by Chris Froome
I’d go down to breakfast with a yearning for coffee, but I didn’t allow myself coffee on the mornings of stage races. I don’t think it’s really healthy to have a stimulant in the morning. It dehydrates you and it’s acidic so it starts your stomach on an acidic kick from the morning on. And it definitely brings you down again at a later point if you don’t top it up.
The mornings were hard. I’d hear the alarm go off and know that I’d been lying there until the early hours texting or brooding. Once I was up and going though I was okay.
Those were flat days. Not just for me but for the team. We were winning the Tour but joylessly.
On the second rest day of the Tour my brother Jono and Noz came over to the team hotel. It was good to have them around.
The team had held a press conference out on the hotel lawn, and afterwards I probably had the best part of twenty minutes with Noz and Jono in the lounge area. We were sitting there talking when a few people came over, journalists wanting one-on-ones. I remember Jono trying to be polite, saying, ‘Listen, guys, not now. We’re just catching up and we’re only here for a few minutes, we haven’t seen him, now’s not the time.’
Some hope!
During the day, Alex Carera, who was still my agent, had spoken to Dave. As a result of coming 2nd, my bonus was bumped up.
It was only money but at least there was the acknowledgement that I was giving something up. The team had recognized what I was talking about. I would happily have forgone the bonus for the chance to race for the win; money wasn’t the issue. But it was a gesture.
We went for the usual rest-day ride as a team. It was an odd atmosphere. There was no giddiness, no sense of what we were achieving.
But at one point Brad and I were riding next to each other. He turned to me and said, ‘Listen, Froomey, don’t worry about this, your time will definitely come, and we’ll be right back here next year, and we’ll be riding for you.’
I glanced at him. He seemed to be saying that he didn’t want to go through all of this again. If he won, that would be it for him. He’d focus on something else, but he’d come back here to help me. I appreciated those words greatly; they weren’t typical of Brad.
I felt okay; this was Brad’s time. Good luck to him. I knew I had to suck this up for now, but there was recognition here, even from Brad, that I would be a leader in the future and he would be there to help me next time around.
We were in a better place now.
Next day it was business as usual. Cav crashed in the feed zone, then Richie got a feed bag caught in his handlebars and crashed too. Nibali made a break down Peyresourde in the Pyrenees. We chased him down. I pulled. Brad pulled. We worked together and gave the media nothing to speak about.
The last three big contenders on GC (if I could include myself with Brad and Nibali) all came in together. Nothing more to be said.
On to the last mountaintop finish: Peyragudes.
Stage Seventeen: Thursday 19 July, Bagnères-de-Luchon to Peyragudes, 143.5 kilometres
I woke up on the morning of Peyragudes feeling fantastic, like I’d had a rest day the day before. Just walking to breakfast, I was bouncing along. I felt fresh; I felt really good. My legs were like the devil on my shoulder: Hey, Chris! Pssst! Mountaintop finish? Feeling good, eh?
I’d spoken to Sean the evening before.
‘Listen, if we get to the point where it’s just the three of us coming to the last kilometre, can I then go for the stage win? If Bradley is safe or if we can even get rid of Nibali, can I try and go for the stage?’
His response was ‘yes’, on the condition that Bradley was safe. And that Bradley gave his consent.
I didn’t check if the consent had to be in writing. I floated away. I might have the chance to go for a stage. Just might. If a breakaway went that didn’t threaten us, we would let it go. If Brad needed company, I would stay with Brad. There were a lot of Dave’s ‘what ifs’ back in the equation.
We rode over Col de Menté, Col des Ares and so on until there were eight of us in the yellow jersey group. Brad and I, Nibali, of course, Van den Broek, Pinot, Van Garderen, Rolland and Chris Horner. Somewhere up the road, Valverde was making a solo run for glory. Good luck, Alejandro.
It was a grippy day. Even on the second to last climb, the Peyresourde, I remember thinking that there were going to be some struggles after this one; it had been a hard day of racing in the heat.
It was a stage of attrition. Everybody was hurting. Going up over the top I drifted back just a little bit so that I could have a look at everyone; see who was there, who was pedalling seriously, who looked like they were up for the last battle.
The radio said Valverde wasn’t too far ahead; we could soon be at the front of the race. Guys in the breakaway were dropping; they’d been out there all day. I had hope.
Before descending Peyresourde, and heading on to the last climb, Peyragudes, I leaned across to Brad and asked for his consent. I said to him that Nibali was on his knees, looking terrible. When I had drifted back for a look, he was really struggling. You could see he was taking the strain; there was no fluency.
I said to Brad, ‘Listen, Nibali’s absolutely finished. Can I go on the last climb? You’ve got no more contenders left. Can I go for the stage? Valverde is within reach.’
He muttered something along the lines of, ‘He’s too far away, the breakaway is too far away.’
Just after he’d said that Sean’s voice came on the radio and said that we were just within a minute from them. I turned back to Brad to see if he’d say anything else but he just looked down at the road.
I was floating. Feeling good. The words on Cav’s note were buzzing in my head; those two quotes. It felt like everything was going my way today, if only Bradley would just give me the nod.
