by Walsh, David
They have missed out and, of course, they then try to salvage the wreck of their day. Europcar’s best rider, Pierre Rolland, counter-attacks with the German Marcus Burghardt. They are in turn chased by Cofidis’s Christophe Le Mével. Wearing the polka-dot jersey of mountains leader, Rolland chases for a long time, and gets to within 15 seconds of the breakaways.
Brailsford has a vested interest in the outcome of this race-within-a-race, and from his seat at the front of the team bus, he leans forward, animated. On days like this his chimp can feel he’s back in the zoo at feeding time. ‘Go on, Rolland, you’re there, just one more bit.’ But the final bit is the hardest. Rolland can’t close and the gap begins to widen again.
‘Shit,’ says Brailsford. ‘Rolland will sit up now, wait for his team and they will start chasing the break which is what we don’t want. But this is fairly typical of Europcar, they miss their opportunity, they then try to get the break back and they piss off a lot of people. What we want is for the leaders to stay away, with our guys chipping away at the lead until it all comes together at the foot of Ventoux. Then let the strong guys sort themselves out.’
Rolland does sit up, the pack devours him and then Europcar’s green jerseys are massed at the front, trying to save their honour. Brailsford thinks it’s all a waste of time, which it is, but he lived in St Etienne for three years and learned to understand the mentality and the culture. So despite the protestations, he knows.
On Bastille Day, no Frenchman takes defeat lying down.
This is how to behave, Gary Blem believes. With respect and consideration. The way that Chris Froome behaves. Guy like that, with his politeness and his steel always wrapped in velvet? Men will walk the line for him.
Gary with his shoulder-length hair. When you see him first you wonder if perhaps he won’t be the rebel digit in Dave Brailsford’s complex equation for success, but his loyalty runs deep. There are things he likes and dislikes about the environment he is in, but the big picture never eludes him. Today he has watched young Pete Kennaugh put in a tough, tough shift and he admires him for it. Kennaugh is young and he still wants to tackle the world and wrestle it to the floor. Søren Kristiansen, the team chef, complains that Kennaugh has been short and disrespectful towards him, but Søren, a Dane, has never lived on the Isle of Man.
And Kennaugh has that thing, that edge his fellow Manxman, Mark Cavendish has, a belief that he is the best and the strongest. And by the way, everybody else is wrong.
Blem watches and tolerates. But there is a line he doesn’t like to see crossed.
‘There’s a point you know, I leave them in the race because in the race they always stress, but, after the race if the rider’s still got the same attitude, straight away I’ll put them in their place. But in a nice way. I’ll speak to them and say, “Look, what is your issue? If you have a problem with me, tell me straight and I can always organise someone else to look after you or whatever, but at the end of the day we need to work together.” It’s about respect.’
And that’s how he gets through the long days. Team Sky isn’t an outfit that does high fives. Certainly not without cleaning their hands with alcohol rub immediately afterwards. The idea is to keep the emotion in check. Let the computer run the race. The chimp inside you can celebrate in Paris.
So this Chris Froome. He’s the guy who came with his girlfriend Michelle to Gary’s barbecue back in Pretoria last November. The guy who played with Gary’s baby daughter Hannah and who never spoke about cycling.
‘An average human being. Nothing special. You know?’
As Ventoux looms, the affairs of the breakaways become less relevant. Their expiry date comes in the trees of the foothills, reeled in like a fish on the end of a line. This doesn’t happen without a last nervous twitch from the dying French challenge. Sylvain Chavanel counter-attacks from the fragmenting lead group, as if somehow he can stay ahead of the tidal wave surging towards him. Futile.
The serious business will go down in the group surrounding Froome and his yellow jersey. There he has Richie Porte and Pete Kennaugh for protection and another twenty-three riders eyeing his top like vultures. Among them: 2011 champion Cadel Evans; the two Saxo-Tinkoff riders Alberto Contador and his sidekick Roman Kreuziger; the two Movistars Alejandro Valverde and Nairo Quintana; the Belkins Bauke Mollema and Laurens ten Dam; and Garmin’s Dan Martin.
