Allan's last word on the matter was just that – final: 'But Cav, I'm the directeur and you have to listen to me.'
On that, on reflection, he was absolutely right.
ONE OF the outcomes of my successes in Scheldeprijs and at Dunkirk was a shift in schedule for both me and Greipel. He'd originally been pencilled in for the Tour of Catalunya in Spain, and me for the Dauphiné Libéré in France, but my fast-rising stock had forced our directeurs sportifs into a rethink. I'd now do Catalunya at the end of May and Greipel would be our sprinter at the Dauphiné a fortnight later.
I've already referred to Catalunya as a week-long School for Suffering and I'd prepared myself for the agony with a week in the hills of Tuscany in Italy. Immediately after Dunkirk, when I heard that I'd been picked for Catalunya, I'd phoned Rod Ellingworth to ask if I could spend a few days training with the new Academy lads, who were now based in Italy. Rod told me I was more than welcome. One epic 200-kilometre ride, in particular, turned out to be an unlikely morale-boost: on the first of five climbs, the only kid in a pro-team kit (i.e. me), was dropped like a fag packet, on the second I was better, on the third I wasn't the worst, on the fourth I was one of the best and on the fifth and final climb I was leaving the others behind. Five months into my pro career, I was already going longer and stronger, just like the races I was now riding.
Catalunya was always going to be a major test. Not only was it to be my first ProTour event and my longest pro-stage race to date at seven days long, it was also to be my first real brush with some of the best climbers in the world on their terrain – the mountains and more specifically the Pyrenees. A few weeks had been all I'd needed to figure out that, on the plains and even short, steep hills of northern France and Belgium, I could more than hold my own. That was all well and good, but if I ever wanted to thrive on the sport's grandest stages – and in the Tour de France in particular – first I needed a few lessons in how to survive the mountains.
The first stage was a team time-trial. My teammates thought I'd be, well, shit – mainly because a lot of people still don't understand that a team time-trial is really just everyone on the team taking it in turns to sprint, as in a team pursuit. Anyway, whatever – we finished well down the rankings with me one of the strongest men in a mediocre team performance. Those sessions with Rod and the Academy lads seemed to have paid dividends; I confirmed that the next day, on stage two, when I amazed everyone, including myself, by winning a steep uphill sprint. You may remember the amusing subplot to that win from earlier in the book: Filippo Pozzato, our slanging match on the finish line, my 'amateurish' descending, then my brilliant but foul-mouthed riposte: 'Not bad for an amateur, am I? Now fuck off!'
Not bad indeed. Stage two had featured two tough climbs and I'd not just survived but won. Now I began the marginally more mountainous stage three in the green jersey awarded to the leader of the points competition with renewed confidence and the renewed confidence of my teammates. That was the problem: so impressed had Valerio Piva and Jan Schaffrath, my directeurs sportifs, been that on the last climb of the day, the Alt de Fores, they wanted the whole team on the front, reining in the climbers. The tactic was as old as the hills we were riding over – by setting a brisk but steady pace, my team could discourage the kind of constant, violent attacks which suited the climbers but would have me gagging and out the back.
The secret was finding a tempo that was not too fast, not too slow. Famous last words; we hit the bottom of the climb and my teammates surged to the front. Way too quick. Before I knew it, I was disappearing out of the rear-end of the bunch as what looked like a giant, magenta-coloured caterpillar – but was actually half a dozen of my teammates – wound its way up the mountain. 'Oi, guys, slow down! Slow down,' I screamed, but by the time two of my teammates dropped back to rescue me, it was too late. Not only that, but the news had already spread through the peloton like a forest fire: Cavendish was struggling. Within seconds one of my rival sprinters, Baden Cooke, had ordered his teammates to the front of the peloton to up the pace and twist the knife. Remember what I said about me and Francesco Chicchi on Stage 7 of the Tour de France – the sprinters' union and all that? Told you it was a load of rubbish, didn't I?
I scraped through to the finish, hot and very bothered, something not helped by the fact that the green points jersey was the only one of the prize jerseys that had a short zip. Small mercies – I'd at least lost the jersey for the next stage; I'd need all the help I could get on what was a monster of a stage through the southern Pyrenees and finishing 2000 metres above sea level. Again it was swelteringly hot, but I felt good. So good that I made it safely over the first climb and, in my relief and quiet delight, announced that I was going back to the team car to fetch water bottles for the whole team.
I headed back to the car. Took the bottles. Stuffed a few in my pockets, a couple under my jersey, and two in the bottle cages on my bike. It was around then that I noticed an unpleasant and familiar sensation: the road was climbing. On the route map for the day, it didn't say that the road should be climbing, not now, not already, but it definitely was. It was steep, as well. And long. And I was weighed down with about five litres of water. And pretty soon, the full horror of what was happening started to hit me – at about the same time as the vision of the peloton inching up the mountain and out of sight.