He hadn’t, so instead I would try to get us on to the last climb. I would set a good pace on the front, make sure Bradley was on my wheel and then I would try to pull him up to the breakaway with me. We would see if we could lose the others. I would be ready to do all of the work on the front here, but seeing as I couldn’t attack, this was my next best option now. I felt really good; it would be a waste not to spend it.
Tomorrow was a flat day anyway.
From our group of eight, gaps opened and a couple of guys dropped off. It looked as if everybody was in trouble, except for Brad and myself. Brad looked good – I thought he was still pretty solid.
We got to the front of our little group and when I started pulling, he was on my wheel. It wasn’t long at all until it was just the two of us left. I kept on looking under my arm or around my shoulder, just to double-check he was there. I think he had realized, also, that everyone else had dropped off. He was safe. He wasn’t worried about the stage.
I started saying to him, and gesturing to him, ‘Come on, let’s go! Let’s go! We can get the breakaway.’
They were just a couple of corners ahead of us at this point. After the first 2 kilometres of the climb they were under 40 seconds ahead. I felt so up for it, I was like a kid tugging on his dad’s sleeve saying, ‘C’mon, c’mon.’
Only Dad wasn’t bothered. On the radio Sean was saying, ‘Just stay together, guys, stay together. Keep together all the way to the top.’
I wasn’t thinking about attacking at this stage but I was trying to motivate Brad, to get some life into him. He was winning the Tour de France at this very moment. This was where the whole race was being won. Time for a little panache.
I’d get him on to the wheel and start pulling, gradually trying to increase it to speed up, and then he’d be off and I’d have to ease up again. He wasn’t telling me when he was dropping off so I needed to keep checking the whole time. I was looking round, just checking, checking, checking, trying to pull at the right kind of pace for him. But we seemed to be yo-yoing the whole time.
With about a kilometre and a half to go it flattened out. I thought, ‘Yes, right here I can absolutely empty it, I can go as hard as I can because it�
�s flatter so there’ll be a bigger slipstream effect. He can sit on my wheel quite a bit more comfortably.’
At one stage I let my hand dangle down to my side like Sugar Ray Leonard goading an opponent into a punch. Nothing. I flicked the hand: come on, come through, pick it up. Nothing. Now I was the dad. I felt like the lad wanted to be carried.
For Brad the race was won and the long struggle was over. I was a poor companion for him to have at this particular moment in his life.
Now I was just looking forward to getting home, getting out of this uncomfortable situation between us. We crossed the finish line up at the top and were swamped by two different groups of journalists.
I don’t know what Brad was being asked. My questions were variations on ‘What are you doing? You could be winning the race yourself.’
On the climb Michelle had tweeted, ‘Damn it, gooooo.’
The guys had got hold of that one pretty quickly.
‘Why didn’t you just “gooooo”? Don’t you want to attack?’
I gave the party line. ‘Brad’s in optimum position to win the race, and at the moment he’s poised to win so … we’re on track. And no, I’m not going to be attacking or anything like that.’
I realized, at last, that everything had been geared towards this. It was never going to be any different. The story was completed long before we got to France. Bradley wins. The book is written. The documentary is made. The promise is fulfilled.
We had just been acting it out. There was plenty worthwhile in that, and a lot to be learned.
24
We keep on keeping on.
As soon as the Tour was finished we already seemed to be ten steps ahead. Brad had won the race and Cav had won the final stage but our heads were already on the next thing. What do I need for the podium? What do I need for the flight? The Olympics are days away. What do I need for them? We didn’t really have time to soak up the fact that we’d won a stage, let alone the whole Tour.
Three weeks of riding in the Tour and at the end we had a very brief sort of cocktail event in a fancy hotel. It felt formal and forced. I had one glass of champagne and a few snacks before a bunch of us left straight away for a plane flying straight to the UK.
It was a relief to get out of there and to see Michelle again and to spend time with her. I was excited about the Olympics. I’d never been to one, and this being a home Games had a special feel to it.
I remember getting to the room. All our bags were there. All of the kit for the Olympics. Everything all laid out and ready.
I did feel a little bit deflated that we weren’t staying in the athletes’ village. Instead, we were staying away from the other athletes at a plush hotel called Foxhills that had two golf courses. It was a breath of fresh air but not the Olympic experience I had expected. It almost felt like it could have been another race. Hotel. Sleep. Eat. Train. Repeat for five days. Then race. What was nice was that we had our partners with us for that week before the Olympics. That definitely made it a lot more comfortable.
We warmed up for the event mentally as well as physically. We got some amazing bikes to ride. They had come from the track. With the help of a wind tunnel and some clever minds they had been converted to our needs. I was very impressed; I was stunned at how the mechanics had set this thing up without me trying it or without me being there and yet it was a perfect fit.
I could imagine Rod behind the scenes pulling all the strings to make that happen.
My last ride for Kenya was at the All Africa Games in Algeria in 2007.
It was quite an experience. Maybe it isn’t fair to compare it to London 2012 but that should be done by anybody who wants to understand the differences between the world of African sport and the privileges we enjoy here in Europe.
