CQ22-Digital

THE CYCLING QUARTERLY
ISSUE 22 2019 £12

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1

THE SOUNDTRACK TO CYCLING
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4
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5

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©Conquista Cycling Club Limited 2019
6

Editor
Trevor Gornall
trevor@conquista.cc
Assistant Editor
Matthew Bailey
matthew@conquista.cc
Sub-Editor
Matthew Bailey
matthew@conquista.cc
Art Director
Scott O’Raw
Published by
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10
Editorial
by Trevor Gornall
12
Domestiques
Words: Cillian Kelly
Photography: Cor Vos
26
San
60
Top
72
Fathers
Luca / Prologues
Words: Chris Lanaway & Matthew Bailey
Photography: Chris Lanaway
To Bottom
Words & Photography: Fergus Coyle
Of Colombian Cycling
Words: Marcos Pereda, Translated by Matthew Bailey
Photography: Biblioteca Pública Piloto de Medellín
para América Latina
8

Bordeaux - Paris
Words: Suze Clemitson
Illustrations: Sam Hinton
Photography: Cor Vos
82
Bathers In The Buenos Aires’ Fountain Of Youth
Words & Photography: Mitchell Belacone
118
128
Other Side Of The Fence
Words:Trevor Gornall
Photography: www.swpix.com & Cor Vos
Briefings
Words & Photography: The Peloton Brief
160
Casquette
Words & Photography: Russell Jones
164
Postcard From The Peak
Words & Photography: Tom Owen
184
9

Editorial by Trevor Gornall
I’m not going to lie – this issue has been especially challenging to
get over the line. We are however delighted to bring you what we
feel is one of our best yet.
Whilst wrestling with missed deadlines and delays I was recently
reminded of the old adage that the less we know about how
sausages are made the better they taste. So with that in mind,
let us pass on the aperitif that would be a dull explanation of the
numerous dreary challenges that have held us back of late and look
forward to our delicious main course of tasty bangers.
But before we tuck in, first let us welcome to the gang Scott O’Raw,
who some of you may know from The Velocast (shop.velocast.cc).
Scott, a man of many talents, is now tasked with delivering our
design. We hope you enjoy his creative direction, which we will
further develop together in future issues.
So, what’s sizzling on this issue’s hot plate? Our traditional mix of
unusual offerings from new and regular contributors emanating
from the far-flung reaches of the cycling globe – that’s what.
We’re delighted to have a second contribution from Ireland’s
walking encyclopaedia of pro cycling Cillian Kelly. In Domestiques
he takes a look at the loyal servants of the pro peloton and ponders
the question how we can measure their contribution to the
successes of their team leaders.
In San Luca Chris Lanaway shares with us the opening stage of the
102 nd edition of the Giro d’Italia, an 8.2 km ITT, which concluded
with the spectacular ascent to the Santuario di Madonna di San
Luca in Bologna. Chris’s pictures also inspired Matthew Bailey to
pen his piece What’s In A Name?, where he ponders the question
– when is a prologue not a prologue?
We welcome to Conquista Fergus Coyle, who tells us about Dr Ian
Walker’s attempt at the world record for crossing Europe north to
south by bike in Top to Bottom.
10

Marcos Pereda returns with Fathers of Colombian Cycling. In this
piece, Marcos tells us a tale of bitter poets, Nobel laureates and two
legendary champions, Ramón Hoyos Vallejo and Martín Emilio
Rodríguez, in the land of magical realism. Photos are courtesy of
Biblioteca Pública Piloto de Medellín para América Latina (with
particular thanks to Esteban Duperly for his help).
On more familiar ground, Suze Clemitson returns with Bordeaux-
Paris – another epic feature, this time detailing the history of a race
that gave us perhaps the greatest feat in cycling history. The piece
is wonderfully illustrated by another Conquista debutant Sam
Hinton, who also delivers our cover.
Switching continents, we bid a hearty ‘¡Hola!’ to Mitchell Belacone,
whose debut Conquista feature Bathers in Buenos Aires’ Fountain
of Youth introduces us to the random collection of amigos whose
regular appearances at an Argentine cycle track appear to be
defying the ageing process.
In The Other Side of the Fence the present author catches up with
recently appointed Great Britain Cycling Team senior men’s
academy coach Matthew Brammeier at the 2019 Tour de Yorkshire.
Matt tells us about the end of his career as a pro rider and his switch
to coaching and offers a little insight into the current crop of talent
coming through the GBCT academy.
Find out everything you never needed to know about Ramunas
Navardauskas, what’s hot in Girona, and Nic Dougall’s switch to
triathlon. It can only be the return of Briefings from The Peloton
Brief.
Jack Swart is one of the all-time greats of New Zealand road racing.
Russell Jones tells us his story in Casquette.
And last but not least, Tom Owen rounds out the issue this time
with his Postcard from The Peak.
So sit back and enjoy this magnificent Molteni-esque sausage-fest.
See you on the road . . .

Alain Vigneron
DOMESTIQUES
12

It’s easy to evaluate and compare the
performance of cycling’s champions.
How many victories?
How many jerseys?
But what about the sport’s water-carriers
– the domestiques? They are invariably
lauded for their efforts and assistance by
their victorious team leaders – but how can
we tell whether they deserve it?
Words: Cillian Kelly
Photography: Cor Vos
13

Most cyclists are losers. 2,648 different riders have managed
to complete the Tour de France and yet only 62 of them have ever
won it. The rest of them are losers. That’s a win rate of 0.023%. It’s
roughly the same ratio for every other cycling race you can think
of. You could say that it’s also true of other sports. I haven’t done
the maths on all of them but I’d imagine you could find similar
numbers of losers in tennis or golf. But this is where cycling
differs. The winner wins and he often wins alone. But he cannot
do so without his team. For so many reasons, the fact that cycling
is a team sport but a single rider crosses the finish line makes it
interesting. Not merely because it gives us this abundance of
losers, but mainly because most of them are not even trying to win.
Of course, I’m being ridiculous just to hoik you in. I know and
you know they are not
losers – far from it. The
domestiques that shape
the sport are some of
”Most cyclists are losers”
the hardest bastards in
it and quite often put in
even more work, produce
more watts and suffer a
lot more than the team
leader they’re working for. They’re not ‘unsung’ heroes. There is
a very wide appreciation and acknowledgement of the work that
they do. When a team leader wins, often the first thing they do is
praise the effort of their teammates.
But how do we know who are the best domestiques? For team
leaders, it’s straightforward – race wins. There can be some debate
about quality vs. quantity and there are different types of riders
who can win different types of races. But ultimately, the races
a leader wins will define him. For everyone else there is no such
measure. How do you measure the contribution of a domestique?
How much credit can Egan Bernal take for Geraint Thomas’s Tour
de France win last year? How much credit should Mark Renshaw
take for all the times he led Mark Cavendish toward the last 300
metres?
A simple measure would be the volume of ‘assists’ a rider
produces. That is, how many times a rider takes a part in a race and
one of their teammates manages to win it.
14

Michel Stolker, domestique to the great Jacques Anquetil
15

Famously, George Hincapie assisted Lance Armstrong to all
seven of his Tour de France wins. Obviously domestiques were
not the only professionals assisting Armstrong during those
years, but it didn’t stop Hincapie from building almost his entire
career around the notion that he was the best domestique in
the business (the rest of his career he built around losing Paris-
Roubaix every year).
George Hincapie, if you include Armstrong’s wins, has
actually assisted three different Tour de France winners. After
the seven Tours with Armstrong he remained on the Discovery
Channel team for a couple of years and was still present when
Alberto Contador won his first Tour in 2007. Hincapie then
moved on to HTC-Columbia, where he proved to be something
of a mentor to a young Cavendish, before ending up at BMC
Racing, where he was on the Tour team in 2011 when Cadel Evans
made it to Paris in yellow.
Helping three different riders win the Tour de France sounds
like it’s no accident. Big George must have had something (drugs,
obviously – but maybe something else too). He’s a rare breed.
Since trade teams were permanently reintroduced to the Tour de
George Hincapie shepherds Armstrong
through the 11th stage of the 2005 Tour
16

France in 1969 only two other
riders have managed this feat of
über-domestiqueness.
The first to do it was a
French rider called Alain
Vigneron, the very definition of
the ‘loser’ we’ve already agreed
is by no means a loser, with no
professional wins to his name.
He was signed to the Renault
team by Cyrille Guimard in 1981
and was trusted straight away
with aiding Bernard Hinault in
July. I’m not sure how much help
the Badger really needed, but
the relationship was a success
as a third Tour de France came
Hinault’s way. A fourth came the
following year, again with the
help of Vigneron. Hinault was
going for three in a row, and five
in total, in the summer of 1983
but a knee injury forced him to
withdraw from the race before
it began. This left the door open
for another teammate, Laurent
Fignon, to capitalise as he took
his first Tour win, again with the
help of Vigneron.
The following off-season
was when relationships soured
between Guimard and Hinault
and the latter went off to form
his own team, La Vie Claire.
He brought Vigneron with him
and again he was there when
Hinault finally did make it five
in 1985 and then promised
to pass the crown to Greg
LeMond the following year.
Vigneron witnessed first-hand
the mutiny and baffling tactics
which coloured the battle
between Hinault and LeMond
as Vigneron himself made it
five Tour de France assists in
total, this time with his third
different leader.
The final rider to achieve
this peculiar hat-trick was
Dominique Arnaud, who
was actually a teammate of
Vigneron’s in 1985 when they
were both on Hinault’s La Vie
Claire team for that year’s Tour.
(Arnaud is not to be confused
with Dominique Arnould, who
won a Tour stage in 1992, then
moved on to the Reynolds
team which won the Tour with
Pedro Delgado in 1988.) Arnaud
went on to ride for Banesto, in
the service of Miguel Induráin
during his maiden win in 1991.
Sadly, Arnaud died of cancer,
aged 60, during the Tour de
France in 2016.
But of course, there is more
to cycling than just the Tour de
France. What about the riders
who have been able to drag
their leaders not just around
France, but around Italy and
Spain too? There are 34 riders
who can say they have assisted
a win at all three Grand Tours.
Both Vigneron and Arnaud are
among them. Hincapie is not,
given his focus on the Tour
throughout his career (he rode
the Tour 17 times but the Giro
only once and the Vuelta twice).
17

The first ever rider to bask in
the glory of their race-winning team
leader at all three Grand Tours
was the Italian all-rounder Nino
Defilippis. He was a teammate of
Angelo Conterno at Bianchi when he
won the 1956 Vuelta a España. He was
at Carpano in 1960 when Gastone
Nencini won the Tour de France.
And finally, when Franco Balmamion
won his first Giro d’Italia in 1962,
Defilippis was there too. In all three
of those Grand Tours Defilippis won
at least one stage of his own.
In subsequent years a mishmash
of riders have managed this
triple. For every Raphaël Géminiani,
there’s a Bernard Quilfen; for every
Jean Stablinski, a Michel Stolker.
The rider who has assisted the most
overall wins in Grand Tour history
is Victor Van Schil, who did it 11
times. This is perhaps unsurprising
as Van Schil spent most of his good
years as a teammate of Eddy Merckx.
With Merckx he assisted at four
Tours, four Giri and a Vuelta, with a
further Vuelta alongside each of Rolf
Wolfshohl and Raymond Poulidor.
The most recent addition to the
list is Mikel Landa, who was at Astana
when Fabio Aru won the Vuelta. He
18

Cav takes another Renshaw-fuelled win
was at Team Sky for two of Chris
Froome’s Tour wins and at this year’s
Giro he provided a foil for Richard
Carapaz to take the first ever Grand
Tour win for Ecuador. Perhaps there
is something to the ‘Free Landa’
movement after all.
Taken at face value, it would
seem that these guys are some of
the most successful domestiques in
cycling history. They are the riders
you would want on your team if you
were trying to win a Grand Tour. But
is that really true? How do we know
that their team leaders won because
of them, and not in spite of them?
What did they actually do to help
their leader? Why were they better
at doing whatever that was than
everyone else?
There’s a great article in the
March 2010 issue of ProCycling
magazine where Daniel Friebe
profiles the German rider Andreas
Klier. At that moment he was on
the Cervélo TestTeam and was
gearing up to aid Thor Hushovd
and Heinrich Haussler in their
efforts to win the Tour of Flanders,
although Klier also seemed to
19

harbour some ambition of winning the race himself. He was 34 by then
but had managed to finish second in the Ronde before, back in 2005.
Haussler describes him as “the reason he joined Cervélo” and “the
man who knows more about riding the Tour of Flanders than anyone
else.” Friebe goes on to write that “his teammates have dubbed him
‘GPS Klier’ such is his knowledge of Classics courses.” Klier had been
living in Flanders for 12 years at that stage and had made it his vocation
to study the local roads and embed all of the fabled routes in his brain.
Another teammate and now GCN presenter Daniel Lloyd (he rode
for the Cervélo TestTeam you know?) revealed in that same article
“Everyone’s got massive respect for Andreas. A lot of the people who
used to be his teammates – you see them following him around the
bunch, because they know he’s always in the right spot. There aren’t
many people who are that clear-headed in those situations.”
But even now, when I ask Lloyd what it was about Klier that made
everyone want to be his teammate, he can’t quite put his finger on it.
And even the bit of detail he did give me was anecdotal. Which is what
being a domestique boils down to – a load of anecdotes. There’s no
measure for this stuff. Sure, you can measure power output or VAM,
but that is no indication of how good a teammate you can be. Sure, in
certain situations they can help. But you could have the best numbers
in the world and still be a dreadful teammate. The only current
measure of the effectiveness of a domestique is the trail of anecdotes
they leave behind in the tales of former teammates.
Anecdotes are not worthless. When a star rider changes
team a whisper in the ear of a directeur sportif, an anecdote and a
recommendation could be all it takes for a domestique to get his next
job. But it doesn’t seem good enough that the careers and lives of some
of cycling’s best people can be left to the whim of a leader and the
hopes that he doesn’t forget the work that was done.
So what can we do? How can we measure it? There must be
something better than the simple ‘assist’ example I’ve detailed here.
These days teams collect and analyse the power data produced by
their riders, both on training rides and in races. And no doubt there is
a benefit to having this information and knowing when and where a
rider’s limitations were reached and breached in given circumstances.
But again, it just feels like there is a piece of the puzzle missing. If a
rider increases their power output significantly during a race for a
20

