The Climb: The Autobiography

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The Climb: The Autobiography Page 27

by Chris Froome


  At the team meeting we decided on everything as normal, all the way. We were still leading and I was riding shotgun with Brad. I was a high-mountains domestique at last and the team would get me and Brad to the last climb. I wasn’t going back to the car for bottles any more now, which was one of the perks of my promotion.

  About a kilometre up Angliru, once again it was only Brad and me left from the team.

  The other riders around us were trigger happy and it was Carlos Sastre who attacked first. He was joined by Igor Antón, who overtook him, and then Cobo launched himself into an attack on Antón. He accelerated and was gone. This Cobo was becoming a problem.

  I thought to myself, ‘I am here with Brad. Stay calm.’ It didn’t even cross my mind to chase after Cobo; I knew I would have to claw him back at a tempo that suited Brad. I felt good – I would pull us up this climb and we would catch Cobo. I was ready for this. The mountain didn’t necessarily play to my strengths; I had never ridden anything this steep, with these staccato efforts. I would have preferred longer and less sharp vertical climbs. But I’m sure we all would have done.

  It took us 44 minutes to get up the mountain.

  I didn’t have a power meter on because it doesn’t work with the smaller compact chainring. This meant no power stats, but from the beginning I started a tempo and I wanted to keep it very uniform. I paced myself. This mountain gives you no recovery. Angliru just goes and goes all the way. A little bit of flat here and there, but then it gets steeper and steeper, harder and harder.

  Cobo had disappeared and I was on the front of our remaining group riding hard. Kilometre after kilometre, it got pared to fewer and fewer riders on my wheel. Finally it was just Brad, Menchov (again) and Wouter Poels, a guy from the Vacansoleil-DCM team.

  We couldn’t hear much on the radio because of all the spectators shouting and a bad signal. We couldn’t see Cobo either – he had gone and he had kept going.

  ‘On and on,’ I thought. ‘Pace it steady. No accelerations. Keep a rhythm and get up the hill. Get Brad up.’

  We must have been 3 kilometres from the top now and every pedal stroke hurt. The cadence was down in the forties per minute, and even the high thirties. ‘One stroke at a time,’ I kept thinking. ‘Grind it out.’ There were birth pains in my legs now as they issued every stroke; each one a torture. I was feeling terrible and maybe doing seven kilometres an hour at the most. It was like riding through a sea of treacle and even people on the hill seemed to be walking faster than we were riding. The TV motorbike in front was wobbling because it was going so slowly. Eventually it toppled over and we had to ride round it. We were hurting so much we didn’t even see the funny side.

  I had been on the front for 8 or 9 kilometres now, for half an hour. Maybe I was just slowing Brad down, I thought. Maybe I should move over and let Brad go ahead now if he had something.

  There had been little communication between us on the way up. A few times he had said, ‘Steady,’ or had asked to go easier and I had eased off slightly. But now I was at a point where the climbing was really steep and cruel and I was struggling. It was like riding up a big wall and it was beating me. We were not going very fast and I was spent from pulling.

  It was no longer best for Brad to have me on the front and I moved over to the left, even though there was very little room due to the lunatic crowds. Brad grinded past. I tried to come back in on his wheel. There had been some mistake, surely? It felt like we had dropped from maybe eight kilometres an hour to six kilometres an hour. I could see now that he was labouring and puffing worse than I was. He was going slower in front than he was behind.

  Was he going to stop?

  Both of us were battling with our gears – the wrong gears – and the seconds passed slowly. It was still really hard and felt like the energy was being pulled out of us and down some great sucking drain in the mountain. It was like we were doing heavy gym torture in the middle of a long race, on a hot day. Still, we shouldn’t be pedalling this slowly. We couldn’t be. It was too much pain for too little gain. We rode at Brad’s pace and I realized that we had definitely been going a little quicker when I was on the front. With this new, deflated tempo, I had reclaimed some energy. For maybe 30 seconds we had ridden at an agonizingly slow pace but I needed to get back on the front. I had more to give. I could take us back to a dizzy eight kilometres an hour!

