The Climb: The Autobiography

by Chris Froome

  ‘A press conference is like a firework display: first you have the silence, anticipation. The small flares go up, you answer them, but then it kicks off and explosions are going off all over, it’s chaos in there! Left, right, the one you never expected, then before you know what just happened, it’s over. Time for a glass of Brunello to take the edge off …’

  We love the impressions but I think sometimes we all wish that Brad would give us more of an impression of himself. There is something else behind the impressions and the gruff geezer cloak but we never get to see it.

  Alex and I sat in the courtyard and tried to speculate about what the team were thinking.

  Shane Sutton had pulled me aside on the way to my room earlier in the day. He said to me, ‘Listen, about your contract. Don’t worry about it – we’ve got your best interests at heart. We didn’t want you to stress about it in this period, and that’s why we haven’t responded. We want you to focus on the race. Of course your value will go up, but don’t worry about that; we will sort you out. Just get this race done, and don’t have all these people in your ear. You will get lots of offers now but don’t pay any attention to it. We’ll look after you.’

  I wasn’t sure why Brad’s coach was telling me this. I told Alex I had been told not to worry, and that the team would look after me.

  Alex took out his phone and scrolled down to show me his texts from Dave again.

  ‘What has Chris done?’ read the message. ‘Nothing.’ Etc., etc.

  ‘Does this sound like somebody who believes in you and wants to keep you as one of the top riders?’ Alex said.

  Nothing? Nothing! I was insulted. I had worked my arse off all year and Dave had the daily uploads of my stats to prove it. I had worked so hard just to be there in all of those other races for other riders. True, I hadn’t backed these results up on overall GC, but I took it easy in time trials so I could work for the other riders the following day and I had shown good results on stages. Apart from one night in Kraków, I had lived like a puritan and trained like a martyr. Nothing?

  Alex said that the best thing we could do now that I had UCI points for having been a leader was to carry on with the GC challenge: ‘Just stay up there. When you have UCI points, teams will pay for you – points translate into contracts. I need those points to get you the best deal.’

  Alex said that if it was okay with me, he would be putting out a press story the next day saying that I was speaking to other teams but that I had not made a decision yet for next year. He would tell people Team Sky hadn’t given me an answer.

  This was fine by me – it was the truth.

  I had been on the phone a lot to Noz and my brothers, explaining the situation to them, and they had each said the same thing – their belief in me was total, and no matter which way it went from here on in the race, I would do well regardless.

  I didn’t have to sign anything immediately. If I slipped off the GC I would still have been in the leader’s jersey for a stage, and my value would have increased. I had been in the top five a couple of times in other races and I would be okay. If I could see it through, then I would be worth a lot more.

  I would have to gamble on myself again but it was fair enough and I wanted to get to the end of the race. If I blew up, my value would plummet from where it was now as I sat in the courtyard. If I did well, it would cost Team Sky a lot more than I would accept at this point.

  Seriously, though, did our bus have an alarm? That day Oakley gave me a pair of red sunglasses to mark the occasion of me being in the red jersey. What happened if the bus got raided in the middle of the night and those Oakleys were on board?

  Stage Eleven: Back in the Chain Gang

  The words Alex planted with the media came up as a harvest – he had twelve expressions of interest from other teams. However, there was no word from Team Sky apart from Dave telling me hurriedly that this wasn’t an issue, and that they would keep me. I was grateful, of course, but I didn’t want to sit down to discuss with them how much they would pay to keep me after those other twelve teams had gone away.

  I had been wearing the same pair of race shoes for the past ten days of racing. They had a flamboyant splash of red on them, and nobody had noticed till that morning. Bobby J sent me a message: ‘Red Shoes? You had this planned from Day One, didn’t you!!’

  That morning we all went to Steven de Jongh’s room for a team meeting. It was our first debrief since the time trial and I left feeling disheartened. The meeting started with a general congratulations.

