Boy Racer Page 11

  The Simon Jones saga taught me a couple of very important lessons. One was that, whatever my strengths as a cyclist, they obviously expressed themselves in a way that someone like Rod Ellingworth could understand and appreciate but which was double Dutch to a lot of sports scientists. The reason was a secret ingredient which no computer or device could measure: passion. Passion was the difference between riding at 100 per cent and 110 per cent. Passion allowed you to suffer through pain. Passion was emotion, not science; racing not performance. Passion was what separated me and dozens of much more talented lads whom I was beating and would continue to beat.

  The second lesson was one even more fundamental: while it was essential to be self-critical, self-doubt was synonymous with self-poison.

  'I want to be a road pro, win stages at the Tour, and be world champion ...'

  'Stages of the Tour de France? What, you? Fat boy? With those numbers?'

  Yeah, that's right.

  Stage 4: Cholet –Cholet (Individual Time-Trial), 29.5 km

  * * *

  1. Stefan Schumacher (Ger) Gerolsteiner 35.44 (49.534 km/h)

  43. Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team Columbia 4.05

  General classification

  * * *

  1. Stefan Schumacher (Ger) Gerolsteiner 14.04.41

  98. Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team Columbia 5.58

  STAGE 5

  Wednesday, 9 July 2008

  CHOLET—CHTEAUROUX, 232 KM

  THE MOST important ten seconds of my life. The next ten...

  When most people think of a Tour de France sprint, the words and images that flash into their heads probably have something do with speed, noise, colour, danger or adrenalin. But I don't think of any of that, at least not when I'm winning. I think of the silence.

  You know those moments in sports films when the striker's through on goal, or the wide receiver's galloping into the endzone, watching the ball over his shoulder, or the baseball leaves the pitcher's hand – and the music and crowd noise suddenly stop and the film starts running in slow motion? Well, you may think those scenes are a cliché, but that's actually what it's like. In those moments – the speed, the noise, the colour, the danger, the adrenalin – none of that matters. It's just you, the bike, the finish line and ... the silence.

  How can you have silence when you also have tens of thousands of fans screaming on either side of the road? It's a good question, and not one I can answer; at every other time in the Tour, the crowd and their noise are the tailwind that whips you along faster than at any race in the season. In those final few hundred metres, though, you notice the noise no more than you notice the air; maybe that's why, if silence is what it sounds and looks like, you feel as if you're riding through a vacuum.

  I'd seen Thor Hushovd's lead-out man, Mark Renshaw surge level with my right shoulder. I'd seen Hushovd on Renshaw's wheel. I'd swung left, across and past my teammate, Gerald Ciolek. I'd trampled all over the pedals.

  For the first time, 300 metres away, at the end of that vacuum, I had an unobstructed view of the finish line. Almost. Incredibly, just as he and his two breakaway companions were about to be swept up under the kilometre-to-go barrier ... the Frenchman Nicolas Vogondy had somehow located a few last droplets of energy and burst clear again. He hugged the barriers on the right-hand side, sheltered from the crowd, hidden in the shadows, clutching at the last available straws.

  For a cyclist, 'form' is probably more mythologised state of physical euphoria than for any other sportsman, but, for me, there are two, maybe three seconds in every sprint finish when 'form' doesn't matter. My 'kick' is the fastest in cycling whether I'm on a good day or not; all that form changes is how long I can stay at top speed.

  On this day two beats of the pedals were enough to make me certain I couldn't lose.

  My kick had taken me level with Hushovd. Usually, as long as long you're sprinting parallel to another sprinter, you keep accelerating in case they surge again. Sense, rather than see, them slipping back and you know they're gone for good.

  Now, Hushovd was slipping.

  My right side was clear ... except for Vogondy, who could hear me coming like a death rattle. On my left there was nothing. A vacuum.

  I could hear one voice. My own. There were no more of those decisions to make, no more wheels to follow, no more risks to run – just me, a hundred metres of open road, the finish line and a hundred photographers waiting to capture the moment.

  Perfection.

  Come on, Cav. It's coming, come on, it's coming, it's coming ... fifty, forty, thirty, twenty ... don't let them back in ... just a few more revs ... it's coming ... one more effort ... fifteen ... yes, it is ... ten... Oh my God!

  Oh my God. Oh ... my ... God.

  Five metres short of the line, I released my hands from the bars and brought them to rest on my helmet. Oh my God, I'd done it.

  My front wheel sliced through the finish line. And the silence ended. First came the noise, then the emotion. Six million volts of emotion – like an electric shock. For the last half of the race, throughout those last fifty kilometres I hadn't entertained a single emotion, didn't give a second's consideration for anything beyond what my body was doing and what it was going to do next. I was in the 'zone'. Crossing the line was like turning on the power switch.

