by Walsh, David
This sounds like a small thing. It isn’t. The aftermath of a stage is key to recovery. The bus is key to the aftermath. Team Sky own two of the celebrated Volvo 9700 buses. They are maybe the symbol of how Team Sky do things. Getting ready to launch in January 2010, and having completed the controversial and expensive signing of Bradley Wiggins from Garmin-Sharp, the team needed a chariot to bear him in.
Not content with merely looking like a Decepticon waiting to transform, the Volvo has even played a part in claiming the scalp of one of Sky’s original Autobots.
There were many reasons why it didn’t work out between Team Sky and its first ‘senior’ directeur sportif Scott Sunderland. For a start, Scott liked the word ‘senior’ before his job title. Big mistake. An Australian, Sunderland had enjoyed a long career in the European peloton and knew his way around. There was much he felt he could teach the fledgling Team Sky, but he didn’t seem to get it that Dave Brailsford didn’t want his team to be a newer version of the old continental European model.
Brailsford dreamt of something very different. For example, when Sunderland thought the team should have more or less the same team bus as the best European teams, he unwittingly insulted Brailsford’s intelligence. Why, thought Brailsford, would we do that when every time he stepped on board a traditional team bus, he was struck by how badly designed they were on the inside? What Brailsford saw was an interior designed by people who saw riders as just one part of the team, not the central part.
So he employed designers who had worked with Formula 1 teams Honda and Benetton to create a bespoke high-spec performance vehicle in which to convey his prize assets. The buses were refitted from scratch over a period of four months. It’s not, however, so easy to refit humans from scratch and midway through his first full season with the team, Scott Sunderland departed. As he’d signed a three-year contract, there was a financial settlement and an agreement that ensured both parties would in the future speak glowingly of the other.
Brailsford had ideas that Sunderland would never have conceived, and certainly had never seen during his racing days. Team Sky’s psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters was commissioned to design mood-lighting to help the riders relax. The front of the bus carries the riders in large comfortable seats which swivel and recline, just nine seats because there will never be more than nine riders at one race. The rear of the bus is a meeting room cum treatment room cum work area. It is here, on long flat stages of the Tour, that Brailsford will catch up on lost sleep.
Each rider has a personal WiFi, and a fold-away table for laptops, a socket panel containing charging docks. And of course there are Sky Boxes. On the ride back to a team hotel or the journey to a stage, riders can Skype, surf the net, watch a movie, listen to music or just sleep.
Energy drinks and food are on their seats when they board the bus. There are showers, toilets and fridges, and a washing machine and drier so that gear can be washed on the road. Open the fridge you’ve got an assortment of chilled drinks, freshly made tuna pasta dishes, yoghurts. Everyone swears by the coffee-maker.
That coffee-maker won’t be making it to the summit of Alpe d’Huez tomorrow, but preparations must go on regardless. As one by one the staff finish their tasks and turn in, I watch Mark Dzalo and David Rozman, two Slovenian carers, complete their final job of the night – filling the big cooler box in the team cars with ice. Through this Tour, these guys have handled more ice than a gang of workers in a fish factory. The Alpe tomorrow. Biggest day of all. They are ahead of themselves. In the morning they can top the bag up with more ice. Bring it on.
There are 177 riders left and for those who have hung in there through sheer bloody-mindedness or just to defy their broken pelvises, today is a perverse reward of sorts. You’d have to be a cyclist to love this place. Alpe d’Huez! The mountain put on this earth to break men. You pass two churches on the way up, just in case you feel like it’s time to make your peace with the Man above.
If you are riding out today though, this is the climb you tell the grandchildren about. And some day when you are dandling them on your lap, they will brace themselves well for the story of this particular day. The Tour has channelled Levi Roots for this year’s stage planning – Alpe d’Huez is so nice you’ll climb it twice.
Here is the gnarled spiritual heart of the Tour de France. The first summit to host a finish, back in 1952. Before that, mountains were just obstacles on the way to finishes on the flat. Each of those draining switchback hairpin bends is named after a stage winner on l’Alpe. Today the estimates of the crowd lining the twenty-one hairpin bends range from 750,000 to double that. People claimed the best spots a week ago. The climb is 13.8km with an average gradient of more than 8 per cent. It starts with a few kilometres at 10 per cent. Just as a meet and greet.