  ‘Fantastic, you have first and third on GC at the moment. Chris? Amazing! Storming ride. Don’t know where that came from but you are now in the leader’s jersey. Well done.’

  Everyone had a little laugh. Me too. Good.

  ‘Now to today’s stage. We have these climbs on this route. We want the team to ride on the front as expected. At the climb, Xabie, do your pull, and then Thomas, Dario, Morris and then Froomey and finally Brad.’

  I didn’t speak up. I remember just pausing for a second and thinking, wait, would it be the other way round – Brad then Froomey?

  No?

  Okay. I was here for Brad. This was Team Sky. This was how things were done and this was the deal. Although I was in the leader’s jersey, nothing had changed. We had the plan. Sancho Panza should have been careful about what he wished for.

  I was a bit disappointed though. Somebody could have come up to me before the meeting and said that this was their position: they were thrilled with my performance, they would be putting this much on the table to keep me because they saw my future going in this way, but for now, though, they had more faith and more of an investment in Bradley. I wouldn’t have minded if they had asked me to continue doing the same job as I had been doing. But if there was a chance I might win the race, I wanted them to be happy about that. If anything happened to Brad …

  This was surely where the team wanted to be? We were leading the Grand Tour and it hadn’t been a fluke. I was in the red jersey because I had climbed well and done a good time trial.

  The possibilities weren’t explored or talked about. Or, at least, not with me. It was a reminder that I was just there to work for Brad for as long as possible, even though I thought that we could have had a little bit of flexibility. I was leading the race, after all, and the chance to continue leading it would have been good. So why not play with both cards, keep them both alive and then go with the one most likely to deliver victory?

  The meeting just stressed the team’s position: it was still about Brad.

  There was nothing I could do, so I got into race mode again and my mood picked up. Going to sign on for the race in the morning I felt a new sort of energy – I was the race leader and people were looking at me differently now that I had the red jersey. It was a really good feeling and lifted me a bit; it reminded me that the jersey meant more than contracts and money.

  Noz had flown over to Spain. He had planned the trip a while beforehand but it made me smile inside knowing he would see me in the red jersey that morning. He gave me a big hug when I stepped off the team bus and we had a quick chat before I went to sign on for the start.

  As I was rolling through the first miles of the day’s stage while fangless breakaways hissed and faded, other riders stopped by and said nice things:

  ‘Wow!’

  ‘Well done.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Impressive.’

  That was a great lift. A lot of the guys who weren’t English speakers gave me kind compliments too:

  ‘Muy bien, Chris!’

  ‘Impressionante!’

  ‘A topé!’

  A couple of riders even said that for a domestique to be wearing the leader’s jersey spread some hope and pride around the rank and file. They talked about how it had happened: working in the mountains for Brad, followed by a good time trial – the domestique’s dream script.

  I felt boosted by all these words from other teams and riders. The peloto
n can be a hard place and these guys didn’t need to say anything to me, but they had made a point of it. That had never happened to me before.

  Meanwhile, the plan that we had for the race was to pace things in a certain way coming up to the last climb. Xabie was to start off the climb, next Thomas and then Dario would go as long as possible until I was to lead Brad into the final effort.

  We came up to the foot of the last climb, known as Estación de Montaña Manzaneda. Xabie got us on to the climb but then Thomas, for some unknown reason – because there was no breakaway that was really dangerous, and nobody in front who was a threat to us – did an enormous pull at the bottom of the climb. We went very deep into our reserves for a good 3or 4 kilometres and the effect was that Dario was dropped and Thomas, who had done his pull, swung off. Xabie hung in there but the distorted look on his face said that he was not going to be able to do much of the pacemaking. He took a short spin on the front before fading.

  Our teammates were supposed to be the mountain guys but we had burned them off before we were even halfway up. It was just Brad and me left in a group of thirty or forty now, with more than 10 kilometres to go to the finish. What happened to the team tactics?

