by Chris Froome
Team. Time. Trial. These days are a long shredding of the nerves. One screw-up and the whole peloton is laughing at you. Go well, and you make a statement.
Richie and I got changed into our time-trial skins and put our helmets on in the hotel room. We took a few goofy selfies to take some of the pressure off, then we got to work.
Team. Time. Trial.
Everyone was in one long line pumping as hard as they could. We were individual parts of the same machine; just one of us feeling bad could have a chain reaction. When you’re racing in one frantic line, it’s quite hard to make calls to the guy on the front. Should he be going faster? Or slower? On the other side of the coin, when things go well, it’s smooth and it’s beautiful and no one needs to say a thing.
But you never really know what’s going to happen.
Geraint was the limping question mark today. There was a crack in his pelvis; on the X-ray, it looked like a river. For normal people, this would mean ceasing all activity. For G it meant somebody had to give him a hand getting his leg over the saddle.
We couldn’t put him anywhere else other than on the back. If he was going to lose the wheel in front of him, he couldn’t take the guys with him. If we lost him, we couldn’t wait. We all knew his difficulty would be hanging on through the first few kilometres, when his body would be trying to bully him into submission.
The plan had been to keep it smooth but fast through the initial few corners until we got out on to the big promenade, where it was open and wide. We would leave G on the back, and if he felt good enough to contribute at any point it would be a bonus.
We settled: we each did a turn, filtered back, and then got in line just in front of G. Nico was on the radio calling the shots.
‘Okay, Kosta, you’re coming back now, you need to slip in behind G or … oh no, behind Yogi. Or Eddie.’
He did that for almost every rider coming through. We also had hand signals. If you had spent a little too much energy and were going to slow it down for everybody, you dropped off and when you got to the back, or just in front of G, you gave a thumbs-down sign. This told Nico that you needed some extra recovery time and you would skip a turn. So then the next one coming back would pull in, just in front of you.
‘Okay, guys, López is now skipping a turn on the back. Yogi, you need to come in behind Kiri.’
When you were ready to go again you gave the thumbs-up sign and Nico did the rest.
‘Okay, fall in behind López now, he’s coming back into the line.’
After about 5 or 6 kilometres riding on the big open promenade, Geraint started moving up through the line. He came and did a turn; he sustained our high speed.
What a lift.
He filtered back through the line, roaring in his Welsh accent. ‘Let’s have it! Gooo on! We’re gooonna do this.’
Eight of us were now grinning and grimacing at the same moment. There was a buzz.
‘G’s really committed today. He just had to hang on but … he’s actually managed to squeeze a few more seconds out of his performance to get everyone a little bit faster. He’s left us with no excuses. We’re gonna really pull today.’
I tried to do more time on the front than most of the other guys as time trialling is one of my strengths; I hoped I could contribute here.
We have a rule. We look at the speed that we’ve been given by the man in front of us and try to hold it there for maybe a 30- or 40-second turn, but only on the condition that the speed doesn’t drop. If we see the number dip we pull off straight away. On the other hand, if we feel really good there is no point in pushing the number from say 56 kilometres per hour up to 60 kilometres per hour, as it will hurt down the line.
We didn’t fall apart; our complex little machine worked.
The Orica-GreenEdge team were fastest and Simon Gerrans was in yellow. Omega Pharma Quick-Step finished 0.75 seconds behind. At Sky we were 3rd, just 3 seconds off the lead. Not bad for a team carrying a broken pelvis. We were happy and there was a good energy between us all again.
Team. Time. Trial.
I loved it.
Today.
WINNER: ORICa-GREENEDGE
OVERALL GC 1: SIMON GERRANS
2: DARYL IMPEY (SAME TIME )
7: CHRIS FROOME +3SEC
Stage Five: Wednesday 3 July, Cagnes-sur-Mer to Marseille, 228.5 kilometres
These dull flat stages were a torture mentally.
I was just following my front wheel, which was following the wheel in front of it.