Landa leads Froome and one-time team
leader Aru at Stage 17 of the 2017 Tour
21

22
Andreas Klier shows the way at
Dwars door Vlaanderen 2010

short period of time, was that power
used wisely? Did the rider start working
harder simply because they were
badly positioned? Or perhaps they
were beautifully positioned and the
extra power was needed to shut down
a dangerous move. The power data
themselves only tell half of the story.
The other half is positioning. And the
only way to fill in those details is with
a highly accurate positioning system.
Perhaps a global one?
It seems like it has been years since
GPS was going to transform how
we view and consume cycling, but
the revolution has yet to take place.
We do get some on-screen graphics
about rider whereabouts and there
are better uses of it to be found
online, particularly during bigger
races where a shiny website tracking
all the riders’ positions is provided.
But this is a GPS view at a rather
macro level. We’re only ever told
which group contains which riders. We
never know whereabouts in each group
each rider is to be found.
Cycling is different to most other
sports. It does not take place in an arena
where all competitors are visible all
of the time. In a sport such as football,
computer vision techniques can be
used to make remarkable conclusions
about team and player performance.
But this is not possible in cycling.
When a race begins to split up in
any significant way it becomes very
obvious very quickly just how few
cameras there actually are covering the
race. There are usually only four. Recall
this year’s Amstel Gold Race, where a
fractured finale meant we had no idea
where Mathieu van der Poel was until
the final straight.
GPS systems exist now which can
provide accuracy to within a few inches.
That would allow fans, riders and team
managers to know exactly what is going
on all of the time. Or perhaps, which
is more feasible, to know exactly what
has gone on – a post-race analysis to
interpret all of the data and explain
everything that had just happened. And
for domestiques, this data could finally
The only current measure of the
effectiveness of a domestique is
the trail of anecdotes they leave
behind
provide them with certainty as to what
their value and their worth actually is.
Which riders are the quickest at
moving from back of the bunch to the
front? How long does it take a rider to
go back and get water bottles for their
leader? When instructed to stay in
front of their leader for a certain period
of the race, how much of that time did
they actually spend in front of their
leader? How much time did they spend
at the side of the bunch eating wind?
When they get to the front section of
the bunch, are they able to stay there
as instructed? For how long? If they’re
asked to mark a rider and stay on their
wheel, how well are they able to carry
23

out that instruction? The GPS information coupled with the
power data from the same race would give a rich tapestry from
which previously unknown conclusions could be drawn.
There was an article published in the New York Times
Magazine earlier this year which provided details of the
data analysis behind the success of Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool
team. Director of research Ian Graham went to Klopp’s
office shortly after the German arrived at the club and began
discussing a game between Klopp’s former club Borussia
Dortmund and Mainz. Dortmund dominated the game from
start to finish but ended up losing it 2-0. “Ah you saw that game?”
Klopp asked, remembering how bizarrely unlucky his team had
been to lose it. “It was crazy. We killed them. You saw it!”
But the remarkable thing was that even though Graham
hadn’t seen the game he still knew more about why Dortmund
lost than Klopp did. Purely through analysis of the data, Graham
knew everything there was to know about this game without
seeing a ball kicked. This might seem utterly unromantic to
many people, but again perhaps this is where cycling differs
from stadium sports like football. With football all of the action
is presented to the viewer and we can all make up our own
minds about what we’ve seen. With cycling, we hardly see
anything. We don’t have the information we would need to
make our minds up about who is a ‘good’ rider and who is not.
How did Óscar Freire always seem to be absent for the entire
race only to appear at the front with 200 metres to go? What
does Steve Cummings do all day long at the back of the bunch?
What was Mark Renshaw doing for the final 10 kilometres when
he piloted Mark Cavendish to all those victories? Does Andreas
Klier’s knowledge of race routes actually make a difference to
how his teammates ride?
We have no idea. It’s about time we found out.
24

Landa imperiously escorts Carapaz through the
mountains to victory at this year’s Giro
25

26

This year’s Giro started with an explosive time
trial around the spectacular streets of Bologna.
Chris Lanaway was there with his camera and
tells the story of the day below.
Following Chris’s report, we get philosophical,
asking: when is a prologue not a prologue?
Well, when it’s Stage 1, of course. But why are
some short time trials at the start of Grand
Tours prologues and others not? Matthew
Bailey cracks open the rule and history books
in search of an answer.
27

The climb to Santuario di
Madonna di San Luca (Sanctuary
of the Madonna) – or more
precisely its famous 3.8 km
covered walkway – has drawn
people to the medieval city of
Bologna for centuries. Some
come to make a pilgrimage.
Others simply wish to marvel at
an architectural masterpiece.
More recently the climb
from the flat centre of Bologna to
the basilica at the top has gained
fame and notoriety within the
cycling community. With a
punishing 9.9% average gradient
and stretches reaching 16% it
is enough to test even the best
climbers in the WorldTour.
This climb, known as
the Colle del Guardia, first
featured in the Giro back in
1956 as the setting for stage 15’s
highly unusual 2.45 km ITT –
essentially a British-style hill
climb displaced 1,000 miles
to the south east. It was won,
appropriately in every sense, by
l’ange de la montagne (The Angel
of the Mountains), Luxembourg’s
Charly Gaul, who would also
go on to win the mountain
classification that year.
It was the Giro dell’Emillia,
the final stage of which ends
with 5 punishing reps, that
would establish it as one of the
great cycling climbs. The Italian
autumn classic has been won by
riders of the calibre of Merckx,
Basso, Quintana and Chaves.
On its return to the Giro
the Colle del Guardia would
host the opening stage of the
102nd edition, an 8.2 km ITT
starting on Piazza Maggiore
and covering mostly flat ground
before reaching the final ascent
to the Santuario di Madonna di
San Luca.
Fans lined the entirety of the
climb with cheers erupting as
Italian riders danced upon their
pedals, wrestling their bicycles
up the long steep climb with
little respite until the finish line.
The steepest section is a chicane
through the medieval arcade,
where the road turns into a
wall. The riders grimace as they
fight the brutal gradient. All this
takes place against a backdrop
of homage to Italian cycling
hero Marco Pantani (Il Pirata).
A legendary mountain climber
with an unrivalled ability to attack
in the high mountains during
Grand Tours, Pantani blew away
his rivals with panache and flair
as he rode out of his saddle with
balletic rhythm.
The intensity of the riders’
individual efforts, riding solo
Words & Pictures: Chris Lanaway
28

LUCA
29

30

through the fans and standing tall on the pedals, brings flashbacks
of Pantani and his high-altitude attacks.
As the riders enter the switchbacks fans watch in awe. Each
Italian that passes through the archway is greeted by deafening
cheers and a congregation of Pantani lookalikes, who give chase
(briefly) through the steepest section of the climb. It wasn’t long
before they were calling it ‘Pantani corner’.
31

32
A Grand Tour that really
encapsulates the beauty
of road cycling, the Giro
will always remain a
special race for cycling
fans and riders the
world over. The circus
moves on from Bologna
with Primož Roglic
wearing the maglia
rosa. I depart Italy with
thoughts of some of
the great moments
of Giro history. And
today was one of them.

33

WHAT’S IN A NAME?
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.
Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
Words: Matthew Bailey
Pictures: Chris Lanaway
34

35

I’m sure you remember
how this year’s Giro started
with a prologue that ran around
the picturesque streets of the
historic city of Bologna, in front
of huge crowds of cheering,
flag-waving spectators and
culminating with a climb to the
spectacular Sanctuary of the
Madonna di San Luca.
Except you don’t, because it
didn’t. That wasn’t a prologue. It
was Stage 1.
This is confusing. Surely a
prologue is exactly this – a short
individual time trial held at the
very start of a Grand Tour. So
why wasn’t this a prologue? Or
to put it another way – when is a
prologue not a prologue? What’s
in a name?
For once, the UCI rulebook
appears to set things out with
admirable clarity. Rule 2.6.006
of the Road Race Regulations
says (among other things) that a
prologue to a professional men’s
stage race must not exceed 8 km,
must be run as an individual time
trial, and must count towards
the general classification. Well,
Stage 1 of 2019’s Giro was an ITT
that contributed to the overall
GC. But it covered 8.1 km. That’s
100 m too far for a prologue.
Those are the rules. Case closed.
Correct?
Not so fast. It should
be remembered that the
commissaires tend to look at
the UCI rules in the way that a
great chef might look at a book
full of recipes. Useful guidance,
certainly, but ultimately no more
than a starting point for individual
creativity.
For example: section 8.2.2 of
rule 2.12.007 states that any rider
who strikes a spectator will suffer
a ‘500 to 2,000 [Swiss francs]
fine per infringement, 10 to 100
points [deducted] from [his]
UCI rankings and elimination
or disqualification’ from the
race. But, after delivering a swift,
skinny-armed pummelling to a
spectator who had just knocked
him off his bike during stage 20
of this year’s Giro, Miguel Ángel
‘Superman’ López received no
sanction whatsoever.
So how useful are the UCI
rules in understanding what a
prologue is and isn’t? Maybe
history holds some lessons
for us.
It is widely agreed that the
first identifiable prologue to
a Tour de France was a 5.775
km ITT held in Angers in 1967.
But, unhelpfully, it seems that
while the organisers informally
referred to it as a prologue,
officially it was Stage 1a (Stage 1b
went from Angers to Saint-Malo
the next day). And so successful
was this that they did the same
in 1968, when Stage 1a took the
form of a 6.1 km ITT around the
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picturesque spa town of Vittel.
1969’s Tour was the first
that opened with an official
prologue. However, the ITT
route around Roubaix that year
was 10 km long. That’s 2 km –
twenty-five percent – further
than would be permitted under
the current rules. So was it a
prologue or not?
That was a minor infraction
compared with 1971, when the
prologue – yes, that was its
official designation – not only
stretched to 11 km but also took
the form of a team time trial,
thus breaking two of the UCI’s
‘rules’ in one go.
So the Tour was willing
to play fast and loose with the
concept of a prologue right
from the start. But that’s nothing
compared with the imagination
on display on the other side of
the Alps.
The first prologue of the
Giro d’Italia came in 1968, but
it wasn’t really a time trial at
all. Instead, the 130 riders were
divided into ten groups of
thirteen, each of which raced
separately around the streets
of Campione d’Italia, a tiny
exclave of Italy surrounded
entirely by Switzerland. The
fastest man around the 5.7
km course, France’s Charly
Grosskost, wore the maglia
rosa the next day, but his time
did not count towards the
general classification – rather
neatly breaking the third and
last of the UCI’s rules.
So none of the things
mentioned in the UCI rules
appear to belong to the essence
of a prologue. More surprising
still is the complete omission
from the rules of what is surely
the most important feature
of anything purporting to call
itself a ‘prologue’.
It is often assumed that the
idea of having a short individual
time trial at the start of a Grand
Tour must have originated with
the Tour de France. Specifically,
the idea is usually credited to
Jean Leulliot, a journalist and
race organiser, who suggested
the prologue (if such it was)
to the 1967 Tour. But in fact
the first Grand Tour to feature
such an ITT on the opening day
was the 1964 Vuelta, when the
riders tackled an 11 km course
around Benidorm.
However, there is a crucial
difference. This earlier ‘prologue’
was officially designated Stage
1b of that year’s Vuelta, the 42
km flat Stage 1a having been
held earlier the same day. Very
short ITTs designated ‘Stage
1b’ were also held after, but on
the same day as, Stages 1a of the
Vueltas of 1966 (3.5 km, Murcia),
1967 (4.1 km, Vigo) and 1968 (4
km, Zaragoza).
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And here’s the thing. Amazingly,
the UCI rules don’t say anything
about a prologue having to
precede the first full stage of a
race. So under the current rules
all those Vuelta Stages 1b except
the first (which was 3 km too
long) would count as prologues.
The truth is that attempting
to understand why a short early
ITT is sometimes a prologue
and sometimes not is a fool’s
errand. It’s a distinction without
a difference (with one small
caveat – see below).
Let’s instead ponder a much
more important question: what
is the point of a prologue? Why
bother starting a three-week
Grand Tour with a blink-andyou-miss
it ITT?
It is sometimes suggested
that the reason for holding a
prologue to a Grand Tour is
to allocate the leader’s jersey
for the first proper stage. And
of course it does serve this
purpose, to the considerable
benefit of certain individuals
who might otherwise never get
the chance to wear it.
The mighty Chris
Boardman, for example, wore
the yellow jersey at three
different Tours de France, each
time after winning a prologue.
What is more, he did so at a time
when cycling was just emerging
as a mainstream sport in the
UK, with incalculable positive
consequences for the country’s
appetite for and grasp of road
racing generally and the Tour in
particular.
But if all you want to do
is ‘allocate the jersey’ it isn’t
obvious that an ITT is a better
way of doing it than holding, say,
a normal flat stage with a sprint
finish. On the face of it, it makes
no more sense for the leader’s
jersey of a race covering over
3,000 km and leading up and
down mountain ranges to be
worn by a specialist in 5 km time
trials rather than by a specialist
in going flat out for 200 m.
No: the real purpose of the
prologue is very different.
A short time trial held
in a city centre at the start
of a Grand Tour can pull in
a big crowd. Consequently,
the host city can materially
increase the economic value
of the Grand Départ simply by
holding a prologue the evening
beforehand, especially if it is a
Friday or a Saturday evening.
In this respect a prologue
is very similar to a city centre
criterium (and both are very
different to most road races).
Like a crit, the racing at a short
ITT is easy to understand: as a
criterion for victory ‘quickest
rider round’ is no more complex
than ‘first over the line’. So
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anyone can follow it. The
action comes in short, intense,
exciting bursts. And everything
takes place in a compact area.
Consequently, large numbers
of punters settle into one spot
for a whole evening, where
they see a lot of action, soak up
the crackling atmosphere and
practically beg to be refreshed.
So entrepreneurial locals will
pay the host city handsomely for
licences to serve beer and frites.
So attractive is city-centre
racing that the entire economy
of professional road cycling
once rested on the criteriums
that take place in the immediate
aftermath of the Tour de France.
Here, huge crowds gather
to consume vast amounts of
premium-priced carbohydrates
while the participants in the
recently-concluded Grande
Boucle pretend to race around
the town centres of northern
France, Belgium and elsewhere
before letting the maillot
jaune ‘win’. This is why Tour
winners traditionally give all
their race winnings to their
teammates: the prize money
is nothing compared to the
potential rewards of tackling
the post-Tour crit scene in the
yellow jersey. Even though the
economic structure of cycling
has changed since then, to this
day the post-Tour crits remain
popular and highly profitable
for riders and organisers alike.
However, as the kick-off to a
Grand Tour a short time trial has
a number of advantages over a
criterium (even where the latter
is a real race, as the post-Tour
crits most assuredly are not).
For one thing, it’s probably
slightly less likely that the
favourites will crash out of the
race altogether (though short
time trials are not without risk
– just ask Alejandro Valverde,
who broke his patella when he
hit the deck during Düsseldorf ’s
damp 14 km opener in 2017, or
Boardman, who broke his wrist
and ankle in a crash during
1995’s prologue in Saint-Brieuc).
More importantly, the
‘race of truth’ gives spectators
more of a guide to the form of
the favourites than would be
possible in a crit, where the team
leaders would undoubtedly be
hidden in the bunch, sheltered
by their teammates. And given
the time trialling abilities
required of contenders in
modern Grand Tours the GC
stars themselves are pretty
likely to shine, even over such a
short course.
It is therefore submitted that
if these are the goals – to kick off
a Grand Tour with an exciting
burst of meaningful action
accessible to all, to present
the riders (and especially GC
contenders) to the public, and to
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present the public to the publiers
et friteurs of the host city (all of
which seem to the present writer
to be pretty good goals) – then
a short ITT confined to a scenic
city centre is an unbeatable way
to meet them.
And yet true prologues have
become a rarity. Over the 41
editions between 1967 and 2007
the Tour de France began with
an ITT prologue on 38 occasions
(there was one ‘prologue team
time trial’, as mentioned above,
and two longer ITTs, in 2000
and 2005). But the eleven Tours
since 2008 have featured only
two prologues, with the last in
London in 2012.
This is at least in part
because of the change of
personnel at the highest levels of
the Tour. 2007 was the year that
Christian Prudhomme took over
as race director. Changing the
nature of the race’s opening was
an obvious way to make his mark.
But the Prudhomme effect
alone is not enough to explain
the demise of the Grand Tour
prologue. The Giro has not
featured one since 2006 and
the Vuelta has been prologuefree
since 1999 (though 2009’s
Stage 1 was a 4.8 km ITT around
Utrecht).
Since 2008, for its opener
the Tour has roughly alternated
between long, flat stages and
ITTs almost double the length
of a prologue. The Giro has done
something similar but thrown
in a couple of team time trials.
And 13 of the last 17 Vueltas have
started with a TTT (all but two
significantly longer than 8 km).
This is a pity. Maybe M.
Prudhomme was right, up to a
point: perhaps having a prologue
almost every year for four
decades was too much of a good
thing. And sprint stages, middledistance
ITTs and team time
trials all have their place.
But none of them introduces
the characters and themes of the
bigger event quite so effectively
and intensely as a prologue does,
and none of them engages the
public anything like as well. So
none of them whets the appetite
for what is to come in quite the
same way.
In short, a prologue is to a
Grand Tour what an overture is
to a grand opera. Moreover, it’s
a well-established and highly
effective way to get the public
to engage with the sport and its
stars. At a time when the sport is
suffering a decline in interest and
a gradual ageing of its audience,
maybe it’s time to restore the
prologue to its rightful place as
the default Grand Tour curtainraiser
– not in the sense that you
have to have a prologue every
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time, but in the sense that if you
want to do something different it
had better be good.
Whatever the nomenclature,
Stage 1 of the 2019 Giro certainly
suggests as much. The final 2.1 km
climb to Santuario di San Luca had
an average gradient of 9.7% and
reached 16% in parts. It therefore
combined all the attractions of
the short ITT with that other
crowd-pleasing form of racing,
the hill-climb. The thousands
of spectators responded by
showing themselves very
pleased indeed, with the riders
straining and gurning their way
to the summit past a swirling,
roaring technicolour cauldron of
advanced refreshment.
Pre-Giro favourite Primož
Roglic topped the timesheet.
Almost all the main GC
contenders finished in the top
fifteen. Fastest up the climb, one
of only a few who switched from
his TT machine in favour of a
standard road bike, was Giulio
Ciccone of Trek-Segafredo. This
gave him the maglia azzurra,
which he wore all the way to
the race’s end in Verona. Miguel
Ángel López took the maglia
bianca, which he would give up a
couple of times but regain in time
for his fisticuffs in the mountains
and then retain to the end.
Both as a spectacle in its own
right and as a guide to what’s
to come it is hard to imagine a
better way of starting the Giro.
So who cares whether or not it
is called a prologue? Is this just
another piece of unnecessary and
confusing terminology that only
serves to put people off cycling,
when the phenomenon it refers
to has the potential to do the very
opposite? Should we cry, like
Juliet, ‘prologue, doff thy name’?
Well, this isn’t quite the full
story. For the UCI rules actually
do provide for a key difference
between a prologue and an ITT
representing a true first stage.
It is this: anyone who suffers an
accident and consequently fails
to finish a prologue, but not a
full stage, is permitted to take to
the start line the following day,
credited with the time of the
slowest finisher.
The significance of this
provision is shown by the
ejection from the 2019 Giro of
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Hiroki Nishimura of Nippo Vini Fantini Faizanè after he failed to make
the time cut of this year’s Stage 1. In a prologue such a struggling rider
could game the rules by having an ‘accident’, missing the end of the
stage and still starting the next day. In a true stage this rider would not
be presented with any such temptation.
So perhaps this is the reason for dispensing with the prologue.
More likely, perhaps everyone has simply forgotten why we had them
in the first place. If so, it is fervently to be hoped that Bologna 2019
serves as an effective reminder.
One last thing. For 2019 the Giro’s organisers entered into a
partnership with online training platform Zwift, who created a virtual
replica of Stage 1. Not only could members sample the course, but also
Zwift held an ‘exhibition prologue’ which saw four of the participating
teams take to their turbos for two virtual races up the route.
After this exercise rumours swirled that the 2020 Giro might even
start with a virtual prologue. Of course traditionalists were aghast at
the thought of a maglia rosa being disbursed on the basis of riders on
a static trainer controlling a laptop. And of course the organisers have
resisted the temptation, announcing that Stage 1 will be a traditional
prologue-like 9.5 km ITT around the streets of Budapest.
Which is great news for prologue fans. But, just for a moment,
suspend your disbelief and imagine a Grand Tour opening with
an e-stage. You could broadcast it around the world on the internet.
Punters could join in, riding the same course at the same time as the
stars. You could hold it in a stadium, with straining riders appearing on
a massive screen like rock stars.
No, forget the stadium. Imagine instead a city-wide event, with
riders on turbos in every bar in Budapest. What might that be a
prologue to?
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TOP TO BOTTOM
Words & Photography: Fergus Coyle

