by David Millar
4. Unique racing. It could go from the gun, equally might be neutralised for most of the day. No one ever really knows.
5. Inevitably the evening meal will comprise pasta that has been (over)cooked hours before and reheated with butter in a microwave, chicken – technique used to cook unknown – green beans (boiled), and apple tart (highlight) and natural yoghurt to finish. Oh, and bread, shitloads of bread.
Daniel Mangeas will be on the PA system at the start and finish – as he has been since the mid-1970s at what seems like every single race in France. This is the best bit.
Tour of Qatar
Qatar is carnage. I’ve only done it once (I may have done it more but if so I’ve erased it from my memory). I have to admit I had fun when I rode it in 2008, but it was savagely intense and crashtastic. There are three reasons for this: it’s flat, it’s windy, and all the Classics riders (aka crazy bastards) go there. The Classics riders are so fucking up for it, there’s usually a race to the start line. Rather than rolling up to the start line in the usual chilled-out fashion, the few kilometres from the neutral start to the départ réel were, the year I rode it, some of the wildest I’ve ever known. It was like being a junior again – that was the last time I felt I might lose the race by not being ready to race from the gun. The official start line became a finish line; the neutral zone became a battle royale in slow motion because, as in every neutral zone, we weren’t allowed to overtake the controlling lead car whose job it was to limit our speed in a manner that had us crossing the départ réel on the exact scheduled time. Never before had I been in a race situation where we were racing before the race.
Then there’s the empty desert landscape, literally in the middle of nowhere surrounded by flat deadlands – no spectators, no buildings, no vegetation and, worst of all, no team buses; just a weird, random castle in a desert, which apparently features every year.
Challenge Mallorca
This is like a drop of early season heaven compared to the other three options. For starters, the genius organisers made it five one-day races instead of a five-day stage race. Meaning we get to choose which days we race – it’s a total luxury.
I chose four of the five races, or, should I say, ‘we’ decided. The team are fully aware of my disdain for the early season and spare me the suffering of the hardest day. Fabian Wegmann and I both skip that particular race, yet we’re such dorks we still go with the team on the bus to the start and hang out and then ride eighty kilometres back to the hotel. (After all, we didn’t have anything else to do.) More importantly, it alleviates the guilt of not racing by sort of being there with the team. As soon as we set off ahead of the race we feel like naughty school boys skiving a day off school. Like I said, dorks.
Ryder
When I arrived at the hotel in Mallorca at the beginning of the week I experienced something I’d never felt before. I felt out of place. It was the strangest thing. Walking past all the team trucks, buses and cars parked up out the front of the hotel I had the sensation that I no longer belonged there among them. Then entering the hotel and looking for the room list I realised that for the first time since 1997 I wasn’t excited – even when I was in bad form and hating January I would always feel a spark of something inside me when I got to that first team hotel of the year. There was simply nothing now, it felt like an old routine, which wouldn’t have been a problem if I didn’t suddenly feel very old.
This was accentuated by the fact that when I did find the room list I became suddenly aware that Christian Vande Velde and Dave Zabriskie were no longer on it, and that two of my other friends, Andreas Klier and Robbie Hunter, had moved column from ‘Rider’ to ‘DS’. I looked closely, sliding my finger down the column reading through all the names. I didn’t recognise a bunch of them. This made me feel even older, so old that I started checking the list again to see who else was old, in the hope I was younger than someone. Then it happened: I realised I’d become the Oldest Rider On The Team. Fucketyfuck, not good. I can still remember vividly being the youngest rider on the team, and, by a long way, I’d never imagined I’d be the oldest on any team.
Thankfully one name was still on there: Ryder Hesjedal. Ryder and I had become close friends over the years. The first time I’d spoken to him was at the Vuelta in 2006 when he was riding for Phonak. He was telling me how he was going back to the States as he was over the European scene. I can remember telling him to stick at it, that he’d regret giving up. He stopped the race that very day, so I’m guessing my motivational talk tipped him over the edge. He went back to the US and rediscovered his mojo, so much so that Jonathan Vaughters signed him up along with me, Christian VdV and Dave Z among others at the start-up of Slipstream Sports.