I was also getting into a pattern in the evenings now. I liked to be in bed before 11.00 p.m., if possible, and most evenings I would put something on to watch to switch off from the day. I was still on Dexter and I would watch ten minutes or so, just enough to get me into the story and stop me replaying the events of the day as I went to sleep, or thinking about the next day.
As for Richie, usually he conked out first and I could hear his breathing change. His breaths get very deep and it isn’t long before he’s snoring. He can really snore; he’s not a big guy but he snores like an ogre.
Sometimes I listened for a few minutes, then fell into the same kind of breathing rhythm and drifted off. Even for getting to sleep, he’s my pilot fish.
If our hotel room overlooked the car park, close to where our team’s trucks were, we knew the mechanics would be washing the bikes early in the morning and loading up their equipment and suitcases, so I would probably put earplugs in to block it out.
Mario Pafundi, our head soigneur, says that one of his jobs is to try to make sure the riders are kept away from the noise when assigning rooms. We tease him. ‘Really, Mario? We didn’t know that was even on your radar. We thought the biggest part of your work was making sure the soigneurs had the best rooms.’
On dull days like today we would often only find out about the closing sprint when we were on the bus or back at the hotel. Today was slightly different.
Cav, who had bronchitis all week, took the win. Our man Eddie Boasson Hagen was in the shake-up, and got 2nd, beating Greipel, Sagan and Kristoff.
Eddie would probably do better with more support but our policy is that the strong riders in the team don’t spend energy leading out sprints. That leaves Eddie free to sprint but without back-up. I understand the thinking, and I benefit from the strategy but, still, it’s tough for Eddie.
As the stage finished, Simon Gerrans ended up with the yellow jersey after more selfless riding from Daryl. I was happy for them.
WINNER: MARK CAVENDISH
OVERALL GC 1: SIMON GERRANS
2: DARYL IMPEY (SAME TIME )
7: CHRIS FROOME +3SEC
Stage Six: Thursday 4 July, Aix-en-Provence to Montpellier, 176.5 kilometres
Today wasn’t thrilling but it finished on a high.
Simon Gerrans led out Daryl in the last kilometre and Daryl finished 13th, which was enough to put him in the yellow jersey. For me, this was the noblest moment of the race so far. Daryl had done so much himself to get Simon into the jersey, and had then done even more to keep him there. You can say it was his job, but wearing the maillot jaune isn’t like putting on overalls or a pinstripe suit.
Simon owed Daryl.
Today he repaid him.
It was very good to see. Daryl was an ex-teammate, and an ex … I’d like to say sort of South African brother, who had been there with me from the early days and who had introduced me to Michelle. Seeing him now wearing the yellow jersey was a thrill; the first African to get that jersey.
Daryl is from a South African cycling family. His dad had been a pro and later owned a bike shop. Daryl was always in the thick of it, and although I came in as more of an outsider, he made me feel like I belonged. We had ridden together and against each other back in Johannesburg; he had shared his room with me in Salzburg; we had sat side by side in the broom wagon at Paris–Roubaix. Now, I went to find him to congratulate him.
He’s not unlike Richie. He grinned and said, ‘Hahaha, I’ve got it befo
re you.’
He laughed. We hugged. Same old Daryl.
‘Ah, no, thanks a lot,’ he said. ‘This is really special.’
It was. Back in the hotel, I tweeted: ‘An incredible day for African cycling, a Saffa in yellow!’
I hoped the whole country, the whole continent, appreciated what he had done today and would get behind him.
WINNER: ANDRÉ GREIPEL
OVERALL GC 1: DARYL IMPEY
2: EDVALD BOASSON HAGEN +3SEC
7: CHRIS FROOME +8SEC
Stage Seven: Friday 5 July, Montpellier to Albi, 205.5 kilometres
Team Cannondale decided to make it very hard about two-thirds into the race today. We still had about 50 or 60 kilometres to go when they got on the front.
They took a lot of people by surprise as the stage was expected to finish in a bunch sprint. There was a small climb that shouldn’t have been a factor, but they made it extremely fast for the duration of the climb. Peter Sagan had yet to win a stage. Their plan was to get rid of the pure sprinters, such as Cav and Greipel, who rolled into Albi nearly a quarter of an hour after the stage had been decided.
