The Climb: The Autobiography

by Chris Froome

  But more attacks came. Nicolas Roche went, who was Alberto Contador’s teammate. Mick Rogers went too. Ditto. They were starting to gamble now on the basis that we would let them go, so we chased. Richie worked like a dog on the flat before the Menté.

  We hit the climb and another wave of attacks began. Richie turned to me and said he was busted. I would have to go on my own.

  I could see the big guys moving now. Alejandro Valverde had attacked, who wasn’t a discretionary case. He and his teammate Quintana had to be covered, as did Contador.

  Suddenly I was very alone: the only Sky rider in a group of twenty-five or thirty, which was under the control of Movistar. I sensed everything could go very wrong very quickly before this day was done.

  When in doubt, act tough. I immediately went right to the front so everybody in the group could see that I was alive and well.

  ‘I’m the sheriff. I’m restoring law and order. Calm down. Nothing to see here.’

  I sat up to make it look like I was quite relaxed and strong and feeling no pressure.

  They looked around. No Sky jerseys.

  ‘Well, tough guy, if you’re the sheriff, where’s your deputy? Where’s the posse? You just have a tin star pinned to you. That’s really all, isn’t it?’

  Movistar figured out that this could be good for them. Between the guys already up the road and the group of twenty-five plus that I was part of, they had seven. It meant that as the stage developed, they would have a lot of cards to play.

  Saxo had maybe three or four riders but enough to give them options. Between Movistar and Saxo, if they handled things well enough, they could use their numbers against me.

  But if you’re me, you’re not panicked by being the outsider.

  I went to Contador. I pointed out to him that there were a lot of Movistar guys around us and up the road in front of us – Quintana and Valverde plus five teammates – which made them dangerous. I told Contador what must have been obvious: he couldn’t expect Sky to control these guys; Saxo would have to do it. Contador and Valverde are Spaniards and there’s a natural rivalry between them. Each wants to be King of Spain. I just wanted to make sure they didn’t form an alliance and use their big numbers against me.

  I told him it was his race to lose as much as it was mine. This was not quite true. Today it was more mine to lose because of the colour of the jersey I was wearing – but Contador had to think he could also miss out if he sat back and watched me get dropped. I had to make that clear to him. Movistar would sting him like a scorpion. That was their nature. Contador would need to use his teammates to protect him (and me). The conversation was in English. Contador just said, ‘Yeah, well, we’ll see how things go today.’

  I was happy enough that he was thinking about it. He knew that for me to lose the race today wouldn’t be enough. He could lose serious time as well if he didn’t play his own cards right. If he thought about this for long enough, I might just survive.

  I started looking for small signs of encouragement. I had been able to go with the most dangerous attack of the day. I was here now. I had to think my way through the next couple of hours.

  There was a largely harmless group up the road, maybe 25 seconds ahead of us. Tom Danielson, Ryder Hesjedal, Yuri Trofimov, Igor Antón and some others were first over the second summit of the day while we eyed each other in the group behind.

  My eyes were glued to Contador, Valverde and Quintana. This was where they would have to stay. I was letting these thoughts settle as I rode second or third from the front down through the valley.

  Next thing, Valverde came from behind, attacking down the right-hand side of the road. He had a Movistar colleague with him. If we were doing 40 kilometres an hour, they were riding at 55 when they passed. They got a huge jump, just when I thought things had steadied.

  This was very dangerous. It wasn’t on a climb; it wasn’t where I felt comfortable. I couldn’t just accelerate knowing that everybody else would hurt worse. If I was left chasing here on a flat road I could get into trouble. I wouldn’t sit on the front and tow Contador and company back to Valverde. I’d be spent. Contador, Valverde and Quintana would leave me behind like roadkill on the final climb and maybe take as much as 10 minutes on GC. So I shifted down two gears before they were 20 yards past me. I sprinted after Valverde, putting in a 40- or 50-second acceleration to get across to them. I would let the others in the group look around and make their plans; surprise was my only asset here. I surprised myself mainly. I was the only rider from the group who made it on to the back of Valverde. His back wheel was my lifeline.

