by Walsh, David
‘Even when I’d, sort of, leave home in the afternoons after school, on a bike, and then be back at night, that would have been when I was quite young. I think under ten, sort of eight, nine, ten.’
Off to the townships or the Ngong Hills following David Kinjah and his dreadlocks. It was a perfect education in the old sense of the word. He absorbed a whole world. And as regards his apprenticeship as a cyclist he grew up deficient in technique but pushing himself after older riders at an altitude of 1800m or so.
When he finished with boarding school in Johannesburg he went to university and, though he churned out good results, he regrets having spent yet more time dawdling in the neutral zone.
‘Yeah. I mean I was trying to get the degree behind me before going off and doing anything, but, I just got offered the opportunity I think a little bit earlier and I thought, “Right, I’m going to go for it now and see where I get to, and if it does fail then I’ll come back to the studies.” But, it certainly would have made my life a lot easier if I’d switched, just focused on the cycling straight after finishing school, instead of going on and doing another year.’
So people say he can’t be as good and as clean as he seems because his progress wasn’t signposted a long way back along the road. It wasn’t. Not even to himself. When he and a pal started an Under-23 team in Johannesburg, not even a decade ago, he is remembered for his lank hair and bangles, his clothes, often kikoys, made of hemp and dyed in the colours of the Swahili race and his white Golf car with tinted silver windows. Everybody saw him coming. And nobody saw him coming.
The one thing he had then and which people commented on from the time he arrived in pro cycling with Barloworld, was his attitude. Chris Froome was a ‘training fundamentalist’.
His early years in Europe read like amusing misadventures, a comic strip of crashes and illnesses and training rides where he would get thoroughly lost. But those experiences were punctuated with races. He learned from every one and when a team came along that believed there was more to be had from a £900,000 rider with a coach than a £1 million rider without one, Froome was in the right place at the right time.
Timing. The ultimate good luck when it comes to beating the odds.
Interestingly, but not to Team Sky, the Lotto-Belisol sprinter Marcel Kittel has allowed himself to get dropped off the peloton as they come through the feeding zone. At roughly the halfway mark, Kittel’s group is over a minute behind. The peloton are hammering it today. It doesn’t look good for a sprinter to be dropping out the back.
Now. Alejandro Valverde suffers a puncture. It costs him 37 seconds and what gets people talking immediately is the fact that Chris Froome doesn’t slow the entire peloton down to allow Valverde to catch up those 37 seconds. The immediate reaction is less condemnation and more sympathy. Froome doesn’t look like he could take off his cape and place it over a puddle at the moment. His chivalry levels aren’t the ones depleted.
There’s too much at stake here. Alberto Contador and his Saxo-Tinkoff teammates see an opportunity, so too the Belkin team of Bauke Mollema and Laurens ten Dam. Valverde is second overall and if he’s not allowed to regain contact, there’s more space on the podium for everyone else. So Saxo and Belkin aren’t slowing.
Besides, given that Kittel is still in the chasing group, Cavendish’s Omega Pharma team and Peter Sagan’s Cannondale squad have good reason to keep the hammer down. Kittel’s been winning and when a sprinter does that he ceases to be a rival. He becomes an enemy.
At first Valverde’s Movistar teammates swarm around him clucking with concern and vowing to reclaim those 37 seconds. If they were that concerned, one of them should have switched bikes with Valverde the moment he noticed the puncture, but Movistar haven’t been working like clockwork on this Tour. Subsequent glimpses show poor Valverde at the front of the Movistar group doing most of the grunt work for himself. It won’t be a happy evening meal for these boys.
As the afternoon sun keeps rising, this stage gets more interesting. Valverde is riding with the desperation of a man knowing his Tour is on the line. Kittel’s foot soldiers try for a time to help but in this cat-and-mouse game, momentum is everything. And it is with the leaders.
They smell blood and the chance to kill Valverde off. The sprinters’ teams are also pleased to have Kittel back there, out of their sight. Encouraged, this coalition of General Classification and sprint teams increases the pace. The gap stretches.
