Boy Racer Read online

  Lunch was at midday, followed by a two-hour French lesson. Those classes could be a pain in the derrière, not because French wasn't going to be useful for a career in cycling – it was – but because a couple of the other lads didn't take it seriously. Brammy was good and Ed picked it up pretty quickly, but Bruce was no Zinedine Zidane, and Tom White used to google his homework and think he was smart. I'd been studying French since I was six years old and had got a 'B' in my GCSE at age fourteen. Now I was being made to start all over again with 'bonjour', 'je m'appelle' and 'je suis'.

  I used to be glad to get back on the track for the afternoon session at three o'clock, this time usually for Madison practice or 'go till you blow sessions', where we'd ride behind Rod's moped, and he'd keep going faster and faster until there was no one left. That would take us to six o'clock and home-time, unless it was a Tuesday, when we'd have dinner at the track then ride in the track league against the weekend warriors – blokes who worked in offices in the week but lived for battering themselves on a bike on Saturdays, Sundays and Tuesday nights. Usually, we'd annihilate them; occasionally we'd just be too tired, and you'd hear them muttering, 'These GB lads aren't that good, are they?' Of course, you'd hear different comments from the guys who knew that we'd been on the track since eight in the morning. Or from anyone who happened to see when we were riding back to the house at eleven at night, including one occasion in the middle of a blizzard.

  ON OUR bikes there was no doubt that we improved fast in that first year. The last race we did in Belgium in 2004, a circuit race in Diest, was both the perfect bookend and counterpoint to that first trip of the season to the Triptyque des Monts et Châteaux, with me winning after a textbook lead-out from the other lads. It was in a couple of other areas – like discipline and, in Ed and Bruce's case, hygiene and cleanliness – that we still needed work. Unlike my roommates, I always understood that it was important to come back to a tidy, comfortable house every night, especially because what we were doing during the day was so hard, and I understood that Rod kept harping on about us 'structuring our lives' for exactly that reason.

  The discipline issue was harder for me to take on board simply because mischief and piss-taking came as naturally as scooting around a velodrome. Rod didn't mind as long as it didn't spill over into our lives at the Academy but sometimes, inevitably, the inner scally reared its curly mop – or, in my case, at that time, its shaven head. That was quite literally what happened at the European track championships in Valencia that first summer.

  The first thing to point out is that I'd been ill before the trip and was hopelessly out of form; consequently, in my events I went like the proverbial bag of spanners. The other point to make is that Rod wasn't expecting much and might have been sympathetic ... had he not heard a racket coming from the fire exit in our hotel one day that week and wandered out to see what was going on. He showed up just in time to see my shiny slap-head bobbing up the last flight of stairs, steam rising off its surface, Brammeier crouched over a stopwatch and pretty much the entire GB squad – juniors, Under 23s, girls and boys – gathered on the landing, bawling either encouragement or abuse. I noticed how it had suddenly gone quiet when I hauled myself up the last few steps, legs muscles howling, the sweat dripping off me; then I saw Rod standing in the corner. He was shaking his head. 'What the fuck do you think you're doing? You didn't even try this hard in the bike-race. Not good enough. Not fucking good enough.'

  That trip confirmed to me that Rod didn't miss a trick. On the last night, he'd told us to go to bed early; the whole week had been a disaster and we needed to be on the case as soon as we arrived back in Manchester. So what did we do? Had a party in one of the rooms, of course. It was about one in the morning, and we'd all spilled out on to the balcony, when I happened to peer over into the car park and saw what looked like someone sitting on the kerb, on his own, in the pitch black, maybe a couple of hundred feet below. I squinted through the darkness; it was Rod, watching us, making mental notes. Again, he was sacrificing his own free time because he cared about us mucking about and wasting our opportunities.

  There were all sorts of other little lapses, but, with Rod, the punishments were always consistent and fair. Telling us off didn't give him any pleasure. He used to set us little thousand-word essays on cycling-related topics – one might be on 'Life in the Academy', another on 'The Career of the Cyclist Stuart O'Grady' – and on one occasion, I thought I'd outsmart him by writing my latest magnum opus longhand, rather than sending it in on the computer, so that Rod couldn't use the word-count tool to check if I'd done the full thousand. Of course, Rod could see straight through this; he counted the words and it turned out that I'd done only eight hundred. He said that he was sorry, but that I would have to do the whole thing again. Rod, though, could put up with my shenanigans because he knew that, in exchange, he was getting a full quota of passion, determination and willingness to learn when it came to my cycling. That was the difference between Rod and another one of the coaches, Simon Lillistone, who sometimes seemed as though he was being strict just to mimic Rod, and to spite us, rather than to enforce rules. He'd do things like taking away our PlayStations, which would achieve nothing, because we'd cause trouble through being bored. Take away our games consoles and we'd replace them with something that could do real damage ... like a paintball gun. That was fun while it lasted – until the gun was confiscated when word had got back to the velodrome of us taking potshots at innocent members of the public.