  Now, though, I couldn’t get past Brad; the crowd wouldn’t leave enough space for two bike riders. Then Brad wobbled heavily to the left and I saw a tiny gap open up on his right. I got out of my saddle and pushed myself through the little crack, and back on to the front. I was picking up the pace again and looked across and back towards Brad. His top lip was curled up in a wince of pain that I hadn’t seen before. Ever.

  Shit. Brad was done; he was spent. And I knew Cobo was in front, going for it.

  What were the choices?

  I didn’t wait. Brad hadn’t got it in him any more and the race was up the road already. I needed to go now. No words passed between us. I just looked at Brad again and we knew what I had to do. Staying with him wouldn’t make him go any faster. It was every man for himself now, even if it would be seen as insubordination later.

  I went. Wouter and Menchov tagged along.

  I was pulling these guys now and they smelled opportunity. They hung back and waited as I pulled for the last 2 or 3 kilometres, before it flattened out on top all the way to the line.

  I watched the TV footage later. With a kilometre to go, Cobo was 1 minute 10 seconds in front. That fallen motorbike meant there was just one surviving TV camera, focused on Cobo. There were no sightings of the red jersey group.

  Then suddenly on screen I saw myself, Menchov and Wouter come out of the mist, riding like three bats out of hell. Menchov and Wouter came round me on the sprint and I finished 4th on the stage. Brad was 33 seconds behind us.

  Crucially, coming 4th meant missing out on a time bonus. Cobo had taken 40 seconds in finish-line time bonuses that day: he’d had a 1st, a 2nd and a 3rd. Team Sky, meanwhile, had no bonuses. Menchov pipping me to 3rd place on the summit robbed me of an 8-second bonus.

  That 40 seconds gave Cobo the red jersey. I was 20 seconds behind him at number two on GC. Brad was 3rd, 46 seconds behind Cobo.

  At the finish I wasn’t apprehensive like I was when I beat Brad in the time trial. I had worked the whole climb with Brad on my wheel and I hadn’t gone out and attacked him. He couldn’t hold the wheel; he had cracked. A few weeks ago he had a broken collarbone and he was human. I didn’t feel I had stepped out of line.

  At the finish Brad came and put his arm round me and said, ‘Well done, you go for it now.’ He acknowledged the reality: I had done the work and he hadn’t managed to stay on my wheel. He was saying that basically now it was my opportunity.

  Wow. How did we get to this?

  That evening my world had shifted. From tomorrow the word was that the team would be riding for me. It was an amazing feeling to have got to this point. I spent half the night looking at every stage profile trying to figure out where I could steal back 20 seconds from Cobo.

  I felt released, in a luminous dream which no accountants or corporate suits would ever know.

  Tomorrow was another rest day. For a soul who likes suffering I was getting to relish these dawdling days.

  Stage Sixteen: Badlands

  The day was flat and long and I came 3rd on an intermediate sprint, gaining just 2 seconds. However, I was told later that I had actually come 4th and had to give the 2 seconds back. I had now finished 2 seconds behind Cobo, which meant I was 22 seconds behind him in the GC.

  ‘Still, tomorrow, amigos,’ I thought, ‘we ride Peña Cabarga. On Peña Cabarga we would live or die. Olé.’

  Stage Seventeen: The Legend of Peña Cabarga

  The mountain where the day’s stage would finish is close to La Pesa, the home town of Juanjo Cobo. He is known for some reason as the Bison of La Pesa, and so it was that busloads of his neighbours,
many of them dressed as bison, had been transported up the mountain to support him. I have seen a lot of wildlife, kept some pythons and have even been chased by a hippo, but I haven’t seen anything like the mountain bison of Peña Cabarga.

  I had cased the joint. Today seemed to me the best chance of a heist that would net me 22 seconds. There were more mountains after this stage but no mountaintop finishes and I liked the look of this route from Faustino V to the mountaintop. It was 211 kilometres long with a short but very sharp jaunt up the peak at the end. Towards the top the gradient reached nineteen per cent, which after a long day with multiple climbs would grind and pestle us. There would be wheat near that summit and somewhere below on the mountain the chaff would be blowing.

  On days like these other riders are able to do a lot more than me at the beginning but their output is a line that slopes down sharply on the graph. I don’t start high but I decline very gently. The longer the stage and the more it eats into people, the better it suits me.

