding my bike and leaving my mark on races which, for generations before mine, have captured the passion and imagination of millions: the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia, Paris–Roubaix, Milan–San Remo ...

  I also do what I do, suffer like I suffer, because I know that, while losing is a nightmare, winning is an addiction. I love winning because I love the pride which comes from knowing how much I've worked, how much my teammates have worked, how much I've sacrificed and they have.

  How Riccardo Riccò could have hoped to feel even vaguely similar to what I felt twenty-four hours earlier – while knowing that his were false sacrifices, that his was false suffering – I have absolutely no idea.

  Stage 9: Toulouse-Bagnères de Bigorre, 224 km

  * * *

  1. Riccardo Riccò (Ita) Saunier Duval – Scott 5.39.28 (39.59km/h)

  150. Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team Columbia 28.11

  General classification

  * * *

  1. Kim Kirchen (Lux) Team Columbia 38.07.19

  151. Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team Columbia 1.12.09

  STAGE 10

  Monday, 14 July 2008

  PAU—HAUTACAM, 156 KM

  HAVE you ever experienced that feeling of waking from a nightmare and being so engrossed in your imaginary car-crash, science exam or God knows what other disaster that it takes a few seconds for reality and relief to set in? When you're a professional cyclist, and specifically a Tour de France rider, that waking fear can be a daily occurrence, with one, very crucial difference – that, very often, you open your eyes to the realisation that the true nightmare is the one due to begin in four or five hours' time. So it was that, on the morning of Bastille Day 2008, I woke to a mountain or rather two mountains of dread: the immense Pyrenean climbs of Stage 10 of the Tour de France.

  They say the devil you know is better than the devil you don't, but I'm not sure that applies when it comes to dragging yourself and your bike over roads that were never made for cyclists. I'd ridden and suffered in the Pyrenees before but how that was going to help me now, I couldn't quite see. The first climb on the day's route was the infamous Col du Tourmalet – the first Pyrenean climb ever visited by the Tour, ninety-nine years ago, 2115 metres above sea level and 17.5 kilometres of guaranteed torture. The second was the even more ominous-sounding 15.8 km climb to Hautacam, the ski-resort above Lourdes. No wonder I woke up nervous.

  I said I'd suffered in the Pyrenees before; that's an under-statement. In May 2007, my T-Mobile managers told me that I'd been selected for the Tour of Catalunya, but might as well have said that they were sending me to a week-long School for Suffering. Catalunya was part of the International Cycling Union (UCI) 'ProTour' series of races – a new and controversial grouping of the sport's toughest and most prestigious events. ProTour races were different from the others in that the leading eighteen teams in the world were guaranteed and obliged to take part; it followed that the level of competition was also higher. When we'd originally discussed my racing schedule in the autumn of 2006, it was agreed that Catalunya would be too hard and too hilly to take on so early in my pro career, but now my breakthrough in Scheldeprijs and two more wins at the Four Days of Dunkirk had forced a rapid reassessment; my directeur sportif at Dunkirk, Brian Holm, had told Rolf Aldag that he'd seen experienced, established members of the team flogging themselves on my behalf, in the pissing rain, with a commitment he'd rarely encountered.

  Before skipping ahead to Catalunya, it's worth a short detour to explain how my ongoing power struggle with my teammate André Greipel had continued at the GP Denain, the day after Scheldeprijs. Denain is a fairly low-key, plan-flat French race which is made complicated by the fact that it's part of the French Cup – another season-long competition, a parochial and less glitzy version of the ProTour, featuring races which are open to teams of all nationalities but in which only French teams can score points which count towards a league table. All French races are chaotic and tactically disorganised; French Cup races are worse because the French teams don't give each other an inch.

  There'd been shocking and brilliant news in the briefing that morning: if the race finished in a sprint, which it usually did, Cavendish and not Greipel would be our man. The other instruction was that we'd put a man in any break of four riders or more – in other words in any break that had a chance of staying away until the finish. Any group of fewer than four would have almost no chance of outriding a peloton of more than a hundred riders; if a larger group went clear, and we had a man in there, we'd have the option of that man collaborating with his breakaway companions then hopefully beating them in the sprint, or of refusing to work with them, whereupon they'd be forced to call it quits. These were just common-sense tactics.

  The race started and with it the attacks. Lots of attacks – most of them brainless. I marked one of two of the breakaways but mostly I just sat towards the back, soaking up all the plaudits from other riders for my win in Scheldeprijs. There was only one thing that was more out of control than the race and that was my ego.

  After a while, teammates started dropping back to ask me why I wasn't chasing. I explained: the breakaway groups that were forming contained riders from maybe two or three of the French teams, and we could rely on the French teams that weren't represented to chase them back. Soon, I went back to the team car to tell Allan the same thing; I wasn't prepared to waste energy just for the sake of it. The previous evening, when I'd been to thank him for handing me my first real opportunity to prove myself at Scheldeprijs, he'd said he was full of admiration for the way I'd seized that chance. Now I was trying to dictate to him how he should run the team. It was equivalent of an eighteen-year-old striker who'd just scored his first goal for Manchester United trotting over to the touchline twenty minutes into the next match to tell Sir Alex Ferguson that 4-4-2 was the wrong formation.

  Predictably, it all ended messily. We caught the break on the finish line, when the riders who had formed that break were spread across the line. The sprinters in the main pack, me included, were left to sprint in the only available space – up the gutter. I couldn't squeeze through. I finished eleventh.

  By now, the post-race routine was well-rehearsed: I'd arrive at the team bus, climb off my bike, take a drink ... then turn around and have to fend off Greipel. Today was no different.

  'Cav, you don't do any work like the others. You save yourself so that you're fresh for the sprint ...' Greipel ranted. />
  'Oh, I get it,' I said, smiling sarcastically. 'So you're kicking off now. You think that's why I beat you yesterday – that I didn't do anything until the sprint, and you think I did the same thing today. Why am I going to waste energy chasing moves that are going nowhere? Just because you're fucking stupid, and you're going to chase, it's not my problem.'

  And so it went on. Again. For the third time this season – at the end of a race, in public. And just like the previous three occasions, it was left to Allan to step in.

  This time, he said, I was in the wrong: 'Cav, be quiet. I told you that you had to ride and you didn't ride.'

  'Allan, but I don't understand,' I replied. 'I'm going to argue with you when I don't agree ...'