  The coaches' problem was that we were too resourceful – short of stripping the house bare and locking us away, there was nothing they could do to stop our high jinks. Evan Oliphant, a Scottish lad who came to stay and race with us for a few weeks, discovered this in that 2004 season when, every night, he'd open the door to his bedroom and think he'd taken a wrong turning to the local Turkish baths. Every night, without fail, about two hours before bedtime, one of us would sneak in, disconnect the pipe at the back of the tumble-dryer that we kept in the corner, press the 'on' switch and pump the air full of hot, sticky steam. Evan knew what we were doing – of course he did – but he also knew that it was a case of our gaff, our rules.

  I have so many memories of my two years at the Academy that, one day, I could write a book solely about that period. The physical suffering, the homesickness, the wins, the losses, the laughs and the tears – there was enough life experience in those two years to fill three autobiographies. Ask me, though, to pick the one episode which encapsulated the highs and lows better than any other, and I don't need to think twice about which one I'd choose. For ease of reference, let's call it the tale of the Horse-Drawn Undercarriage.

  It all started so innocently, with a phone call from Brammeier's little sister. Bless her, she wanted help with her homework, and Brammeier thought one of us might be able to help. 'Hey, lads,' he said, 'I've got my sister here. She wants to know how to draw a horse ...'

  I have no idea what had come over us that day. We rarely, if ever, drank, but for some reason, that day, the prospect of demonstrating my artistic prowess had me practically gurgling with delight. I reached for a black marker, and walked over to the window; a minute or two later, a line here, a bit of colouring there and we had a masterpiece of rare and, er, very graphic detail.

  The lads were beside themselves. 'That's fucking brilliant, Cav. Absolutely brilliant.' So brilliant, in fact, that they didn't want to rub it off. We were heading off for a race the next day, yet somehow it slipped our minds that we were leaving behind a gallery of profanity as liable to cause offence as anything Tracey Emin's ever painted. We'd also forgotten, or rather Brammy had forgotten, that he'd drawn the curtains in his room and left the light on; as a result, for the duration of the weekend, my sketches would be gloriously illuminated in his bedroom window. Another couple of minor details: there was a synagogue a few doors down and a church directly opposite our flat. A church where, what's more, people were rolling up at all hours of the day for art lessons, support groups a
nd, probably, after they saw my little comic strip, a quiet word with Our Father.

  On Monday, when we came back and saw Matt's light on, alarm bells should have started ringing. Instead, later that day, it was our phones that were ringing, and Simon Lillistone on the other end: apparently the gentleman who lived next door hadn't appreciated our little exhibition and had contacted the landlord. The landlord, in turn, had contacted Lillistone. Rod then showed up at the house. When he saw the window, he stood open-mouthed, not sure whether to marvel at our stupidity, our audacity or at the intricate detail of my diagrams. 'Lads,' he said, 'whoever drew it, it is funny. I mean, it's a good drawing. It's detailed, it's fantastic ... but not on a fucking residential street! What were you thinking?'

  We were soon summoned to the office at the velodrome to see Lillistone and Brailsford, both of whom were seething. The first thing they did was play the recorded message from the landlord. We all bowed our heads and bit our lips, but I would have defied anyone not to laugh. Anyone, that is, except Brailsford and Lillistone, who looked as though they might self-combust. On went the tape: 'I was called round by the neighbour, who was horrified by something drawn on the window. I went round to have a look and I saw some very rude drawings of donkeys ...'

  Lillistone pressed 'stop' and cast his gaze in our direction. 'Now is this all true?'

  'No, it's not true ...' I replied. 'It wasn't a donkey ... It was a horse.'

  The next day we received our punishment, or at least its first instalment: three hours, riding full-gas round the top of the track, with Rod baying 'Faster, faster!' and screaming at us if we strayed too far from the wheel in front. After that physical ordeal came the trial by humiliation: for the next week, Rod said, we'd wash all the staff's cars every day, in full view of everyone arriving at the velodrome.

  AS IF there hadn't already been enough tests of our, ahem, still maturing characters in that first, 2004 season with the Academy, the year was to end with our first taste of the European Six-Day circuit. Almost a sport in its own right, the Six-Day scene is hard to describe to a layman, but if you could imagine a German Oktoberfest meeting the Cirque du Soleil meeting a track cycling event, all held over six consecutive evenings, there are enough images there for you to have a rough idea.

  And rough is exactly what Six-Day meetings can be, because, contrary to a popular misconception, the racing is hard, hard, hard.

  All that saved us initially was that we were racing in the Under 23 category and not with the seniors. That and the fact that we'd spent countless hours on the Manchester boards over the previous few months honing our speed, our bike handling and also the tactical know-how you needed in these events, the highlight of which were the Madisons. In our first appearance, in Amsterdam, I'd come third overall with Matt Brammeier and looked forward to faring even better on what was going to be our next outing to Dortmund. Sure enough, despite Brammy's misgivings about his own track skills and a spectacular collision between him and Tom White on the last evening, we ended up holding on for a win which was merely the latest evidence of how far we'd come since our first day at the Academy the previous January, when then only thing we'd looked likely to win was an ASBO.

