here - Rouleur Magazine

“Rouleur accomplishes something more 

than making you want to ride: It makes 

you realise, or remember, that cycling is 

simply the greatest sport in the world.” 

Bill Strickland – Bicycling magazine 

“It is to bike magazines what National 

Geographic is to nature photography. 

Instead of glossy, well-lit portraits and 

fancy racing shots, its pages are filled 

with long, thoughtful photo spreads 

that drive deep narratives.” 

Wired magazine 

“Since its launch in May 2006, Rouleur 

has set the tone for this new breed of 

bike magazine… with an emphasis 

on narratives, beautiful imagery and 

boutique production values.” 

Eye Magazine | 77 | 

The International Review 

of Graphic Design 

SAMPLE EDITION 

RLR Sampler OUTER COVERS.indd 1 24/05/2013 09:34

ROULEUR 

ANATOMY OF A BIKE RACE 

THE RACE CONVOY 

JOURNALISTS 

GUESTS/VIPS 

COMMISSAIRES 

NEUTRAL 

SUPPORT 

DOCTOR 

POLICE 

illustration Tom Jay 

ORGANISATION/ 

PHOTOGRAPHERS 

RLR Sampler Info graphic_IFC-03.indd 2-3 24/05/2013 09:35

Rouleur n. m. Fr. – a cyclist who ‘rolls’, a rider for the flatter races and 

often the team’s captain. 

Rouleur is unique in the world of road cycling magazine publishing as 

it truly reaches the heart of the sport’s great characters and classic races. 

Rouleur’s contributors are always seeking new perspectives on the sport 

we all love with incisive, insightful reportage from the best writers in 

cycling and photographers from a diverse professional background – 

all with an alternative view and an inquisitive eye. 

Each 250-page plus edition is a labour of love, with an emphasis 

on design that presents the untold stories and stunning arenas of 

professional cycling past and present – Rouleur provides unmatched 

content that you won’t see anywhere else. 

This is your free taste of Rouleur, a slimmed-down version featuring 

extracts from issue 39, our current Tour de France-flavoured edition, 

printed on the same heavy Italian paper with the same attention to 

detail we place in the magazine. 

If you want more, please see the subscription offer inside the back cover 

of this sample edition, or check our website – rouleur.cc 

We hope you enjoy your mini Rouleur. 

6 100 

Paul Fournel and Jo Burt 

12 Corsica 

Colin O’Brien and Paolo Ciaberta 

18 The Watchmaker of Ávila 

Carlos Arribas and Timm Kölln 

26 The First Time 

Ian Cleverly and Robert Wyatt 

34 Speedplay 

Ian Cleverly and Daniel Sharp 

38 Froome Dog 

Ned Boulting and Taz Darling 

44 The Ones 

Robert Millar 

Rouleur magazine is published eight times a year by Gruppo Media Limited. 

© 2013. Copyright remains with the Publishers. No part of this journal may 

be copied or reproduced without the written consent of both the publisher 

and the contributor. 

Cover: Speedplay by Daniel Sharp 

This page: The Watchmaker of Ávila by Timm Kölln 

4 Subscribe at rouleur.cc 

Subscribe at rouleur.cc 5 

RLR Sampler Contents_p04-05.indd 4-5 24/05/2013 09:35

words Paul Fournel translation Graeme Fife illustrations Jo Burt 

100 

ONE HUNDRED TOURS DE FRANCE 

IN FIFTEEN NUMBERS 

~0~ 

Yellow jersey… zero 

It is assuredly one of the greatest injustices in the history of 

the Tour de France, that Raymond Poulidor, beloved Poupou of 

popular fame, never wore the yellow jersey. It enraged millions 

of his admirers and hundreds of thousands of them are still 

furious. It’s said that, in the course of bibulous dinners, after 

they had both retired, Poulidor used to pull on the yellow jersey 

and his friend, Anquetil, the rainbow jersey – which he’d never 

worn – to avert fate and to drop a splurge of laughter into the 

champagne. You can’t pedal up a new palmarès. 

~5~ 

Five Tours 

Several men have won five Tours: Jacques Anquetil was 

the first, Bernard Hinault came next, but Miguel Indurain 

was the first to win five in a row, between 1991 and 1995. 

Sure, Armstrong did better since then, taking seven victories 

in succession, but he was stripped of them in a sorry history 

of stimulants. He won seven jerseys, sure enough, but he can’t 

wear them any more or boast about them. 



RLR Sampler Numbers_p06-11.indd 6-7 24/05/2013 09:35

ROULEUR 

~7~ 

The magic number of beautiful wins 

For several years, the record of victories in the Tour de France 

has been 7. This prodigious and unequalled tally was the work 

of the very overbearing, very powerful and very fast, Lance 

Armstrong. The handsome Texan, who beat cancer, could not, 

however, beat the anti-doping agencies. Convicted of cheating, 

he confessed and found himself stripped of his victories. The 

authorities, whose role in this fine accumulation of victories 

appears to have been short-sighted, have shied away from 

awarding the jersey to the second-placed riders and have decided 

to leave seven entries in the Tour’s palmarès blank. A silent and 

inglorious first. The famous number 7 does not lose its aura 

completely because, in 1979, Bernard Hinault won seven stages 

in the same Tour and the bold Richard Virenque took the best 

climber’s jersey seven times. 