I don’t want to sound like the spoilt mzungu recoiling in horror at what he found. That’s not me. I just want to explain that this is world sport; this is just how it is over there.
The athletes’ village in Algeria was very much like a big compound; it was almost like a staff quarters. All the toilets were simply holes in the floor and there weren’t enough beds and mattresses. There were no pillows, no covers and no plug sockets. There was just one light bulb hanging from the ceiling in each room, and the corridors were dark. There was also a bit of a pungent smell.
We were told we couldn’t travel outside the village because of bomb threats and terrorists. Not long before the Games, a huge bomb had gone off in Algiers, killing a lot of people. For a while things were in the balance, and the All Africa Games were almost called off. But of course they eventually went ahead. Life goes on. This was Africa.
The journey from the airport to the village was colourful. It lasted about an hour on a big motorway where everybody seemed to have competing interpretations of the rules of the road. I remember wondering if there were any rules for driving here. There were no lines painted on the roads, although the width of them allowed for three or four lanes across. The fast lane could have been on the right or on the left – it was anybody’s guess. There were cars weaving everywhere but the minibus driver seemed to be quite relaxed. He was smoking and humming along to music, and driving very fast in between different lanes, not to mention getting very close to other vehicles. He didn’t seem at all fazed by it.
I’ll never forget our first meal in the village. Try this, Gordon Ramsay. There was rice and there was meat stew but there was very little in the way of plates and cutlery, and not nearly enough for everyone. At first people would wait for others to finish eating so that they could grab their plates and cutlery to give them a quick rinse and then re-use them, which was fine. But the queue got bigger and bigger and eventually the system imploded. Soon everybody was using one hand to dip into the large metal pots to grab fistfuls of rice. With the other paw, we would scoop up a handful of lukewarm stew and carry it to our table. There we would put everything into a little mound on our tablecloth and commence eating with our fingers. If we didn’t do this we weren’t going to be eating that night.
Of course, there was a vegetarian option: two handfuls of rice, no stew.
At breakfast the next morning I went along early. I helped myself to a few bananas and brought them back to my room to keep me going. This hardly mattered though because we couldn’t train anyway: there were no turbo trainers and we still couldn’t leave the village. There was a path around the perimeter but it was thick with runners. So we were all kitted up with no place to go.
I got a silver medal for the time trial. I made a mess of the final climb in the road race.
Afterwards, there would be a reward for my silver. It was substantial for me at the time, huge for a lot of other riders. As much as a couple of thousand euros. But I never saw the money. Despite travelling to the Games at my own expense, when I got back to Kenya it had disappeared. Some people had passed it on; other people never saw it. Nobody knew where it had vanished to.
The Olympic Road Race
After the Tour we had five days to get ready for the 2012 Olympic road race. We tapered our training off for this, doing two or three hours a day to keep things ticking over. One day was longer, when we went to see the circuit, but the rest was mostly just freshening up.
The road race route involved climbing Box Hill nine times. It wasn’t exactly Ventoux, but stack it up nine times and it becomes very wearing both mentally and physically. We were there to support Cav, who was the favourite to take the gold.
Looking back, I do think it was realistic that Cav could win. What wasn’t realistic was to expect that we could do it all on our own as Team GB. I think we’d banked on at least one or two other nations with the same kind of plan who would see the benefit of having the race end in a bunch sprint: Germany with Greipel, or Australia with Matt Goss. We expected someone else to come along at some point, late in the race, and say, ‘We also want that breakaway to come back because our sprinter is here and feeling good.’
On the day, it felt very much like everyone really was
racing just to beat us, as opposed to actually winning the race themselves. It was a tough day for us. We were a team of five, which was a lot of work for the four riding for Cav. When we started weakening, the race really started kicking off. Instead of other teams helping us, they sent riders into the breakaway. That’s racing.
The last time up Box Hill, guys were attacking and going across to the breakaway. Cav said he had the legs to go. I think it was David Millar who turned round to him and said, ‘No, no, don’t worry, we’ll bring it back.’
We went down the other side though and we didn’t get it back at all. I hadn’t gone that far into the red through the whole Tour de France. I had never got to the point where I was actually blowing up like I was now. I was absolutely flat, flat, flat. After going down the other side of Box Hill for the final time we were on a flat road. I thought, ‘Okay, I can just sit on for a few seconds to recover and then I’ll be able to get back on the front again to keep pulling.’
But I couldn’t get back to the front. I went back to the car and got bottles instead, thinking, ‘Right, I’ll do one more effort, get bottles to all the guys, and then I’ll pull off.’
I got up to our train again, I reached forward and gave Cav a bottle, and that was it. I was so far in the red that I couldn’t actually go any further to give the rest of the team their bottles. We’d been on the front from kilometre 20 to kilometre 200. And now we weren’t going to be able to deliver Cav a gold on The Mall. We had let him down.
Brad was strong. While I was struggling to get the bottles to the guys, he was still pulling at the front.
I rolled through the last 20 or 30 kilometres, to get to the finish, being slowly lifted by the crowds. For the first time there was an Olympic feeling, riding along the big open roads where thousands of spectators lined the sides, cheering.