We should freeze the frame here for a second. For all the talk of how Team Sky have made the Tour a procession and how boring they have become, we have a stage here today, a flat stage with just one bump in the road and the plot is almost Shakespearian. The race is all strung out. Knives are being flashed at Valverde by the GC boys and at Kittel by the sprint set. Froome is gritting his teeth and settling in for another hard shift. If it all goes wrong he could be handing over the jersey. It’s that unstable right now.
A few minutes later, Kittel and his team accept that in a race that will run for another nine days, there are no prizes for flogging a dead horse. They accept today will not be their day. Valverde keeps pushing, in second overall he’s got to. This turns into one of the most thrilling days on the Tour and the Spaniard shouldn’t feel too depressed, he’s just had a puncture on the wrong day.
Some of the guys at the front, who would have been counting their blessings to be on the right side of the split, are now counting the cost. The lead group is coming apart like an ageing boy band right now. Richie Porte is struggling again. Richie was told he could give his all in the time trial two days before. Is he getting the bill for that today?
Bilharzia. It sounds as unattractive as it is. You meet up with your little parasitic friend in the waters of Africa and from then on as it develops into a flatworm it chomps your red blood cells, promotes rashes, lethargy, headaches, fever and lots of other nice surprises. For an endurance athlete the impact is crippling. Having something consuming your red blood cells and depriving you of oxygen is a nightmare. Your bilharzia eats the body, steals the breath and gnaws the confidence.
For Chris Froome it was something to be ridden through. His time in the neutral zone was extended considerably by the fact that he paid no attention to the debilitating bouts of sickness.
When people are being cynical about Team Sky, one of the things they are most cynical about is bilharzia. Which is odd. It is a rampant disease in Africa and the fact of Froome’s condition is easily ratified if anybody ever cared to ask. After malaria, bilharzia is the world’s second most common parasitic disease. He has been straight up about it since diagnosis. Late in 2010 in Kenya, while seeing his brother Jeremy, the UCI performed a routine blood check on him for his biological passport. Given the patchworked history of his health he asked the doctor to scan his blood for anything irregular (doping mastermind?) and the doctor told him that his insides were crawling with bilharzia.
For those interested, the treatment for bilharzia isn’t a dose of EPO or anything else which might provide an excuse for elevated numbers of red blood cells. The treatment is a drug called praziquantel (or more ominously, biltricide) and it just lays waste your flatworm population.
The idea is that having paralysed or killed most of the flat-worms, your immune system will do the rest. If you are consistently underweight and riding yourself to the brink of exhaustion, your immune system may not get around to finishing the job.
Froome had his first dose in January 2011. The side effects are brutal. The drug doesn’t question and ID everything it finds. It just wipes stuff out. For a week to ten days the patient is wiped out as well. By spring of 2011, Froome was showing signs that the treatment was working and he raced well through March and April. In May, though, at the Tour of California the bilharzia was back in business.
Froome battled on until the Tour de Suisse where his legs turned rubbery on the hills. When the Tour was finished he took another dose of biltricide and with his preparations already behind he said goodbye to the To
ur de France for that year.
Meanwhile, 2011 was the year he began working with Bobby Julich, the retired American rider who had set up home in Nice. Froome had moved from Italy to Monaco and was getting specialist coaching every day. The components of a great racer were already there for anyone to see. The right-sized block of good-quality stone.
Julich just needed to keep chipping away. Life skills. Bike skills. Race skills.
According to Team Sky’s daily plan for Stage Thirteen to Saint-Amand-Montrond, Rod Ellingworth and Carsten Jeppesen must travel ahead of the race and, among other things, they will check which way the wind is blowing and how it will affect the race. Like scouts in old Westerns, they go ahead of the cavalry and send back messages.
Jeppesen drives while Ellingworth writes notes in his race bible on the page that shows the day’s itinerary. At the top of the page, he writes ‘56km, out of town, straight and open roads, full crosswinds’. Often Ellingworth asks Jeppesen to stop the car so he can get out and feel the wind on his face and better understand how it will be for the riders.
From 50km to the finish, his pencil works a double shift. At the town of Segry, he notes, ‘real open after town and heavy surface’. On the right margin little arrows point towards the last 30km: ‘small roads and crosswinds,’ ‘open road and headwind’. Ellingworth then texts his notes to the two directeurs sportifs, Nico Portal and Servais Knaven, in the race cars and the information is passed on to the riders.
