by Chris Froome
In Mallorca I definitely felt that some of my teammates were trying to use me as the gauge for their own efforts. They would be outriding each other one day and then falling off the back of the group the next day with sore legs or wounded knees.
Tim took me aside to say, ‘Listen, don’t worry about the other guys, some of them are way out of their zones trying to match the efforts you are doing at the moment. Because you are the main guy in the team, people will compare themselves to you all the time. Just carry on doing what you are doing.’
That was good to hear. It was what I had hoped to achieve when I had been putting the work in down in South Africa.
Of course, some guys coped because they knew how to. You knew that old warriors like Danny Pate or Xabier Zandio had been doing the work. There was no trying to turn heads or show off their form, they just did their work. They were good, consistent guys.
We developed a rhythm to the days. Richie and I would go to the gym before breakfast, where we would often find Kosta and Kiri. Their cores are so good we wondered why they felt the need, and then, of course, we realized that it was exactly these early-morning gym sessions that helped to build and maintain their core strength. Within the team everybody had their own habits and their own ways.
Brad was in and out. He was at the camp during the week and he would fly home at weekends to be with his family. Once he and I sat down for a round-table discussion with journalists who wanted to talk about the season. Brad controlled the conversation and did most of the talking. He was very engaging and switched on, a side of him the team didn’t always get to see. I felt like I was just adding in a few words here and there but that didn’t bother me. Brad was more accustomed to that scene than I was. We spoke about the Tour in 2012, and what we had learned. Brad then talked about the Giro and how he intended to come and support me afterwards in the Tour de France. We toed the party line.
The journalists wrote afterwards that there didn’t seem to be a lot of warmth between the two of us. Well, we were saying what we needed to say but neither of us felt comfortable sitting next to each other. I was nervous about what Brad might come out with, whether or not he would follow the pointers set out for us by the team in the one-page ‘media messages’ print-out.
Brad was to focus his comments on the Giro; I would focus mine on the Tour. As the season progressed we would see how things panned out. The idea was for Brad to come and help me at the 2013 Tour, and if any questions about 2012 were framed in a Brad-against-Chris way, we would play them down.
We were trying to portray an image of us working together and that was fine. Brad sounded very confident and genuine; it didn’t have to be all warm and brotherly between us as long as we were singing from the same sheet. That day I didn’t think there would be much of a problem. We just got on with it and I felt reassured about what was to come.
If there was pressure early in the season, it was subtle. The team wanted me to win one or two races in springtime in the hope that winning would build the confidence of the team around me; it was felt I needed to establish that I was the leader. This was expressed equally subtly. Tim might say to me after one of the harder training rides, ‘Listen, Chris, your numbers are right up there – there is no reason why you shouldn’t, oh, let’s see, win Oman for example.’
Okay, Tim. I never saw a race I didn’t want to win, so the guys were pushing at an open door.
Oman was the first race of the season. We won but it would be a more interesting week than the bald result suggested.
In the first couple of stages I had the feeling the race wasn’t doing what it said on the tin. It was too easy to sit in the bunch between the critical parts of the race, which was going very slowly. I had expected a more action-packed race in the desert; I had imagined there would be more hills and lumps.
In terms of the big picture, this didn’t seem like a very useful way to be spending a week. I had been training a lot harder and faster than this race was willing to be.
The event picked up gradually though and I went with it, stayed out of trouble and kept my head down till we got to the showpiece day on Green Mountain.
Again, even that stage wasn’t quite what had been promised. The pace was painfully slow which meant that everybody would be fizzing on the climb. I prefer for it to be hard all day, a race of attrition. This day instead seemed set up for a guy like Contador, who is maybe more explosive than me.
It may have been called Green Mountain but it was not really a mountain. It was more of a sudden and eye-catching change in terrain, as if an interior designer had decided to make the desert interesting. At first glance I thought that if this was the Green Mountain then I was the Incredible Hulk, but as we climbed the air became cooler and thinner, losing the furnace fierceness of the desert. The views stole our breath away.
Long before we got up to those heights I had a look at the power meter. I needed to use it to stop myself going too far into the red early on the climb. With everybody so fresh it would be easy enough to get carried away.
As it happened, Contador and his Saxo Bank team set an unbelievable pace at the bottom. They lined it up and made it really hard for everyone else for the first kilometre. I found I was dropped from the front group of fifteen to twenty guys.
After about a kilometre of climb on Green Mountain the road dips for a few hundred metres before going up again. The front group had dropped me by about 50 metres at that point. I turned round and saw that the next group of guys were 20 to 30 metres behind me. I was in no-man’s-land and on my own.
Richie was in the front group with Contador and Nibali and a couple of the other big players. He looked back and saw me on my own on that flattish, downhill section. Immediately he filtered back, hooked up with me and led me all the way back to the front of the race for the next section of climbing.
It was a very tactical climb, so there were attacks all around. There was Nibali, Contador attacking and Rodríguez following. I did a small attack of my own just to make it seem as if I were pushing as hard as I could but I didn’t put too much effort into it. I didn’t want to go that far out, as there were still 3 or 4 kilometres to go.