Dr Ian Walker is an environmental psychologist who
has written in-depth studies of why we drive cars and of
the behaviour of drivers overtaking bicycles. He’s also
an endurance cyclist and winner of the 2018 North Cape
4000. This summer saw Ian return to the northernmost
tip of Norway to begin a new challenge: an attempt at the
world record for crossing Europe north to south by bike.
Fergus Coyle caught up with Ian in his home town of Bristol
to talk about bad drivers, cycling and breaking records.
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May I start by congratulating
you on last year’s impressive
race win! How did you first
get into endurance cycling?
I got into endurance cycling
through endurance running. I
got into the running through
long-distance walking. And I got
into that completely by chance.
I was in my late thirties and
was doing pretty much nothing
physical. I’d succumbed to
the comfortable sloth that hits
so many people at that stage
in life. Then, out of the blue, I
read about the Long Distance
Walkers Association and got
fired up with the idea of taking
part in their annual 100-mile
walk. Somehow the idea of
walking 100 miles burrowed
into my brain – it felt so utterly
inconceivable to walk that far.
I just had to discover what it
would be like to do something
so immense. It turns out that it’s
really, really hard.
Later that year, a friend sent me
a link to a YouTube video with
footage of the Transvulcania
Ultramarathon – a 75 km run up
and down a massive volcano in
the Canary Islands. The scenery
and the event looked absolutely
stunning. “If you can walk 100
miles,” he said, “I reckon we can
do this.”
I immediately became a runner.
I trotted out my first 5 km
run the next day, and within
three months I’d run my first
marathon. A few months after
that I managed to finish the
Transvulcania race – and despite
an hour spent collapsed in the
gutter a mile from the finish I
still finished in the top half of the
field.
The next few years saw me doing
more and more ultrarunning. I
took part in the de facto world
championship of mountain
running that is the Ultra Trail du
Mont Blanc, and back in the UK
I became one of a small number
of people to run the full 102
miles of the Cotswold Way in
under 24 hours.
And then I learned about the
Transcontinental Race and
dropped running overnight.
The Transcontinental Race
covers distances of over 4,000
km across Europe, taking a
different route each year. It
seemed so much bigger and
more challenging than anything
I’d done before. Once again, the
idea of taking on such a massive
challenge burrowed into my
brain – I couldn’t think about
anything else for days. This was
so much bigger than anything
I’ve ever attempted and I just had
to know how that felt. I bought a
bike and started training.
What motivates you to
compete at such a level?
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There are many reasons I ride
long distances. It keeps me fit,
and I’ve discovered that I am
also reasonably competitive –
something I would never have
suspected about myself before I
started to take part in races.
But perhaps above all, the
reason I ride across countries
and continents is to put myself
in difficulty.
I think it’s really good for us to
experience some difficulty from
time to time.
By doing ultradistance bike
rides I put myself in tough
situations – but at a time of my
own choosing. This lets me build
self-reliance and coping skills.
By doing that, I become more
confident and better equipped
to handle difficulties off the bike
as well as on it.
At its simplest, whenever I have
a tough day at work, I can always
ask myself “Is this as bad as that
time I was stranded in a Serbian
motorway construction site at
3am with no functioning inner
tubes? No? Well then, let’s get
on with it . . .”
How do you train to be on the
bike for up 20 hours a day?
There’s no substitute for time in
the saddle. Last year I rode over
25,000 km in 1,000 hours. I have
to do those sorts of distances to
toughen me up and make my
body adapt.
But on a day-to-day basis it’s
pretty easy. A big proportion
of this distance was on my
commute to and from work. It’s
an 82 km round trip, which is
a great way to get the distance
into my legs as part of my daily
routine.
The current record for
cycling north to south across
Europe stands at 6,300 km
in 21 days, 14 hours and 23
minutes. How many days do
you hope to complete your
challenge in and what will
your strategy be?
I don’t want to give away too
much in advance, but I do have
definite strategy and tactics for
this record attempt that I hope
will see me come in below the
current record.
Above all, I want to be more
disciplined than I have been
in the past. Last year, on the
North Cape 4000, I averaged
over 360 km a day – but it was
really variable as I didn’t have
any strategy other than ‘ride as
fast as possible’. Individual days
ranged from just under 300 km
to one memorable day where I
cranked out 565 km across the
Baltic States to establish myself
as the race leader.
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This time I want to keep the days a lot
more consistent.
Does being on the road ever get
lonely?
Strangely, no – not really. Riding long
distances during a race is quite different
from riding those same distances in a
more leisurely way, such as on a touring
holiday. When I’m racing, a big part of the
day is spent thinking about how
I can best keep moving,
and where I’ll find the
basic elements of
existence: water,
food and shelter.
Or perhaps I’m
thinking about
the running
repair I’ll
attempt when
I next stop, and
how I can do
this as quickly as
possible with the
tools at hand. There’s
almost always something
to think about, to plan.
So individual moments might drag on,
and a climb over a mountain pass might
seem interminable, but in the bigger
picture time passes like the wind. I don’t
think I’ve ever known weeks go by so fast
as when I’m absorbed by the process of
moving as quickly as possible from A to B.
You must be burning an astronomical
number of calories each day. Is there a
science to what you eat or do you just
smash down anything in sight?
Yes, it can easily be well over 10,000
calories a day. But ultradistance cycle
racing is a world away from the controlled,
scientific world of professional sport.
It’s still an underground, ghetto sort
of event. On top of this, races like the
Transcontinental, the North Cape 4000
and the Trans Am Bike Race insist on
riders being entirely unsupported. All of
this means that you’re living on whatever
you can find quickly and easily along
the road. And that basically
means a lot of junk food
from petrol stations.
This isn’t an event
for people with
finicky digestive
systems.
A m o n g
E u r o p e a n
u l t ra c y c l i s t s ,
the 7Days
p r e - p a c k a g e d
croissant has
achieved almost
legendary status: it’s
a massive slug of sugary
calories that will slip into a
jersey pocket but which you can
find in almost any petrol station across
the East for about 50 cents.
This record attempt will be selfsupported.
What will you be carrying
and is there anything unique about
the bike you are taking?
Guinness don’t distinguish between
supported and unsupported world
record attempts, so I could in theory do
this ride with a crew who would massage
me and prepare my meals. But, if I’m
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honest, I’d rather do it by myself. This
way, it’s a ‘purer’ event. If I succeed
in beating the record, anybody who
comes along later to try and take the
record from me can choose to take me
on in a fair and equal contest by going
unsupported themselves.
I’ll be carrying the absolute minimum
that I feel comfortable with. Spare parts
and tools, obviously, but zero spare
clothes – I’ll sleep naked, or
in the kit I ride in. I’ve
got my kit down to
such necessities
that, apart from a
sleeping bag and
bivvy bag, I’d
take pretty much
the same stuff on
a long day’s ride
as I would on a
transcontinental
adventure.
Travel light, move
fast.
My bike is nice, but nothing
unusual or unattainable. It’s designed to
be comfortable over long distances, and
I feel at home on it in a way I can hardly
describe. On good days it’s like it’s part
of me.
Future
generations will
think we were
ridiculous.
Back in 2006, in my job as a psychologist,
I fitted a bike out with instruments
and spent a few weeks riding around,
measuring how close motorists got
as they passed me. That study threw
up quite a few things that have largely
passed without comment, not least that
drivers got closer to men than women
when overtaking – a finding that’s since
been repeated in a few other countries.
But one finding from that
early work upset quite
a few people, which
was the discovery
that drivers
tended to pass
a bit closer
when I cycled
wearing a
helmet than
when I didn’t
wear one.
It’s hard to say
why people got so
exercised about this
finding. Perhaps the
idea that wearing a helmet
‘solves’ danger is just very entrenched
in our culture, to the extent that people
aren’t comfortable with my questioning
something they have always just taken
on face value.
Your study into drivers overtaking
cyclists was met by some criticism
over its findings. Particularly
controversial was the finding that
drivers tend to pass closer if a cyclist
is wearing a helmet. Can you tell me
a little about the experiment and
your findings?
I should stress, incidentally, that I’m
not saying that it’s a bad idea to wear a
helmet if you bang your head. Obviously,
cushioning is going to have some value
if you do. The point of these studies was
to show that there might be unintended
consequences of wearing one, and that
your choices as a cyclist don’t happen in
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a vacuum – they’re part of a bigger, more complex system, and
we need to consider all its parts.
But, more widely, I’d argue quite strongly that safety equipment
shouldn’t be seen as a solution to dangers that other people
force upon us against our will. It’s one thing for me to put on
a gas mask because I’ve chosen to use some noxious glue
for a repair; but it’s quite another thing for somebody else to
demand I wear one because they’ve decided they want to blow
smoke in my face.
In exactly the same way, it’s one thing for me to wear a helmet
in case I lose control of my bike and fall over, but quite another
if I’m expected to wear one because other people have chosen
to drive machines next to me without due care, or because
politicians can’t be bothered to make our roads safe. And even
then, I’m being very charitable in assuming the helmet would
help when somebody drives their car into me . . .
In 2017 the cycling world was rocked by Mike Hall’s
untimely death whilst competing in a race across
Australia. Given your research and first-hand
experience, do you think there is a point in competition
where endurance cycling becomes too dangerous?
No. If riding legally on a road that is open to bicyclists is too
dangerous then the only acceptable solution is for the road to
be fixed, not for legitimate road users to get off it.
As a culture we have somehow sleepwalked into the situation
where we are comfortable with the idea that outdoors is deadly.
We act as though the danger from motor traffic is something
we can’t control, like the weather.
Around the world, 1.3 million people die on the roads every
year. These deaths are almost all avoidable – but only if we
throw off our blinkers and realise that this danger is not like
the weather. We could stop it tomorrow, if our priorities were
straight. Indeed, we would probably do exactly that, if it were
aeroplanes that were killing people rather than cars and trucks.
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But because it’s cars and trucks, we choose not to fix the problem because
we’ve all grown up in a world where dying on the road is seen as normal. Future
generations will think we were ridiculous.
Are you hopeful to see a shift from driving in the coming years with
more people choosing to cycle?
Go out into the street and look at all the cars driving past you. Do you notice
how most of them have just one person in them, yet are taking up a huge
amount of space, putting you in danger and polluting your air? Well, assuming
you’re here in the UK, I can tell you that a quarter of those cars are travelling
under two miles. The majority of them are going under five miles. A lot of those
people you see – probably most of them – could be walking or cycling those
trips.
So why don’t they? Because driving everywhere – even short distances, all by
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yourself, within the heart of a city – has been made to feel easy, cheap, normal
and safe.
We need to change this, and change needs to come from both ends. Our
leaders and civic officials need to stop making short-distance urban driving
feel so easy, cheap and normal, and need to start making alternatives to the car
meet those criteria instead.
And we as individuals need to take some responsibility too. We need to be a
lot more mindful of how we travel. Driving, especially through a city, is never a
harmless activity. To do it does impose harm on others – whether that’s noise
pollution, the risk of collision, or whatever.
I’m not saying nobody should drive ever – of course I’m not. But we should be
a lot more sparing and thoughtful about when we do it.
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A
tale about
bitter poets, Nobel
laureates and two
legendary champions in
the land of magical
realism.
Words: Marcos Pereda, Translated by Matthew Bailey
Photography: Biblioteca Pública Piloto de Medellín
para América Latina
72