The plan to isolate and exhaust Froome before Mont Ventoux has not been a success. It is time for Plan B. Ventoux’s first 5km are cruelly gentle, because the 16km of climbing that follow are murderously steep. Much of the middle section, with its 8 to 10 per cent gradients, is lined with trees that offer protection from the sun. But then you leave the forest and come out onto the famous scree slopes, with the weather tower on top and the micro climate which makes this place different from most places on earth.
With more than 200km in their legs, even the modest early slopes claim good men. Rolland who had fought so valiantly for Europcar drops like a stone, as does the talented young American Tejay van Garderen, who should be doing better. Also feeling the hard tug of gravity is Andy Schleck, who enjoyed greater success on this climb four years ago when he and his brother Frank slugged it out with Contador on the penultimate stage of the race.
The first sign of a Plan B comes from the precocious young Colombian Quintana. It’s an oddity of Tour coverage that any Colombian doing anything impressive on the mountain stages is beyond question, because like some sort of exotic species they are bred at altitude. Froome’s life at altitude in Nairobi and the Ngong Hills will not buy him any such exemption from suspicion. Few even realise he was nurtured at altitude.
Anyway, with the smooth acceleration we will become accustomed to, Quintana breaks away with 10km to go. At this point Team Sky’s tough young Manx Pete Kennaugh is just about to clock off his shift of hauling Froome through the early inclines.
Froome is a quiet and reserved man addicted to his pleases and thank yous, but through this terrain he needs tough cookies. Kennaugh is four years younger than Richie Porte, but climbs well and isn’t afraid to get to the front of this elite group on one of the most brutal mountains and push on. Some of the guys complain he’s too headstrong and too lippy, but they know he’s worth the effort.
Porte, the Tasmanian (or ‘the angry little man’ of the Tour, as Froome occasionally refers to his friend in jest), takes over at this point. He ups the tempo. Riders fall off the back, but it is still the Sky way, chipping away at the breakaway’s advantage without going into the red zone to do so.
Froome has such an air of formality about him sometimes that you almost expect him to stop the bike to shake Kennaugh’s hand, thank him for his sterling work and wish him a safe journey to the top, but instead he and Porte maintain the same relentless tempo. So strong, that now every other member of their elite group has been burned off. It’s the two of them bearing down on the Colombian.
There are moments in any Tour de France that are pivotal and this is one of them. Froome isn’t making a swashbuckling solo pursuit of the Colombian. His comrade Porte is calmly leading him to his prey. ‘Froomey, I will bring you to him, then you deal with him.’
Soon Quintana is in their sights, the picture of his back and behind growing bigger with each pedal stroke. They join up and take a little breather, giving Contador an opportunity to come from a little behind and make the leaders a group of four. Buoyed by this little victory, the Spaniard will think that maybe he can do something now, but Froome knows Quintana is the greater threat.
There is an arresting theatrical drama about Ventoux when the riders get to the top of the tree line and come out into the blinding light of the moonscape beyond. It is a mountain built to stage final acts.
This final act begins with Froome attacking and leaving everybody for dead except Quintana. Tactically it is a master class, and illustrates how much wisdom Team Sky have been able to plant in Froome’s head these past few years. The younger, straight out of Africa, Froome would h
ave chased down every break of the day before finding himself out of gas.
Or on another day from the early years he would have looked around him, taking in all the big names, and decided his only chance was to attack from far out, when they weren’t paying much attention. They would think he was mad and do what bike riders have done since 1903: give him enough rope to hang himself. He would often get a good placing on the stage but would have emptied his tank to do so. The next day, he would sleep with the fishes.
But here on Ventoux, he is calculating, waiting for the right moment. And his understanding of the perfect strategic climb is no coincidence. Froome has climbed Ventoux before. Twice.
Back in May, Chris came to the mountain to film an episode of The Ride, organised by Eurosport and Oakley. One amateur, a Norwegian competition winner named Jonas, would climb with two pros: Sean Kelly, former Irish pro cyclist and 1982 Tour de France stage winner; and this year’s hot favourite, the Kenyan man of the mountains.