  I was in the leader’s jersey, but as I was riding for Brad it was still my responsibility to control the bunch and ride on the front. I was looking about me. Shit. What now? Other riders were starting to jump around, making attacks. Something needed to happen. Somebody needed to get to the front in order to start controlling this.

  Steven wasn’t giving the orders on the radio so I turned to Brad and asked him.

  ‘Okay, what do we do now that we have no teammates left?’

  He just looked at me and sort of motioned me forward. You go ahead.

  He was basically saying, ‘Ride tempo, a steady tempo. Don’t do too much, don’t hurt yourself, but you need to control the race.’

  So I got on to the front and rode up the climb at an even pace for about 3 or 4 kilometres until we reached a section which flattened out again. There, for 10 minutes or so, we had level riding, a little downhill even. There were forty guys who were all sitting on my wheel now, Brad included. We turned left and started the last part of the climb, which was maybe another 3 kilometres, and then the attacks started happening – real attacks. I had nothing in the tank; I could keep the same steady pace but I couldn’t follow the surges and the other guys were really going for it now. I was hollow and Brad was gone too.

  I felt so deflated watching the riders accelerating around me, knowing that I couldn’t respond. I had spent my energy getting them here while some of them had been freewheeling or at least conserving their energy. Twenty-four hours. Everything had changed, and nothing had changed.

  One guy left behind with me was Carlos Sastre, a Saxo Bank teammate of Juanjo Cobo. I was a little way back from him when he looked over his shoulder. Seeing that it was me, in the leader’s jersey, he subtly eased up enough for me to get on to his wheel. Then he continued pulling. He could see I was in trouble and it was a generous, simple thing for him to do. Carlos is a Tour de France winner, who had no need to help me, so it was pure class. He had better legs than me at that stage and although he could just have pulled away and left me there to get to the finish line alone, he was saying, ‘Look, kiddo, sit on my wheel and we will get to the finish together.’

  He rode at a speed I could just about handle and I didn’t need to say a word to him. The pace was comfortable enough for me to hang on and to limit my losses; Carlos saved me as much as 30 seconds. I got to the line 27 seconds behind Brad and Juanjo Cobo. David Moncoutié, the old fox, picked off the stage.

  I went to Brad to congratulate him – he was taking my red jersey to bed with him for the night. Then I went to Carlos to thank him. ‘De nada,’ he said. It’s nothing, no problem.

  I filled in my race diary that evening: ‘In the leader’s jersey, hard day but we had the privilege of riding on the front. I felt super today. Really well recovered after the rest day, also no bloating or holding of fluids.’ I hadn’t encountered that sluggish feeling I had experienced previously quite often. It was overall a positive day in my eyes: ‘I stayed on the front and controlled the race until a little over 2 kilometres from the top where it all kicked off. I tried to limit my losses as much as possible. Brad the new race leader.’

  Steven de Jongh had told the media: ‘Hats off to Chris. He was in the lead but nothing changed with the position of Brad, of course. He is our leader and he still was after the time trial. Chris was a hundred per cent happy with that and he did an amazing ride. Bradley will thank him for that, I’m sure.’

  And, in fairness, he did thank me.

  All was back to normal. Now I could go back to being the domestique in the mountains, which was the plan from the beginning. Well, my plan from the beginning.

  And the plan is the plan is the plan, after all.

  19

  2011: Vuelta a España, Closing Stages

  Stage Fourteen: Rocky Mountain High

  We wore black armbands today. A year before on the Vuelta we lost our soigneur Txema González. He was a beloved figure and is still missed, and he would have loved this day because we did our best climbing performance so far.

  Nothing much had happened on stages twelve and thirteen. During the latter, Thomas, Xabie and I had fended off a series of attacks on the Puerto de Ancares ascent. Vincenzo Nibali took a 6-second time bonus in an intermediate sprint, jumping above me into 2nd place, just 1 second ahead. Brad and I finished the stages together.