~9~ 

Minor crash-landing 

Robic broke a bone on nine occasions: twice his skull (despite 

his leather helmet), two collarbones, a thigh, vertebrae, shoulder 

blade. But that’s behind me, we can hear him say. “Fall nine times, 

get up ten” should have been his motto. No wonder they called 

him “Death Dodger”. Easier to understand why, on the evening 

after his victory in the 1947 Tour de France, he went straight off 

to deposit his yellow jersey among the relics in the basilica of 

Sainte-Anne-d’Auray… 

~24~ 

Non-stop 

The Tour de France never stops. It works 24 out of every 24 hours, 

even if the riders are pedalling for only a few hours in the sun 

each day. Hardly has the last man crossed the finish line than the 

workmen are dismantling the podiums, taking down the barriers, 

sweeping the roads and rubbing out the finish line, so as to leave the 

town as clean as they found it. Then they climb into their lorries 

to drive to the next day’s stage town where they hastily reconstruct 

the podium, draw another finish line, set up the timekeepers’ 

cabins and the départ village. They work in tandem with the 

radio and television technicians who spend all night preparing 

the following day’s live transmissions. So it’s an entire town which, 

for three weeks, never sleeps and is constantly on the move. 

~35~ 

Against the clock 

After the stage finish, the riders are still racing. They have 

only 35 minutes from the time they crossed the line to present 

themselves at the doping control and urinate in front of their 

assessors. The riders have had to pee in view of the controllers 

ever since the time when a number of riders used a small rubber 

bulb filled with clean urine. One rider, who took some of his 

wife’s urine in the morning, discovered, following the drug test 

in the afternoon that – joy – he was pregnant. 

~111~ 

What to do with all those jerseys 

The organisers of the Tour presented Eddy Merckx with 111 

yellow jerseys over his career. That’s a record which is not close 

to being beaten. History does not relate what the great Eddy did 

with them. One thing is sure, he doesn’t wear them any more… 

at least not in public. 

~121~ 

Planetary 

The Tour de France is the most viewed annual sporting event in 

the world. Only the Olympic Games and the football World Cup 

exceed it but only every four years. Nowadays, 121 television 

channels report on the Tour. They transmit to 188 countries, 

60 of them with live coverage, relaying the images from France- 

Télévision. In addition, 72 radio stations broadcast live and 400 

newspapers and magazines are accredited. Hard to forget that 

the original Tour de France was created to promote sales of the 

newspaper L’Auto. 

~130~ 

Randonnée 

To get to see the riders from the side of the road, spectators 

travel, on average, 130km. While the majority of them travel by 

car, causing unbelievable parking problems, many do it by bike 

in a spirit of solidarity with the riders. This spirit of cycling 

is so lively that, since 1993, the organisers have offered every 

cyclotourist and sportif rider a stage of the Tour exclusively for 

them. They follow the race route with car support and they are 

timed. In 2012, they covered the Pau-Bagnères-de-Luchon stage; 

in 2013, they’ll ride from Annecy to Semnoz. A week after entry 

opened, there were already in excess of 10,000 riders signed up. 




ONE HUNDRED TOURS DE FRANCE IN FIFTEEN NUMBERS 

~488~ 

Heavy legs 

We never cease to argue about the suffering imposed on the 

riders. If the stages are long, we exclaim ‘Murderers!’ but if 

they are shorter, the riders devour them faster and faster and 

suffer for it...Where to strike the right balance Really nowhere, 

because it’s not the race route which makes the riders suffer but 

the riders themselves. That didn’t stop the organisers from doing 

things on a grand scale between 1919 and 1924 by proposing that 

the men of valour should ride a stage from Sables d’Olonne to 

Bayonne, covering 488km in a single day, making it the longest 

ever stage on the programme of the Tour de France. 

~1903~ 

Promotion of genius 

It was because his newspaper L’Auto faced more and more 

vigorous competition from its rival, Le Vélo that Henri 

Desgrange (or his assistant Géo Lefèvre to be precise) had the 

idea of creating the Tour de France in 1903. It was, therefore, 

in the name of the automobile that the bicycle came to greater 

prominence. What began as a race to get publicity quickly 

became a social phenomenon. The idea of making a circuit of 

the country immediately grabbed the public imagination, first 

because France is a country which lends itself to a tour, 

then because the landscape changes abruptly and is varied, 

but also because the idea of the Tour de France dug its roots 

deep into working class solidarity and a job well done. 

Once launched, the Tour proved unstoppable and has not 

ceased to grow. It took huge upheavals of history to halt it but, 

as soon as peace was restored, it set out again as a symbol of 

peace, of holidays and of sunshine. The Tour de France is bigger 

than the race itself. On this score, no other sporting event on 

the calendar can rival it. It celebrates much besides competition 

and remains, without doubt, the most beautiful window on the 

whole of France. 

~1910~ 

The broom wagon 

For the first seven Tours, those who abandoned had to sort 

out and pay for a return home any way they could. In effect, 

a double misery: “You’re knackered You’re on your own.” 

Doubtless inspired by a proper sense of compassion, in 1910, the 

organisers introduced the broom wagon. This small lorry drove 

along behind the last rider on the road, towards the end of the 

stage finish, and scooped up all those who did not want, or were 

not able, to continue pedalling. Their number was removed, 

they were sat down in the vehicle, their bikes loaded up and they 

finished the course at the pace of the back markers. With all the 

back up available these days, the broom wagon often remains 

empty. Exhausted riders prefer their directeur sportif’s car. 

Some star riders even disappear from the race in a helicopter… 

leaving by the top floor, so to speak. 

~1919~ 

Yellow Jersey 

The yellow jersey was not born with the Tour. We had to wait 

until 1919 to note its appearance. The public needed to be able to 

spot their champion at a glance. Yellow was chosen not because 

of the summer sun but from the colour of the pages of L’Auto, 

which brought the race into being. The daily was actually printed 

on yellow paper. The yellow jersey very quickly became the dream 

of every professional racing cyclist, but not, at first, unanimously. 