  The peloton was particularly jumpy that day with lots of one-off attacks; this was the sting in the tail of the race.

  Cobo had some good guys working for him: Carlos Sastre and Denis Menchov were his main henchmen all day but David de la Fuente and David Blanco rode strongly too. They got Cobo through the climbs with no problems.

  It had been a blistering pace on to the lower slopes of Peña Cabarga and Cobo’s men had done an impressive job making the race uncomfortably hard. I liked that. The explosiveness would be long gone from the more punchy riders, and I stayed as close to the front as possible without taking too much wind. It was perfect.

  With about 5 kilometres to go, the phoney wars became real. Dan Martin of Garmin, who had ridden a good Vuelta, attacked on the lower slopes of the final climb and immediately I thought to myself that this was way too early. Yes, there had been a bit of a lull, but there was a long way to go and too many riders left in the group. Now was not the time to attack and I knew we would be seeing Dan later. Still, three riders chased off after him.

  They were still out ahead when the Belgian Jurgen Van den Broek threw himself after them at a crazy pace. He caught them and overtook them. We were getting to the endgame now though. Van den Broek had mistimed everything and the pace had decimated the peloton. Now I was in a group of four with Brad, Cobo and Mikel Nieve, another Spaniard. Nieve took on the dog work as we approached 2 kilometres to go.

  As we passed the 2-kilometre marker we were steaming past Van den Broek.

  Then the crazy Belgian attacked again, even when he should have been dead. The pace was up once more and I felt myself go with him; the pain was pure, exquisite and sublime. My lungs were burning and every muscle in my body howled for oxygen.

  I got past and soon Van den Broek was history. We pushed on. I knew there were riders on my wheel or just off it, but the grind took all my concentration. Cobo was closest now and I pulled onwards for a few hundred metres. I wasn’t thinking about the riders we had dropped. My focus was on Cobo entirely.

  Then Cobo took over. We were on a steep part of the course and he actually started setting the pace himself. I had been expecting him to wait for other people to attack and this was a surprise. I followed him through a few switchbacks and under the flamme rouge. One kilometre to go. Everything had gone quiet behind me. I turned round and realized it was only the two of us left there to duel under the high and pitiless sun.

  Just Cobo and me on the mountain. And the entire village of La Pesa, I would think. They had painted his name again and again on the road with a pair of horns protruding upwards from the first o in Cobo.

  Just Cobo and me now, which suited him. If I got 1st place I would get a time bonus but if he got 2nd place he still got only a slightly diminished time bonus. I could do with having a teammate here to get in between the two of us.

  Cobo had chipped this hefty shard of effort into the pot and now he too looked around to see where everyone was. He must have thought that he would either be alone or that the group behind would still be chasing. Instead, all he saw was me, which shook him. He didn’t want to be pulling me up the mountain and I felt him ease off the pace a small amount. He hadn’t got rid of me and I was feeling really good.

  The road tilted up again ahead of us. I was just to his right now and he almost boxed me in. So I cut across to the side of the road a little but he was there too. He knew the game now and so did I. I was boxed in for a good 10 seconds and there were lots of spectators. He had me up against them, and they were hysterically excited. At one point a big ox of a man was running up in the road right in front of us. It was a wild scene. I really wanted to get out in front before Cobo had time to recover from his pull. I wanted to attack and make this my one move; give it everything I had to put him in difficulty. But the big ox in front of me was in the way and the Bison of La Pesa knew this was useful.

  Every second he blocked us was a second more for Cobo to recover.

  In the end I got a little impatient. I dashed past Cobo on the inside and pushed up beside the ox. Placing a hand on his beefy shoulder, I shoved him out of the way.

  I had a text message on my mind, which I had received from my old friend Matt Beckett that morning. He said, ‘Just go. Don’t go a little bit and then look around and then go again. Go once and make it count. Just put your head down. Don’t hesitate. Don’t wait for Brad. Don’t do anything other than pedal your arse off. Make your move and make it count.’

  He was right. I was only going to attack once and I was going to make it count. All in. Everything on the line. Do or die. This was where I could win the Vuelta or lose it.