At the summit we will be at an altitude of 1,850m. We will also be in a car. For this much, thanks.
Of course it would be too easy if the riders just rode up l’Alpe twice in an afternoon. Far too easy . . . Instead, the final climb will come at the end of a gruelling 172km stage with a series of four lesser climbs and a spin up l’Alpe along the way. That’s more like it. All that and fans pushing and pulling at riders in the afternoon sun. This is cycling’s waterboarding.
From the start the pace is hectic. Jens Voigt, one of the peloton’s breakaway addicts, is restless. He makes an early break, gets caught, and then surfs the wave created by Saxo-Tinkoff’s early aggression. Good old Jens. Who said that the Germans don’t do optimism?
Eventually an escape group of nine establishes itself and pushes on down the road, hoping for the best. After 60km they have a decent lead of nearly 6'30", but they know that when the peloton wants to it can reel them back in at a rate of one minute every 10km. Doing the maths has never been more depressing.
It would seem Saxo-Tinkoff have had a hearty breakfast and an inspiring team talk. They are full of ideas and gambits. Just a week ago these boys made a little theatrical production out of toasting themselves following a modest success on Stage Thirteen.
Since then all has not gone well for Saxo-Tinkoff. Yesterday was another setback. Froome won the time trial, with Contador second. Sport can be brutal. By this point in the race, Contador knows he can’t take Froome’s yellow jersey and he’s just trying to get something for himself, one victory he can look back on and think, ‘Yeah, that was a good day.’
The time trial from Embrun to Chorges was that opportunity for Contador. At 32km, with two second category climbs and a weather forecast that made slippery descents likely, it favoured Contador more than Froome. After all, the Team Sky rider had 4'30" cushion and mentally he geared himself up to ride conservatively and limit the time losses to his rivals.
Contador went for it, as did the other Spaniard, Joaquim Rodríguez, and when the Saxo rider beat his compatriot’s time by a single second, it seemed certain he would claim a stage victory after all. Froome was the only one who could beat him and as the roads dried through the final third of the race, the Sky rider changed bikes to allow him to take better advantage of the flatter final section of the course.
At the finish line Contador waited, knowing he was ahead of Froome at all of the intermediate time checks but fearing the race leader would keep on keeping on. He did, and by finishing strongly, he bettered Contador’s time by 9 seconds. In Chorges that evening Alberto Contador was the picture of misery.
Commenting on the achievement of Contador and his team mate Roman Kreuziger leap-frogging over Bauke Mollema and claiming second and third in the overall standings, Saxo’s directeur sportif said he was glad that his riders had ‘conquered the two lesser places on the podium’. With three Alpine stages to come, his talk of conquering podium places seemed as premature as the little dinner-table celebration in Le Veurdre five days before.
Back at the Team Sky hotel in Embrun, Brailsford slept through most of the time trial, waking in time to watch the finish on television.
‘Chris has always been a good time-triallist,’
he said afterwards, ‘that’s where I first saw him, in Melbourne in the Commonwealth Games in 2006, first time I set eyes on him. Nathan O’Neill won that time trial, we had Steve Cummings and the usual suspects. I was there with Doug Dailey and Shane [Sutton]. Shane’s saying [in Brailsford’s best Australian twang], “You’re not going to believe this, some bloke’s turned up in sand shoes, jumped on his bike and look what he’s done. In a pair of fucking sand shoes!”
‘We all looked and thought bloody hell that guy is impressive. He wasn’t up there, but it was impressive, you know, he caught the eye. And he was completely unknown. And then Doug, being Doug, said, “Ah, I might have a word with him, lads,” they got in touch, and the rest . . . was history really.’
Arising from Contador’s gut-wrenching loss in the time trial is the likelihood of further disappointment. He gave that time trial everything he had, but it wasn’t enough and he knows he can’t match Froome in the mountains. Who’d want two ascents of the Alpe after that? He came here expecting to duke it out with Froome. Instead he is being badly beaten and has been denied the one victory that would have softened his fall.