Cannondale shook us all out of the pattern of the previous few days, and for that I think they deserved to win the stage. They set up Sagan perfectly and he did the rest. It was very impressive.
Daryl stayed in yellow; he is quick but he can get over the climbs too. Eddie was 2nd on GC for the second day. He survived the climb but didn’t get it together in the sprint. He finished 5th on the stage which was frustrating for him as we headed into the mountains; his own chance of wearing yellow was gone for another year.
WINNER: PETER SAGAN
OVERALL GC 1: DARYL IMPEY
2: EDVALD BOASSON HAGEN +3SEC
7: CHRIS FROOME +8SEC
Stage Eight: Saturday 6 July, Castres to Ax-3 Domaines, 195 kilometres
So far, a lot could have gone wrong. Today, we planned for a lot to go right.
We would know after today. This was the first true day of business in terms of GC; it was the first day when we would see if Contador had stepped up from the Dauphiné; if Rodríguez, if Valverde, if any or all of them had more than we anticipated. And there was Quintana, who had come back from a long training stint in Colombia. How good was he going to be?
In the races leading up to the Tour there had been a vibe coming from the Contador camp: He isn’t at his best, but you ain’t seen nothing yet. In the Tour, he would be the old Contador; irresistible in the mountains.
For a long time I had been determined to attack on this stage; I wanted to reach that final climb and cause a real GC shake-up. The team kept saying softly that I needed to be careful, and not to go too early. As if.
Our plan was to ride hard to make the race as tough as possible, then to let it fall to the GC guys to scrap it out over the last few Ks.
On the valley road building up to the last two climbs you could feel the volts of tension shooting through the pack. Twenty kilometres to go before the climb and it was already kicking off: a war of pushing and shoving started as everybody was frantic for a position close to the front. There was big pressure: this was the race for the Tour de France yellow jersey.
All the domestiques were helping their leaders to be at the front, the sprinters were pulling for the climbers and, as we were getting closer to the climb, it was just getting faster and faster.
Eddie gave a really big pull in that valley, as did Yogi and Kiri, who were all swapping off. Geraint was just surviving at that point. We got a good position early on, and the rest of the battle was holding on to it.
Climbs. There were two mountains close together at the end of today’s stage: Pailhères, which is very difficult, and Ax-3 Domaines, which is shorter and less difficult, but because the race was finishing at its summit, it was where the battle would be.
On Pailhères, Nairo Quintana attacked. So this was it. This young and very talented Colombian climber had been sent on a mission: go early, make the others chase, make them spend a lot of energy and create the opportunity for your leader, Alejandro Valverde. This felt like a tiny victory to me; Quintana was the unknown, the one who could be the dangerous dark horse. Valverde, I knew. I didn’t fear him.
A few years before, I would have pushed all of my chips to the centre of the table and gone with Quintana. All or nothing. Today, my face was as expressionless as a corpse. Kiryienka did a good pull at the bottom of the climb, followed by Pete Kennaugh, who took over and did a huge pull. Over the top and down. He laid down such a ferocious pace that I began to wonder whether I was actually in the shape I thought I was in. He took us to the bottom of Ax. This was hard. Really hard.
Pete took us a little bit further, then handed over to Richie.
At home, Quintana might ride up a lot of mountains all day long, but he didn’t seem to have done many hairpins: he was giving up seconds every time he took the wrong line round a corner.
In his ear the Movistar directeur sportif must have been telling him that Richie Porte was coming for him. Richie was leading a disparate gang which consisted of me, Contador, Valverde and Roman Kreuziger, a teammate of Contador.
The good news was that there was no sign of some of the other big GC favourites. There was no Cadel Evans, no Joaquim Rodríguez, no Andy Schleck. And where was Tejay van Garderen?
The pace that Richie was setting was causing chaos behind us. By the time we caught Quintana, we had dropped everyone. This lifted my spirits.