Riders need to know what’s coming up, but knowing is not a guarantee they will act upon it. And there are a few teams sensing possibility for carnage now.
The first beneficiary of the chaos is a big fish. Alberto Contador, who up until now, with about 30km left, has been content to hang in with the lead group and let his teammates contribute to the workload. They have been buffeted for much of the day but they’ve a plan that will show the truth in an old maxim: it’s an ill-wind that blows no good.
Suddenly, Contador and his five teammates are gone as if they have heard a signal outside of everyone else’s audible range. The move is initiated and led by Mick Rogers. Later, there will be rueful smiles in Team Sky land. A year ago Rogers was doing this sort of thing for them.
Others in the lead group sense what is happening as the Saxo riders gather at the front. Mark Cavendish, finding himself alongside Geraint Thomas, whispers a warning that something’s going to happen. Be ready. Thomas isn’t in the best position, trapped a little on the right-hand side.
Then the Saxos have gone, created a gap, and because there are six of them, they team time trial at the front, open a gap and create a no-man’s-land between their break-away and the pursuit. The ten seconds after the attack are vital. Cavendish is lucky. ‘I nearly missed the final split. Kwiatkowski [teammate Michał] got me halfway across and then I shouted to him to move left. I sprinted and just managed to get in the echelon. When echelons form it’s similar to falling through ice . . . you’ve got five seconds to save yourself or it’s all over.’
They latch on like two drifters catching a departing train.
All eyes switch to Froome. The membership lists are closing for this break right now. Mollema is safely there, so too his teammate ten Dam. In fact, every rider who will be in the top seven this evening is there. Except Froome. Fifteen are gone and not coming back.
In their team cars and on the bus, Team Sky’s back-up men are surprised. Why isn’t he there? What was he thinking? ‘I looked at Cav’s back wheel and thought, “I’m going to get there,” but Cav took a hand sling from one of his teammates and then sprinted to get on. Minute I saw that, I thought, “No way am I going to be able to do that on my own.”’
Froome’s brothers Jeremy and Jonathan are accountants and Chris, the youngest, received the same calculating gene. If he surges after Cavendish he enters the open space between breakaways and those behind and he will end up fighting the wind on his own.
He’s strong, he’s determined, even bloody-minded, but he’s not a sprinter like Cavendish and he’s not stupid. Refusing to plunge into that no-man’s-land is probably the single smartest thing he has done on the Tour. Instead he looks around to check on what support he’s got.
Richie Porte is gone. Pete Kennaugh has just slipped off the back like a drowning man disappearing beneath the surface. Kosta Siutsou is visibly fading. David López drove himself hard early on as per instructions and his race is already ridden. Geraint Thomas is residing in his private house of pelvic pain for this Tour, yet it will be himself and Ian Stannard who are in position to help. Thomas will be the last to fall away.
The lead stretches. Soon it is clear that Sky’s reduced and bedraggled team are riding not to catch the leaders but to limit the damage they will suffer. With 5km to go they are one minute behind but Froome is on his own, leading the chase, refusing to panic. He now shows the rider he has become. When everyone misses the bus, what matters is how you react after it’s departed.
Froome keeps pedalling. But he’s not desperate and he doesn’t waste energy wondering why the team hasn’t been better today. Most of all he lives to fight another day. Ventoux is ahead, looming ominously in the schedule. If he can get to Ventoux with as much energy as possible, then he can be the pied piper and others will dance to his tune.
And the accountant in him knows that on flat stages like this one, a minute only seems like a long time. In the mountains, a minute is what you lose riding from one hairpin to the next. When we speak a few days later he won’t deny the loss he and the team have suffered but neither will he see it for more than it’s worth.
‘The way Contador and his team rode shows you can’t let your guard down. Before yesterday I thought Valverde was my biggest rival but he was knocked out of contention, and Contador is now the most dangerous. In the mountains and the time trial, I will be okay. When there’s crosswinds and any team lining up near the front, I’ve got to be on their wheels. End of story.’