  Now I had the two Movistar riders with me for company. They were pulling and taking turns. Ahead were the few guys who had already attacked on the previous climb. They were being caught by Valverde and his mate with me hanging on. If they had made that bridge on their own, it would have been very dangerous, because some of the riders up the road were also from Movistar: they had two or three in that front ten. They would have spent the rest of the day pulling.

  Behind was the group with Contador and the others. Their view on what was up the road had just changed.

  I was still in bad trouble but I wasn’t dead.

  A couple of times Valverde and his mate looked over at me. They said, ‘Come on, you have to help us.’ I just shook my head. No way. Why would I pull on the flat for no reason? They recognized that and didn’t persist. They kept working and I stayed with them.

  As soon as the Movistar boys and I looked like bridging the gap to the front group, Contador gathered his remaining teammates together, including Mick Rogers and Nicolas Roche, and they gradually closed the space between us. They were 30 or 40 seconds behind us through the valley and it took them the best part of 15 minutes to reel us in. It was quite a bit of chasing from their point of view, but they did it.

  I added that work into my calculations in this new scenario. Whatever happened in the race from here on, at least everybody would get to the last climb pretty tired. The pace hadn’t eased up all day.

  Once we all regrouped at the bottom of Peyresourde, the whole race slowed down a little bit. Movistar took control and Saxo kept a watch. Again, I had survived the most imminent danger. Time for … oh shit … for the first time I figured out I would have to go back for bottles and gels. They wouldn’t be coming to me. No room service today.

  I put my hand up and thought, this must look strange: the yellow jersey putting his hand up to go back and feed. I went back to the car trusting that the unwritten rule as regards attacking when somebody is feeding or taking a leak would hold firm. It did.

  It was good to chat with Nico when I got back to the car. Despite the relatively tricky situation we were in, he smiled and was full of encouragement, we would get through this together.

  Back in the chain gang this was still a day of politics; it was very nervy. I went and positioned myself where, in my opinion, the best chance was: on the back of the Movistar train.

  Movistar suddenly upped the tempo and were working really hard now. What had caused this? Suddenly it dawned on me. The news had come to me over the radio; it must have come to them too. They were working hard because Richie was coming up from behind with Kiri helping him.

  I had spoken to Nico on the radio. Maybe the guys would be better off conserving their energy for tomorrow rather than killing themselves on a wild goose chase? We could regroup and learn from today.

  Nico saw it differently. Richie and Kiri were closing in. Soon they would be just a minute behind.

  Of course, Movistar’s directeur sportif was listening to the Radio Tour, hearing reports of Richie’s comeback, and of course he passed that on to Valverde and Quintana. Richie was 2nd on GC, and they wanted him out of the way. But that was the limit of their ambition now: to kill Richie.

  They didn’t want the words ‘Team Sky, one and two on GC’ being rubbed in their faces again. And that’s why the tempo had so suddenly increased. Richie didn’t get back, and I wasn’t put through th
e torture of Quintana then Valverde attacking me in turn on the Peyresourde.

  Poor Richie. He didn’t know it but by trying so hard and so honestly to get back to the front to help me, he had done a great job.

  It was quite a strange feeling sitting in a line of seven Movistar guys all riding as hard as they could. I wondered what I would have asked my teammates to do here if they were all riding at the front at this point. Eureka! I would have asked them to ride in much the same way as Movistar were riding. That gave me comfort.

  Their guys were wearing different jerseys but they may as well have been wearing Sky jerseys; I was sitting in their train.

  Today Movistar were my team and they were doing the job for me. It would be about legs and not tactics in the last shake-up, which suited me.

  Movistar were fully aware of what they were doing. They knew they were riding Richie out of the race for GC and they probably took satisfaction from that, even though I was getting a free ride. I was for another day as far as they were concerned. Sometimes in life, there’s not going to be another day like the one you’ve just had.