Along the route Sean recalled his experiences on the inclines, where he attacked and where he struggled. The pace was steady despite Sean attacking from a little way out and a valiant attack in the final stages by the Norwegian amateur on the year’s most hotly tipped pro. Still, Froome yearned for a harder ride, for a proper go at the climb he would have to repeat in the Tour just two months away.
So what did he do? What could you do after reaching the top of one France’s toughest climbs?
‘I went and rode it myself again afterwards, just on my own. At a faster pace.’
The fun ride was over. Now time for the serious stuff. This time, without nostalgic flashbacks rehearsed for the cameras and no one to worry about leaving behind, he could get a proper feel for the slopes. Although alone on two wheels, he had his professional, and personal, support following him on four, in the form of directeur sportif Nicolas Portal and girlfriend Michelle Cound. With his head down but his eyes open, he started plotting the perfect climb.
When Chris Froome hits Ventoux and closes down Quintana like a lion about to make lunch of an antelope, Gary Blem shifts his head into neutral. If he thinks about what is happening, his closeness to it all, he’ll feel intimidated and awestruck.
He will make a point of not watching this on television later. Then his thoughts might wander to the size of the audience he is part of. He might begin to notice the fanatics who press forward, narrowing the path for Froome and Quintana to race up. The fact that this is a mad and crazy phenomenon for which, in his own little way, he is responsible might just dawn on him.
‘So long as I don’t see television, they’re just another rider wearing cycling kit, and I treat them like a normal, an average human being, nothing special, you know?’
Froome and Quintana soar past a stèle at the side of the road. It is the monument to British rider Tom Simpson whose life, forty-six years and one day previously, was claimed by this mountain while riding on a cocktail of alcohol and amphetamines. It is a monument which marks a different time.
Does Blem ever wonder if the men he serves are part of the brotherhood of the needle? He has thought about it. No man who has been around cycling for years hasn’t. No way, he thinks.
‘As a rider you’d have to be an absolute fool to dope in this team. It’s the wrong team for you if you want to dope. Chris did this last year as well. But what’s nice is it’s consistent now. It’s not erratic, it’s not like he’s coming up to this thing going bam, and then disappearing. He’s been really, really, really consistent.’
Nairo Quintana won’t go away. Every time Froome tries to leave him behind, the Colombian finds another air pocket which gives him enough energy to live off. Froome has one tactic left and it’s not a surprising one. He burned Contador off with 6.5km to go by injecting a short burst of acceleration into the climb. At the end of a long day, it is a deadly weapon.
He uses it on Quintana again and again, and is beginning to reconcile himself to not taking the stage win today when the youngster runs out of responses. For the last 1.5km the gap grows and Froome wins by 29 seconds. Afterwards people will say he should have let the Colombian win the stage for it was his attack that ignited the race. And after his victory in the Pyrenees, Froome didn’t need it.
But the argument is not logical and owes something to the general tiredness with Team Sky’s dominance. Froome didn’t need the victory on Ventoux, though it is the greatest of his career so far, but he may need the extra time that his final acceleration has gained on all rivals. He was prepared to let Quintana have the stage, but unprepared to wait for him.
As Froome crosses the line, he throws his right arm into the air and allows his left hand to rest close to his heart. Had he been listening carefully he would have heard, in the midst of the cheering, the noise of people booing. Almost six hours have passed since leaving Givors; the attacking, the counter-attacking, the chess-like plays on the mountain that foretold the final surge, and when you arrive? The sound of disapproval.
Froome hears but is not listening. Some don’t believe, others don’t like Sky. Always suspicion hangs in the air and his aggressive style of racing causes the clouds to thicken. When he breaks clear of Quintana, he seems unnaturally strong but nothing he does on the mountain is much different from what he does in training.