  We headed home from Dortmund, tired but none too quietly thrilled. We then relaxed – or at least I did – barely riding my bike for a month. This would have been fine if my next races had been on the road and three months away, in January or February, but we were due back on the track for the Six Days of Ghent at the end of November. To compound matters, by this time, there was a new intake of Academy lads, and one of them, Geraint Thomas was absolutely flying. If Geraint and his partner Tom White made the British Federation and Rod and the Academy look very good indeed that week, the way Brammy and I rode, we made Gee and Tom look even better. In short, we were utterly, embarrassingly, excruciatingly woeful.

  Rod was fuming. More importantly, though, I was fuming with myself. The unexpected success of Dortmund had been so exhilarating, so rewarding, and yet, within the space of a month, I'd contrived to fritter it all away like a lottery winner with his winnings. I said it was embarrassing, but, really, that doesn't convey quite how it had felt, all six nights in that packed, smoky, raucous Ghent velodrome; what it had been was downright degrading.

  It was also – I would make sure – the very last time that I was ever going to allow myself to take such a horrendous beating. Thus, over the next few weeks, I trained more than ever before and indulged less – a win-win combination, the effects of which have to be seen in photos from that winter to be believed. On a typical day, I'd go out at seven o'clock in the morning, do a two-hour loop, then, at 9.15, swing by the Quarter-Bridge roundabout, outside the NSC, where there's a group that gathers every single day of the year, even Christmas. I'd then do two hours with them, followed by two more hours on my own, after which I'd arrive home and call Geraint Thomas. Gee would barely have picked up the receiver before the one-upmanship would start: 'So how many hours today, Gee? Ah, only five? I did six ...'

  At the end of a year when the lessons had come thick and fast, apparently, the best and most valuable – a true turning point in my career – had waited until last.

  Stage 3: Saint-Malo–Nantes, 208 km

  * * *

  1. Samuel Dumoulin (Fra) Cofidis –

  Le Crédit par Téléphone 5.05.27

  10. Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team Columbia 2.03

  General classification

  * * *

  1. Romain Feillu (Fra) Agritubel 13.27.05

  85. Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team Columbia 3.45

  STAGE 4

  Tuesday, 8 July 2008

  CHOLET—CHOLET (INDIVIDUAL TIME-TRIAL), 29.5 KM

  ON THE night of 8 July, the 2008 Tour de France was four days old, my overall Tour career was now into its second fortnight and I still wasn't a stage winner. To understand the significance of this you need to understand that a Tour stage win is a rite of passage in professional cycling; the Giro d'Italia or Tour of Italy, and its Spanish counterpart, the Vuelta a España, may be on the same theoretical footing as cycling's other two 'major tours', but whereas victory in those races brings recognition within the sport's niche community, a stage win in the Tour guarantees exposure outside the goldfish bowl and respect within its deeply hierarchical confines.

  For sprinters in particular, the Tour is more than just the most important race on the calendar. A Tour stage win on your curriculum vitae is the cycling equivalent of 'PhD' after your name – a status symbol which not only earns plaudits but also privileges. To put it another way, not only can you expect more nods and backslaps, more 'ciaos' and 'bonjours' from fellow pros in the Tour's start village, you'll also notice that, when the racing begins, where once you would have to scrap and jostle for certain positions, now potential obstructions will move respectfully to one side like a bellboy at a posh hotel.

  There is another side of the same coin, of course: as a sprinter, as long as you haven't won at the Tour, any claims you may have to a standing among the elite in your field of expertise simply can't and won't be validated by your peers, the media or the fans. As someone who, for several months now, had been assuring everybody who cared to listen that I wasn't just one of the fastest, but the fastest bunch sprinter in the world, obviously this left me with something of a problem.

  I'm blessed in that I'm not one of these athletes who's ever been plagued by self-doubt. I've already mentioned the British Cycling psychologist Steve Peters, and the brilliant work he's done in helping our track riders, but I can honestly say that I've only ever had momentary, very, very occasional dips in self-confidence, never full-blown crises, and certainly nothing a good win or ego-massage from one of my coaches or teammates couldn't fix. Fortunately, what doubts I haven't created for myself, other people have been more than happy to supply for me. I say fortunately, because there's only one tactic which trumps what I like to call the Sunshine up the Arse motivational method – bombarding me with adulation and flattery – and that method i
s equally uncomplicated: just tell me 'Cav, old pal, you can try but I don't think you're gonna make it ...'

  Some people might say that I have a persecution complex. That most kids, at the age of nine or ten, would have just laughed or ignored their mum when she said that instead of racing around the NSC car park they looked like they were going for a Sunday stroll. Or that they'd have shrugged it off when, a few years later, more than one coach told them they were overweight and would never amount to anything. Lance Armstrong once said about the teams, riders and journalists who'd crossed him, 'I just keep a list, a mental list. And if I ever get the opportunity, I'm gonna pull out that list.' Now, not only do I keep exactly the same kind of list, but in the same way that Armstrong's long-time team manager Johan Bruyneel claimed at the end of 2008 that Lance had 'always drawn his strength from anger and resentment', it may just be that all those who have doubted and discounted me have been among the most influential figures in my career to date.