A cyclist is made by pedalling.
With attacks, sprints, victories.
Champions are decided by
newspaper headlines, by the
prizes they win, by a quick glance
at a palmarès. It’s how we create
our stars.
But our heroes, they’re different.
They ride, yes, they compete, and
they win more than the others.
But they are transcendent for
other reasons. It’s not just the
victories, nor even their panache.
It’s something else, something
more ethereal, not easy to explain
or understand. Something
tangible, something that makes
you shiver inside with boyish
excitement. Yes, these are the
heroes: the riders that make you
feel like a kid again.
This is the story of two heroes.
Two cyclists and good ones too.
Their country’s best of their
respective eras, certainly. Two
riders who were born within a
few kilometres of each other.
Outstanding figures, the fathers
of cycling in Colombia. The
mirror in which you can see the
reflections of Egan Bernal, Nairo
Quintana or Miguel Ángel López.
Two myths. As simple as that.
Two myths.
A Man in Marinilla
Everyone called Ramón ‘Don
Ramón’. Don Ramón de Marinilla,
to be precise. Ramón is Ramón
Hoyos Vallejo. One of the
pioneers of Colombian cycling.
No less than the first ‘beetle’.
The ‘beetle’ business is a curious
story because it came about by
mistake. It so happened that one
day Jorge Enrique Buitrago, a
sportswriter who used the pen
name ‘Mirón’, said that Hoyos’
style reminded him of an insect.
He would climb crouched up
against his handlebars, legs
akimbo, ungainly, too eager. Seen
from a distance, he resembles a
grasshopper, thinks Mirón. But
he is wrong and mixes his words
up. An eternal error. There goes
Ramón Hoyos Vallejo, he says, the
mountain beetle. And that’s how
all Colombian climbers would be
known for the rest of time. But he,
Ramón, Don Ramón de Marinilla,
will always be the first.
Ramón Hoyos was also a great
champion. Probably the greatest
champion of the early years of
Colombian cycling. The Vuelta
a Colombia was born in 1951 and
by 1958 Hoyos had already won
it five times, taking 38 stage wins.
His record would only ever be
beaten by Cochise Rodríguez.
But we are talking about the
very first Vueltas a Colombia.
In a word: madness. Monstrous
routes which motor vehicles
couldn’t cope with but which
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were conquered, day after day, by
the long-suffering riders. Losing
hours, gaining minutes, up and
down in every stage. Wading
through overflowing rivers with
their bikes on their shoulders, up
to their knees in oceans of mud.
Climbs up to an altitude over
3,000 m, where the air is thinner
and lighter. And the jungle,
the tropical humidity, the high
temperatures, the ghosts at the
summits. An adventure which
takes in an entire country. And
there, him.
Him.
Because the figure of Hoyos was
perfect. Perfect for that place,
for that time. Hoyos was a paisa,
born very close to Medellín
in the centre of Antioquia. He
represented the pride of his
region against the champions of
Cundinamarca. It was they, from
Bogotá, who created the Vuelta a
Colombia, but it was we who won
it. His duels with Efraín Forero
Triviño, the indomitable ‘El Zipa’,
who won the first edition of the
race, are legendary and went
far beyond mere sport. Zipa
accused Hoyos of training too
much, of having a whole team
at his service while he had to
fight alone against everyone and
everything, especially against
those who were supposed to be
his teammates.
And he wasn’t far wrong, because
the Antioquia teams (at that
time the Vuelta a Colombia was
contested by teams representing
the country’s regions) were better
prepared, more disciplined and
worked together in the face
of the chaos and anarchy that
existed elsewhere and from
which Forero suffered so much.
The credit for this goes to Julio
Arrastía, an Argentine immigrant
to Colombia who brought with
him ideas and a strong grasp of
psychology to help him persuade
each rider to put himself in the
service of the strongest.
And the strongest, almost
always, was Ramón Hoyos. So
much so that he seemed larger
than life, acquiring something
of a mythical status. He rode in
the jersey of the armed forces
(he was doing national service)
and they cheered him wherever
he went. Everyone wanted to
catch a glimpse of him. He was
venerated like a lay saint. In many
Antioquia homes there were
two pictures on the living room
wall. The first was a religious
image, usually a Sacred Heart.
The second was a photograph
of Ramón Hoyos. Legend has it
that one paisa household kept
as a relic a chicken bone that
had been gnawed by the great
champion. How heretical, how
beautiful. Such was the intensity
of public fervour.
For his part, Ramón did little to
encourage it. He was taciturn,
quiet, sometimes even surly.
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Ramón Hoyos
75

Cochise as a young man
Of humble origin, he never managed
to rid himself of that shyness typical
of those who had known hunger as
children. So his comments to the press
were sullen and very brief, the absolute
bare minimum required of him. It didn’t
matter. Everything he had to say he
could say on the bicycle. And there,
ascending those eternal climbs, he was
the greatest. With his clumsy style,
laboured but effective. Taking metres,
minutes, worlds of distance from the
other riders with every corner. Daring
and decisive. Breaks of 100 or 150
kilometres. What’s the difference? I can
do anything, I can do anything. That’s
why I’m Don Ramón de Marinilla.
But the public wanted more. We know
the champion, but what of the person?
The inscrutable furrowed brow is not
enough: fans crave smiles and stories. So
a Colombian newspaper, El Espectador,
decided to send a young journalist to
write a long biography of Ramón Hoyos,
to be serialised over fourteen issues.
The name of the little-known reporter
was Gabriel García Márquez. Much
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later he won the Nobel Prize
for Literature.
And it was at this point
that Hoyos definitively
transcended his sport.
Because it is impossible to
tell where his life ends and
Márquez’s storytelling begins.
In other words, the first beetle
moves to Macondo and lives
in the words of ‘Gabo’. And his
actions start to have symbolic
meaning. What surrounds
him is telluric. The dirt on his
face. The ground he hits in
his many crashes. Mud in the
tragedy that ends the lives of
his mother and sister. And
dreams full of premonition.
The prose of Gabriel García
Márquez merges with the life
of Ramón Hoyos and what
emerges is a marvellous novel.
The greedy author does not
hesitate to appropriate reality,
to twist it, to turn the tanned
and taciturn face of Hoyos
into a recognisable icon, a
literary symbol. And we all
smile, because it’s beautiful.
That’s how it is, that’s how it
was, how a cyclist started to
become something bigger,
much bigger. An illusion
shared by everyone.
Oh, Ramón Hoyos was also
the subject of a painting by
Fernando Botero, the most
internationally-renowned
Colombian artist of the 20 th
century. One day the painting
was stolen and the artist
received a ransom demand for
$3,000. Certainly more money
than Hoyos ever earned for
riding his bike in that amateur
age. Botero paid, of course.
You don’t let a legend get
away.
Cochise vs. The World
The kids leave the cinema.
They have been to see ‘Broken
Arrow’, a western with
cowboys and Indians. One
stands out. One of the bad
guys. One of those that some
call bad guys. But oh, how
brave, how noble, how driven.
Nothing and no one could
stop him. He looked people
straight in the eye and always
kept his word. How could
they call him a savage when
he was more human than any
of them? Yes, that boy, that
dark-skinned boy with the
deep hazel eyes, he sees it
clearly. That same afternoon
he tells his friends, “Don’t call
me Martín Emilio any more. I
prefer Cochise.”
That’s how Martín Emilio
Rodríguez became known
to all as Cochise Rodríguez.
It was also the first time that
his overpowering personality
imposed itself on a stubborn
reality, in the administrative
matter of his name. It would
not be the last.
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Because Cochise was special.
Charismatic, fun. Cochise always had
a smile, a kind word, a controversial
remark. For a journalist or photographer,
Cochise was a dream. So dark, those
sideburns so long, those good looks.
He had the face of a heartthrob, a star
of telenovelas. But there is more to
winning a bike race than having a pretty
face. You need legs, strength. And
Cochise had these in abundance.
He was fascinating. Imperious. He was
the precise opposite of what we think
a Colombian cyclist is. Especially the
Colombians of his era. He was tall and
strong with broad shoulders and legs
that moved like powerful pistons. A
locomotive. Nothing like his teammates
– short, thin, crazy climbers who
barely knew how to ride on the flat.
Cochise knew. As fast as anyone in the
sprints and superb against the clock,
he moved skilfully around the peloton.
He was perfect: photogenic, daring and
charismatic. He was a true symbol of the
Colombia of the sixties and seventies.
Because Cochise, Cochise Rodríguez,
was not a contemporary of Ramón
Hoyos. There was barely a decade
between them, but in reality the
difference was much greater than that.
Hoyos was a boy who came from a
more rural world, simpler, more direct
perhaps. Work and keep your mouth
shut, that was Hoyos. Not Cochise.
Cochise was a city boy, a character from
Dickens in the suburbs of Medellín,
someone who saw from a very early age
that the bicycle would offer him a route
to a better life. Hoyos wore suit trousers,
Cochise the most modern of jeans.
One fearfully hid his expressions from
the lenses of the photographers. The
other stretched his smile, pulled faces,
let his eyes peek out from behind his
sunglasses. Two worlds. So close, yet so
far apart. They never got along. Jealous,
perhaps: one of the other’s youth, the
other of the first’s mystique. They never
got along, no.
And what more was there? Cochise
dedicated himself to winning, or rather
to tyrannising Colombian cycling. He
won the Vuelta a Colombia four times
(winning 39 stages in the process and
thus beating – such exquisite pleasure –
Hoyos’ record). One Clásico RCN. And
every other race you can think of. On the
road and, above all, on the track.
And it was in the velodrome that Martín
Emilio – sorry, Cochise – enjoyed his
greatest achievements. South American
Champion. World Champion in the
individual pursuit. Holder of the
amateur hour record (in Mexico in 1975).
He was a star. It was the high point of
his popularity. And the seed of what
happened next.
Because in order to take on the Hour,
that epic challenge, Cochise called upon
the help of an Italian sponsor, Giacinto
Benotto. His bicycle was Benottobranded
and ‘Benotto’ appeared on
his jersey that day. Nothing unusual
about that . . . except in Colombia, where
cyclists were, in theory, amateurs and
so not allowed to accept sponsorship
money. The scandal was uncovered and
Cochise saw his great dream evaporate
– the Munich Olympics. Since only
non-professionals competed at the
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Martín Emilio “Cochise” Rodríguez
Olympics in those days and he was no longer an amateur, he was
not allowed to participate.
The world was at his feet. What was he to do? In Colombia he had
won everything. Latin America itself seemed too small for his
legs. Cochise wasted no time in deliberations and the European
adventure began. He was not the first Colombian to try it (Giovanni
Jiménez had been racing in Belgium for a few years already) but he
was the first to be successful. He joined Salvarini and later Bianchi.
Always riding as a gregario for Felice Gimondi, the great Italian
champion of the time. Always subordinated to his leader. Even so,
there were successes – some symbolic (he was the first Colombian
to ride the Tour and the Giro) and some real. He won two stages
of the Giro, the first stages to be won by a non-European at any of
the Grand Tours. A milestone. His name will remain in the history
books forever.
When he returned to Colombia, tired of riding for others, it was
madness. The veteran champion is always more popular than the
arrogant youth and Cochise returned across the Atlantic with that
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special aura: of a time when we were all young and still idealistic. He
began to participate in special tributes arranged for his benefit and
appeared in advertisements. He smiled and pressed the flesh. Some
say he charged people to visit his house, though he always denied it
(it’s not as crazy as it sounds – Rafael Antonio Niño, his successor as
the great Colombian champion, sold tickets to his fans to watch him
rest in bed). He had transcended sport like no one before him. He
even had his share of literary glory, like Hoyos.
Only he was interviewed not by Gabo but by Gonzalo Arango,
who was a sharp-witted and sarcastic poet, someone who despised
athletes merely for being athletes. And the conversation was
disrespectful, aggressive with the two almost coming to blows. The
result is fantastic, of course. The same can be said for the difference
between the two stories, that of García Marquez and that of Arango,
which marks the changes in Colombia between the 1950s and the
1970s. Or, while we’re making comparisons, the evolution from
Hoyos to Cochise.
Maybe. Only maybe.
They never got on, Cochise and Hoyos. They were civil, never
making direct attacks and would never have dreamt of being
disrespectful. That’s for others, who have no manners. But there
were never compliments or flowers. They avoided fine words and
let slip only minor complaints. Of course, Rodriguez said, he got a
lot of help from his teammates. And he, responded Hoyos, was never
able to gain time in the mountains. They looked at each other. The
two of them. Knowing they were legends. Still more, repositories of
something transcendental, something inexhaustible.
Both Ramón Hoyos and Cochise Rodríguez were the pride of an
entire nation.
Conquista and Marcos Pereda would like to thank Esteban Duperly
for his assistance.
80

Ramón Hoyos at the start of the Classic “El Colombiano”
81

Bordeaux-Paris was one of the last links
to professional road cycling’s dustiest
origins. The version that died in 1988 was
a pale shadow of what was once arguably
the greatest race of all – a race which also gave
us perhaps the greatest feat in the sport’s history,
courtesy of Jacques Anquetil.
82

BORDEAUX
PARIS
Words:
Suze Clemitson
Illustrations: Sam Hinton
Photography: Cor Vos
83

It all starts at the Hotel Grillon in
Chambéry. There’s just time for a shower,
a shit and a massage before Anquetil is
whisked away in a Ford Taunus, Géminiani
at the wheel, in pursuit of a double inédit – the
Dauphiné and Bordeaux-Paris, the longest,
toughest, motherfucker of a Classic on the
calendar. Anquetil is 32, at the summit of his
legendary career: the first rider to win 5 Tours de
France and all 3 of the Grand Tours, tester par
excellence and winner of a record 8 Grands Prix
des Nations to hammer home the point. None of
this is his idea.
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When George Pilkington Mills
lined up at the first Bordeaux-
Paris he was there by right.
Invited to ride by organisers Le
Véloce sport, Mills had ridden
an Ordinary from Land’s End
to John o’ Groats in just 5 days
and would attack the record
ceaselessly over the coming
years on bicycles, tricycles and
tandems. The king of LEJOG was
a perfect fit for the 600 km slog
between the great south-western
city of Bordeaux and the Parc
des Princes velodrome in the
south-west suburbs of Paris, now
home to Paris Saint-Germain.
1891 was a busy year for
G.P. Mills. At the age of 25
the designer and bicycle
manufacturer went bankrupt
and once again broke the LEJOG
record, this time by 21 hours over
his old mark, riding a Humber
safety bicycle. He also breezed
across the Channel with a couple
of friends from the North Road
Cycling Club, which he had cofounded
in 1885 to promote ‘fast
and long distance cycling on the
Great North and other Roads’,
to tackle some continental
racing. Mills, Montague Holbein
– who would unsuccessfully
attempt to swim the English
Channel at least 4 times – and
Seymour Edge – future motor
manufacturer and car dealer –
would finish one-two-three in the
first Bordeaux-Paris.
Mills used a combination of
youth, guile and tactical nous to
build an unassailable lead. When
the race reached Angoulême,
instead of resting and enjoying
a three-course meal and a hot
shower, as the good people of
Angoulême were expecting –
surely no one could tackle such
a great distance without need of
a bed for the night? – they were
shocked to see Mills grab a bowl
of soup and hightail it out of
their city, paced on his way by
one of France’s top professional
riders. He would lead by over
half an hour by the time the race
reached Ruffec, 50 km away.
Mills would eventually be
declared the winner of the race
once the Bicycle Union had been
convinced of his amateur status.
Even though he was sponsored
by a bicycle manufacturer Mills
wore the fake halo of the amateur
riding for love not money.
Given the weather conditions
and the equipment at hand
Mills’s winning time of 26h 36m
25s was quite a feat. But the
Englishman had had an ace up
the sleeve of his woollen jersey –
when he stopped briefly at Tours
he ate raw meat and consumed a
‘specially prepared stimulant’.
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For those who think British cycling success began in 2012, Mills wasn’t
the only rider tearing up the continental roads in the 19th century.
James Moore had been setting records since the 1860s and was
considered the world’s first great racing cyclist. Having won what was
purported to be the first ever bicycle race in 1868 at Saint-Cloud in
Paris he capped it all with his triumph in Paris-Rouen in 1869.
Moore’s triumph in Saint-Cloud was quite an achievement
considering he’d only acquired his first bicycle, a cumbersome
Michaux velocipede, in 1865. Born in Suffolk but resident in France
from the age of four, the crack rider was known as l’Anglais volant in
France and ‘The Flying Frenchie’ across the Channel. But Moore had
retired by 1877, too soon to race the fledgling Bordeaux-Paris.
Instead, 5 years after the North Road Cycling Club had dominated
that first race, it was a slight, dark-haired rider with an impressively
European moustache that would stand on the top of the podium.
Arthur Linton was mining in the pits of the South Wales valleys at
13 and signed as a professional to Gladiator Cycles in 1893. There he
came under the influence of James Edward ‘Choppy’ Warburton, who,
like Linton, had been a child labourer, scuttling under the clatter of the
cotton looms as a 6-year-old, gathering waste cotton.
Choppy has become the original Dr Mabuse, the godfather of every
modern doping doctor, with his infamous little black bottle and
the sulphurous stench of doping. The truth seems more mundane:
the bottle was a piece of showmanship wielded by the flamboyant
Lancastrian in his sweeping floor-length overcoat and bowler hat, his
arms wrapped over-familiarly around his young charges.
Toulouse-Lautrec captured him in a poster for the Simpson chain
company, hands in pockets, bestriding the little world of the Catford
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He boards a Mystère 20 at
Nîmes airport and 1 hour 15
minutes later steps onto the
tarmac at Bordeaux-Mérignac.
He catches an hour’s sleep before the
marathon begins. His directeur sportif,
Raphaël Géminiani – Le Grand Fusil
– is waiting to drive him to the start
line in the heart of Bordeaux. Gem is
the real author of this crazy stunt. It
is he who has decided that his rider
is capable of completing the 1,565
km of a particularly mountainous
Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré before
haring across the country to ride
through the night and into the day
from Bordeaux in the deep South
West to the boulevards of Paris.
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velodrome like a colossus. He was fond
of boasting that he’d trained four riders
and three had become world champions,
including Linton. Tongues wagged but
it seems Linton’s true weakness was
for gambling and match-fixing, a little
peccadillo he’d acquired during his
successful athletics career. His riders’
success hinged on a dedication to ferreting
out new ways to improve performance –
history is in the process of reevaluating him
as a Brailsford rather than a Ferrari.
As part of Warburton’s untouchable
Gladiator squad Linton was unstoppable,
setting record after record. When he
returned home to Aberaman at the end
of an 1894 season that saw him declared
‘Champion Cyclist of the World’ he
received a hero’s welcome and a banquet in
the local pub The Lamb and Flag.
Arthur had already split from Choppy in
1895, a saison sans thanks to a knee injury.
According to his obituary in the Evening
Post his health was already failing before
he recorded his greatest triumph, winning
the 1896 Bordeaux-Paris with the “sheer
bulldog pluck and determination, which
were his characteristics throughout
the whole of his career.” Though Linton
crossed the line first, 1’ 02” ahead of his
rivals, the victory was shared with the
Frenchman Gaston Rivierre when Linton
was adjudged to have taken a shortcut.
His last race was the gruelling Bol d’Or,
a 24-hour marathon held at the Buffalo
velodrome in June. After leading for the
first six hours he stopped for a break,
complaining of feeling unwell. Forced to
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etire, he returned to his hometown of
Aberdare and died just under a month
later. And that’s when the rumours start
– of Linton foaming at the mouth after a
swig from Choppy’s bottle and dying from
strychnine poisoning.
The truth is far more prosaic and infinitely
sadder. Linton died from typhoid fever
brought on, it was said, by overexertion
and the years of training and constant
effort. His brother Tom, also a modestly
successful rider, would die of the same
illness 18 years later. Choppy Warburton,
his career destroyed by a lifetime ban from
the English cycling scene, suffered a fatal
heart attack just a year after his protégé’s
death in 1897, still fighting his ban. It was
said he was worth just three halfpennies
when he died.
Dead of night. A fine rain – the
kind that soaks you through
– is falling. 11 men line up at the
Bordeaux velodrome to ride the 567 km
between them and the Parc des Princes.
8,000 fans pack the building, cheering
their heroes to the rafters as they head off
into the darkness. A phalanx of lighted
windows and cheering spectators mark
the way as the rain doubles down, and
the wind hits them square in the face like
a fat wet sail.
89