Eugène Christophe, for example, did not like it because a sneering 

joke at his expense went round: “Christophe the Canary”. 

~450,000~ 

The handsome prize 

For years, the riders had the look of proletarians in the sporting 

world: worn out and ill-paid. That is not the case today when 

the top men are on a par with the top men in a number of other 

sports. Today, the winner of the Tour collects a prize of 450,000 

Euros (the last-placed man gets only 400). As a general rule, the 

winner, whose market value is about to make a huge leap up, 

gives his prize money to his team-mates. He knows he will earn 

a lot more elsewhere. 

~15,000,000~ 

Generous result 

Crowds of up to 15 million spectators have been reckoned 

to amass by the roadside along the Tour’s route. Of them, 

70 per cent are men, 80 per cent French. On certain mountain 

stages, there can be 500,000 packed tight along the sidewalls 

or on the edge of the slopes. The crowds sometimes hem the 

riders in so close that they can hardly find any road through. 

The motorcyclists have to work very hard to clear the way as 

well as to hold back the crazier fans who run along beside their 

champions at risk of tipping them over. It is a superb spectacle, 

it’s free and nobody would dream of forgoing it. 

Paul Fournel is the author of Vélo, with illustrations by Jo Burt, 

published by Rouleur. This is an extract from Rouleur issue 39. 




words Colin O’Brien 

photographs Paolo Ciaberta 

Earlier in the day we’d perched ourselves on top 

of a craggy precipice. It was the perfect spot for a 

photograph and to hell with the strange looks we 

got from the passing motorists. Eventually, one car 

stopped. The police, we thought. Or a race official. It was 

neither. It was a shameless French photographer who thought 

that our idea was so good he’d just steal it for himself. So much 

for professional courtesy. 

The landscape had been different then, the weather too. Glorious 

sunshine illuminated the island’s southern, coastal terrain: great 

open stretches of rugged and primordial rock, sandy, almost 

cadmium yellow in colour and interrupted by nothing but for 

the winding, empty blackness of a tarmac ribbon and the border 

of a spotless, blue-green sea. Messrs Voeckler and Schleck were 

still in control; their spirited break not yet exposed as unformed 

juvenilia. From up there, it was hard to understand what took 

the Tour so long. Even the dismal conditions later in the day 

couldn’t take from the island’s savage beauty. 

In the end, Froome’s solo attack was magnificent. Fresh as 

a daisy after 170km, five-and-a-bit from the line, every bit 

the champion, Sky’s heir apparent for the Tour drove himself 

forward determined and focused, powered by unstoppable legs 

and lungs that sucked in huge, visceral fills of the cold forest air. 

The gathered fans banged furiously on the advertising hoardings 

and his victory echoed out into the darkness. Behind him, Porte 

held off the chasing pack before making his own break for 

second with two to go. It almost looked... easy. When they come 

back to Corsican shores for the Tour de France’s grand départ, 

with the full weight of the year’s meticulous planning and the 

black-and-blue colossus behind them, it should look staggering. 

But we knew how good Sky were already. What came next 

was an illustration of just how far others had fallen. Twentytwo 

minutes after Froome crossed the line, a wretched figure 

materialised like the ghost of Tours past from the grey, 

damp gloom that was smothering the mountain. Eyes to the 

covered heavens in a vague and desperate supplication, he 

trundled on in hopelessness, burdened by the heavy load of 

expectation and his own potential. Was it for this that Andy 

Schleck was born 

Viscid clouds of fog clawed at him as he heaved his gaunt shell 

up l’Ospedale one strained pedal stroke at a time. It was a long 

CORSICA 

12 Subscribe at rouleur.cc SUBSCRIBE AT ROULEUR.CC 13 

RLR Sampler Corsica_12-17.indd 12-13 24/05/2013 09:36

“Eyes to the covered 

heavens in a vague and 

desperate supplication, he 

trundled on in hopelessness, 

burdened by the heavy load 

of expectation and his own 

potential. Was it for this that 

Andy Schleck was born” 

RLR Sampler Corsica_12-17.indd 14-15 24/05/2013 09:36

day in the saddle for the former maillot blanc, and a longer 

season, though we’d not yet reached April. 

Schleck’s drawn-out comeback from injury has been fraught 

with problems. A doping conviction for his brother at the Tour; 

aborted races and questions about his own professionalism; the 

ex-team boss caught up in the ‘Reasoned Decision’; a French 

MP who claims to have seen the Luxembourger too drunk to 

stand up in a Munich hotel; and a sponsor sick to the back teeth 

of cycling and pulling the plug as soon as it can. Far from ideal 

conditions for one of the sport’s most high-profile riders trying 

to rediscover the form that once excited us so. 

As Fabian Cancellara raged against the dying of the light 

in Belgium’s hinterlands, he gave a perverted impression of 

RadioShack. It’s a miracle they’re still in existence, let alone 

winning Classics. On that melancholy Corsican slope, Andy 

painted a much more honest picture: a haunting spectre of what 

might have been, suffering towards its own end in dragged-out 

slow motion, savaged by the exertions of impotent endeavour. 

A cautionary tale to the sport’s current luminaries. The next big 

thing that never was. 

Who knows what’s happened to the Schleck of old 

The rider once tipped as a multiple Grand Tour winner, 

who was on the tongue of every Tour fan at the turn of the 

last decade, has disappeared. That memorable win at 2009’s 

Liège-Bastogne-Liège seems an age ago. His breakaway 

that day was breathless, his future full of almost limitless 

potential. Now we wonder if he has a future at all. Behind 

Schleck, burly men packed barriers and signage into grubby 

vans. Other riders chatted as they sped past him unaware, 

downhill to the warm reward of the team bus. Fans making 

tracks to their cars wore confused faces when they saw the 

cyclist battling on. They thought the race was over. It was. 