Ryder comes from the west coast of Canada. I was never aware this was such a big deal until I heard Ryder forever remind people of the fact. Evidently the west coast crushes the rest of Canada – at least that’s how it is to Ryder anyway; he doesn’t speak French and is proud of it, chapeau. He comes from Vancouver Island, which is a pretty epic place – big trees, bears, that sort of thing. Last September I spent a week with Ryder on Vancouver Island and I began to understand why he is the way he is from that trip.
Ryder’s nickname is ‘Legend’. It was created in a mildly sarcastic tone, the same way Little John was actually a really big dude. Ryder has always acted as if he is a legend, way before he had legitimately claimed the right to use the title. He was a big deal in mountain biking at a young age. The best way for me to explain Ryder is to give his life story in cars.
AMC Concord Wagon – $500, sixteen years old: This was his first car. When staying with Ryder I got to see where he comes from and got to know his friends. It was the first time I understood his background, as it’s not something he ever talks about. Langford is their home town; it had suffered economically in the 1980s, resulting in high unemployment to the point of becoming a fairly destitute and desperate area, in other words a tough place to grow up. Although Langford seems to be putting those times behind it now, there are still signs of what it had once been, most poignantly visible in the derelict remains of the secondary school Ryder and his friends went to. They didn’t have much, they were ‘grinders’ as Ryder would say. Cycling was his only opportunity to escape.
Subaru Wagon – $300, seventeen years old: Ryder funded everything himself at the time. He’d more often than not find himself racing against kids who could afford the best equipment. He was already trading down so he could afford to race.
Merkur XR4Ti – $2,500, eighteen years old: This was the first time Ryder started to have some financial control of his own life, thanks to winning money from races and getting small sponsorship deals. One of the first things he did was buy himself a ‘nice’ car.
Acura Integra (Purple/Slammed) – $10,500, nineteen years old: He gets his first big sponsor in Gary Fisher Mountain Bikes and with it enters the Poseur Period. Here the Legend starts to emerge. Slamming meant having the car’s suspension lowered to a degree that more often than not made the car totally unusable in normal circumstances. This was a small price to pay for the level of supposed coolness attained.
Lexus IS 300 (Canary Yellow/18” Chrome wheels/Slammed) – $50,000, twenty-one years old: The poseur progresses to what is commonly known as ‘pimping’. Most easily displayed by the fact he spends $8,000 on a set of chrome wheels for a car so slammed it can barely get off of his driveway. In fact he has to ask his friends to wait until he’s out of the driveway in order for them to get in the car or it won’t make it out.
Lincoln Navigator (White/24” Chrome wheels $14,000) – $100,000, twenty-three years old: This is the zenith of the Pimp Period. Ryder had become one of the best mountain bikers in the world, dominating the scene in the US and becoming a regular presence at the front of World Championship races. His crowning achievement in vulgarity was fitting this car with Gucci (fake) upholstered head rests that he collected personally from New York.
Chevy Avalanche (Fully Blacked
-out/24” Chrome spinners) – $40,000 AND Ford F350 (Black/Full-size Turbo Diesel) – $40,000 AND Chrysler 300C (Hemi/22” Chrome wheels) – $50,000, twenty-four years old: Ryder trades in the Lincoln for two cars and buys a 300C for his home in Vancouver Island. He keeps the 24” chrome wheels and adds spinners to them, which is probably the most ridiculous thing he’s ever done, although it doesn’t last long as he has a near fatal crash in that very car. Him and his friend Seamus are thrown out of the car while it’s flipping and find themselves twenty metres from the eventual wreck. He doesn’t replace the Chevy and he sells the Ford, and keeps the Chrysler at the house he has bought for his parents in Langford. He moves from mountain biking to road cycling, the big pimpin’ life comes to a close. He is paid a fraction of what he earn as a top mountain biker, taking minimum wage from US Postal in pursuit of his Tour de France dream.