  I was out of the saddle sprinting. I counted the seconds in my mind. One, two, three … until I had been sprinting for just over a minute on one of the steepest parts of the climb. Cobo immediately got on to my wheel again – he had the tenacity of a honey badger. He stayed there for maybe 30 seconds and then drifted off a bit. Even in all the hysteria I could feel that his presence now was gone. I looked down underneath my arms and saw that he was no longer there.

  ‘Right,’ I thought, ‘I’m clear. I’m absolutely clear. This could be it. I could be on my way to winning the whole Vuelta here. Now.’

  Stop thinking that, STOP, my brain was telling my body. Keep your head down. Keep going. Block out the pain.

  But I can’t block it: I’ve done a huge effort and sprinted for a minute – pain is all there is, replied my body.

  Love the pain then, live the pain, argued my brain. There was probably just over 500 metres left to go now. I would have to dig really deep; I had to keep this advantage. Had to drive on. Had to. Had to.

  Meanwhile my body was saying, Go ahead, sunshine. There’s nothing left. Less than nothing. Dig away.

  My brother Jonathan had also come to Spain to support me. He had told me that morning he was going to be standing just after the ‘1 kilometre to go’ sign and that I was to look out for him. We didn’t know the circumstances I’d be in when we arranged that, Jono! He sent me a text to say he would be wearing Team Sky kit. And lo and behold, there he was, waving a Kenyan flag so I wouldn’t miss him. A policeman was holding him back as he was just as excited as the bison – a herd of them. He was screaming: ‘Go on, Chris!’

  ‘Well, indeed,’ I thought. ‘Can’t stop now, bro.’

  I went on. Passing Jono, I realized what a fantastic position I was in: I had dropped the leader. I got back into my saddle again and tried to keep my legs turning.

  There was a guy running alongside me now. He said in very bad English, right into my ear, ‘If you win, we kill you! If you win, we kill you!’

  What an arse. I wanted to tell him that I was undeterred; I wanted to give him some stiff upper lip. But I didn’t; I rode on. I needed to keep every little bit of energy now to get me to the end. I needed to sustain this pace and not to die on the bike. Not here. I could feel the lactate brewing up like a storm in my legs. Had I gone too deep?

  I had attacked way too hard just there bec
ause I wanted to get rid of Cobo. But what if I had only put him on the ropes and winded him? Maybe I hadn’t got the big punch in. He could have dropped off, letting me blow myself out while he sucked in the oxygen. What if he had paced it perfectly? What if he had sensed I was going too fast for him? For myself! He could have eased off my wheel and gathered himself while I was biting at the air and turning my pedals through treacle.

  What if … ?

  I could keep going, though; I could keep doing this. The road was starting to flatten out. It was not exactly flat, but not as steep as it had been with perhaps a reduced three to four per cent gradient, although it was picking up again ahead.

  I could see the 400- and 300-metre markers in front, but they might as well have been a mile apart from each other.

  ‘Where are you, where are you?’ I thought. I still couldn’t see the finish line. And then there it was: a long last straight followed by a left at the top – the finish line was just round the corner. Ride. Shit. Shit. Shit. He was back on. I sensed him from the noise of the crowd and didn’t need to see him; I knew he was there. He caught me and he surged past me.

  Unbelievable, incroyable, increíble – a babble of shouted commentaries sounded in my head.

  He was a hard bastard. I was dropped and there was a gap already. For maybe 20 metres I wasn’t even on his wheel. Hard. Hard. Hard.

  I had to get up and sprint to control the damage – I couldn’t let him take any more time on me. So I sprinted on legs of jelly, turning myself inside out until I got back to his wheel. I could sense that he thought he had already dropped me for the last time.

  As we approached the final left-hand corner he was leading me. He had maybe 15 metres to the line, but I was on his wheel again. Surveying the corner, he must have heard the thunder of victory and seen the headlines already: the Bison was to win on his own mountain. But I would bet the farm that he hadn’t realized I was here now.

  The quickest path to take to the finish was the inside line, hugging the barrier. Cobo made a mistake: he drifted out on the corner. His mistake was only a yard wide, maybe less, but my handlebars would definitely make it through the gap.

 

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