Sic transit gloria mundi. 

Colin O’Brien is a freelance journalist based in Rome. This is an 

extract from Rouleur issue 39. 

 

 

 

 

Photo : Getty Images - Laurent Fabry-A.S.O. 

www.letapedutour.com 


RLR Sampler Corsica_12-17.indd 16-17 

 

 

 

 

24/05/2013 

 

 

 

 

09:36

words Carlos Arribas 

photographs Timm Kölln 

The 

Watchmaker 

of Ávila 

hen he’s in Ávila, which isn’t very 

W often, Julio Jiménez lives in the 

depths of a dark house which has a 

small living room and a large bedroom 

with a sizeable bed. The trophy heads 

of three chamois from the Oisans stare 

out somewhat perplexed and glassy-eyed 

from dusty corners. This is the house in 

which he lived with his mother, Doña 

Goya Muñoz, until she died recently at 

the age of 90; and in which his life and 

his memories are preserved along with 

a yellow Bartali brand bike held up by a 

couple of old rusty rollers gripping the 

finest Reynolds tubes almost too tightly. 

It was a lightweight bike made for him 

by Géminiani to tackle the vast mountain 

stages during his time at Bic. 

Almost 50 years later Julio Jiménez 

still has that look, his bright eyes are 

18 Subscribe at rouleur.cc Subscribe at rouleur.cc 19 

RLR Sampler Watchmaker_18-25.indd 18-19 24/05/2013 09:36

ROULEUR 

THE WATCHMAKER OF ÁVILA 

mischievous yet strangely innocent; the 

reflection of a life which already seems to 

be fading into that ethereal territory where 

memory merges with myth. But let’s not 

get ahead of ourselves. His memory is still 

as sharp, precise and as clearly defined 

as the innate driving force that guided 

his years as a cyclist, not to mention his 

relentless optimism and survival instinct; 

abilities that have endured to this day and 

still surprise him. On a cold winter’s day, 

as sad and gloomy as a winter’s day can 

be in Ávila, dirty snowflakes fly loose in 

the air and at four in the afternoon the city 

is deserted, austere and stony, populated 

mainly by priests and officials. It’s already 

getting dark and Julio, or Julito, as he’s 

affectionately known around here when he 

goes to the local bar for wine and patatas 

revolconas (a potato dish with bacon, 

paprika, peppers and onions) returns to 

his home, a ground-floor flat opposite a 

petrol station, alone. 

“I’ll get the dinner on now, grilled steak,” 

he remarks as he says goodbye, and in 

doing so provides the finishing touch to a 

portrait of loneliness, old age (Julio lives 

alone and is 78 years old) and melancholy 

in which the ageing, almost forgotten 

champion’s only remnants of the glory 

days are a selection of ceramic plates with 

naïve art motifs (seven in total, one for 

each stage won on the Tour), yellowing 

photos that only the very old or the very 

wise know how to unravel, three stuffed 

chamois, one for each time he was King of 

the Mountains on the Tour, and sacks of 

press clippings sorted by year, including the 

announcement that appeared in L’Équipe 

on Saturday July 13, 1964: “Mrs Gregoria 

Muñoz, as the mother of the winner of 

the Puy-de-Dôme stage, Julio Jiménez, 

shall receive a bouquet of flowers courtesy 

of Interflora at her home in Avila”. 

And that was life. Or was it 

The following morning at our second 

interview and photo session, one feels 

obliged to ask how his night was; mainly 

out of pity (because the one asking 

the question feels young and free in his 

mediocre life with no past of which to 




ROULEUR 

THE WATCHMAKER OF ÁVILA 

speak), as if to comfort him. He begins 

to roll those orbiting oval eyes, allowing 

a mischievous smile to creep onto his face 

and responds: “Alone No, not at all, I 

called a friend, a girl I know. We had a good 

time...” Come again By girl you mean, 50 

or 60 years old The ensuing relief from 

the question provides a moment of respite. 

“What are you talking about She can’t be 

more than 30 years old, a real cutie...” 

It’s a revelation that bursts open the 

floodgates, momentarily submerging us in 

truths as we begin to understand – apart 

from why the bed is so big and cosy – his 

true personality, the character of a cyclist 

about whom one could say was always 

there in the most memorable moments 

of the Tour during the ’60s, though not 

many people have heard of him. On the 

other hand you have to admit that old age 

doesn’t always mean surrendering and that 

women are most certainly the spice of life. 

Julito was a womaniser who never 

married because according to him his 

mother never would have approved of the 

women with whom he enjoyed spending 

the nights. He was one of the privileged 

few in Franco’s sad and repressed Spain 

that could enjoy a fulfilling sex life, as 

did most cyclists, being on the road and 

always moving on. He experienced sexual 

repression at a very young age before 

becoming a cyclist and a watchmaker, 

the job that nicknamed him ‘The 

Watchmaker of Ávila’ for eternity. Before 

putting together and taking apart watches 

in his cousin’s workshop (so as not to get 

out of shape, he wouldn’t stop moving 

his legs as if he were pedalling under 

the watchmaker’s table), Julio worked in 

an army clothes shop where dozens of 

women sewed military uniforms. 

“My job was to oil the sewing machine 

motors,” remembers Julio. “And I loved 

it because the motors were almost on the 

floor and while I lubricated them I got a 

good look at the seamstresses’ legs.” 

Carlos Arribas is a sports writer for El País. 

