Boy Racer Read online

  It turned out that I was dead right: Sparkasse had simply invented a story in an effort to make me stay.

  I got set to travel from my base near Dortmund to what was going to be my first race in a T-Mobile jersey, the stage Regio Tour, certain that I'd need to impress the new T-Mobile bosses if I was to have any chance of securing a permanent deal. I'd trained hard all summer, and proved it by finishing fourth in a high-class international field in my last outing for Sparkasse the previous week. In what was my team's home race, the Sparkassen Giro, I'd been shoved in the sprint and come from maybe twelfth position to finish fourth, no more than a tyre-width from Erik Zabel, who was third. Little did I know it at the time, but T-Mobile's directeurs had watched me closely that afternoon and liked what they'd seen; they'd liked it so much, in fact, that on the first morning of the Regio Tour, before I'd even pulled on the T-Mobile jersey for the first time, one of the team's then managers, Luc Eisenga, had called to tell me that the team were offering me a two-year contract. Luc said that the offer was for 10,000 euros a year less than what they'd initially intended ... but if that's still okay ...?'

  Still okay? I was bloody delirious.

  My excitement may have got the better of me in that first stage. In the grand scheme of international cycling, the Regio Tour isn't exactly a big fixture, but to a German team like T-Mobile the race was important enough to make victory not just worthwhile but a near necessity. With experienced Tour de France stars like Michael Rogers and Giuseppe Guerini, we had a strong team and, in Andreas Klöden, a leader who the management would expect to be on the top step of the podium come the end of the race. The rest of us would be expected to get him there.

  Within an hour of the start, strong crosswinds had split the race. Three of our riders made the break, but the two top dogs, Rogers and Klöden, were in the back group with me. Klöden rode on to my shoulder. 'You have to ride to pull this back,' he said. To me it didn't make sense, with three men in the front group to either thwart or take advantage of the split, but then he was a Tour de France podium finisher and I was a little twenty-one-year-old scally on work experience. I nodded and took myself to the front.

  Maybe a few kilometres, a few minutes went by. I pulled until I hurt. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Michael Rogers.

  'Why are you riding? We've got three men in the front group ...'

  'Well, we were told to ride ...'

  Mick told us to go back. Take it easy. I did as he said. A few more kilometres, a few more minutes, then someone else was tapping me on the shoulder. What now? It was Klöden again, scowling this time. 'What are you doing? If I tell you to ride, you ride, okay?'

  The race ended in a sprint – a sprint in which, Valerio Piva had informed me over the radio, I'd be leading out my teammate Andre Korff. That's exactly what I was preparing to do when, with around three kilometres to go, an Italian rider from the Naturino team leant on my arm and left me with two options but no real choice: either wipe-out into a signpost and die, or give him a gentle shove and hope he could stay upright. I took option two. The clatter of bikes and bodies was still ringing in my ears when I launched Korffy to a disappointing second place.

  The misunderstanding with Klöden and Rogers was cleared up that night. It had been just that – a misunderstanding. What had happened in the final three kilometres might be a thornier subject, not least because the entire peloton knew who had caused or at least been involved in the crash. Sure enough, the next morning, before the start of the second stage, I found myself besieged by Italian riders blaming me for the pile-up. It took the intervention of Guerini and two or three other teammates to diffuse what was in danger of becoming a very public and very heated row.

  I'd always known that professional cycling was a school for hard knocks, and I'd finished my first day roughed up but also toughened up. The race continued in the same vein – hard and fast – but ended in triumph for both the team and its youngest member: just as we'd hoped and planned, Klöden won the general classification, Rogers was second and I went home under a shower of compliments from the directeurs sportifs for all the time I'd spent selflessly driving on the front of the bunch.

  My next race was a big one for me, if not for some of my teammates. In fact, it didn't take Einstein or a body-language expert to figure out that Matthias Kessler and Patrick Sinkewitz, at least, didn't want to be at the Tour of Britain. Fortunately I had enough motivation for about three riders. Our directeur sportif that week was Brian Holm, a wiry former Danish pro with a taste for funky haircuts and all things British.

  On the first stage, as we approached the feedzone, a group of three had already gone clear, and Brian decided that it was about time we chased. The whole team duly went to the front except me and the German rider who was to be our 'first-choice' sprinter that week, Olaf Pollack. Within a couple of minutes, Brian buzzed in on the radio. 'Cavendish, you fat fuck! When I say chase, you chase, okay?!' He wasn't joking. It goes without saying that my first sprint that day was the one that took me through the peloton and on to the front.

  Klöden pulled out of the race, ill, in the first 50 kilometres of that first stage. Pollack crashed, hurt his head and told me to do my own thing in the sprint. I ended up finishing seventh – fourth in the main bunch, behind the three men in the breakaway – and disappointed to have been blocked in the final straight. Brian sat down next to me at the dinner table that night; when he said seventh wasn't bad, I shrugged and puffed out my cheeks. He laughed and said he liked my attitude.