Christophe Bassons, the clean French rider in the Festina team of the 1990s, used to say he never had any problem climbing with Richard Virenque on training rides. It was just in the races that Virenque was a different animal, transformed by the stuff he was taking. When Brailsford and Kerrison examine Froome’s numbers after Ventoux, they will agree they were good but not as good as some of the training numbers.
Doping is not the sole cause of disaffection.
Consider this from a French point of view. Twenty-eight years have passed since Bernard Hinault’s victory in the 1985 Tour. With the exception of Laurent Fignon in 1989, no French rider has worn a yellow jersey anywhere near the Champs-Elysées since then. Along comes an Englishman in 2009, sets up a team that he enters in the 2010 Tour and three years later his team is about to win the race for a second time.
Two weeks of the Tour have passed. Froome is trying to roll with the punches. Nothing for it but to wait by the finish for his rivals to make their weary way to the summit of Ventoux before the end of day rituals of media bites, podium presentations and doping control.
In the scant moments of calm he gets a chance to think back to the race as he dreamed it two months ago, as he rode alone up the now conquered peak. How similar was the race stage, peloton and all, to May’s battle plan?
‘I’d sort of pictured it to be pretty similar to how it panned out. I had planned to hit the bottom with the whole team pulling at the front, so that we were in prime position. But then once we were on the climb, I’d envisaged that it would be easier then to back off a little bit, and let other teams take it up. Which is exactly what happened and I was left with Richie and Pete, who then, later on on the climb, came and started working. And setting a really hard pace, so, I’d sort of seen the bottom really steep part, I’d figured out that other teams were going to take that up anyway, and it didn’t really matter if it was us or someone else pulling at that point, but I thought it was better to try and save the guys for a little bit later on.’
So far so good. But what about that ambitious solo attack from 8km out?
‘Yeah. I had thought Richie would be there until the final sort of two or three Ks, but given that it was so hard up until that halfway point and he was already in pieces I thought, okay, here. I can really gain big time if I go here and the guys are left chasing for the last eight K, could open up some big gaps.’
But all in all a successful recce?
‘Yeah, it wasn’t far off.’
Chris Froome is in the A-Team, and he loves it when a plan comes together.
He smiles broadly and thanks his confederates. It has been a long day but he has taken time on everyone, and has extended his overall lead to more than 4
minutes on Mollema and Contador.
Gary Blem knows there is a week of racing to go, and a tough one at that, but the likelihood now is that he will be back home in Pretoria next Tuesday in time for little Hannah’s birthday, and that he will return home as part of the Tour de France winning team. The nice man who came to their house for the barbecue will be champion.
And tomorrow, Monday, is a rest day. He might look forward to that, but there is a record-breaking gust about to hit Ventoux. Accusations and insinuations flying at 198mph. The questions will come by reflex, thrown in the knowledge that anybody who loves cycling has a right to ask questions, but thrown without much constructive thought as to how to move the discussion or the inquiry forward.
Froome has hardly stepped off his bike, but the humming wires of the social media universe can be heard conveying the doubt and outrage of the armchair jury. The doubts which had been festering all season and through the first week of the Tour about Team Sky and their collective strength vanished after the team’s collapse in the Pyrenees. Now it’s just the yellow jersey they worry about.
Nobody could do what we have just seen Chris Froome do and sleep soundly at night.
Why not? They just couldn’t.
Coming down the mountain, the forest echoes with the sound of statistics being fired in anger. The Ngong Hills are very far away indeed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.’
Mark Twain
A few nights before Ventoux I had a fascinating evening in the company of Dave Brailsford and Tim Kerrison. The men were discussing an email that Dave had received from Antoine Vayer, the French sports scientist who, with his co-author Frédéric Portoleau, has created a model that allows them to estimate the power output of riders on the climbs of the Tour de France.
They compare these power outputs to what they believe is possible without doping and then, depending upon the extent to which a rider exceeds this limit, he is deemed suspicious or even more. In Le Monde the previous day, Monday, Vayer wrote that Froome’s performance on the 7.8km climb to Ax 3 Domaines was beyond the limit of what’s possible clean. He had more or less accused Froome of having doped.