  One of the first faces I saw when I crossed the line was Bob Stapleton's; his was always one of the first faces I saw when I crossed the line. He could have been sipping champagne in the hospitality area, which you'd think was the most natural place for a billionaire businessman to be. But no, Bob was always there, in the middle of the stampede of journalists, photographers and soigneurs – inconspicuous, reserved, but as quietly delighted and excited as anyone. In age, demeanour, occupation, Bob and I couldn't be more different but we get on because we have one, vital thing in common: passion.

  I felt the Spaniard Oscar Freire give me a congratulatory pat, then Erik Zabel. But now my emotions were running wild. I just wanted to see my teammates. Where were my teammates? I had to see my teammates.

  Almost to a man, they'd crossed the line with arms aloft in jubilation. Now, one by one, they fought their way through the scrum to find me, hug me and shout words that may have seemed incoherent at the time but, which, in fifty years' time, I'll still remember. I later found out that Gerald Ciolek had hurt himself so much in the effort to launch me in the final kilometre that he'd had to go for a ride to warm down.

  In a matter of seconds chaos had broken out – a chaos that I'd helped to create by turning around and heading into the current of 180 riders, sucking the crowd of pressmen with me. Several of those 180, like David Millar, were happy for me; most were too preoccupied with their own fight for survival and the fight to muscle through to their team bus. One was furious – furious to have to battle through this crush and furious at the result; thus Filippo 'Playboy' Pozzato celebrated my first Tour de France stage win by reaching down for his water bottle and hurling it at a journalist.

  THERE is a school of thought that says a rider aiming for the general classification in the Tour is better off doing without stage wins. The theory goes that stage wins are a handicap for general classification riders simply because the post-stage rigmarole eats big chunks out of your recovery time.

  The first people I wanted to see after crossing the line had been my teammates. One of the first people I actually saw, standing with my team soigneur, was an anti-doping chaperone. These chaperones are under orders not to leave your side until you've given a urine sample. You have an hour after the finish to report to the cabin just beyond the finish line marked 'anti-dopage'.

  The sixty minutes that followed my first professional win at the Grote Scheldeprijs had been the most euphoric, exciting of my life. Of that hour, as well as listening to Melissa screaming down the telephone as she danced around the living room back on the Isle of Man, what I'll most remember is that the Belgian journalists seemed almost as excited as I was; there was no 700-seater media centre, no real prot
ocol – just me, a tent, and a handful of mostly middle-aged men with bad haircuts and their notepads. I could have talked all day and they would have listened. I loved every second.

  Was I less excited a year and a bit later at the Tour? I don't know. In the same way that the race is faster, fiercer, just altogether more, then so is everything that comes next. There were more text messages, more phone calls and certainly more microphones and television cameras. In cycling, anyone will tell you, it simply doesn't get any bigger than this.

  The podium ceremony alone seemed as carefully choreographed as a West End musical. By this time, the anti-doping chaperone was just one member of a growing posse of journalists and officials stalking me everywhere, and it was one of those officials' job to explain the podium protocol as I waited backstage.

  There'd been interviews on the finish line, in the ruck, then more before the podium ceremony, and a few more en route to the video room. Once, apparently stage winners would do a full-blown press conference in front of the full-accredited presspack in the main media centre; now there were no more than a dozen in the video room and the rest watched and asked questions via a remote link-up. I'm a fickle bastard: two days ago, when I'd missed my chance in Nantes, I'd given more than one interviewer short shrift; now, by comparison, my answers were long and full of interesting nuggets.

  Next stop was the anti-doping booth. As always, I'd stopped only once on the stage, planning for precisely this eventuality; stop twice in the race and you might find that the plumbing's dried up and, before you know it, it's not just one hour of the evening that's been lost, it's two. The whole process is complicated and tedious enough without that added inconvenience: drop your pants, lift your shirt and turn through 360 degrees so the anti-doping officer can check for any hidden pouches or containers; wash your hands; pick a random flask with a sealed lid; break the seal; piss into the flask, which is then resealed by the anti-doping officer; take the flask then pick a random container with two sealed bottles inside; open the two bottles and check for any signs of contamination; pour the required amount of urine into each of the bottles, which are then permanently sealed with a screw-type mechanism that can't be opened; hand over the bottles, watch the anti-doping officer put them in a sealed plastic bag, then place the bag in a polystyrene box which is also sealed. Oh, and I nearly forgot – you also have to sign a form to confirm that all the required hygiene conditions were respected and to specify any medicine you've been taking.

  I left the anti-doping booth, finally free of my chaperone, and walked straight into another scrum: autograph hunters. It's always the same; sign a hundred but don't get round to the last ten and you look like an arsehole. At the same time you're worrying about that, you're also worrying about the fact that you've been on your feet for over an hour and, if you're not careful, it'll be your legs that suffer tomorrow. You know that it could make a kid's day, or even ignite a passion for the sport which might culminate, twenty years from now, in him doing in exactly what you're doing now. But sometimes you walk on, guilt-ridden. It's just one of those things.