Two of his Saxo comrades, Sérgio Paulinho and Nicolas Roche, are sent ahead of the main bunch, not so much to chase down the leaders but to be in a position to help Contador when the race gets serious. Looking sprightly, they head off into the great unknown.
The nine men in the break hit the halfway mark of the stage with a lead of 7'15". There are 88.5km remaining. Too early for anybody to get excited. By this point Paulinho and Roche are still on their own somewhere between the escapees and the main field. Though they are racing, they are also waiting for the moment when their services will be needed.
It is the kind of tactic a team uses when its main man is on the ropes.
At around half past one, lunch is done with and the riders sit up straight in their saddles and contemplate. Fed and watered, Team Sky lead the peloton. The break is still ongoing, but no one there worries Froome. All are too far back. Contador is waiting, waiting, lurking behind Sky. He’s got one foot in the grave but he keeps pedalling with the other one.
At just after two o’clock the first five of the fragmented breakaway group hits l’Alpe for the first time. Chris Froome and Team Sky are still at the front of the peloton, winding their way through the twenty-one hairpin bends that will take them to the summit. Ian Stannard has done his job and dropped back. Kosta Siutsou takes a shift driving the rhythm. Nicolas Roche gets caught by the peloton.
The mountain is a world of chaos and a house of pain. The riders’ progress is impeded on each side of the road by the seething masses of fans. Hairpin corners offer the best observation posts and attract the densest crowds. There is a ‘Dutch corner’ which has drawn a huge number of fans from the Netherlands that fill almost a kilometre of road.
There is also an Irish corner for the first time, less populous than its Dutch equivalent, but with enough green and raucous cheering to distinguish it. Every group has its favourites among the cyclists. It isn’t a universal feeling, but if there were to be a referendum for which team are getting it in the neck, Team Sky would have a second yellow jersey.
Coming through the tiny little village of Chantelouve back down the road, somebody has taken the trouble to hang a curiously inquisitive banner. Simply: ‘FROOME?’
Now on the corner where the Irish have gathered hangs another banner. ‘FROOME DOPÉ’. A camper van with four Frenchmen in it is reckoned to be responsible. They fixed it to the bare rock, just over four Irish tricolours. The first time the cyclists come up this corner three of the occupants run towards Froome and squirt water at him from large toy syringes. He assumes it’s water, but he doesn’t know. It is fired at pressure and mostly what he wants is to keep it out of his mouth on the chance that there is a contaminant lurking in there.
The yellow jersey instinctively strikes out with its right sleeve and punches the assailant in the face, an act of physical violence utterly at odds with the character of its inhabitant. ‘Some of the stuff went into my mouth, it might have been beer but I was conscious of not wanting to swallow even a drop and just kept spitting out. I was thinking, “What if there’s some product in that stuff?”’
All the way up to the top some fans scream at Sky riders while miming shooting up. Eggs smash against the cars, beer too, and when a car slows enough for the jeering mob to rock it from side to side, that’s what they do. The abuse is worse on some parts of the climb than others.
Froome is used to some interaction with the gallery. He often tells the story of how, on Stage Seventeen of the Vuelta in 2011, a spectator ran up to him and put a proposition to him. ‘You win. I kill you.’ He dismissed the guy as a lone crazy but three more showed up with the same message before the finish line. This, though, in its own way, has more ugliness to it. This felt like a siege.
The race rolls on. Upwards and onwards. This is just the first climb. The pandemonium can only grow.
The American rider Tejay van Garderen is out on his own at the front of the race now, 7'45" ahead of the peloton, with 56km left. Christophe Riblon is the closest man to Van Garderen, about 15 seconds back. Riblon is French so this is major excitement. Behind them, the field continues to thin out and 2011 winner Cadel Evans gets dropped again. It has been a tough Tour for the Australian. They battle to the summit. Van Garderen first, Christophe Riblon next. For the French it would be the best day of the Tour if Riblon could win. So he will be excused the left hook he swings towards an over-enthusiastic countryman who almost blocks his way up the hill.