Then I couldn’t wait any longer. With just under 5 kilometres to go, I made my move. It was slightly earlier than planned but …
I passed Quintana. I knew he had nothing and that he had gone too early; I had been that guy. As he saw me go by he must have been wondering about Valverde. Why wasn’t he here?
I was alone in the lead. It was painful but joyful. I told myself that every second I gained could be the second that won the Tour.
I crossed the line. My mate from Tasmania rolled over in 2nd spot, 51 seconds behind me, having attacked Quintana.
We had sown time into the field. I had the yellow jersey. Richie was with me. Perfect.
There is one other lovely memory. We were speeding towards the start of the climb to Ax-3-Domaines when Daryl pulled alongside me in his yellow jersey.
‘Make sure you bloody well get this jersey, bru. You’d better be wearing it tonight.’
That hit home in the best sense. Daryl knew he wasn’t going to keep it, and that it was going to be with a climber this evening. But he had the generosity to say he wanted it to be on my shoulders. A lot of people die a little when a friend succeeds. Not Daryl. That’s the measure of the man.
WINNER: CHRIS FROOME
OVERALL GC 1: CHRIS FROOME
2: RICHIE PORTE +51SEC
Stage Nine: Sunday 7 July, Saint-Girons to Bagnères-de-Bigorre, 169.5 kilometres
House of cards.
On the bus we made our plans. We had the yellow jersey, yesterday we had bullied the peloton, and this morning the papers were saying that the Tour was already over: finished after just one mountain stage.
That yellow jersey colours everything around it, so we planned to ride in as controlled a way as possible. We were only interested now in the big dogs. If a breakaway had no big GC names in it, we would let it go. Anything else we would chase down like collies bringing sheep back to the fold.
That was our first mistake of the day.
On the bus, feeling all-powerful and with the happy yellow bleeding into our thoughts, we didn’t specify what we meant by this. We didn’t pause to think that with Richie and me in the first two spots in the GC the rest of the peloton would be feeling bruised and aggressive.
The attacks started straight away. The first climb, a category-two hors d’oeuvre, was still 30 kilometres down the road, but the peloton was popping and fidgety. Attack. Attack. Attack. With yellow now in our brains we chased down just about everything; if a piece of paper had blown up the road, we would have gone after it. And t
he peloton saw what we were doing and knew they had a chance to break us. Like schoolkids sensing weakness in a student teacher, they went after us.
Garmin-Sharp declared jihad from the start. They launched an insane barrage of attacks on the way to that first climb, the Col de Portet d’Aspet.
Dan Martin of Garmin and Igor Antón of Euskaltel were the two breakaways that had us in a quandary. They were borderline cases: a few minutes down on GC but if they got away maybe they would be a problem later. They could both climb.
Nico was on the radio urging us to go. We were trigger happy, so we went.
We should have said our goodbyes. ‘See you later, guys.’ As the yellow jersey team, we should have worked slowly and methodically through the day at our own pace. Instead, we let everybody else set the agenda. It was my mistake. I should have called it. I should have let them go but I didn’t have the experience to know.
I was coasting through the peloton, staying close to the front and keeping an eye on who was going away, but there were just so many attacks. The team were taking it in shifts to patrol the front of the peloton. Even by the first climb, when Dan and Igor attacked, you could see the toll it was taking on us. And so could the other teams.
Soon we were a man down. Pete Kennaugh swung out of our line towards the left of the road just as Ryder Hesjedal from Garmin came sprinting through from behind us to attack. Pete was knocked into the ditch like a skittle and rolled down for 4 or 5 metres. By the time he climbed back up and remounted, the race had gone.
We kept thinning out. After more chasing it was Richie, Kiri, Kosta and me now controlling things at the front. Other teams were using us. After we had done a tough stint at the front in pursuit of Dan and Igor, they would counter-attack and, one by one, our guys started popping and dropping.
In the valley after the first climb we were already beaten dockets. Now it was only Richie and me left.
It got worse on the second climb, the Col de Menté.
At this point, ironically, we found some sense. ‘Okay,’ we said, ‘let’s leave the breakaway alone. Let’s just regroup, recover and reorganize. Let’s work as a team.’