  As the days went by, I could sense that I was fast earning my teammates' respect and, more importantly, Brian's. On the second morning, when the older guys had finished their breakfast, Brian came over again, just as he had the previous night. He pulled up a chair and motioned towards the window, to the rainwater cascading down the glass. I shrugged just as I had the previous evening: 'Doesn't bother me,' I said. Brian smiled.

  I never did win a stage that week. I was fourth on Stage 2, and second on Stage 4 to Birmingham, having spent the whole day in an eight-man break. The team were delighted with that performance, but I was mortified, not so much for myself, not even for my teammates, but for my mate from the British Academy, Geraint Thomas. There was an unwritten, unspoken rule that week that some of the GB riders would help me out in the sprints, with my T-Mobile team down to four riders, two of whom – Patrick Sinkewitz and Matthias Kessler – were no more than passengers. That day in the break, though, Gee helped me for no other reason than personal loyalty. By now everyone in the race knew I was a fast finisher, so it was inevitable that they'd try to get rid of me before the closing straight with repeated attacks, one of which, by the Belgian Frederik Willems, took him clear on his own. It was then that Gee moved into action – burying himself for no other reason than to reel Willems in and set up a sprint finish that I'd almost certainly win. When we didn't quite make it, Willems stayed away and I got second, I felt bad for myself but absolutely gutted for Gee.

  I finished the race with third place in a bunch sprint in the Mall in London and, much more importantly, the green jersey. Awarded to the rider who'd totted up the largest number of the points available for finishing positions at the end of stages and in intermediate sprints, the prize was the direct equivalent of one of the holy grails of sprinting in road cycling: the green jersey in the Tour de France. Although I'd agreed a two-year deal with T-Mobile at the Regio Tour, I'd only signed the contract that week in England.

  As I left the podium, I happened to bump into the man who had started the ball rolling and first alerted T-Mobile to my potential over a year earlier – the former British Federation coach Heiko Salzwedel. I put my arms around him then gave him the green jersey I'd just won together with a promise – that it wouldn't be my last, and that one day I'd give him a green jersey from a much more important race. I could see from the twinkle in his eye that I didn't need to elaborate.

  SO WHAT exactly had Roger Hammond said to convince my new bosses that, when they talked ab
out my programme for 2007, they wouldn't have been better off pointing me in the direction of Alcoholics Anonymous's twelve-step programme?

  I later discovered that he'd simply told them the story of the Under 23 World Championships Road Race in Salzburg in September 2006, or rather what had happened immediately afterwards. The race itself had been a tale of its own, and not one that particularly flattered me. I'd gone into that World's in good form, fresh from my good rides at the Regio Tour and the Tour of Britain and convinced that, if I could beat Gerald Ciolek, who that season had become my rival in races in Germany and also the youngest ever German senior road race champion, I'd be world champion. I had a brilliant Great Britain team and what I thought was an infallible tactic: approach the one, key climb on the circuit in the first few positions, wait for the race to come back together on the descent, then smoke Ciolek in the final sprint to become world champion. What could be more straightforward?

  It was all going beautifully. No, better than beautifully, because on the final lap, Ciolek committed hari-kiri. As we neared the top of the crucial climb for the last time, a group of six or seven riders went clear and Ciolek gave chase. My jaw almost hit the tarmac: Ciolek, the favourite, the German wunderkind, my would-be nemesis, had just thrown away the world championship. On every lap, the bunch had splintered them re-formed on the descent and this time would be no different. Well, actually, it would: this time we'd hit the finishing straight and Ciolek's legs would be like two sacks of spuds after an attack that was as physically taxing as it was misguided.

  The gap grew to ten, twelve seconds as we reached the top of the climb. Bothered? It was just a matter of time, a formality, they might as well give the troph— then BOOM! A motorbike crashed in front of us and slid across the road. I stubbed my foot and broke my shoe. More to the point, the ten seconds of confusion as everyone swerved, slowed, looked for teammates and set off again were fatal for our hopes of catching the break. Against all odds and all logic, Ciolek's suicide mission had paid off. A few minutes later he was world champion.

  After the race, I'd gone back to Roger Hammond's flat in Belgium and Roger had offered me 'one beer, just one, then an early night'. I'd declined. Not only that but, that Monday after the race in Salzburg, I'd told Roger that, never mind the fact that we'd just got off the plane from Austria, I was going to put a light on my bike and go out training in the dark.

  That was the story Roger had told the directeurs. On hearing it, Roger said, the smirks with which they'd greeted me an hour or so earlier had been replaced by a look of mild and pleasant surprise.

  THAT training camp in Lugano had been part planning meeting, part team-building exercise, with various 'fun' activities like rock-climbing designed to forge a spirit that I'd heard had been lacking in the team when everything had revolved around Jan Ullrich. Ullrich's involvement in the Operación Puerto doping scandal in the summer of 2006 had sparked the implosion that had resulted in his departure, the team's restructuring and, almost, the cancellation of my stagiaire's deal. From what I'd seen in Lugano, there were still cliques, but the management wanted to see them disappear. They also wanted more dialogue with the riders through the winter and during the season; to this end, we were all assigned one of the directeurs sportifs as a liaison or mentor – and I was allocated to Brian Holm.