It was very cat and mouse, with lots of bluffing and lots of pawing. Nobody really wanted to bite. It got down to myself, Nibali, Contador and Rodríguez. The four of us were all looking at each other and trying to work out who was bluffing and who wasn’t. There was one other guy with us, a small French rider, Kenny Elissonde. At some point in all this, Cadel Evans latched on to our group as a temporary distraction. Then he was gone again.
I was still bluffing most of the way, by making it look as if I were really struggling. I didn’t want them to keep using me, working me only to attack me in the final stretch. So with about a kilometre to go Rodríguez accelerated. I looked at the other two and basically gave an expression which said, ‘I can’t follow that. Poor me.’
Inside I felt really good but I just spun off, dropping off their wheels and giving them 10 metres of space in front of me. They glanced back at me, amazed. He has nothing left? Wow!
Now it was Rodríguez, Contador and Nibali. And then me, toiling manfully a few metres back.
I can remember seeing the 500-metres sign and being absolutely shocked that we were at that point because I could see the road kept going right up into the hills.
I had miscalculated. Surely it went on further? I could see a road snaking up slopes higher than we were. The race must go on further, I thought.
But on the other hand, I didn’t want to get it wrong, just in case this was the finish. If this was about establishing myself as the leader of the team, it wasn’t going to work if I started by having to explain how I misjudged the finish.
Then again, wait. Could that sign have meant that there were 500 metres to go to the King of the Mountains hotspot? I couldn’t risk it. There was nothing for it. I put my head down and went with everything I had left.
There was no doubt in my mind that Contador and Nibali wouldn�
�t be able to follow me. I knew I was going a lot faster than them and I didn’t expect them to be able to respond. Rodríguez was just out of my reach but I wasn’t bothered by that as I knew he wasn’t on GC.
In the end, he won the stage and I finished 5 or 10 seconds after him. However, in that 500 metres I had put a good 30 seconds into the others.
It was a good result but frustrating too; I thought I could have done more damage if I had only realized exactly where I was on the road. Still, I was in the leader’s jersey and we had just two stages to go.
After giving some post-race interviews on Green Mountain I went to the bottom for the podium ceremony. After the presentation of the jerseys I thought I heard somebody behind the podium say something in Swahili. That was strange; really strange. Must have been my imagination.
A few minutes later somebody turned round to me.
‘Habari gani, Chris?’ (Hi, how is it going, Chris?)
I was shocked but I replied in the same manner.
‘Kila kito ni poa sana.’ (Things are really good.)
I then asked my new friend what he was doing here, such a long way from home. He said that, no, this was home, that he lived here. He went on to call some others over and they were all speaking fluent Swahili, just as you would hear it in East Africa.
I thought, ‘What is this? Are they on holiday? On the run?’ They didn’t look like tourists.
It turns out that there are a lot of East Africans in the country, and many people in Oman speak Swahili because of the big influx of East Africans into the country.
That made my day. It was a really nice surprise, getting the leader’s jersey and then being able to make some small talk in Swahili.
After we’d finished shooting the breeze, the team car was waiting to take me back to the hotel. This was the first thing I learned about life in a leader’s jersey: you no longer took the bus and you were filed off from the team. Your colleagues had eaten and showered on the bus back to the hotel while you would be detained for other duties. While your teammates were being massaged, you would still be winding your way back.
I had been finding it harder than usual to read Brad all week. On Green Mountain, for instance, he hadn’t done much to help the team. The last 10 kilometres into the bottom of the climb involved the usual jostling, pushing and shoving and it was quite hectic. But I didn’t see Brad there; he just stayed out of it, above it.
The plan had been for him to lead us into the bottom of that climb and to take us up on the first kilometre or so, but instead we were all over the place. I don’t think there was anybody around me and this was disappointing after such a long, slow wind up.
Unfortunately the team meetings weren’t going great either.
Nico Portal was moderating the discussions in the mornings and the tension was written all over the poor guy’s face. These were no longer the usual open forums. It wasn’t, ‘Okay, guys, well, what are we going to do today?’ Instead, the atmosphere was very tense and forced. We all enjoy working with Nico but you could see he was under pressure.
I felt that everybody was on eggshells around Brad and how he was feeling about not being top banana. I had hoped that all this would have been dealt with in Brad’s head, and by Dave, who has some access to Brad’s head, before we got there.
In the meetings Nico’s voice would occasionally tremble as he spoke about the stage ahead. Every day was judgement day for Nico: Dave looking at him, Brad looking at him, all of us just looking at him. How would he describe Brad’s role? And my role?
At the end of each meeting Dave would try to get round and speak to everybody to gee us up: ‘Just enjoy it. Go out and have a good ride.’
Okay, Dave!
But the mood was way too tense. Nobody ever added anything to what Nico was saying, we were in too much of a hurry to get away.
One evening Brad was having physio or running late and didn’t show for dinner. The atmosphere was completely different; it became light-hearted with the usual banter and nobody tiptoeing around the situation.