Isuzu Trooper (Rent money) – twenty-six years old: He acquires this car in lieu of rent from his friend, Nigel, who has been staying in his house in Victoria. He is in his second year of racing in Europe, with none of the success he is accustomed to. He returns to the US to race for a domestic team on the national scene and leverages himself to the max, buying a small place in Maui in a last-ditch attempt to reinvent himself.
Opel Monterey (Bought in Girona, identical to Isuzu Trooper) – €3,200, twenty-nine years old: Back settled into Europe with Slipstream, he’s now made it, the reinvention has worked. Girona will be his seasonal home for the years ahead, so he buys himself an Opel Monterey, which is the same car as the faithful rent-traded Isuzu Trooper he has in Canada, just branded differently. It’s even the same colour, a sort of army green. The least pimping car imaginable. We nickname it ‘The Unit’.
Mazda 5 (bought from Hertz ‘Rent or Own’ in Maui) – $12,000, thirty-two years old: Ryder wins the Giro. Buys his teammates a Rolex each as a thank-you. Returns to Maui and buys himself a Mazda 5 from a rental agency. All four cars he now owns are worth less than $30,000. When people call him ‘Legend’ now there is not even the slightest hint of sarcasm.
So Ryder has had a fairly unorthodox climb to the top of cycling. He will be the first to say he is a frugal man, and even when he was going through his Pimping Period he was always careful with his money – he may have been driving some ridiculous cars but he also bought his parents a house and has always invested conservatively. Behind the façade there is somebody who has a deep-down, inherent respect for money. This isn’t surprising when you know where he comes from – he knows all too well what it’s like not to have money, and it’s clear he can never forget that.
In many ways he encapsulates what pro cyclists used to be like: they weren’t middle class, as is so often the case these days, they came from poor backgrounds and saw cycling as their only escape. He loves cycling more than any other pro I know. For him it’s more than just a hobby that turned into a passion and from there to a profession; it’s been a vehicle to a life he could have never imagined without it. Maybe it’s for this reason he loves his bikes so much – they are always in perfect condition and he is obsessive about their set-up. I’ve never known a pro who will spend so much time and money on their own bikes.
All of this makes him one of the few truly interesting characters in modern cycling. He treats being a professional as more of a lifestyle than the science it seems increasingly to resemble. Even when he’s at his best, before his big objectives, he won’t think twice about having a beer in the middle of a ride if he feels like it. That’s just the way he rolls: he’s super-focused and dedicated, yet he still allows himself to be who he is. He’ll send me video clips of himself in the off-season in Maui – bearded, shirtless, riding his favourite old mountain bike to a bar in cut-off jeans, just cruisin’. That’s Ryder.
All of this helps make him a great roomie. He’s so goddamned relaxed about everything, it never really feels like he’s trying, and yet you know he is, because everything he does has a level of detail applied to it that belies the surfer-stoner attitude he radiates.
The Princess
Ryder’s latest thing is juicing. So this first training camp of the year in Mallorca becomes a juice extravaganza. His juicer is called ‘The Princess’. We go nuts on it. We’re convinced it’s working miracles – or we trick ourselves into believing so; either way it’s a good way to kill some time in the afternoon. We have to go and buy the vegetables and then make the juice, and then clean up the inevitable mess. It becomes a fixture, something to look forward to. We feel like proper athletes. Then we go and have a beer at the hotel bar because we feel so amazing about ourselves.
Loose Ryder
Ryder shows me his ever-growing catalogue of selfies with cycling stars. It’s become his thing, he’s got some beauties – a particularly amazing one with Nibali – all of them taken while on the bike. I don’t know when he does them. And without fail whoever the victim is, be it Contador, Sagan, Cancellara or the like, they all look a little confused, not sure whether Ryder is being serious or not, because Ryder is so loose at times you might just think he’s serious about a fansie selfie, which explains the often perplexed looks and uncertain smiles he captures.