  That winter, Melissa and I went to Florida, our first holiday for years. I also trained well, while not making the common mistake of overcooking it in my effort to impress at the first real training camp with T-Mobile, which was to be held in Majorca in January 2007. Both Andreas Klier and I were arriving in Majorca a day early, so it made sense that we should share a room together. Andreas was an experienced German pro whose interest in cycling was born out of a passion for racing and the traditions that, to fans of other sports, seem alien and mystifying. He loved the culture and folklore so much that he'd even uprooted from Germany to the home of blood-and-guts cycling, Flanders in Belgium. He was a man after my own heart and, although we hadn't spoken in Lugano, now we hit it off instantly.

  I can't say it was an enjoyable ten days. Whatever scepticism my directeurs had about my ability and my attitude to racing and training, I'd started to overcome with my performances as a stagiaire, and Roger had done the rest in the now infamous meeting in Lugano. Now, though, I came up against a new obstacle – a young German coach by the name of Sebastian Weber, who, like me, had just started working with the team.

  My experiences with Simon Jones at the British Federation had left me with very clear convictions about sports scientists. Consequently, to avoid wasting Weber's time and mine, I'd told him in Lugano that there was no point in our working together; in Rod Ellingworth, as far as I was concerned, I already had the best coach in the world. Weber clearly wasn't too enamoured with the idea, but he agreed that a good compromise would be him at least contacting Rod and finding out a little bit more about who I was and what I needed. From where I was standing, at that camp, it looked as though Weber ignored everything that Rod had told him.

  I've already talked about my hatred of fitness tests on a stationary 'rig' or indoor bike. What I didn't know at that camp in Majorca was that the test I'd be made to do there would indirectly jeopardise the start of my first pro season.

  I'd already warned Weber: I was always shit in lab tests and this one wasn't going to be any different. Sure enough, I stepped off the rig at the end of my test, crimson-faced, drenched in sweat, having given everything, but acutely aware that, of the twenty-nine riders in the team, my results would probably be the worst.

  Another first-year pro might have panicked. Not me – at least not yet. In Andy Klier, I had a roommate whose contempt for crunching numbers matched my own; if I needed someone to reassure me that Weber had got it all wrong, it'd be Andreas. I knew that he understood me, and he underlined that one night when he came into the room and announced that he'd just been talking about me with Rolf Aldag. He'd been asked what he thought about his new roommate and Andreas had given a favourable verdict. Rolf had countered that I was fat; Andreas's last word on the topic had been that Rolf should look at the number of races I'd won while riding for Sparkasse the previous season.

  Throughout the camp, on the road, I was in the slowest of three separate groups. There was nothing unusual about that, what with the directeurs conscious of the need not to abuse my youthful exuberance. Much more relevant, to my mind, was the day when we practised sprint trains. Having signed me, my old rival Ciolek, Bernhard Eisel and the Kiwi Greg Henderson, T-Mobile now had a glut of sprinters, and we all went head-to-head in 'lead-outs' of around three kilometres, each of which would finish with a shoot-out between the two sprinters in the respective lines. In one of these 'races', I was up against Eisel. When the last men pulled off, Bernie had a ten-metre advantage; when we crossed the fictional finish line, I was a bike-length clear.

  That exercise alone seemed like a vindication. Again, though, as with Simon Jones over the previous two or three years, the disparity between what I could produce in a race scenario and in the lab was a source of constant irritation to some. Weber was one of those people. Towards the end of the camp, he presented us with the results of our rig tests. When he came to me, he looked and sounded disapproving.

  'Unacceptable for a professional', was the phrase I seem to recall him using.

  As I've already made quite clear, I was dubious about sports scientists, so it followed that I would be dubious about Weber. I also had the positive experiences of my stagiaire period to reassure me that I belonged among the professionals. Even without that, in Majorca, whether through explicit praise or other, subtler signals, people who knew from first-hand experience what it took to flourish as a pro – people like Brian Holm and Andreas Klier – ought to have set my mind at ease.

  Outwardly, whenever Weber's name or his ideas came up in conversation I was as cocky and dismissive as ever, even when he confronted me at the end of the camp. 'Numbers don't lie,' he'd said. It was like listening to Simon Jones
.

  My conscious mind wasn't paying attention but somewhere, deep in my subconscious, an insecurity was stirring. 'What's your first race?' he asked me. I told him that I was due to ride the French one-day race, the GP L'Ouverture La Marseillaise at the beginning of February in about a month's time. He sniffed. 'With numbers like this, you won't even be able to hold on to the peloton. You're overweight and you're not pushing enough watts.'

  Not even hold on to the peloton? I'd already ridden pro races the previous autumn and threatened to win more than once. Okay, so I was a couple of kilos heavier and slightly less fit, but that was normal – it was January. He clearly didn't know what he was talking about. Why, then, did I walk away from that conversation determined not just to prove him wrong, but to prove him wrong on his terms? He wanted me to lose weight? Okay, I'd lose more than he ever thought was possible. He wanted more watts? Okay, I'd smash myself every day until I was putting out more power than he knew how to measure.