I said to Pete Kennaugh, ‘Does this feel different to you?’ He nearly exploded with relief.
‘Fooking hell, I thought it was just me. It’s not! I’m glad you said something. I’m afraid to open my mouth.’
It felt very unhealthy with everybody on edge; like a week working at a job poisoned by office politics. We were there because we were paid to be there, but the dynamics were off.
I had gone to Oman thinking that I had to race with these guys as often as possible, the ones I would be at the Tour with, and help to set the mood within the team for the season to come. Everybody should feel free to say what they’d like to say over dinner, and there should be no tensions. There was work to be done to get us on the right path.
The stage after Green Mountain caught us all off guard and was much harder than any of us had imagined. It went over the same climb, came back and went over again: three times in all and then to the finish.
We had gone over the climb once and Christian Knees and Joe Dombrowski had both done really decent pulls. Joe, in particular, had set a very good pace. When we got down to the U-turn and came up the climb for the second time I can remember being astounded that Brad was in the line. This was where we really needed him to take his turn and pull on the front and race hard. ‘He’s going to do it,’ I thought. Then, suddenly, he seemed to remember a prior engagement. It literally looked as if he pulled the brakes. He swung out of the line and dropped off just as the second climb began. He hadn’t done a pull or a turn on the front. Maybe he’d left the gas on at home?
It really felt to me that he wasn’t interested, that he just didn’t feel like suffering that day.
I don’t know if it was that or if he didn’t want to ride for me. I was coming to the conclusion that if you were riding out to battle through early-morning mists with your standards flying high, Sir Bradley Wiggins was a man you would want at your side. Because after lunch he just might not be bothered.
I tried to keep the rest of the guys together in our formation. Halfway up the climb Saxo Bank took it up again with Contador and a couple of his henchmen pushing everybody hard. Very quickly I was left with Richie and it was just the two of us.
Richie did an incredible job. He pulled to the last kilometre of that second climb, getting back to Contador who had attacked off the front. Then Contador sat on the front and controlled the race all the way round and down the mountain, before doing the U-turn and leading us back up for the last time.
Saxo Bank came swarming around us quite early on the final climb. After a few hundred metres they were pulling really hard, trying to launch Contador off the front. Richie had already done quite a bit of tough work containing things and when Contador went, I could see Richie was close to being done.
I said to Richie, ‘Relax, it’s great, you are doing just fine, he’s not getting away from us. Just keep working. You are doing a great job.’
Richie carried on pulling for a little bit longer and then turned to me. I could see he was spent.
Contador was about 15 seconds up the road so I accelerated from the group I was in towards him. Rodríguez hung on to my wheel and now we were both in pursuit. When we got to the top of the last climb Contador was probably only about 7 to 10 seconds in front of us.
There were a few more lumps and bumps and then the proper descent. On the little dip where it started going down I could see that Contador got up out of his saddle, sprinting to get on to the back of the camera motorbike. I was working hard behind in the headwind and was worried. If he managed to get the protection offered by the motorbike he would gain a few extra kilometres an hour right there. I was on the limit already so I really wanted him not to make the motorbike. I turned to Rodríguez and told him he needed to help me now. If he didn’t, we would both lose.
He made his calculation. He did his share of the work. He came through. I was happy to have his help. Rodríguez is a rider I respect – somehow his love for the bike
and the sport has always seemed really pure to me. Once at the hotel in Tenerife when I was there with Team Sky, he was there on his own. No team, no minders, just a guy and his bike doing a lot of good work, and loving it. His nickname is Purito, which is actually Spanish for little cigar, but to me it seemed to reflect the purity of his character. ‘Purito,’ I thought, ‘you’re well named.’
We got Contador back on a little dip near the start of the descent, and we rode down the mountain eyeing each other. On one of the corners I felt like I had taken the wrong line and I was forced to pull my brakes a little harder than I should have done. A very small gap opened up to Contador, just a few metres more than he would have been expecting. He was as quick as a cobra to spot this and was up and ready to strike on the next corner.
I could see he was pushing harder than he would do normally because I had lost his wheel for that one second. It was a good lesson for me. If I gave this guy 10 centimetres he would take 10 metres. He looks for every chance to get one over.
The three of us more or less rolled on into the stretch. When we got to about a kilometre to go I knew that nobody wanted to do a turn. The two of them had pulled but that was over. I could see them looking at each other; alliances were shifting.
That was my cue to say, Sorry, guys, I’m going to go for it. Now. I don’t think I stood up or sprinted. I just sat in my saddle and accelerated, trying to get a gap on them. They were on to it pretty quickly and within a few hundred metres they had me reeled me back.
With 500 metres to go now, the three of us were still looking at each other, and I was still on the front. A stand-off prevailed. There would be no more mutual interest; just three selfish cats.
Nobody wanted to lead it out and our brains had to be whirring as quickly as our wheels because we had to make the right call and go with it. I decided to take things into my own hands with about 300 metres to go and then lay down a sprint. They weren’t going to take GC time on me today. That was the main thing; I had nothing to lose.