This is an extract from Rouleur issue 39. 




THE FIRST TIME 

words Ian Cleverly photographs Robert Wyatt 

RLR Sampler First Time_p26-33.indd 26-27 24/05/2013 09:36

omething is not right. The man sat across the table from me, 

S normally as chipper as chipper can be, is decidedly out of 

sorts. If SRM added a chipometer to its range to sit alongside its 

power cranks, this rider would normally be nudging the upper 

reaches of its capabilities – somewhere between ten and a Spinal 

Tap-esque 11. Now he is downright grumpy. 

Russell Downing, an easy-going man from Yorkshire, is feeling 

dicky for the second day running of the Three Days of De 

Panne, a race run for the last 37 years in Belgium as a warm-up 

for the impending and rather more serious matters of the Tour 

of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. 

VDK-Driedaagse De Panne-Koksijde, to give the race its 

proper Belgian title, is a decent enough event in its own 

right, but its proximity to the Belgian big two of the Classics 

season lends a slightly underwhelming air to proceedings. 

As a journalist – or bike fan – there’s a lot to be said for 

races like De Panne, where a lack of pressure allows access 

to teams and riders ordinarily off limits. But when the star 

riders start bailing after a couple of days, keeping their 

powder dry for the following Sunday’s Ronde, you can’t 

help but feel slightly cheated. Who’s going to win Who cares! 

The big boys went home already. 

One man who won’t be going home quite yet is Downing, 

sitting in a hotel bar wrestling with the Speedplay cleats on 

his shoes, determined to find a solution to his poor form in recent 

weeks. Four crashes since the start of the season have left him 

scratching his head and wondering when Lady Luck will smile 

his way. Crashes for a pro cyclist may well be part and parcel of 

the job, but for an experienced bike handler like Downing, two or 

three a year might be par for the course. Four in as many weeks 

was beyond a joke. 

“I was good two weeks ago, but not now,” he says dejectedly. 

“I didn’t take any skin off in the last crash, but something is not 

quite firing.” 

So this joker in the pack, who along with older brother Dean 

is a popular and seemingly ever-present fixture on the UK 



acing scene, is down but not out, convinced there must be a 

simple solution to his bad run. That morning in Oudenaarde’s 

beautiful town square, across the road from the Ronde Museum, 

Downing had hassled the mechanics for Allen keys and adjusted 

his saddle height a tad, wondering if that might be the cause of 

the strange sensations in his legs. 

The answer, when it came, was both unexpected and bizarre. 

The cleat on Downing’s left shoe was 25mm further back than on 

the right, presumably shifting during one of the aforementioned 

crashes in the weeks prior to De Panne. 

Now, in this world of professional cycling where the top bananas 

are supposed to notice if so much as a pea has been placed 

beneath their mattress of an evening, you may wonder why 

Downing didn’t figure that one out previously. I certainly did. 

Twenty-five millimetres is no typo: we are not talking 2.5 

millimetres here. That’s a whole inch, near as damn it. 

“It just didn’t feel right and I couldn’t work out what it was,” 

he says. “I couldn’t get any power out. I was so pissed off, then 

I went to change my cleats and one of them was out by 25mm. 

You never know, it might have done me good in the long run and 

strengthened my left leg.” 

That’s an upbeat appraisal of what might, just might, have 

benefitted Downing’s marginally weaker left leg for however 

long he’s been riding with this positional imbalance, as we joke 

about the pedalling triangles motion he has endured for several 

weeks. Imagine if he’d been using those Osymetric chainrings that 

Wiggins used to use. He’d have been pedalling octagons... 

New cleats correctly fitted, the transformation was immediate. 

Downing placed himself in the early five-man break the following 

day for a good old- fashioned blow out prior to Flanders. With the 

oldest man in the race (and possibly professional cycling, for that 

matter), 42-year-old Niko Eeckhout, driving the younger men 

along, the quintet pressed on promisingly, until that unwelcome 

symbol of many a cursed Belgian breakaway, the train crossing, 

intervened. 



Thirty seconds or so spent jiggling around behind a barrier and the 

not- so-famous five resumed their mission,but the impetus was 

gone. Truth be told, the sprinter’s teams would have reeled them 

in at a time of their choosing, but that extra half a minute would 

have added a little extra spice to the morning’s racing. 

As the bunch split apart on the final finishing laps of the town of 

De Panne, Downing lost the best part of a minute in the closing 

kilometres. He had done enough, however, to make the 120-man 

cut for the afternoon’s time-trial. If NetApp-Endura directeur 

sportif Enrico Poitschke was happy with his man’s performance, 

it was hard to tell. 

“He didn’t say a word, to be honest,” says Downing, nonplussed. 

“I came back, gave him my bike and said: ‘That’s more like it’. 

He didn’t say a word. A couple of the lads afterwards had no 

idea I was in the break...” 

I’m detecting a hint of things being less than rosy in 

the garden following the merger this year between the 

German NetApp squad and Scotland’s Endura. Despite some 

sniffing around in various quarters, nobody is forthcoming 

with the juice, apart from the occasional mention of “initial 

teething problems”. 

This marriage of convenience between the two squads made 

good business sense and gave Endura access to a Pro Continental 

licence, a step in the right direction after a very satisfying 2012. 

Wins from the likes of Jonathan Tiernan- Locke, Ian Wilkinson, 

Erick Rowsell and, of course, Russell Downing, put the Brits at 

the head of the UCI’s EuropeTour ranking by the end of March. 

Tiernan-Locke’s Tour of Britain victory was the icing on the cake 

at the other end of the season. Endura backed their Sky-bound 

Devonian to the hilt to claim the first British winner of the modern 

era race, no mean feat. 