  On the final climb Quintana had obviously been given the freedom to attack. Maybe they thought I’d stay with Valverde and Contador and it would be Quintana’s opportunity to steal some time. But first it was Dan Martin and Jakob Fuglsang who attacked. I decided that this wasn’t my battle. I stayed in the group but it wasn’t long till Quintana started his own attack. Now it was different: each time he went, I reacted. I didn’t get up out of the saddle to sprint after him like a crazy man; I just sat on the front and did a bit of a progression back to his wheel, then we would slow down for a few seconds and he would go again. I think that happened four times.

  I was within myself. They were hard attacks but I had them under control. After each one I remember thinking, ‘Okay, I’ve closed another one.’ Each time I did, I looked around to my left and to my right.

  Now it was surely going to be Valverde or Contador to be the next one to go. To my surprise, neither of them did anything, which was interesting. Quintana and Valverde didn’t seem to be in tune with each other: they were two individuals. Either they hadn’t got it in their legs or they didn’t fancy the final descent on their own. Anyway, they never moved.

  We got to a point about a kilometre from the top of the last climb where it just felt like stalemate. I was riding at the front and a number of guys from the group started riding next to me as if to say to Quintana and Valverde, ‘Look, you had your chance, it’s not going to happen. We are just riding now. No more attacks up here.’ They made an unspoken truce.

  I survived. Dan Martin had a famous stage win. Overall, it was one of the most complex, tactical and interesting days the Tour had seen.

  I got over the finish line and almost immediately the France 2 TV reporter, who was always at the finish area doing the on-the-spot reports, had a microphone in my face. His first question had nothing to do with the race.

  ‘A lot of people are questioning your performances here. What can you say about that?’

  I felt so pissed off. Of all the questions he could have asked after that day of racing, this was it? It hadn’t even occurred to me as I saw him coming that he would ask me about doping.

  The dark side still blows clouds over, even on the brightest days.

  WINNER: DAN MARTIN

  OVERALL GC 1: CHRIS FROOME

  2: ALEJANDRO VALVERDE +1 MIN 25 SEC

  29

  Monday 8 July, Rest Day

  We could have surrendered the Tour yesterday. Instead, today was a new day. We had moved northwards, jumping from the Pyrenees to our hotel in Brittany.

  When we went out for our rest day warm-down ride, Dave made a point of coming out with us. As we rode he spoke to each rider in turn, flitting around like a bumblebee gathering pollen.

  The guys weren’t happy. There had been bad luck and misunderstandings, for sure. G had crashed, Eddie wasn’t sure of his role, Kosta had been over-raced and we’d lost Kiri. David López had ridden really well to make the Tour team but it seemed to us that he’d then relaxed. When he pitched up in Corsica it appeared that he’d gained a bit of weight and lost some form.

  Dave took in all the stories and processed them.

  Stage Ten: Tuesday 9 July, Saint-Gildas-des-Bois to Saint-Malo, 197 kilometres

  Dave sat us all down in the bus that morning and said, ‘Okay, guys, here we are.’ Dave loves to start his talks in that way. ‘We have got what we have got.’ ‘It is what it is.’ ‘We do what we do.’ ‘We are at this fitness level and it won’t change.’ ‘We can’t bullshit each other.’ ‘Some of us are not going as well as we would have hoped.’

  After identifying the issues – the guys who weren’t performing and the guys who weren’t happy with their roles – he outlined the solutions. Dave handled this mini-crisis well. I wasn’t the only person to have learned from 2012.

  I had gone to have a chat with Kiri before he left the hotel. He had worked so hard in the last race and had done such a big job trying to get Richie back, pulling along that long valley road that I had chased Valverde across. However, he hit the next climb and got dropped. Then he slipped back into the gruppetto, and then into the no-man’s-land behind the gruppetto.

  When the second team car was up ahead behind Richie, Kiri slipped through the net. He only got eliminated by a minute and a half, which I felt was quite a big mistake from our point of view. We should have had someone egging him on, telling him, ‘Listen, you have a minute to make up, you can do it.’