Crazy scenes now, fans spilling everywhere. Sérgio Paulinho who made that odd break with Roche is finally caught and almost immediately gets spat out the back of the peloton. That was one tactical gambit which didn’t work.
Froome and four Team Sky riders are still battling through the multitudes as they hold position near the front of the peloton. Up ahead, Moreno Moser of Italy catches van Garderen and has the moderate thrill of being first over l’Alpe this time round. It’s him, van Garderen and Riblon for the descent down Col de Sarenne, which is either very tricky or very crazy depending on who you speak with. Or depending on the weather.
Five minutes later the Team Sky guys roll over the summit. Shadowed still by Contador, Roman Kreuziger, Nairo Quintana and Joaquim Rodríguez, the race is now less about the yellow jersey but the places alongside him on the podium. Sure, if Froome weakens the others are ready, but no one expects it and his lead is big enough to allow for a relatively bad day. Better for the others to fight for what they believe is winnable.
Behind, in the convoy of cars, Team Sky have unexpected problems. The two soigneurs, Marko and David, who last night packed the cooler with ice, had duly topped up with more ice this morning. Unbeknown to them the previous evening’s ice had begun to melt at the bottom of the cooler and on the descent from the Col d’Ornon, 15km before the first of two ascents of Alpe d’Huez, Gary Blem was sitting in the back of the team car when he heard water sloshing about in the cooler.
Not good. Around the tight corners on the descent, the water crashed against the sides of the cooler, some spilling out into the boot of the car and, from there, into the electronics.
This was the Number One team car, driven by the directeur sportif, Nicolas Portal, but also carrying News Corp’s James Murdoch and Blem. They just about got the car to the top of Alpe d’Huez. A stop-start-stop business through the hairpins even on a good day, Portal knew something wasn’t right with the car. Then the dashboard panel began to light up like a fruit machine. Flashing warning lights everywhere. Blem reached back and saw the water, all over the boot, causing the electrical carnage that foretold the day’s disaster.
Things are starting to happen on the bikes too. Out ahead on the descent Moser has been left behind . . . until van Garderen’s chain goes, leaving Riblon clear, until . . . Riblon misjudges a turn at speed and leaves the road to explore ditch and stream . . . leaving Moser to reclaim the lead.
Meanwhile, at the top of the descent, Alberto Contador surveys what’s ahead, takes a deep breath and launches an attack. Chris Froome surveys Alberto Contador, takes a deep breath and says ‘Off you go.’ Froome, the calculator, works it out instinctively. If Contador attacks on the descent it is because he knows he cannot do anything on the climb.
With 21km to go (nearly 14km of that is another climb of Alpe d’Huez), Contador finds himself 20 seconds ahead of Froome and 90 seconds behind Moser and Riblon. At this point he is second overall and still feels he has a chance to win the day.
Meanwhile . . .
On the bumpy descent from the Col de Sarenne which Contador has just hurtled down, the Team Sky Number One car just cuts out. The riders are pushing ahead for the second climb of Alpe d’Huez, but here on the downslope the car has cut out. They give quiet thanks that this has happened on the loneliness of a descent and not amid the wild multitudes on the way up Alpe d’Huez.
Chris Froome will later comment that those scenes between the walls of fanatics reminded him of being stuck in a car in Kenya once with his mother as a riot went on outside. A broken-down Team Sky Jaguar might have been stripped for parts in seconds as the mob turned to piranhas.
On the Col de Sarenne, Gary Blem gets out and coaxes the battery into renewed life. The reprieve, however, lasts only minutes, so they wait on the side of the road for the second team car to come. Seven minutes that seemed to stretch towards eternity. The back-up arrives. They switch cars and head off trying to recover their number one place in the cavalcade.
It was close to hopeless, for by now the leaders were climbing Alpe d’Huez for a second time and, on a road filled with fans, overtaking was dangerous and difficult. Needing to feed before Alpe d’Huez, Froome got teammate Pete Kennaugh to go back to the team car.
‘Car’s not there,’ said Kennaugh on his return.
And if Chris Froome was into his country and western, he might have hummed Kenny Rogers: ‘You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille.’