“To finish off the season by winning the Tour of Britain – that 

was amazing,” says Downing, a man with a reputation for 

winning, equally satisfied in his support role. “Sat on the front, 

day in, day out, and still sprinting at the end. It was a good 

feeling. I need to find shape like that again...” 

Ian Cleverly is Managing Editor of Rouleur. This is an extract from 

Rouleur issue 39. 



words Ian Cleverly photographs Daniel Sharp 

SPEEDPLAY 

Richard Byrne came up with a home trainer that held 

the bike in position and offered resistance using fans, 

a major departure from old school rollers. He called 

it the Turbo Trainer. You might have heard of the 

generic term. He didn’t have the patent in place for that one... 

One great idea lost to others. 

How about tri-bars Five years in advance of Greg LeMond 

blasting down the Champs-Élysées in 1989 tucked down on his 

Scott clip-on aero bars, Byrne had come up with a not dissimilar 

design, again without patenting. There’s a theme developing here... 

When he finally arrived at the pedal and decided he could 

do better, Byrne made sure everything was in order with the 

paperwork before laying his ideas in front of the major players 

in manufacturing. 

“I had been looking at pedals and other things in the market and 

decided I wanted to make a better pedal. There seemed to be a 

gaping technological hole, in so much as they were all singlesided. 

The other thing with them at the time is that they had a 

design flaw: the harder you pull on them, the more likely you are 

to pull out of the pedal. 

“I thought of it like a door handle. You can pull on it as 

hard as you want and nothing will happen until you reach the 

release point. I also wanted it to float. That was my goal, so I 

started playing around with designs and drawing, and figured 

the only way I could do it was with the lollipop shape with a true 

locking mechanism. 

“We took it to 22 companies and said: ‘We got this new design: 

half the weight of the competition, much better cornering 

clearance, much better stack height, far superior locking 

mechanism, and it’s double-sided. You’re gonna love it!’ 

“And they looked at it and said: ‘That’s a radical departure... 

No thanks!’ 


RLR Sampler Speedplay_p34-37.indd 34-35 24/05/2013 09:37

ROULEUR 

SPEEDPLAY 

“It performs like a bicycle pedal, but doesn’t look like anything 

that had preceded it. So we started out with the legacy of what 

had come before us, which now became an impediment to our 

potential.” 

That could well have been the end of the story, except that 

Sharon Worman, who happens to be Byrne’s wife, and whom 

he credits unconditionally with being the business brains behind 

the operation, agreed to throw her eggs in the Speedplay basket. 

“Sharon was an attorney at the time, but suggested we start a 

company ourselves. She said she’d give it two years and then go 

back to work, and that was 21 years ago...” 

Byrne’s early years in the sport, as he relates tales of first 

seeing the Tour de France in 1972, chatting to Barry Hoban 

(who was amazed to see an American race fan in France), 

ending up on the front page of L’Equipe by accident – 

a longhaired autograph hunter lurking in the vicinity of 

Raymond Poulidor – suggest a hippie doing a cyclist’s version of 

a Jack Kerouac road trip that continued once he had landed back 

home in Florida. 

“I got more and more into cycling and I wanted to race but there 

wasn’t much going on in Florida so I drove around until I ended 

up in San Diego.” 

Track racing was Byrne’s bag and the San Diego velodrome turned 

out to be the perfect place. When an inventor came looking for 

a pilot for his super-sleek recumbent, Byrne won the audition 

and was duly crowned winner of the Human Powered Speed 

Championships in ’83. Two years later, in a coaching capacity, 

Byrne helped Jim Elliott to fourth position in the Race Across 

America, then a fledgling event for extreme distance nutcases, now 

an established event for extreme distance nutcases. Those aero 

bar extensions I mentioned earlier featured on Elliott’s machine, 

developed further by Pete Penseyres, winner of the ’86 edition and 

still holder of the highest average speed for the RAAM. 

“My latest hobby is teaching bike handling skills,” says 

Byrne, who never seems to sit still for long, as you may have 

gathered by now. “It came from teaching the same thing on 

the track. It came about after Dave Zabriskie crashed on the 

Tour. I had breakfast with him the following morning and 

said if he came to San Diego I would teach him some skills, 

which I did in one day. The next time I saw Bjarne he said 

‘What did you do with Dave He is like a totally different rider. 

We need you to do the same with my guys’. 

“It was basically parking lot skills. Zabriskie was scared to ride 

next to somebody, to ride at close quarters. Riis’ skills were 

much better than most of the guys on his team.” 

You are probably building up a mental picture of Richard Byrne 

that suggests he is a little bit flaky, in a good-natured, whackedout 

kind of way; that the Californian sun has turned his head to 

mush and all of these side projects are minor distractions from 

the business in hand. 

But you’d be wrong. He’s always thinking, always looking 

for ways to improve, whether that be Zabriskie’s handling, 

aerodynamic riding positions or the humble pedal. It’s all 

relevant. If I were to cook an omelette in the company of Byrne, 

I’m thinking he’d have some marginal amendments – maybe 

even wholesale sweeping changes – to the recipe the rest of us 

use. No butter perhaps. Heating it under the grill possibly. 

Ian Cleverly is Managing Editor of Rouleur. This is an extract from 

Rouleur issue 39. 


RLR Sampler Speedplay_p34-37.indd 36-37 24/05/2013 09:37

words Ned Boulting photographs Taz Darling 

FROOME 

DOG 

RLR Sampler Froome_38-43.indd 38-39 24/05/2013 09:37

ROULEUR 

Every now and then, when he’s got nothing better to 

do, Chris Froome leaves his Monte Carlo apartment, 

shouts to his fiancée Michelle that he’ll be back soon, 

and heads off to the beach. This is a normal enough 

situation, I suppose. We’re talking about Monaco, where loafing 

around in sunshine is part of the residency requirements. But the 

rest of the trip to the beach is less typical. 