Notably he didn’t say, ‘We’ve got to be on their wheels.’ The more I see of Froome, the more I warm to him.
Into Saint-Amand-Montrond Mark Cavendish takes his win. His twenty-fifth in an outstanding career. He points his fingers at the skies. One day they toss urine at you, the next day it is laurels. Chris Froome rolls over the line 1'09" behind. His advantage in the General Classification has had a big lump taken from it but he lives. The yellow jersey is still his. He even allows himself just a razor thin smile when receiving it. He is just 2'28" ahead of Mollema in the GC. Contador is third at 2'45". Valverde has vanished.
This evening I travel from the finish with Ellingworth and Kerrison. They’re talking about how they’ve seen the day.
Ellingworth says it’s been a hard day for everyone in the team.
‘I worry a little bit about G and Ian and Pete because they fucking nailed themselves out there.’
TK: ‘Day like today, you miss Kiry [Vasil Kiryienka]. And a good Kosta [Kanstantsin Siutsou] . . . I don’t know that we can be so confident about what’s to come but we will know if we have a good Chris. It’s so hard because when you look at him, he always looks so fucked after the stage.’
RE: ‘I think the Ventoux is perfect for Chris. I don’t think he wanted to empty the tank today.’
TK: ‘We have said that for the second time trial he can bury himself, but he needs to be a bit careful, given the next three stages are hard, and how he felt after the last time trial. But I think he needs to be a bit careful on the next time trial, certainly not lose time, try to take time. The difference between ninety-nine per cent and one hundred per cent is small in relation to time but can be a lot in fatigue.’
RE: ‘The Annecy stage is going to be so hard, you could have a three-and-a-half-minute lead on that stage and still lose.’
TK: ‘But that’s Stage Twenty [of twenty-one].’
RE: ‘What I mean is he’s going to have to be calculating.’
TK: ‘We have the best climber and the best time trialler in the race, with a ti
me trial and three mountain top finishes to come. It’s not over yet.’
I sit silently, letting two of the best brains in the business air their thoughts, hopes and nerves without interruption. As I look out upon Auvergne’s hills and pastures, post-stage analysis as my soundtrack, I am acutely aware of the access I am enjoying. Other journalists will now return to their hotels for another round of dinner, sleep and breakfast with only their speculations to cling on to between stages and press events. Instead, I live among the riders, coaches, managers, mechanics and carers that keep this team in the yellow jersey, following the Tour from inside Team Sky.
Julich solved the mystery of Chris Froome like a veteran detective working a complex case. Brailsford’s old adage about a £900,000 rider with a coach would be proved true. Froome says that one of the greatest misapprehensions people have about him is that he is naturally skinny, that he could live on a diet of Big Mac meals and not gain a pound. The truth is that he is obsessive about food, snacks on nothing more fattening than bean sprouts, and has to work at his conditioning.
His tutelage under Julich coincided with the growing influence of Tim Kerrison’s ideas. Bradley Wiggins, somewhat envious himself of Froome’s build, has noted that when he got serious about road racing his weight fell away. He was between 81-82kg at the Beijing Games in 2008 but weighed 73kg the following summer in France. For Froome it was a similar story as he adopted the regime of no breakfast rides. In the spring of 2011 he weighed 73kg. In September he weighed 68kg. Consider that the UCI imposes a minimum weight limit of 6.8kg for bikes used in the Tour. Froome shed almost the weight of a bike from his 6 foot 1 inch body.
Finally he was ready for the road.
The bilharzia persists. Eggs can get trapped in the liver, the lungs, even the brain, and the difficulty with treatment is that they can’t eradicate eggs trapped within tissues and organs during lengthy infection. Sometimes in rare cases the long-term avoidance of organ damage requires chemotherapy, a detail which has occasionally been seized upon to bolster the accusation that Froome has hugely exaggerated the problems associated with bilharzia. He hasn’t. Froome has never had anything but conventional treatment and has never claimed to have suffered anything from treatments beyond the usual week of feeling bad. He had a third dose after the Criterium International in 2012 and in early 2013 tests showed that the condition persisted. He has no Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) for any drugs concerning bilharzia or anything else.