Oh, fucking terrific. I had 130 kilometres still to ride, thirty-five-degree heat, three climbs topping out at over 1000 metres and then the final, horrific slog up to Andorra. Plus I was alone – or nearly – because soon, I'd clawed my way back to another rider who was gasping almost as much as me: the Belgian Dominique Cornu of the Lotto team. It's at times like these that you learn the first lesson of suffering in the mountains: nationality, the logo on the other guy's jersey, whether you speak the same language – none of it matters one iota. The single, important bond is the need to survive. To do that, you need to share the workload with each man taking turns at the front and taking the brunt of the wind, share support and even share food and drink. Now I glanced at Cornu and he glanced back at me: we were both ready to be joined in unholy agony.
We reached the top of the evil, unmarked climb then hurled ourselves down the other side at 70 or maybe 80kph. We could see the peloton below us and were even edging closer, then another disaster struck: I skidded on some gravel and went sprawling into a ditch. I stood up, dusted myself off, wiped the blood from my cuts then hopped back on my bike and set off after Cornu. When I caught him shortly afterwards, he asked me whether I was going to carry on, as he was stopping. I shook my head: there may have been 100 kilometres to go, four mountains and an even bigger metaphorical one to climb but quitting races wasn't and still isn't my style. I was going to make it to Andorra or die trying.
I could go on and describe the full, excruciating torment of the next three hours but, rather like the magic of form or the ecstasy of winning, again, a lot would be lost in translation. Suffice to say that I'll never forget those three hours and neither will our team mechanic Pedro. With our directeurs otherwise engaged behind the front of the race, it was left to him to follow and cajole me. I never pay any attention to the SRM meter which sits on my handlebars and measures the power going into each pedal stroke – but I did that day; together with Pedro, it was all that got me through. I decided on a target wattage and cocooned myself in the pursuit of that number. To my eternal gratitude and disbelief, a much more important pursuit ended when I saw then finally rejoined the gruppetto on the climb up to Andorra.
It was hard to judge which was more of a triumph: my win on stage two or the test of physical or mental endurance which I'd passed two days later. The team, too, seemed undecided. Kim Kirchen was thrilled with me. Professional cyclists pride themselves on just how much pain they can endure and anyone who rides over 100 kilometres of a mountain stage, most of them alone, can expect serious kudos. Winning a sprint, or even winning a sprint at the end of a hilly day like stage two might prove my talent; finishing a bruta
l mountain stage had shown my resilience. A victory could bring adulation; survival brought something more valuable – admiration and respect.
After a mountain time-trial on stage five, again up to Andorra, there would be more mountains, more suffering and more confirmation of my growing stature on day six. That stage again started with a long climb. Again, I was left behind but this time at least I wasn't alone. I also had Jan Schaffrath imploring from the team car, 'Don't give up. Whatever you do, don't give up!' It took a descent that would have made the skier Bode Miller wince to cancel our two-minute deficit and bring me back to the peloton.
It started raining. I can remember that I was putting on my rain-cape when I found myself riding next to David Millar. Funny – a year earlier, practically to the week, we'd been riding up a mountain in Italy, arguing about whether I'd ever cut it as a professional. As I recalled in the chapter dedicated to Stage 4, Dave had said much the same things as the former pro Max Sciandri a few days earlier, namely that, if I wanted to make the grade, I should eat better, train better and generally liven up my act. I'd replied that I'd do all of those things when I started riding as a stagiaire with T-Mobile at the end of the year. But only then. In the end, we'd agreed to disagree.
Now Dave said he wanted to congratulate me for the way I'd ridden throughout the week. I thanked him, and asked him if he remembered our conversation a year earlier. He said he owed me not just congratulations, but also an apology – 'a massive, massive apology'. 'I was so, so wrong about you,' he said. 'You told me that you'd step up and you have. Cav, you were completely right, and you've been a phenomenon this season.'
Comments like this could be as gratifying as any trophy or prize jersey or stage win. For the record, if Dave was impressed with me then I was impressed with Dave; it's a rare sportsman who can overrule his ego and admit he was wrong.
On the same day, six kilometres from the finish line, bodies tumbled and I was caught behind the pile-up. Within a minute or two, I'd shot out of what was now the third group back, joined the second group, then attacked again to catch the front group with 800 metres to go. Now I relied on the homework I'd done the previous night – to be precise the mental note I'd made to go wide on the last, ninety-degree left-hander with 300 to go, then launch my sprint as I swung back into the middle of the road. It worked brilliantly: the four or five riders ahead of me all overshot the bend, leaving me to blast through on their inside and take my second stage win.
Perhaps the most arduous but also rewarding week of my cycling career ended the next day with yet another hilltop finish which cost me victory in the green jersey competition. It didn't matter. I'd spent a week at the School of Suffering and passed every exam; I was now ready for the race where the best, toughest professional riders had all studied and graduated with honours. I was ready for the Tour de France.
The next day, I turned on the computer and wrote the email reproduced at the front of the book. As you all now know, that letter requested a place in the Tour de France and a licence to suffer some more – much, much more.
I couldn't have been happier when the request was granted.