  Today, on stage fourteen, we were relatively fresh, and the last climb of the day was an epic: La Farrapona. It started with more crosswinds and Brad and I pulled the same stunt as earlier in the week. He was on my wheel coming up the last mountain and we waited till about 6 kilometres to go. I got on the front with Brad still on my wheel and we pushed on for a couple of kilometres to get rid of a few guys. It worked well. We lost Nibali and Fredrik Kessiakoff and then got down to just a few diehards: Brad, myself, Mollema, Menchov and Cobo.

  There had been a break up the road all day but there were no key players in it. Rein Taaramäe, the Estonian, was in there, who would scoop the prize, as was David de la Fuente, who was Cobo’s teammate, although he had to drop back to work for Cobo.

  While we were shedding Nibali and company, Brad was saying, ‘Easy, easy, slow down.’ I knew he was on his limit so I sat up higher to make a better slipstream to pull him along a bit more easily, thinking maybe this would help him. I was a little ignorant as to the urgency of what he was saying. We were going the same pace but it would have been better for him if he had been sheltered even more.

  I felt good and told him, ‘Just a little bit longer.’ I was not going to go at this speed till the end but we just needed to get rid of a few more guys and then I would ease up. I went hard for a couple more minutes and then backed off, telling Brad that now I would take him to the finish. Nice and steady.

  He wasn’t comfortable with that last acceleration. I knew I needed to slow because he wanted me to but at the same time I felt we had to push on for a bit longer to do the real damage. Over these yards our relationship was evolving wordlessly.

  When I did slow down, riding at a steady pace with just a few left in the group, Brad asked me to get him to the ‘1 kilometre to go’ mark.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about? One kilometre to go? I’m going to take you all the way, sucker!’

  Well, no. What I actually said was: ‘No worries. I feel fine. I’m slowing for you. Don’t worry about me. I’ll take you all the way.’

  Cobo had gone early to catch the front group and we had let him go, while De la Fuente dropped off the back of our group. Cobo wasn’t really on the radar as a big contender so we let him chase the stage.

  There were four of us in the group now. With that previous acceleration on the front we had gotten rid of pretty much everyone that mattered.

  As we rode I was thinking about Brad. He didn’t
quite get where I was today. He thought I had done my effort and now I was blowing, but the only reason I had stopped was because he was asking me to go easy. I knew that I could take him all the way.

  There were a couple of points where I was going steadily for the last couple of kilometres where he pulled around me and put himself on the front. This was unnecessary. He didn’t need to, but maybe he wanted to do some dog work and contribute to his jersey.

  The four of us – Brad and I, Mollema and Menchov – finished together.

  I was hit by a revelation as we crossed the line. I had pulled really hard in the crosswind earlier and I knew now that if I had saved that effort for climbing on the steep part of the mountain I could have dropped people. I could even have dropped Brad but I worked to leave him enough space to be sheltered from the wind. That was the job, but the transfusion of self-confidence I got from this realization was massive.

  I knew now I was controlling the guys around me on these climbs. The penny had dropped. I watched the stage online that evening and studied how people struggled to get on to the acceleration that I did, which thinned out the group into one line. Somebody would sit up, which caused a gap, and that was it – they were out the back, destroyed.

  Brad was in red, 7 seconds in front of me and 36 seconds in front of Bauke Mollema. But I had felt quite good all day; I had ridden within myself. This self-confidence was a new thing.

  Stage Fifteen: Changing of the Guard

  Alto de L’Angliru is a 12.3-kilometre climb. That statistic is the most straightforward thing about it. Otherwise it is a mountain that just beats you up all day long. I think David Millar once made a statement about how ridiculous it is; that it shouldn’t even be in a bicycle race. He was right. It is just too steep, with lots of insane gradients and one sheer climb that is so extreme you can never get a rhythm. But Angliru is known for this; Angliru is very, very hard.