Le Véloce-sport had its offices at 3 Rue du Château-Trompette, a side street
just off the Place des Quinconces, a magisterially open space and one of
the largest public squares in Europe – just right for the start of a massdepart
cycle race. It was here that any aspiring cyclo-touriste
could purchase a copy of Voyage de Bordeaux à Paris par trois
vélocipédistes for the sum of 2F 30. This luxury edition –
200 pages and 2 illustrations – detailed the picaresque
adventures of Messrs George Thomas, president of
the Union Vélocipédique de France and chevalier
de la Légion d’honneur, Oscar Maillotte of the
Véloce Club Bordelaise and Maurice Martin of
Le Véloce-sport as they bowled through the
bucolic countryside towards the fleshpots of
the capital. Think Three Men on a Bike with
potholes, gîtes and pedals.
Maurice Martin, poet, writer and a longtime
member of the V.C.B. virtually
invented the idea of cyclo-touring and
promoted it enthusiastically through the
pages of Le Véloce-sport. But the magazine
had another mission – to challenge the
hegemony of the Parisian cycling press as
arbiters of all things vélocipédique. When
George Thomas took over as president of
the UVF in 1890, Le Véloce-sport became
the de facto house magazine.
Whether the exploits of Thomas, Maillotte
and Martin were the inspiration for three
pistards of the VCB – Fernand Panajou,
Théophile Lévelley and Pierre Rousset – to
create Bordeaux-Paris isn’t entirely clear, but
the synchronicity is neat enough. They said they
wanted to ‘strike the imagination’ of the rider by
arguably creating the world’s first Classic. For Le Vélocesport,
scooping Le Petit Journal and Pierre Giffard’s Paris-
Brest-Paris spectacular must have been sweet.
No such problems for the Le Véloce-sport event which, the
magazine was quick to claim, had even won the approbation of those
who were constitutionally opposed to bicycle racing in Bordeaux. By
1893 the list of prizes up for grabs included a watercolour offered by the
90

artist for the oldest sprinter not classified in the top 6, plus a variety of
medals: for the first rider to go through the control in Poitiers and finish
in Paris and the first Bordelais rider to arrive at the finish line. Most
splendid of all, a complete cycling costume offered by the Maison
du Grand Théâtre in Bordeaux for the youngest Bordelais rider
to arrive in the Parc des Princes.
1891 was Year Zero for road racing, born out of the
unholy marriage of sport, spectacle and selfpromotion.
These were the baby steps of what
became known in France as le sport spectacle
where the enthusiasm and expertise of cycling
clubs riffed off the commercial imperative
of the newspapers that invested in their
races to sell more newspapers. Riders
and manufacturers weren’t immune to
the commercial opportunities either.
Before long they’d learned to monetise
everything from inner tubes to tyres
to the bicycles themselves. A cycling
exploit like Bordeaux-Paris became both
a technological showcase and a real-time
drama to be shared with the crowds
waiting with bated breath . . .
Bordeaux-Paris was the first in an
explosion of ultra-distance races between
1891 and 1896, which saw the debut of La
Doyenne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, in 1892
and Paris-Roubaix in 1896. The northern
cobbled race was often seen as a mere
amuse-bouche for Bordeaux-Paris, the Queen
herself. Both those shorter races survive, their
devotion to distance never quite so extreme as
the randonées refashioned as road races. Despite
being commemorated in the folklore of cycling as a
tasty choux bun, Giffard’s Paris-Brest-Paris – at 1,200 km
over twice the distance of Bordeaux-Paris – struggled to
capture the imagination and was finished as a professional
race by 1951.
The gimmick of setting riders absurd long-distance challenges was
part one-upmanship between rival newspaper editors and part regional
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pride – the riders of Bordeaux, alarmed at reports the cycling
clubs of Grenoble and Lyon were about to adopt the English model
of endurance time trialling, jumped the gun and opted for a less
logistically challenging point-to-point race. The pacing came later –
the 1899 race was paced by motorcar, the raffishly knickerbockered
figure of Josef Fischer tucked in the slipstream of an elegant
automobile. The familiar profile of the smelly little Derny would be
introduced in the 1930s.
The UVF had always been open about attracting professional riders
to their ranks and allowing them to compete in their races. But one of
France’s elite riders, Charles Terront, would not be at the start line in
1891. In order to attract British riders to the race, Le Véloce-sport was
forced to accept the diktat of the National Cycling Union that the race
be strictly amateur. Which meant that the shamateur Mills, riding for
his North Road club but heavily sponsored by Humber bicycles, was
free to be paced by a professional and beat the peloton of French club
riders. Ironically, the British had turned what was dreamed of as a
randonnée into a proper road race.
The debate over where Paris-Bordeaux could and would lead the
sport of bike racing would rage on over the next decade. By the late
1890s the race had been taken over by Giffard’s Le Vélo and the 1902
edition was won by Édouard Wattelier, who had already finished
second in that year’s Paris-Roubaix.
But there was another Bordeaux-Paris race that year, where the
winning rider smashed the winning time by over 4 hours. It was
unpaced because the organiser despised anything that might impede
on the Spartan cruelty of long-distance riding. That second race was
won by a rider known variously as the White Bulldog and le petit
ramoneur and was organised by the new kid on the sports journalism
block – L’Auto-Vélo under the editorship of Henri Desgrange.
92

For the next 300 km,
Anquetil suffers – like a
dog in the midday sun, like
a condemned man in his cell.
He pants, he coughs, the waxy skin
stretches tight over his cheekbones
like a death mask. Gem berates him,
insults him, questions his pride and
his manhood. Anquetil is having
none of it but he’s fucked if he’s about
to surrender. He says later that the
reason he won was because he
wanted to abandon the race as late
as he possibly could presumably just
to piss off the boss. But the relentless
cold and the wind take their toll and
by Châtellerault he’s half an hour
down on his schedule.
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94
Herman van Springel

Bordeaux-Paris didn’t make it into the first Tour de France as one of
the iconic six original stages. Instead the peloton tackled Bordeaux-
Nantes, a mere 425 km, in a stage won by Maurice Garin. The
diminutive French-Italian rider would go on to win the race overall,
having led from start to finish. It was the start of a long and illustrious
relationship between the biggest cycling race of them all and the
jewel of the South West – Bordeaux has hosted the Tour 80 times
since 1903.
It’s not difficult to see how a 500 km+ one-day race in May became a
playground of future Tour champions. It was the ideal preparation for
the gargantuan stages of that race and the roll call of winners between
1903 and the outbreak of world war one reads like a Who’s Who of the
Iron Age of cycling – Hippolyte Aucouturier (1903), 2nd in the Tour
and winner of Paris-Roubaix that year; Louis Trousselier (1908) winner
of the Tour – Paris-Roubaix double in 1905; Francois Faber (1911)
winner of the 1909 Tour and a record 5 stages back-to-back.
When the race resumed in 1919 it was with a win by Henri Pélissier,
the flamboyant star of the new French cycling who would finally win
the Tour in 1923. His brother Francis would win Bordeaux-Paris in
1922. He was the last French winner before a long string of fabled
Belgian hard men dominated the palmarès – Georges Ronsse the
cyclo-cross specialist, Classics winner and two-time world champion
won 3 editions of the race between 1927 and 1930.
The dominance of the twin superpowers of world cycling was briefly
interrupted in 1925 by the first rider to pull off the illustrious Ronde
van Vlaanderen / Paris-Roubaix double in 1923 – a feat unmatched
until his countryman Fabian Cancellara did it again in 2010. Heinrich
‘Heiri’ Suter was born 8 years after the first Bordeaux-Paris was
raced and won the GP Wolber – at that time the unofficial world
championships – in 1922 at just 23 years of age and then again in 1925,
the year he conquered Bordeaux-Paris. In 1926 he’d go one-two at
Paris-Tours with fellow Swiss Kastor Notter.
The youngest and most successful of six brothers who all raced, Heiri
nailed 58 professional wins in his career. Neat as a toy soldier with
his slicked-down hair, Suter was Swiss champion 7 times before he
retired at the end of a 14-year career that was ridden entirely between
the two world wars.
95

96
Poitiers. Relief as the trainers mount their
Dernys and motor-pace the riders from here
to Paris. Vin Denson attacks and spends the next 100
km with his nose in the wind. He’s one of three Ford
France-Gitane-Dunlop riders in the race alongside
Maître Jacques and Jean Stablinski. But the Peugeot
team are there in numbers and they’re keen to make
the race relentless. Attack after attack has the desired
effect and drops Anquetil like a greased piglet. Time
after time he rides himself back, the jumper, tights and
jaunty bobble hat of the early hours stripped away
between the car doors, by the exposed roadside in the
traditional Bordeaux-Paris mid-morning striptease –
ah, the glamour of professional cycling. And through it
all, Tom Simpson – the sensational winner of the 1963
race – bides his time.

They called him The Flying Dutchman ever
afterwards. The rider who flew 70 m down
a ravine on the descent of the Aubisque and
climbed back out on a rope braided together
out of inner tubes. For Wim van Est it was
heartbreak - the first Dutch rider ever to pull on
the yellow jersey, he was forced to abandon the
1951 Tour even though he suffered only mild
abrasions. “In a flash I saw death,” he said later,
“and the rest I don’t remember very well – a big
boom in my head and then a religious silence.”
It made a great ad campaign for his sponsor,
Pontiac watches: “My heart stopped, but my
Pontiac didn’t.” That snappy advertising slogan,
with the strapline “Pontiac can take a beating,”
caught the public imagination. Shortly before
his death in 2003 he unveiled a plaque at the
spot his dreams died and another of the Tour’s
legends was forged.
Wim van Est had only turned pro 4 years
earlier, at the age of 24. He’d spent his early
life dodging the law, smuggling tobacco and
serving prison time. The bike was a step
towards legitimacy and van Est grabbed it,
winning Bordeaux-Paris in 1950. It suited him
well, the rider they called ‘The Locomotive’,
with its endless grinding kilometres. He would
win it twice more – in 1952 and then again in
1961 at the end of his long career. In total he
stood on the podium 6 times.
It was an exceptional record in the longest of
the Classics. In any other era he’d have earned
the title ‘M. Bordeaux-Paris’ and he remains one
of the monstres sacrés of that epic race. But that
particular nickname was reserved for a stocky
rider from Grenoble who won the race 4 times
between 1951 and 1957, Bernard Gauthier.
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98

Like van Est, Gauthier was a relatively late arrival
in the pro ranks having made the choice between
the bike or the Foreign Legion. As a kid during
the war he’d been picked up by the Gestapo and
bundled onto a train headed for Buchenwald
concentration camp. Full of the courage,
audacity and grinta that would earn him the
nickname ‘Steel Legs’ in the pro peloton,
Gauthier jumped off the train and escaped. He
started his cycling career as an independent,
arguing that it was the only way to detect real
talent, and wore the yellow jersey at the Tour
for a week after diving into a crazy escape on an
epic stage between Liège and Lille in the 1950
Tour. There’s a photo of him, wild-eyed, after
raiding a pub for a drink, beer bottle in hand.
The 1954 race showed every ounce of
Gauthier’s guts. Crashing heavily at Arthenay
the Frenchman shredded his shoulder
leaving van Est to dart away towards a third
victory. His directeur sportif, the ever-formal
and taciturn Antonin Magne – winner of the
1931 and 1935 Tours and one of the greatest
tacticians of them all – may have been
nicknamed ‘The Monk’ for his silence,
but he had a way of bringing out the best
in his riders. Gauthier hauled back the
Dutchman and then forced the race at
Châteaufort, riding into the Parc des
Princes alone and exhausted.
In 1956 the race was paced from
start to finish. Gauthier, suffering
terrible stomach cramps, seemed
powerless to stop Jean-Claude
Skerl, a complete unknown,
running away with the race.
For over 400 km Skerl held
the lead until Gauthier’s
iron determination and
steel legs dragged him
back into contention as
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the race headed towards Chartres, the magnificent
cathedral looming large on the featureless plain.
Gauthier struck in the Vallée de Chevreuse and
Skerl’s luck and legs ran out. Gauthier raised his
arms in victory for a third time.
The Chevreuse valley was his happy hunting
ground again as he constructed a record-breaking
fourth win in 1957. The heat was storm-laden and
oppressive. The great Classics specialist Rik Van
Looy couldn’t take the pace and climbed off before
the race hit Chartres, his red jersey flaked out at
the roadside like a wilted poppy. Gauthier – like a
great Hercules crushing a bike that should never
have passed the bike fit – put the legendary sprinter
André Darrigade to the sword and then flew away
to a 7’ victory that more than honoured the French
champion’s jersey he wore with such pride.
In a perfect ouroboros, Gauthier would spend the
1962 season as van Est’s DS at Liberia-Grammont-
Wolber. It was one of cycling’s petty cruelties, a
tragic vignette, that shook Gauthier’s confidence
and sent him back to Grenoble to open a florist’s
shop – Marc Huiart was knocked down by a race
car and killed at the GP des Fourmies soon after he
set off down the road to best his brother Jacqui’s
winning time.
Hercules died at the age of 94 in November 2018, on
the same day as Gaston Plaud, the Peugeot directeur
sportif who took Merckx, Thévenet and a young rider
from England called Tom Simpson to glory.
100

Tours, km 327. Francois Mahé, a
brick shithouse of a Breton, kicks
through the muck and joins
Vinson in the lead at Mont Saron.
It’s the last race of a 15-year career
that has seen him wear the leader’s jersey
and win stages in the Tour and the Vuelta
and finish 2nd and 3rd in Bordeaux-Paris.
He sets all his stubbornness and experience
at winning one final time. The peloton,
such as it is, a straggle of Dernys and riders
strewn across the road, is 1’ 30” down by
the time the race crosses the Loire. After
210 km alone in the lead, despite a couple
of punctures that see the peloton frozen in
place as he makes his repairs, Mahé is 6’ 30”
ahead and the race behind is decimated.
Simpson, furious that Mahé has attacked at
the change zone, tries to bring him to heel,
still picking chunks of gravel out of his groin
and chamois as he rides.
101