  In the last hour of the race, I'd concentrated a lot, planned very little and felt absolutely nothing. After that brief, initial outpouring of emotion when I'd seen my teammates and Bob and my directeurs sportifs Brian Holm and Rolf Aldag, the last hour had been a relentless assault course of obligations. The previous year, at Scheldeprijs, the euphoria had been total, overwhelming and unmitigated; now, there was the rest of the Tour to contemplate and, before that, the question of how I was going to recover.

  I'd spoken to Melissa immediately after the finish but now, in the team car that had waited behind to drive me back to the hotel, we had more time. She and her friend had seen me at the start village that morning then headed straight for the airport to wait for their flight home. She'd watched the stage from a bar in the airport, which, in the space of a couple of hours, had become the newest outpost of my official fan club. The bar owner had uncorked a bottle of champagne to toast my win.

  My memories of the rest of the evening are sketchy. It's funny – I remember time-gaps and sprints and blow-ups from races going back ten years in brilliant detail, yet the more mundane aspects of life on the Tour tend to blend into one. The Tour organisers have a system whereby, over the course of the three weeks, every team gets their share of good and bad hotels, and one thing I do remember about that night was that we were in a hotel which could only be described as, well, shit. Two stars would have flattered the place.

  Very little else stands out. The shower, the massage, dinner – give or take the odd phone interview or ten, the odd text message or fifty, it could have been just another day on the treadmill that is the Tour. There was champagne, sure, but then we always had one glass when we won a race, which had been practically every second day in 2008. At all other times, at races, alcohol wasn't allowed.

  At one point during dinner Brian Holm wandered over holding his mobile phone. He crouched down next to my chair and passed me the phone. He said that someone wanted to talk to me.

  I looked at him suspiciously.

  'Er, hello. Who's this?'

  It was Sir Paul Smith – one of the world's most famous fashion designers, a cycling nut, former aspiring pro and Brian's mate.

  IT WOULD be easy to say that I went to bed that night wearing a huge contented grin, under a warm duvet of self-satisfaction, but the reality's different. Every night, before going to sleep, I looked at the race manual and memorised the last five kilometres. Tonight I opened the book at Stage 6. Aigurande to Super Besse, 195.5 km through the Massif Central, with an eleven-kilometre climb to the finish, of which the last kilometre looked brutal. It would be a day for surviving, not sprinting.

  Tomorrow I'd wake up a Tour de France stage winner, the most talked-about twenty-three-year-old in the race and in the sport. It didn't make a blind bloody bit of difference: I'd still have 195.5 km to ride before my next bedtime.

  Stage 5: Cholet –Châteauroux, 232 km

  * * *

  1. Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team Columbia 5.27.52 (42.45 km/h)

  General classification

  * * *

  1. Stefan Schumacher (Ger) Gerolsteiner 19.32.33

  97. Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team Columbia 5.58

  STAGE 6

  Thursday, 10 July 2008

  AIGURANDE—SUPER BESSE, 195.5 KM

  SIX STAGES and six evenings into the race, my teammate Kim Kirchen was leading the Tour de France. The Italian, Riccardo Riccò, had murdered everyone on the climb up to Super Besse but Kim's fifth place was enough to take the yellow jersey from the German Stefan Schumacher, who'd fallen in the last kilometre. How do I know all of this? Well, beside the fact that even 'Grim' Kim was smiling tonight, I caught the highlights on TV.

  When Kim was crossing the line, I was where I am on stages where there are mountains to climb: at the back of the race, in the last group on the road, with fifty-one other poor buggers. I may be a much better climber than some people believe but the parameters shift slightly when you're competing against the 180 best bike riders in the world. After a stage like today's – and indeed after most stages – you won't catch me looking at the white results sheet that the directeurs hand out at the hotel; had I looked tonight, I'd have discovered that I'd finished 168th, and my fifty-one partners in suffering and I had completed the stage nearly eighteen minutes after Riccò.

  I felt like shit. I couldn't help feeling that it had a lot to do with the post-stage palaver of the previous day. I was dropped, on my own, early in the stage, and only a breathless pursuit with the French sprinter Jimmy Casper and the German Sven Krauss brought me back to the gruppetto, my life raft for the rest of the day.

  We were now a week into the race. By this point in the 2007 race, I was waking up each morning and mentally ticking another day off the list, desperate for the pain to end. I'd finally gone home on the eleventh day. This year was different. Every morning I rolled out of bed and thought of the kilometres I had to rid
e on the day's stage – and not, today, of the five stages already under my belt, or the potential sixteen that I had to come.

  I was right about the perks of being a Tour stage winner. There was respect in the other riders' eyes and in their actions. There were certainly lots of congratulatory winks, pats on the back and the shoulder. As for my own feelings, well, the happiness, the excitement were all there, but, again, muffled under the knowledge that I still had a job to do, mountains to climb and more sprints to win.