When he gets to the water, he dives in and hunts around the 

sand and stones on the seabed, feeling for life, looking for 

octopus. When he finds one, he harpoons the holy crap out of it, 

retrieves his prey from his spear, and if it’s still alive, ‘flips its 

head inside out’ and bashes its brains out on a rock. Dripping 

water, and carrying the deceased cephalopod back upstairs to 

his wife-to-be, he returns home. Lunch is sorted. 

He then thumps his chest, and heads for the shower. (All right, 

I made that bit up.) 

This story is relevant, somehow. I feel certain there must be 

some justification for leading this feature with the octopus 

story, other than its fleshy shock value. Maybe it’s a metaphor. 

Perhaps because it serves as a reminder that Chris Froome’s 

particular kind of British upbringing involved him spending 

precious little time in Britain. If he’d been from, let’s say, 

Kilburn, for example, he might have developed a passion for fly 

fishing tiddlers in the canals at Maida Vale, instead of circling 

submarine life forms in warmer waters with murder on his 

mind. Or perhaps I like the story because he told me that he’s 

been trying to teach Philippe Gilbert (a fellow Monégasque) 

how to harpoon sea bream. The Belgian world champion is, by 

all accounts, an eager student, but has much to learn. Heaven 

help the fish when he’s mastered that. 

But, thinking about it, I think I do know why this simple story 

of Côte d’Azur leisure time strikes a chord: it doesn’t seem 

very likely. 

I close my eyes and try to imagine it. But the details prove 

elusive. Has he got a scuba tank Does he carry a knife 

Are there flippers involved Speedos Is the octopus trying to 

escape, or has Team Sky’s Chris Froome caught him unawares, 

and with devilish stealth Come to that, how do you flip an 

octopus’s head inside out I can’t picture it. 

The truth is this: I just can’t see Chris Froome killing a giant, 

bilaterally symmetrical, waterborne mollusc. But then again, a 

year or two ago, I couldn’t see him winning the Tour de France. 

Doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen. Stranger things have 

happened, as I hope I’ve just proved. 

I’ll be honest, as my deadline now ticks down to the final few 

hours. This hasn’t been the easiest feature to write. No sooner 

had I rattled out some sort of first draft, than the whole thing 

needed an instant reworking, in the light of the ever-changing 

power struggle within Team Sky. The story, as I understood 

it, had aged within an hour. In Monaco, I had been struck by 

how little Chris Froome had seemed interested in stoking the 

smouldering embers of La Toussuire, that Alpine climb of the 

famous 2012 “attack” There is, in my mind, little doubt that 

his publicly semi-functional relationship with Bradley Wiggins, 

is also privately, well, semi-functional. Yet, sitting in the 

springtime Riviera sunshine, Froome was painting me a picture 

of a man who appeared to be widely misunderstood. He was 

casting Bradley Wiggins in a different light. 

“I don’t think he likes the limelight. I don’t think he enjoys fame. 

I think he’d be a lot happier having a quieter life, away from the 

buzz, the whole circus.” 

The problem was, that a week or so later, as I sat at my desk in 

London, listening back to my recording of Froome’s carefully 

chosen words about his team-mate, Wiggins himself was 

indeed caught temporarily in the limelight (at a pre-Giro press 

conference), creating a buzz, and whipping up a circus all of 

his own. Suddenly, Bradley Wiggins wanted to lead the Tour 

team again. 

I stopped typing. I had to. This ran directly counter to the specific 

account that Chris Froome had only just given me. 

“I don’t think he likes the limelight. I don’t 

think he enjoys fame. I think he’d be a lot 

happier having a quieter life” 



ROULEUR 

“I was in my own little world. I came back 

down with a huge grin on my face, thinking, 

this is what I ride for.” 

“Will you seek Brad out, face to face, and have that discussion” 

I had asked him, as we perched on the steps of the Port de 

Fontvieille. 

“We already had that discussion. He told me that he would ride 

for me at the Tour.” He had looked certain, sounded emphatic. 

“We don’t need to have that discussion. I think it’s pretty 

clean cut.” 

Perhaps not as clean cut as he might wish. 

* * * 

Taz, Rouleur’s photographer, and I had checked into the 

Columbus hotel in Monaco for our appointment with Chris 

Froome and his girlfriend Michelle Cound. We had both been to 

that establishment before. I mention this only because in 2009, 

I sat in its foyer on the eve of the Tour de France listening to 

the Garmin-clad Brad Wiggins telling me how he was pretty 

certain he had a top 20 finish in him, “maybe even top ten”. It 

seemed a bit of an empty claim at the time, and I’m not sure 

we even bothered running the interview on our TV coverage the 

next day when the Tour got underway. Of course, three weeks 

later, he had announced himself as a genuine GC rider with his 

fourth place (third if you discount Lance Armstrong, which you 

absolutely must). Back then, we had no idea what he was about 

to reveal about his potential. 

Monaco was crawling with Team Sky operatives that 

weekend, I recall. Some were covert, others more visibly 

sporting their three-lettered allegiance to the Master Dish 

Sellers of Osterley – Sky. Plain old Dave Brailsford, in his 

pre-knighted days, was also staying at the Columbus, along with 

Shane Sutton. Fran Millar was looking after the marketing types 

from BSkyB in the Fairmont hotel on the other side of town, 

overlooking the famous F1 hairpin. They were busily putting 

together their plans for the launch in six months time. Brailsford 

was privately, as well as publicly, repeating his mantra to anyone 

who would listen: “Our aim is to produce a British Tour winner 

within five years.” 