  The team had a huge feeling of regret about this.

  Today’s stage was another one for the sprinters. Our concern is to stay out of trouble during the hectic final 30 kilometres of these stages, so we will have a Sky train at or near the front and it can be pretty annoying when someone from another team tries to muscle his way into our train. If there is any one rider who sticks out for always wanting to push in, he’d go down as, well, we have the phrase Arsehole of the Day. There is always one. There is a Movistar rider who scoops the title regularly. He cuts into our train and brakes for whatever reason, which causes a gap between our front guys and our back guys. It is part of racing but it is irritating. When the stakes are higher it is very annoying. When you are ambling along with 150 kilometres to go it isn’t a huge issue. The stress comes at the more crucial moments, coming into a climb or during the wind-up finish.

  I didn’t think he was deliberately trying to get under our skins; I got the sense he figured the best place to be was wherever we were. But he wasn’t fully aware of what was happening around him or why we were all in a line.

  Most of the time I bite my tongue in situations like this. Richie isn’t so gentle.

  ‘Hey, you think it’s just a coincidence that we all showed up here wearing the same jerseys, and now we’re all on each other’s wheels?’

  L’Arsehole du Jour was just on a different wavelength to us. I hoped that his understanding of English was just as poor, and that he didn’t quite catch what Richie was saying.

  WINNER: MARCEL KITTEL

  OVERALL GC 1: CHRIS FROOME

  2: ALEJANDRO VALVERDE +1 MIN 25 SEC

  Stage Eleven: Wednesday 10 July, Avranches to Mont-Saint-Michel, 33 kilometres

  I woke up in the morning leading Alejandro Valverde by 1 minute 25 seconds and Bauke Mollema by 1 minute 44 seconds. I had 2 minutes on Alberto Contador. The stage was just 33 kilometres of time trial but this was where I hoped to buy myself some time and a cushion in case I had a bad day in the Alps towards the end of the Tour.

  I had to empty myself to gain as much time as possible. Today was a day which had to count.

  I see my time trialling as a godsend. I am extremely lucky to be able to time trial and climb. More often than not, people can do one or the other. Doing both very well is quite rare.

  Today I had a very good ride. I finished 1 minute 10 seconds faster than Richie. People like Valverde and Contador were 2 minutes or more back. Quint
ana was the same. These were all excellent climbers but not as strong on the time trial.

  The exciting thing for me was that I had set out at a good pace and had taken a few kilometres to ease into things. I felt I had ridden a good time without over-extending in the first half of the race. When I got to the time check I heard that I was around a second up on Tony Martin. That really motivated me and made me think – either Tony was having a terrible day or I was going very well. If that was the case it would be an excellent result.

  Nico was in the car talking to me all the way.

  On the second time check I was 2 seconds ahead of Tony. He went faster to the finish, gaining 14 seconds for the last stretch. But I could definitely live with that.

  My lead was up to 3 minutes 25 seconds – could this race now be mine to lose?

  The first race I did with Barloworld was in 2008 in South Africa, just five years before this Tour. We had done the training programme over in Italy in January and had come back to South Africa for the Intaka Tech World’s View Challenge in March.

  I was a bit nervous at the start but on the third day I got into the break on one of the hilly sections and then broke away on my own on a climb about 10 kilometres from the finish in Pietermaritzburg. Coming into the finishing straight I had everything going for me to win the stage. It was mine to lose.

  All of a sudden, a guy on a motorbike at the front of the race said to me, ‘You can relax, they are more than three minutes behind you.’

  I thought, ‘Super,’ and so I relaxed, because there was no point in being stupid and wasting my energy.

  I sat up, zipped up my jersey and set about looking prim and proper for the finish.

  Luckily I hadn’t quite raised my hands in the air for victory.

  I heard the screeching of brakes and the crashing of metal. Guys flew past me in a bunch sprint, and some even crashed trying to get round me; I was a slow-moving obstacle they hadn’t expected to see. There was a terrible pile-up and Daryl Impey came down.