“Briton wins cycle race,” announced British Pathé with typical stiffupper-lipped
understatement. At the height of its fame as the
longest, most gruelling classic, Tom Simpson sprinted into the
Parc des Princes and smashed it, putting minutes into his rivals
and taking one of the great wins of his illustrious career.
To understand Bordeaux-Paris you have to understand how it
feels to be yoked to a Derny kilometre after kilometre,
the pace and the road inexorable,
your eyes glued to the wheel,
your nose filled with the
thick stink of two-stroke
fumes. Not a word had
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passed between Simpson and his trainer, the implacable Fernand
Wambst, who had paced Ferdi Kübler to victory in 1953, for over 500
kilometres. Then 2 km before the velodrome: “On sprint pour le tour!
We’ll sprint for the lap!” A 100,000 franc prime but peanuts compared
to the winner’s prize and the lucrative appearance contracts that
went with it. Simpson’s voracious greed for victory and its
spoils was as all-consuming as ever – he won the 1963 Derby
of the Road at a sprint, his extravagant coup de pédale as
efficient as ever.
Under the direction of Plaud,
Simpson and his 4 Peugeot
teammates ate their pre-
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ace meal at 11.30. The hotel kitchens buzzed
with soigneurs filling musettes and bidons for
the day ahead. 15 riders lined up in the predawn
gloom to ride the 2 km of the départ
fictif along the quays of Bordeaux before
the flag dropped at 1.58am. Like a gang of
narcoleptics out on a spree, the peloton of the
62 nd Bordeaux-Paris headed sleepily towards
Châtellerault where the trainers were poised
to pace their charges the remaining 299 km to
the Parc des Princes.
Attacking effectively in a Dernypaced
race is all about the symbiosis
between trainer and rider, the almost
imperceptible upping of the revolutions
until your rear wheel has disappeared down
the road as if you simply teleported from
here to there. Wambst sees the twin
Gothic spires of Chartres cathedral, one
of the most recognisable landmarks
in the race, and imperceptibly ups the
pace, turning the pedals of the Derny
just a little faster.
It’s nothing and everything. His turn of speed proves
devastating with just over 60 km left to race. He is
careful in the way he turns the screw not to blow
Simpson’s legs out from under him. Both men and
their machines move away towards Paris in perfect tandem.
When Wayne Hildred raced the 1982 Bordeaux-Paris alongside
Paul Sherwen and Sean Kelly he wasn’t so lucky. His pacer was an
ambitious Belgian wheeler-dealer and sometime agent called Staf
Boone, who decided to make the race hard from the start. Hildred
remembered “screaming out at Staf ‘Ease up! Easy, easy! Slow
down, Staf!’ and he wouldn’t listen.” By 8am Hildred’s legs were
shredded and he was vomiting at the roadside. Gradually, trainer
and rider were forced to reverse places: “After a while I would just
sit up and refuse to keep the pace and eventually I gained some
control over him.” Hildred finished an hour down on the winner,
Frenchman Marcel Tinazzi, and lost 6 kg in the process.
104

Wambst understands how to pace Simpson
perfectly. Now the Englishman begins to
hunt the victory in earnest, reeling in riders,
constructing his final victory on the Côte de
Dourdan, a Flemish berg dropped into the
Chevreuse Valley. One of the lost mythic
landscapes of cycling, wrapped in this quietly
beautiful landscape that teems with forests,
rivers and castles, Dourdan is the Arenberg or
Alpe d’Huez of Bordeaux-Paris. In 1963, as they
had been so many times before, the roads were
heaving with spectators eager to see who was
ready to launch themselves to victory. The 1959
winner Louison Bobet can be heard shouting
“Bravo Tom - il est formidable!” from the Radio
Luxembourg car.
So would Simpson ride the Tour if he won
Bordeaux-Paris, asked Sporting Cyclist. “Almost
certainly not,” Simpson responded. “I would
concentrate on the world road championships.”
The rainbow jersey would have to wait until
1965 in San Sebastian when Simpson took an
almost impossible win, beating the German
powerhouse Rudi Altig in a two-up sprint. Mr
Tom had never been so popular.
105

Le Gué, km 483. Everything until
this point has been riposte and
parry. Now Simpson attacks, then
attacks again at Ablis 9 km down the
road and then again in the pavé at Dourdan
after another 8 km. A series of quick thrusts
that cut the thread between Simpson and
his pursuers. With just 35 km until the finish
in the Parc des Princes velodrome, Simpson
catches Mahé with Anquetil and Stablinski
around 100 m further back down the road.
106

But even in 1963 the shine was coming off Bordeaux-Paris. That
year there was no Van Looy, Altig, Stablinski or Anquetil on the
start line and the inevitable whispers about the legitimacy of
Simpson’s victory began to circulate, even though any rider can
only win against the riders in front of him.
By 1977 René Fallet, who followed that year’s ‘masterpiece of
jeopardy’ from start to finish, was writing in the Livre d’Or du
Cyclisme: “Now it is threatened with extinction, like the whale.
Bordeaux-Paris has become too big for the so-called ‘big’ riders.
In contrast to the great ones of yesterday, the Simpsons, Bobets,
Küblers, Anquetils, etc., those of today flee this Monument like
the plague and perhaps condemn it to death, which seriously
dishonours them. One day – and why not? – they will find Paris-
Roubaix or the Tour too tiring and will only ride criteriums.
In front of empty seats, I hope. And it will be the end of this
legendary sport.”
But Bordeaux-Paris wasn’t ready to go quietly. There were still
riders who wanted to pit themselves against this prehistoric
challenge. Herman van Springel lost the 1968 Tour by just 38
seconds, done over by a rampant Jan Janssen in a final 55 km time
trial into Paris that saw the yellow jersey ripped rudely off the
Belgian’s shoulders. 1969 saw the debut of Merckxissimo and the
all-devouring Cannibal. What was a Belgian to do? Head for the
South West and make his name in the last great endurance test. A
race where he knew Merckx was sure not to follow.
Van Springel won in 1970, 74, 75, 77, 78, 80 and 81. In 1977 the
funny little Dernys – named after the Roger Derny et Fils factory
where they were manufactured and powered with pedals and
two stroke engines – were replaced by a sleek and shining fleet of
Kawasakis. The new Monsieur Bordeaux-Paris beat Tour winner
Lucien Aimar in 1970 and might have increased his tally of wins to
9 if the 1971 and 1972 races hadn’t been cancelled. In 1974 he beat
the next-placed rider Régis Delépine by over 15 minutes but was
forced to share first place with him. Just like Arthur Linton back in
1896 he was judged to have ridden the wrong course though this
time van Springel rode several kilometres more than he needed to
and it was Delépine who argued that the prize be shared.
He was first in a field of 10 riders in 1975 and then second to
Walter Godefroot the crack sprinter and Classics specialist who’d
107

already won the race back in 1967. Although by 1977 the Miroir
du cyclisme was declaring “‘The race that killed’ has become the
race that died,” nobody told van Springel, who had his revenge
on Godefroot by winning with a 3’ 25” margin of victory. He
won again in 1978 to surpass Gauthier’s four wins, pinch his M.
Bordeaux-Paris tag and beat Joop Zoetemelk in the process.
Despite a bad crash and serious head injury, van Springel still
finished third in 1979 before rounding out his Bordeaux-Paris
exploits and his professional career with back-to-back wins in
1980 and 81. In between times he managed 5 stages at the Tour,
a green jersey, and a handful of other Classics including the 1968
Giro di Lombardia where he beat a star-studded field solo and
bagged the Super Prestige Pernod International trophy into
the bargain. But his name was made in the endless, grinding,
hallucinatory hours of Bordeaux-Paris while Merckx was bending
the Grand Tours to his implacable will.
Bordeaux snoozes on the banks of the river Garonne like a
châtelaine, grown rich and fat and sleepy on great wine and
culture and gastronomy. Louche and elegant yet with a fiercely
beating Latin heart, Bordeaux has a long association with the
bicycle. From the monstrous stages of the early Tours to the
halcyon year of 1994 when the hour record tumbled again
and again throughout the dog days of summer and autumn,
Bordeaux is now a mecca for the cyclo-tourist who can take in
great vineyards, endless beaches and Arcachon oysters with
equal ease.
1988 was the first in a run of three outstanding vintages and
an exceptional year for Sauternes, producing wines of full,
lush, mouth-pleasing richness, the sugar smoothed into
honeyed heaven. But times were changing. The Chinese
capitalist revolution was kickstarting the process that
would open up the grands crus to Chinese ownership,
the first Vinexpo was held in Hong Kong, and négociants
started buying office space in Beijing.
The game was changing in cycling, too. 1988 saw the
US’s Andy Hampsten winning an epic Giro, Ireland’s Sean
108

Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse,
km 538. Into the endgame and
the sting in the tail. Over a series
of leg-sapping côtes Simpson tries in vain
to stretch his tenuous lead but M. Chrono
and Stab relentlessly, inexorably reel him
back in, despite Stab’s trainer crashing
on the Côte de Dourdan. By Saint-Rémy
Mahé is a busted flush and Stab takes
control, attacking at Châteaufort, forcing
Simpson to dig deep, Anquetil’s pedal
stroke ominously smoothing out
from busted marionette to its
usual perfectly oiled precision.
But his race still hangs in the
balance between triumph
and abandon.
109

Côte de Picardie, Versailles,
km 555. Anquetil gives the
imperceptible signal to his
trainer, ups the pace with ease
and lets fly. By the top of the côte he has 100
m over Simpson, 150 m over his teammate
Stablinski. The sweating and the rocking
and the uncertainty of the morning are long
gone. The long levers turn with elegant
efficiency. The effortless fluidity of his coup
de pédale is matchless. The sheer sleek
style of it all – back curved, head bowed,
shoulders squared and immobile as he
melts into the bike and transforms effort
into advantage.
110

Kelly taking his only Grand Tour win at
the Vuelta and Spain’s Pedro Delgado
victorious at the Tour de France despite
a skin-of-the-teeth doping ‘positive’ that
wasn’t – at least not under UCI rules. The
Super Prestige Pernod International was
on its way out, to be replaced with the shiny
new World Cup competition. The UCI
seized control of the professional rankings
and replaced the informal rating of riders
with their own points-based system, the
start of a land grab that has put the sport’s
governing body at loggerheads with race
organisers ever since.
As for Bordeaux-Paris, the final curtain
was about to fall. Long a race out of time
it was declared open in 1988 and more
than 1000 riders were at the start in the
Place des Quinconces. There was no
motor-pacing and the event was won by
Jean-François Rault, a little-known French
pro who covered the 608 km of that final
race in 18’ 55”. The jours de gloire were
at an end – no professional rider had the
time to dedicate to specific motor-paced
training or the desire to ride distances that
belonged back in the Iron Age. There were
too many premium UCI points to be won
at the Vuelta and the Giro, and no rider
with the cojones to attempt anything as
wantonly ridiculous and joyously bonkers
as Anquetil’s Dauphiné-Bordeaux-Paris
double. That kind of thing was best off
left in the bad old days of amphetaminefueled
hi-jinks. It had no place in the
professionalised era of EPO.
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30 May 2014 and the Place de Quiconque
is once again thronged with the 998 riders
ready to take on the 610 km challenge of
riding from the sun-soaked vineyards of the
south-western grands crus
to the sleepy green
of the Chevreuse.
26 years after its
last incarnation as
a professional race,
Bordeaux-Paris is
once again open to
amateurs in the way
that the godfather of
cyclo-tourism Maurice
Martin intended.
500 will ride through the
night, maybe even stopping for
the traditional striptease near
Poitiers, aiming to finish the ultra
raid in 36 hours. The rest will
ride alone or in pairs to finish the
ultra rando in under 60 hours.
They will ride through 9 French
départements passing through
some of the prettiest villages and
plus beaux détours in France. They’ll
ride in the slipstream of Mills and
Linton, Simpson and Anquetil, van
Est and Gauthier and van Springel
– a strange fever dream, a sleepdeprived
journey back into the days
when distance ruled and nothing
else mattered.
112

113

Maître Jacques
114

Anquetil is in his
element now, time
trialling into the Parc
des Princes velodrome to
the ovation of the crowd. His
motor pacer and trainer Jo
Goutorbe raises his left arm
to salute his rider, Anquetil’s
wife cries without troubling
her immaculate mascara
or her exquisite eyebrows.
L’exploit est fait. Stab takes the
monstrous bouquet for second
place. Simpson, who dreams of
finishing his career and settling
in Australia, finishes third. The
eternally cool Anquetil has
earned his permis de panache
once and for all.
115