Ryder and Vincenzo Nibali (Alberto Contador photo bombing)
Ryder and Alberto Contador
Ryder and Fabian Cancellara
Even the way he races is loose: there is no other rider of his stature in the sport who does what he does. That is, to race from the back. He cannot fathom why everybody fights so much to be at the front of the peloton, it makes no sense to him. In most races he’ll spend the four-hour preamble that the leaders have to endure before they battle it out firmly ensconced at the rear of the peloton. I personally cannot agree with this tactic, and yet he proves over and over again that it works for him.
There are a few problems with sitting at the back, the biggest of which is the fact you are at the whim of nearly 200 riders in front of you. For example, if you have your team controlling the race, you sit up there with them. If you’re a team leader you’ll be in the protected position near the rear of your team’s formation, never the last position, because you always need a buffer of a couple of riders between you and the mêlée behind you fighting for position. You also need the security of having a teammate or two on your wheel who can see if something happens, rather than having you try to shout ahead if a problem occurs – more often than not you won’t be heard.
This means that if you’re in this position you only have five or six riders ahead of you, and they are your teammates, whose job it is to take care of you; behind you are the 200 or so other riders fighting for position. That’s 200 things that could go wrong behind you versus the five or six things that could go wrong ahead of you. It’s simple risk analysis.
But Ryder doesn’t give a shit. He’d rather deal with the randomness than live with the permanent stress of constantly fighting for position in the first part of the peloton. Because that’s what it is; there is only one team that can actually sit on the front, and they have that privilege because they have the leader’s jersey, or they have the favourite to win that day. Everybody else fights behind.
This is something I have seen change over my career. When I started in the late nineties the peloton was quite an organic, flowing thing. There would be one team on the front, then the leaders from other teams staying up there in relative safety, with two or three of their loyal domestiques/bodyguards protecting them – and then everybody else doing their thing behind. It’s not that it was less stressful, it was simply a different, more independent stress. Each one of us decided how much we wanted to fight.
Nowadays it’s robotic. All team directeurs are on the radio telling their riders to get to the front and ride as a tight unit. Fair enough, I can see what they’re trying to achieve, but it ends up being counter-productive, as with so many teams trying to do the same thing it turns into a total clusterfuck.
If left organic then the guys who are at the front want to be at the front, and have the awareness
and will to remain there; they flow freely and without stress, forever maintaining their presence at the front while never letting you know they’re there. It’s a remarkable thing when done well, and a very rare thing to behold in the modern peloton. These days flowing is difficult because you’ll come up against racers who have been ordered against their will to be there, often young guys who are so scared of not doing what they’re told that they end up fixated on their teammate’s wheel in front and will be knocking into people and creating conflicts at what is a essentially a peaceful moment in the race. They’ve never been given a chance to learn how to flow.
This permanent and unnecessary stress leads to more crashes as people get more and more desperate to maintain their position, the desperation leads to careless and disrespectful riding … and all it takes is one flick into an unsuspecting rider who happens to be relaxed, in that particular peaceful moment of the race, and bang, a crash begins. I can understand where Ryder is coming from.
Of course, there is a flipside to the Ryder style of racing. You open yourself up to being stuck behind crashes that happen ahead, and more often than not left isolated from your team, because, contrary to the front, no team will risk having all their riders at the back – if we were all back there and there was a crash that left the road blocked we’d lay there on the floor watching the race ride away from us with zero of our team in it. This is exactly what happened in the 2012 Tour de France Stage 6 mass pile-up when our whole team got caught up behind what was the biggest crash I’ve seen in my career (see the Theory of Crashes).
Challenge Mallorca (2)
All in all it’s the perfect re-entry into the peloton. Contrary to other years, and most other teams, we follow up the five days’ racing with a ten-day training camp. This is part of the deal for the team gaining a place in Challenge Mallorca: we also have to hold our training camp there. Team training camps have barely changed in the twenty years I’ve been doing them. The hotels are almost always nearly empty as we’re staying in holiday resorts in their off-season. The weather is normally good but not good enough to actually be there unless you’re a professional cyclist escaping northern Europe. The food is normally quite average, although compared to the food we’d get served back in the nineties on similar training camps it’s Michelin-starred.