WHEN, several years from now, cycling fans and historians recall Stage 10 of the Tour de France, sadly, it's not of heroes that they'll reminisce but a cast of villains headed by the Italian Leonardo Piepoli. Like his younger compatriot Riccardo Riccò two days earlier, at Hautacam, thirty-six-year-old Piepoli seemed to confound gravity, logic and our intelligence not just to win but annihilate all opposition except his Spanish teammate Juan José Cobo. It was only several months later, when the French anti-doping re-examined Piepoli's drug and urine samples, that our suspicions about Piepoli's performance at Hautacam were confirmed. Like Riccò's at Super Besse and Bagnères de Bigorre, Piepoli's supersonic climbing had been fuelled by a new, banned wonder-drug called CERA.
That really was one of the tragedies of Piepoli's conniving and indeed of all drug scandals – they overshadowed the real heroes. One such hero, without any doubt, was my teammate Bernard Eisel.
Bernie is our team's equivalent of Prozac – he's permanently smiling and laughing so, more often than not, the rest of us also smile and laugh. I'm almost certain that the guy was born with a muscular condition that makes it impossible for him to look unhappy.
On the bike, as I also mentioned earlier, Bernie had been signed to the team at the beginning of 2007, expecting to be the number-one sprinter in what was and still is the world's number-one team. I'd ruined that plan somewhat but Bernie remained a highly talented rider who could win sprints and also wreak havoc on the cobblestones in races like Paris–Roubaix and the Tours of Flanders. On that tenth stage of the 2008 to Hautacam he was also about to prove yet again that, in the department of loyalty, there was simply no one better.
There was one good thing about that stage – the fact that it came immediately after a rest day. 'Rest day' is a relative term at the Tour, as usually the twenty-four hours' of 'respite' are chock-a-block with media engagements, massages, sessions with the chiropractor and believe it or not, a short training session.
Having Melissa around that afternoon was a rare luxury. As I explained earlier, she'd left the race on the morning of my first stage win but had now come back for another flying visit. That afternoon we had a great time, just lying on the bed and chatting – and no, that's not meant to be a euphemism. Incidentally, on the same topic, after the Giro d'Italia, Riccardo Riccò was asked whether he'd 'indulged' with his girlfriend on the two rest days of that race. Riccò had stared into the camera, given the watching public a weaselly smirk and replied, 'Let's just say that I did what I had to do ...'
Classy guy. He'll be sorely missed during his two-year doping ban.
What I said about my waking fear on the morning of Stage 10 was all true. The previous year Catalunya had proved my durability as much to myself as anyone else, but it's a little like any scenario when you feel yourself driven to the brink of psychological despair, physical breakdown or even, I suppose, death: just because you've survived once, doesn't mean that you'd relish the prospect of trying again, and neither does it guarantee that you'll make it through the next time. I'll talk later about how the mountains I'd encountered and overcome at the Giro d'Italia in May were steeper and harder than their equivalents at the Tour, but everyone in cycling knows that it's the riders, and not the route that make the race. The Tour was faster, more intense, more frightening than the Giro. The flat stages of the first week were much faster, much more intense, much more frightening. At the Tour, you were more tired when you reached the mountains. As I've explained more than once already there was also just more of everything at the Tour – more adrenalin, more pressure, more fans at the roadside, more riders experiencing their 'magic' moment of form ... above all there was just more speed.
Sure enough, the race started fast. Extraordinarily fast. To the spectator watching on TV, the best gauge of how quickly a peloton is moving is the helicopter shot from above; a slow-moving bunch is also a short, fat one; the quicker a peloton is moving, the more it resembles a long, skinny, venomous snake slithering across the earth.
In the first half-hour of this stage, we had ourselves one very long, thin, angry and above all fast-moving snake.
We sped past the 20-kilometre mark. To say you're 'comfortable' in a group of 170 riders hammering along at a pace liable to set speed cameras clicking can only ever be somewhere between wishful and delusional. As I've said before, though, everything at the Tour is relative; I was as 'comfortable' as I could hope to be on a 156 km stage, featuring two mammoth climbs, ten days into the Tour de France.
It'd take me several hours and the eyewitness accounts of numerous other riders to work out what happened next. Apparently, one of the police motorbike riders ahead of the race had seen a football in the middle of the road, tried to kick it away, but sliced his clearance in my direction. All I knew was that I ended up on the tarmac. And that it hurt. A lot. And that my bike was in bits. It was a bad time to have ma
de my way to the front of the peloton, as now I'd have to wait for the entire race to swish past for my team car to arrive with a new bike. Not only that, but my teammate Adam Hansen had just punctured. This meant that our team car was even further back, attending to Adam. On a day like today, the last thing I needed was a starting handicap before we even arrived at the mountains.
Usually, at times like these the race referees or 'commissaires' who follow the race in the convoy would be sympathetic; it's widely accepted that a rider who has crashed or had a mechanical problem should be allowed to use the slipstream of the team cars lined out behind the bunch to help them regain touch. They just mustn't physically hang on to those cars. Here at the Tour, due to a political dispute between the Tour organisers and International Cycling Union (UCI), the commissaires had been provided by the French Cycling Federation and seemed to view the Tour as their own personal, three-week power jaunt. As I started to move up through the cars the commissaires started to wag accusatory fingers at me. Fortunately, to a man, the directeurs sportifs in the team cars took no notice and raised no objections as I moved from bumper to bumper and finally back on the peloton.
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