Wim van Est (centre)
116

117

118

Words & Pictures: Mitchell Belacone
119

Three or four times a week I ride my
bike down to Circuito KDT to train on
its car-free track. KDT consists of a 1.3
kilometre oval cycle route, a velodrome
and a home-cooking style restaurant
that I equate to a ski lodge for cyclists.
There is also a bike storage garage with
a skilled mechanic. It is on Salguero
between the Alcorta shopping mall
and the river drive. I get there almost
exclusively by bike lanes.
During my five kilometre journey
to KDT I typically share the bicycle
lanes with: a motorcyclist whose helmet
is dangling from his elbow; a twentysomething
hipster pedalling with a
leash attached to his bike at one end
and a Dachshund’s neck at the other;
a chatty couple pedalling side by side
in the opposite direction and taking
up both lanes; at least one ‘look ma no
hands’ genius passing head-on at twenty
kilometres per hour; a few people
choosing to walk on the bike path,
seemingly oblivious to the idea behind
the little painted bicycles on the ground;
and two or three cyclists speaking on
the telephone, or forced to text because
they have DJ-sized headphones on.
Viewing a sexting would not be as
big a surprise as you might think it
should be. They all share in common
a disdain for the helmet, excepting the
aforementioned motorcyclist’s elbow.
This path still beats letting one of
the million maniacal drivers meld me
into the pavement outside the so-called
protected area that is the bike lane. The
insanity ends when I reach into my
jersey pocket and pull out the 10-peso
entrance fee and say ‘Hola amigos’ to
the friendly and familiar faces inside
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the gatehouse. I enjoy the ritual
of reaching down to tighten my
cycling shoes and turning on my
gazillion-function cycle computer.
The device and conversation
with the other cyclists help divert
my attention from the repetitive
and none-too-special scenery
of the course. KDT, being less
than a kilometre from the river,
is windier than farther inland, so
riding in a peloton is even more
advantageous. Even without a
breeze a cyclist going thirty-three
kilometres per hour is creating
and bucking a thirty-threekilometre-per-hour
headwind.
The rider behind him (drafting)
is doing between thirty and forty
percent less work. Typically riders
of equal ability will share the
workload by rotating on and off
the front. Often the younger and
stronger riders will be happy to
stay up front and do the ‘pulling’.
My group seeks them out. We all like
the feeling of going fast.
Argentina has a strong group of
older cyclists called masters. Maybe
it is the Italian bloodlines. Many have
been riding and racing all their lives. At
fifty-nine I am the second youngest in
an informal group of around twenty-five
friends. The majority of these riders
are octogenarians. Most are retired
or people that make their own work
schedules, so we meet down there
around noon. I have been training on
racing bikes fairly consistently since
I was fifteen. If I miss more than two
weeks I struggle to keep up with this
group. I’m always curious about their
ages. Fortunately they usually ask me
mine first. Likely some are interested,
but I get the impression that more
often their real motivation is to watch
the shock spread across my face when
they tell me theirs. They have every
right to be proud. It has nothing to
do with being patronising: I typically
guess they are ten years younger than
they actually are. It’s not only the lack
of pudge, but also the way they move
and act, on as well as off the bike. There
is no weakness in their voices when
they speak. At lunch they move around
in their seats and gesture like college
kids trying to make their points. They
walk with the gait and posture of people
twenty years younger.
In warmer weather, attractive
women often sunbathe on a certain
grassy portion of the infield. When my
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eyeballs are not otherwise occupied, I
notice a few of our group leering there
each and every lap. I think it’s less a
case of nostalgia and more the result
of superior circulation. Many have
resting heart rates in the fifties and low
sixties, more common to athletes in
their twenties. They relish relaying their
doctor’s classification of them as one in
a million or freaks of nature.
There is an addictive quality to
the audible hum and gentle vibration
produced from chains driven by pedals
whirling at ninety revolutions
per minute, pushing us through
the air in unison. We all share
that need for self-produced
speed. These elder statesmen’s
addiction to endorphins is
no less pronounced than in
younger athletes, if not more
so. Unless there is a crash,
which is extremely rare for this
experienced group, and as long
as you are properly fitted on the
bike, injuries are almost nonexistent.
Regardless, everyone
in our group wears a helmet.
Rubén is eighty-three.
He rides with a titanium hip.
You could not meet a happier
person spinning around with
the pack. Two years ago, in the
slow lane, a young distracted triathlete
ran into his rear wheel and knocked
him off his bike and onto his fake hip. It
was clearly the triathlete’s fault. Rubén
was in the hospital for a year, half of
that time fighting for his life because of
infections. One day I saw someone else
riding his bicycle and feared the worst.
I asked around and was told that in fact
that was his old bike. He was still alive
but had sold the bike because he was
homebound. That was then. Now go
there on any given Tuesday, Thursday
or Saturday and you will see him on his
new bike with an even bigger smile on
his face.
‘El Uruguayo’, also known as ‘El
Gato’, is eighty, yet has the spirit and
friendliness of a teenager. His bike and
equipment date to a past generation
but he still keeps up with everybody
without sweating too much into his
faded wool jersey. I ride one of the latest
high-tech ‘Ferraris’ of bikes and I often
wear out before he does. I asked him
why this is. He told me, “Because I never
stopped.”
Still another friend, Enrique, is
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eighty. He raced bikes from
fifteen to twenty-four. He
did stop, because he had to
concentrate on work and then
tennis became his leisure sport
until he got aced by his knees.
I had trouble keeping up with
him the other week. Knowing
his age, I diagnosed my struggle
at that moment of incredulity
as not enough air in my tyres,
not enough oil on my chain and
he will be in Spain with his new
wife, following the Vuelta a
España.
I hesitate to mention Alfonso
only because he is eighty-one
and stronger than me. I average
fifty kilometres a training
session compared to his seventy.
When we are riding side by
side I’ll often look over and spy
his heart monitor. When his
to a heart problem that must
have just arisen. Five years ago
his wife of forty-nine years died
and he found riding a better
alternative to staying home.
Much heartache can be abated
by riding two hours with friends
at seventy to eighty percent of
your max pulse. Don’t go down
there looking for Enrique the
next three Tuesdays because
is showing one hundred, mine
is typically at a less efficient
one hundred and fifteen for
the same workload. Alfonso is
the owner of an elevator repair
company so I assume he is
good at recalibrating electronic
devices to his liking. How much
different can a heart monitor be
from an elevator control panel?
Forgive my imagination, but I
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need something to explain away
the painful discrepancy.
Carlos is a softly-spoken retired
economist. He stands 6’3” and is
the smoothest pedaller there. Call
him economy in motion with no
sign of retirement on that account.
Carlos’s posture has not bowed one
degree to eighty years of battling
gravity. One session I asked him if
he wanted to practice leading each
other out in sprints. It agitated him
and he declined in a firm tone. I
then realized he understands his
body very well and is all about
protecting its engine. He would not
want to risk his ticket to health and
happiness for a momentary thrill as
I was asking him to do. That being
said, he often tucks in behind my
wheel when I jump onto the fastest
peloton. I can’t remember him ever
letting go of it, even at speeds of
forty kilometres per hour.
My first friend there was an
eighty-two-year-old, also named
Rubén. Before the bike lanes
existed, I used to keep my bike in
KDT’s garage. I would take a taxi
there and sync my riding time
with Rubén’s so I could take his
cab back home. After two hours of
riding, it amazed me how silently
and cat-like he jumped in his cab. It
encouraged me to bury the grunts
and groans that I let out for that
task. He was just as quick to jump
out of the car, large-cat-like and not
so silently, when challenged by
aggressive drivers. Rubén smoked
cigarettes until his fifties and the
competition late into his seventies.
Racers are often limited by their
VO2 max (ability to consume
oxygen under stress). Rubén was
not limited by his lungs for the
simple fact that he did not have
lungs, he had a lung. I liked him a
lot even if it annoyed me that he
was as strong as me with just the
one. Rubén had a relapse of his
cancer and half of the remaining
lung was removed. A few months
later he was back, not as strong
but no pussy cat either. As I know
the excitement of being in a bike
race I don’t feel sorry for him, just
admiration for the thrilling life he
had made for himself.
Francisco trains on a track
bike (fixed gear) with only one
handbrake, which he also uses to
commute. Francisco is one of the
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most fascinating to watch because he is approaching
eighty and can still keep up with the group at thirtyfive
to forty kilometres per hour on his jalopy. He is
not usually the first to drop off. Francisco was gone for
a few months. One evening as I was having dinner in
Las Cañitas I saw him with his arm in a sling. He was
working as a trapito, car parking guide and protector
for tips. I went over and we spoke. He assured me he
would come back from his crash and he did, a month
later. Now I have not seen him for a few months again
but I would be surprised if he did not return.
These people are not the exception. They are
the norm for this clique. There are also many other
people their age that just cruise around in leisurely
fashion, clearly very happy to be doing so. This group
proves that the Great Cyclist in the Sky is open to my
athletic input and thus might be somewhat flexible
deciding the final day of my ‘Vuelta de Earth’. You
don’t necessarily have to get old at any appointed
time. If not for these forever-young inspirational
friends I likely would not have gotten married at age
fifty-nine, and for the first time, this year. Please give
me a couple of years before I decide whether to thank
them or cut their brake cables.
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Bathers in Buenos Aires’ Fountain of Youth was first
published in Mitchell Belacone’s 2019 collection Bud’s
Nose: And Other Less Canine Stories.
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128