They were there to see Bradley Wiggins. Chris Froome wasn’t at 

the race at all. 

After a text message saying they were running a little late (his 

training ride had been a bit longer than planned) Chris and 

Michelle pitch up. We shake hands, and since it is a beautiful 

spring afternoon, head for the sea front, to do battle with the 

noise of the helicopters taking off and landing en route to Nice 

airport. There’s a lot going on in Froome World just now. 

He has to be at the height of all his powers, both mental and 

physical, to zone in on what matters and to disregard the rest. 

“Yesterday the penny dropped.” Froome is talking slowly, as is 

his way. Sometimes he thinks for a while before he speaks, and 

occasionally bites his bottom lip. He’s faultlessly polite. He’s 

always been faultlessly polite. 

“It was a recovery ride. I went out for two-and-a-half hours 

just over the Col de la Madone and I had that feeling that 

I had completely switched off.” It must be nice, that. To rise 

13 kilometres above the chaos and the clamour, and let it all 

evaporate. From up there Monaco must look very small. “I was 

in my own little world. Just came back down with a huge grin on 

my face, thinking, this is what I ride for.” 

There have surely been times when that bit, that fundamental 

pleasure, has been easily forgotten. Entering the sharp end of 

the most important season of your life, hitting July face-first 

as the favourite to win the Tour, with the defending champion 

shadowboxing you from afar: this is the stuff which might 

threaten to break you, a pressure that will turn cracks into 

fissures and blow the whole project apart if you let it. 

Yet Chris Froome takes ‘level-headed’ and stamps it onto every 

waking minute of his life. 

Ned Boulting is the author of On The Road Bike published by Yellow 

Jersey Press. This is an extract from Rouleur issue 39. 



THE ONES 

Stage 3 

Maastricht – Charleville-Mézières 

1 July 1969 

words Robert Millar 

photographs Offside L’Équipe 

The team leader’s pressure 

starts long before that first 

roll call. Depending on 

the situation it’ll usually 

commence anywhere between 9 and 

12 months before and there are two 

options: there’s the good Tour and there’s 

the bad Tour, but don’t be tempted to 

think the middle is no man’s land. In 

the professional cycling world there is 

no such thing. Pro cycling doesn’t see 

things as bad, average or acceptable; 

it’s a black and white world where you 

are only as good as your last race, and 

this psychology is the brutal reality for all 

the ones. 

If the team had a good Tour the previous 

year there’s a little bit of slack before the 

questions start getting asked. How are 

you feeling Are you going to do better 

Will there be more wins Will you be 

faster 

Have a bad Tour and the same questions 

start instantly though this time it’s the 

management not the media or fans 

asking, and the grilling comes without 

the niceties and pre-interview small talk 

that success brings. 

Any new teams and newly promoted 

ones are given the benefit of the doubt 

and typically come to their first Tour 

with new relationship enthusiasm, their 

sights set high or higher depending 

on their form. They may like to think 

they are under less pressure to win, 

but they aren’t. 

The ones learn quickly of the fickleness 

of their situation. They are there to win, 


RLR Sampler The Ones_44-49.indd 44-45 24/05/2013 09:38

Stage 12 

Bourg-de-Péage – Mende 

16 July 2010 



Stage 6 

Merlin Plage – Merlin Plage (ITT) 

2 July 1975 

or at the very least to be competitive. 

They are expected to be seen and that 

doesn’t include slipping out the back or 

being at the bottom of a pile-up, though 

quite how you avoid the second scenario 

often depends more on luck than it does 

on anything else. 

At some point during the process of 

becoming a one you grow to be painfully 

aware that your form, or the lack of it, 

concerns not only your direct future but 

probably that of the 40, 50 or 60 other 

people employed by the team. It may 

even impact on the sponsor companies 

depending on their size, markets and 

monetary commitment because a good 

Tour can mean more exposure, more 

sales and more employment for them 

too. All it takes is to catch a snippet of 

conversation that you weren’t supposed 

to hear – probably from a couple of 

members of the team staff – for the 

reality to smack you between the eyes that 

there could be more at stake than just the 

bike race. They might even be guys that 

you like who were doing the gossiping, but 

all the same it’s one of the truths you don’t 

need to hear when the pressure is on. 

Your job as a one at the Tour de France 

is to be at the front when you need to 

be. That means all day during the first 

week and if you don’t do it naturally then 

you have to get used to being dragged 

up to the head of affairs on a regular 

basis. Later on, once the race has a bit 

of structure it’s slightly easier to keep a 

decent position, but during the opening 

stages having a one on your dossard 

doesn’t earn you any more respect when 

the fighting really gets going near the 

stage finishes. You can’t afford to fall off 

and the desperadoes know that, so unless 

you are a sprinter you get bumped and 

barged, lose the place and end up in the 

wind or further back. 

You have to get used to being surrounded 

by team-mates too; some riders like this 

and some don’t, but for most ones the 

choice is made for them at the morning 

meeting. Flat days and it’s the big burly 

team-mates looking after your needs; 

mountain stages it’s the climbers; for the 

in-between days it’s anybody who is still 

fresh. There are no real days off as a one. 

The best you can hope for is an invisible 

day where you take no wind, make no 

significant efforts and everyone forgets 

about you. Those days do exist, and they 

are almost as pleasurable as the days 

when everything goes right. 

Robert Millar was King of the Mountains 

at the 1984 Tour de France. This is an 

extract from Rouleur issue 39.

here - Rouleur Magazine

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?