Exploring the Great Britain
Cycling Team Academy at the
Tour de Yorkshire 2019
Words by Trevor Gornall
Photos by www.swpix.com / insta: @swpix_cycling & Cor Vos.
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It’s been a while since we last spoke to
our old mate Matthew Brammeier, so we
decided to visit the former pro, now lead
academy coach with the Great Britain
Cycling Team (GBCT) men’s endurance
programme, at this year’s Tour de Yorkshire.
It turned out to be a fascinating insight
into how the outspoken and occasionally
controversial pro rider has matured
into a confident and astute leader, now
able to bring the benefit of his diverse
and complicated career as a rider to aid
the development of the next crop of British
talent. Before we delve into the second part of
Matt’s riding career and his aspirations for the
academy we first travel with the team through
stage one of the Tour de Yorkshire 2019.
We met up early on the morning of the first
day of the race at the team hotel in Wetherby.
Here I left my car and grabbed a quick coffee
in the restaurant. Matt and I had a
brief chat in the lounge about the
day ahead, but there wasn’t much
time to hang about gossiping, so
we headed more or less straight
away to the far corner of the
hotel car park that GBCT were
calling home for a few days.
Team staff were buzzing
around making sure all the
last-minute preparations
were complete. There
was a nice atmosphere
around the place and
everyone was clearly
looking forward to
the days that lay
ahead and mixing it
with the big boys’ teams
of the UCI WorldTour. I was
introduced to staff and riders before we
set off with as little fuss as possible.
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We drive in convoy with the other GBCT vehicles towards the
start town of Doncaster. In the driver’s seat is of course Matt, with
me (feeling important) riding shotgun. Behind Matt sits the team’s
road captain Dan McLay, on loan from UCI WorldTour outfit EF
Education First. At first I’m not entirely sure who is sat next to Dan
in the back. I think to myself that it could be the young Scot Sean
Flynn, but he was especially quiet - perhaps nervous ahead of the
big race, or maybe just going through his own private pre-race
routine. The in-car chat between Brammeier and McLay catches
me a little off guard, but perhaps I should know better. Matt is
explaining to Dan some half-baked theory on how the Amazon
rainforest only produces enough oxygen to maintain the animal
life forms that live within the Amazon rainforest, and how in return
the animal life forms that inhabit the Amazon rainforest create
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just enough carbon dioxide to maintain the plant life of the Amazon
rainforest. So in terms of the rest of the planet the Amazon rainforest
has net zero benefit, he suggests. “It’s like you’ve got these two glasses,”
he continues, and mimics pouring water from one to the other and back
again. “See? Oxygen...and carbon dioxide.” I did not see. I was a bit baffled
if I’m honest, and I’m not entirely unbaffled even now.
We arrive at the start almost without error. Here we are greeted by an
official-looking chap. I drop my window and enquire where the GB
mechanic’s truck is parked, fully expecting a broad Yorkshire accent to
respond. Instead I get only a blank stare back. The Lancastrian in me does
a metaphorical eye-roll before repeating S-L-O-W-L-Y for the benefit of
my Tyke cousin, “The Great Britain team, please mate?” From the back
seat comes an entirely unexpected interjection
from McLay, who in
fluent French was able
to converse with said
official and quickly
establish where we
needed to park. I turned to
McLay, in equal amounts
of embarrassment at my
faux pas and amazement
at his linguistic ability.
“ASO innit,” he mumbles
before retreating back into
his beard, and the world
equilibrium was restored.
The lads sign on underneath
menacingly black clouds.
I briefly imagined that the
weather could just hold,
but as the start approached
the raindrops were already
assembling, ready to unleash
themselves upon this
unusually lively corner of
God’s own country. What to
wear seemed to be the main
debate amongst the team as
some opt for the ‘gabba’ style
tops (or ‘Kabbas’ as I overhear
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them described, due to them being
made by Kalas), while others go
for the more traditional ‘layers’
approach, topped off with a rain
jacket. McLay appears to be wearing
every single item of kit issued to him.
That’s experience right there.
We roll out of ‘Donny’ and within a
few minutes of the flag dropping the
weather has already gone biblical
on us. The heavy rain rebounds from
the sodden Yorkshire tarmac, which
reflects the headlights of team cars
and race motos alike. It feels more
like dusk than the middle of the day
and an ark may have been a more
appropriate means of transport.
Barely out of the neutralised zone and
before we can settle into the race, the
words “CHUTE, CHUTE!” are heard
on race radio. Within seconds we
overtake the incident where a couple
of riders have gone down hard to our
right. By the look of the Euskadi guy
his race is done. I recognise the tell-tale
manner in which he’s sat on the ground
nursing his arm. It’s a classic broken collarbone injury for who I later
confirm was Spaniard Mikel Aristi. My pity for him at lasting but a few
minutes into a four-day stage race is tempered by my relief that it wasn’t
one of ‘ours’. We press on, as the race inevitably does, leaving the medics
to mop up the unfortunates behind.
The race immediately goes to plan as Joe Nally and Sean Flynn of GBCT
both get themselves into a small break of just six. They are joined by
former GBCT academy man and winner of 2017 Gent-Wevelgem U23
Jacob Hennessy, now of Canyon dhb p/b Bloor Homes and fellow Brit
Dan Bigham of Team Ribble. Jesper Asselman (Roompot-Charles) and
Kevin Vermaerke (Hagens Berman Axeon) complete the sextet.
Matt checks with the second GBCT car to confirm who is carrying the
spare bikes for our two lads in the break. The consensus is that it’s us.
There then follows one of the most exhilarating things you can do in
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sport without actually contributing personally. Our car needs to move
up from our position in the race convoy following the peloton, passing
120 or so riders, as well as motos and other race vehicles, and navigate our
way to the head of the race where the breakaway has formed with a
modest gap of a couple of minutes.
Nothing can really prepare you for
the adrenaline rush, no matter how
many times you’ve experienced
this before. It’s real heart-in-mouth
stuff for this nervous passenger.
I try my best to melt into my
seat, making myself as small as
possible, not easy for someone
1.92 m and 85 kg (on a good day).
But I want Matt to have sight of
his mirrors at all times. The horn
is depressed almost constantly
as Matt moves us up bit-by-bit
on the narrow and twisting roads
somewhere between South and
North Yorkshire en route to our
ultimate destination in Selby.
We’re mere centimetres away
from a dozen or more riders
throughout the nervous couple
of minutes it takes Matt to
pilot us safely to the front. All
occupants of our car are silent
throughout as the mechanic
and I respectfully observe the
skill and patience required to
choose where and when to go for a gap,
and when to hold your ground and maybe risk the wrath of the angry
bunch yelling expletives through the half-open window.
As we pass the pointy end of the bunch I breathe a sigh of relief that our
little escapade is complete, and for the moment we can settle into the
more mundane task of following the breakaway. The fan boy in me was
thinking that at least I might get to hand out a bidon or two.
But we don’t have long to wait before the action kicks off once more. We
hear on the team radio that Ethan Hayter has been involved in a crash and
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he needs to change his bike. Yep, that’s right, his bike is of course on the
top of our car. And we have just manoeuvred ourselves to the opposite
end of the race. Of course, turning around and heading back is not really
an option! All we can do is find a lay-by, pull over and wait.
The old heads around me immediately take advantage of the lull in
proceedings to exit the vehicle for an opportunistic nature break. I think
about it for a fraction too long and by the time I’ve decided to join them
they are already zipping up and heading back to the car. With visions of
the team car speeding away while I’m stood there with my old feller in
hand, I decide to hold it in. The mechanic gets Ethan’s spare bike off the
roof and waits patiently at the roadside as the peloton and its entourage,
that we battled so stressfully to overtake for what seemed like an age,
pours past us in a handful of seconds.
Still sat in the passenger seat, terrified to move, my eyes probe the wing
mirror for a sign of Ethan’s arrival behind, but nothing. Matt is constantly
on the team radio reassuring Ethan we have his bike and are waiting on
the left side. What seems like an eternity passes before Ethan calmly
appears. He seems physically OK following his tumble, but his cleat has
become twisted and he cannot continue until it’s resolved. Adrenaline
pulses through my own veins as all I can think about is the ever-growing
gap that Ethan is now going to need to work extremely hard to close to
get back to the rear of the bunch. But he’s the coolest customer in town
as the mechanic tweaks his cleat and re-tightens the bolts. But it’s not
quite right. Inside I’m yelling “GO MAN GO...THE GAP IS FUCKING
MASSIVE!” But undaunted by the situation Ethan calmly feeds back to
the mechanic how the cleat needs further adjustment and waits patiently
for the mechanic to complete the task. Only once his shoe and pedal are
once again perfectly aligned does he coolly climb on board his new bike
to chase down the peloton, setting off seemingly as relaxed as if he were
pedalling to the shop for a packet of Yorkshire Tea.
We spend the next relatively uneventful portion of the race following the
main bunch. There are some nice moments after the feed, when the race
appears to have settled down a little following the early frantic moments
of the break establishing itself and a glut of crashes and collisions. A few
of the elder statesman of the WorldTour spot Matt driving and swing
across the road to say hello. Bernie Eisel, smiling as ever, shares a joke
and Nathan Haas is keen to offer Matt the benefit of his motoring advice.
“Yer almost killed us all back there mate,” he playfully yells through
the window – huge grin on his face. “Almost,” replies Matt smiling, but
without ever taking his eyes off the road ahead.
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The other highlight of the day was lunch. An exquisite ham salad
wrap was delivered courtesy of the cooler box in the rear, accompanied
by a mini can of Coke, of a size which, it seems, is only ever served up by
airlines or in feed zone musettes at bike races. To much hilarity amongst
the other two car occupants Matt even conjured up a pre-planned mini
napkin to ensure no crumbs made it onto his new team issue top. The
relative crumb-free benefit of the wrap over other bread types was
debated at length, to the point where the requirement for the napkin was
questioned. Closer inspection of said napkin then revealed a rogue blob
of BBQ sauce had stealthily seeped from the bottom of the wrap. We
were reluctantly forced to admit the napkin had been an inspired call and
had fully justified its inclusion.
One legacy of Keith Lambert’s time as senior men’s academy coach
appears to be the mid-race brew. Matt’s preparation for this started as
soon as I arrived at the hotel. He’d already boiled the kettle in his room
and filled a flask with tea. He later tasked the swanny with sourcing some
milk. All was packed into the car before we left the hotel ready for a postfeed
brew-up. I recall being at the same race last year when I went with
the swanny to the feed. After handing out the rider musettes his next
task was to wait for Keith to pull over to the roadside and hand through
the window his flask of tea, and on that occasion a packet of McVitie’s
digestives. On long days like this sustenance and morale are just as
important for the staff as the riders.
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Towards the end of the race, despite his mammoth effort Flynn gets
shelled from the lead group. As is so often the case for riders who have
fought a long hard battle in the breakaway, he slides ungracefully back
through the main bunch and straight out the rear of the peloton. We spot
him and offer bottles and gels, but the manner of his shake of the head
says it all. He’s totally spent and we won’t see him again until he arrives at
the team bus several minutes down on the main bunch of finishers.
Between the race radio, team radio and the live ITV4 broadcast that we
are receiving courtesy of a tablet hastily gaffer-taped to the dash, we
see Nally is still up top, although the break has now thinned to just four.
Following the final climb of the stage Jake Hennessey called it a day in
the knowledge he will start stage two wearing the King of the Mountains
jersey. The weather almost certainly played its part as he dropped back
in search of the relative warmth of a place in the middle of the bunch,
leaving just four out front. And with only a few kilometres left it dawns
on us that Nally and the remaining other three in the break are actually in
with a chance of staying away.
For a moment I let myself imagine the pure joy this would
bring to all involved. A young academy kid just learning
his trade. Not only executing the day’s plan of getting in
the break, but seeing it through to the end and maybe,
just maybe, delivering a memorable victory. The
excitement was palpable as Matt started
shouting at the TV, “Come on
lad, come on!” We exchange
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a knowing glance as we both acknowledge the enormity of what might be
just about to happen and I start to imagine myself in one of those pieces of
in-car GoPro footage at the Tour de France when the DS and his sidekick
embrace each other while whooping and hollering as their rider solos to a
mountaintop finish of the queen stage.
Such was the level of emotion inside the car, and belief in our man, that Matt
pulled the car over and stopped so that we could witness the final moments
of the race on our improvised in-car TV. Inside the final kilometre and
under the red kite they go. Holy crap: he might just do this. But the bunch
are bearing down on them fast. This is going to be really close, but have the
sprinter’s teams mistimed their planned capture?
In the thick of the chase, monitoring and manoeuvring but of course without
contributing, is McLay, who is expertly piloting Hayter to the pointy end of
the gallop. Ethan had expertly rejoined the business end of the race following
his tumble and bike swap, and was now ready to offer Plan B as the team’s
designated sprinter for the day. But only if the bunch caught the break.
By now we’re all screaming at the tiny flat screen taped to the dash, praying
the data connection doesn’t start buffering – or worse, give up completely.
Come on Joe, come on, you can do it lad! A few hundred metres to go and the
bunch are thundering down upon the four escapees. ‘Kinell . . . they’ve got
this. Five hundred metres and they are still away. Four hundred. Three.
With whatever is left in their weary legs the four survivors of the day-long
break finally open up the sprint. Given the speed of the peloton roaring down
upon them, now just metres behind, no obvious increase in the speed of the
now-sprinting breakaway four is detectable. Indeed, they suddenly appear
to be going backwards unfeasibly quickly. At just one hundred metres to go
the four are spread across the road, very much focussed on their own race,
seemingly blissfully unaware of the mayhem that is lurking behind them,
and already reaching wilfully for the line.
With barely fifty metres left Asselman of Roompot launches himself ahead
of the others. The bunch suddenly overwhelm the remainder of the break
and there is chaos behind as we try to see who finished where. Asselman
was the clear winner, but the rest was pretty hard to decipher, especially in
the dull and murky conditions, where everyone’s kit was soaked to a similar
grey colour.
Finally the stage result appears on the screen and we see that Ethan has
come through to finish sixth. Nally was swamped on the line and ended up
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in twelfth, just behind the likes of Cavendish, Lawless and Zabel, but ahead
of fellow breakees Bigham in 14th and Vermaerke in 18th. No shame in that
whatsoever. A hell of a ride for the youngster.
We eventually rejoin the race route and make our way to the team parking
area at the Selby finish. Sean rolls in 124th of 126 finishers, over ten minutes
down. Everyone makes it safely back to the camper, albeit in various states
of near-exhaustion and universally frozen. All the lads want to do is get
out of their sodden kit and into something warm. Within minutes they are
reappearing from the camper wearing winter coats and woolly hats, with
Tupperware containers of hot food in hand. The exodus from Selby is
impressively well organised as the bikes are all packed away rapidly and we
are on our way in only a few minutes. There is less banter in the car returning
to the hotel post-race. I can only recall a wee small voice coming from the
back seat proclaiming he’s never felt so tired in his life.
My disappointment for Joe at getting caught so close to the line was tempered
slightly at how privileged I felt to have witnessed the events at such close
quarters. Having spent the day with the team I didn’t want to outstay my
welcome. Although I still had a load of questions for Matt and the team I
decided to leave as soon as we arrived back at the hotel and let them recover
for the next day. I arranged to catch up with Matt after the end of the race.
It’s a while later when I eventually get around to calling Matt and asking him
a little more about the race, the academy lads he’s working with and more
generally his own aspirations for his role as senior men’s academy coach.
Matthew Martin Brammeier has already enjoyed a remarkable career in
professional cycling. Back in issue one (in late 2013) we ran an interview
with him that covered his career to date: ‘No Fairy Tales - A Survivor’s Story’.
The feature explored his early days as a junior, when he raced alongside the
likes of Mark Cavendish and Geraint Thomas, and joining the Great Britain
academy where he experienced modest success on the track. Then getting
both legs broken when he was run over by a cement truck in Manchester
and later being invited to leave Britain’s elite programme by coach Rod
Ellingworth. Deciding to go it alone outside of the system and moving to
Belgium and eventually getting a ride on Sean Kelly’s An-Post team, before
switching nationality from British to Irish and becoming Ireland’s national
road race champion four times in a row and time trial champion once.
We pick up our conversation where the last interview left off in 2013. Matt’s
team Champion System had just folded and he was unsure what the future
held, despite an encouraging performance at the Tour of California. I remind
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him of Stage 4 when, according to the TV commentary, he went “the wrong
way” at a roundabout with 2 km to go. This enabled him to get the jump on
the bunch, but despite the pre-race plan none of his teammates came with
him. Without any support he was caught shortly before the line and robbed
of a memorable career-defining win.
“I went the right way!” he defiantly maintains.
Following that performance in Cali Matt got talking to some bigger teams
but nothing transpired and he ended up signing for the new Azerbaijanbased
Synergy Baku outfit for the 2014 season. I ask him what he made of the
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different race programme and environment away from his familiar European
surroundings.
“At the start I hated it. It was total chaos. Twelve-hour bus journeys to the
start soon put a stop to me complaining about transfers at the Tour of
Britain! But looking back it was actually one of the most fun years I’ve had
on the bike. When I stopped taking myself so seriously I actually started to
really enjoy it. The team was what it was. It gave me enough money to get
through a season and enough races to keep me in the spotlight to move back
up to where I wanted to be.”
I venture to enquire about one of Matt’s career high points – the King of the
Mountains jersey at the 2014 Tour de Langkawi. How the hell did you pull
that one off?
“Talent,” comes the single-word response, with a shrug.
We explore his time as a young rider living in Belgium and the challenges
that brought, not least the weather and dealing with the ultra-competitive
environment where ‘flick or be flicked’ seems to be the way of the world.
“I did a few weeks in Girona over the winter of 2011 and totally fell in love
with the place. The pace of life, the roads, the weather. I just loved it. Belgium
is a great place for young up-and-coming bike riders and of course cyclocross
riders, but after a while I found it difficult to train properly there and
stay serious. So I moved to Girona in 2013 and split my time between there
and Belgium.”
The change of location and the re-focus appeared to do the trick as at the end
of the eventful 2014 season with the Azeri outfit Matt got back into the big
time, earning a two-year contract with what was then everyone’s favourite
second team MTN-Qhubeka. Most riders are afraid to drop down a level, and
worry they will never return to the top races in the world. But Matt made it
back and quickly repaid his new team’s faith in him with a victory in a stage
of Ster ZLM Tour. He also won his own weight in beer at Tour of Flanders. He
was once again reunited with Bernie Eisel, Mark Renshaw, Mark Cavendish
and many staff from his HTC days. I ask him what it meant for him to get
back to that level, competing in those races he dreamed of as a kid, and being
in a supportive and familiar environment where every rider appeared to be
offered a chance to lead the team when they had the form.
“Of course I was super happy to be given the opportunity to step back up.
Clearly it was always going to be a challenge. I think my determination not to
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give up in 2014 was enough in itself to open the door back up. I had a great
couple of years at MTN and enjoyed my one and only pro win there! I’ll
look back fondly in years to come on those years for sure.”
I hesitate to push too much on the next topic, because I know what a
profound effect it had on Matt, but I take him back to Stage 6 of the 2015
Tour of Utah. He’d had a fantastic ‘comeback’ season and seemed to be
loving life on the road again. Then that collision. I genuinely still feel sick
thinking about it even now. It was all over social media at the time so you
will find it easily enough if you haven’t seen it already and feel the need to
understand what I’m talking about. I have only seen it once and that was
more than enough for me. I woke that morning to my phone buzzing like
crazy. Knowing that we’d worked together at HTC, Matt’s family were even
contacting me to see if I knew how he was. I did not. There was hardly any
information coming from the race coverage. No one knew what state he
was in – not even his team – only that he’d been involved in a very serious
incident. His family here in Europe going frantic with worry, and, in the
absence of any information, fearing the worst. Still now whenever I see a
bad crash in any race I think about Matt’s incident and how terrified we all
were for his welfare at that time, and how shockingly poor communication
of his status was.
I tell Matt I have the impression that his life as a pro was never quite the
same after that incident and the bizarre situation where his friends and
family watched his crash live on TV, then for hours afterwards had no clue
whether he was alive or not. Thankfully in time he made a full recovery,
but somehow things seemed different afterwards. It seemed his attitude
to the sport had changed and he started to get actively involved with the
rider union and safety issues.
“It definitely added a bit more perspective to my life and made me start to
realise what was important. I made a good comeback from the crash but
in all honesty even if I didn’t know it at the time it was the beginning of
the end for me. I struggled to take risks, fight for position and in general it
killed my competitiveness. I just didn’t care as much any more. As soon as
you lose that fight it’s all over. Cycling is too hard not to be fully committed
– and just a little bit bonkers.”
We move on to happier memories and the team’s connection with the
Qhubeka charity. Matt not only did his bit as part of the team but also
started his own initiative collecting unwanted cycling kit and sending it to
an academy in Africa.
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“I saw the opportunity to do a little bit more and give something back to
the sport that almost killed me twice,” he suggests wryly.
“Most of the lads on the team were amazing blokes. There were a couple
who seemed to get a little entitled at being Africans on the first African
team, but they didn’t last long.” I don’t enquire further to understand who
he’s referring to.
2017 saw the arrival of the first Irish-registered pro cycling team Aqua
Blue Sport, and naturally they valued having a multiple Irish national
champion on their roster. Matt got a two-year contract and hooked up
once again with some UK and Irish lads he knew well. I ask what kind of
experience he had racing with this team.
“Year one was a right laugh. We had a great group and it was so much
fun. Naturally success followed. Year two went to total shit. Expectations
were crazy high and we all paid the price for some stupidly overambitious
aspirations. At the end of the day the owners had no idea about cycling. As
soon as they got more involved it went to shit.”
The team rapidly grew in status as a ProContinental outfit and gained
perhaps some eyebrow-raising invites to top races in their first year. The
team owner later suggested he’d bought his way into those races. I ask
what this suggests about the state of pro cycling.
“As far as I’m aware it’s pretty common practice. But it does my head in that
it’s become a general conception that cycling is ‘broken’. Formula 1 drivers
buy their way onto teams, is F1 broken? It’s existed for many years as is and
it is totally fine. If anything it’s overambition and greed that’s going to kill
our sport eventually.”
With the benefit of hindsight, the Aqua Blue Sport experiment was
perhaps fatally flawed from the start. Rick Delaney had the ambition to
create a self-sustaining business model that funded the team through
sales of cycling-related products via a now-defunct online retail site.
Riders appeared to lack confidence in the equipment. Was the experiment
always doomed to failure?
“From day one the sums didn’t add up. We were told ABS would take 5%
commission from sales. We apparently spent over £2m in our first season.
That would take a bigger turnover than Chain Reaction & Wiggle put
together if my maths are correct! There was definitely some other hidden
agenda. We were asked to test equipment the year previous. It was tested
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and we hated it. This was communicated but of course we were only the bike
riders, what did we know about bikes?”
As many predicted would happen, the team folded at the end of 2018. But
Matt had already signalled his intention to step away from racing. Was it the
body or the mind that told him it was time to hang up the wheels?
“Bit of both. I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. Couldn’t hurt myself in racing or
training anymore. And on top, the team was a joke. Of course I had something
else lined up for quite a while before. That was motivating me so much more,
so the time was right to go for something new.”
Then, perhaps a surprise to some, he returned to the place where it all
started at British Cycling and the Great Britain Cycling Team, but this time
on the other side of the fence as lead men’s academy coach. It turns out the
same guy who sat him down all those years ago to tell him his career with
Great Britain was over was the same person who reopened the door for
Matt’s return.
“It was a conversation I had with Rod some years ago. I was always kept in the
loop of possible opportunities and as soon as it opened up I jumped at it.”
Clearly Matt didn’t harbour any reservations about returning to British
Cycling after being let go from the track programme as a promising
youngster and had no regrets about switching allegiances to race for Ireland.
But I ask him about the antics he, Cav, and G got up to during their youth.
Allegedly doing donuts in the velodrome car park and changing the wheel
circumference on their cycle computers to make it look like they’d ridden
the training distance prescribed by their then-coach Rod Ellingworth. They
were a proper pain in Rod’s arse - does he not fear the same tricks will come
back to haunt him?
“The lads are a lot more well-behaved these days, thank god, and let’s leave it
that way thanks!”.
I’m intrigued to know how the academy set-up has evolved since Matt’s time
on the programme.
“Everything has really moved forward. I’d say the current crop of juniors are
at a similar level to what we were at as U23’s. However the ethos remains the
same – work hard and learn the trade.”
There seems to be an abundance of talent amongst the current crop of
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youngsters. I ask how he sees these lads progressing.
“We definitely have some good guys coming through. It’s a real strong group
which is testament to what we are all doing. The Olympics is possible for
one or two of the lads and we could maybe have two or three moving into the
WorldTour next season too.”
So the ultimate question then - what difference can Matt and his unique
experience bring to the academy?
“I’ve come in with some pretty lofty aspirations. Some years ago the academy
was ’the place to be’ and the best development team in the world. It was
where everyone wanted to be. Over the years the sport has evolved and we
now have some healthy competition out there. I have full faith that we have
the best support team in the world and it’s my goal to build the academy
into the most successful development team in the world. Success to me isn’t
just about performance, it’s about setting these lads up for their futures and
crafting them into happy, resilient, complete bike riders.”
One of Matt’s first changes was to switch the training base to Girona, a place
where he’s has many fond memories of life on and off the bike.
“For me location isn’t all about the roads, the weather, or the transport links.
The move was more about off the bike and the lads being able to have a
happy life away from bike riding. I feel Girona is the ideal place for them to
enjoy themselves off the bike and live their lives as committed bike riders at
the same time.”
We finish off with a chat about the lads who I’d had the privilege to join for
that day in the car at the Tour de Yorkshire. I was curious to better understand
why they were chosen to race, what their roles where and how Matt felt the
race had gone for them all.
So overall the race was considered to be a success for the academy and the
lads who raced. All part of “learning the trade” as Matt often puts it.
These are fascinating times for the GBCT set-up. The track facility in
Manchester with world-class coaches and support staff is very well
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DAN McLAY
Dan is no stranger to the academy
set-up. The WorldTour sprinter
with EF Education First has
experienced track success as a
junior in GBCT colours. In 2009 he
took bronze in the Madison at the
UEC European Track Championships and
in 2010 became junior world Madison
track champion with Simon Yates (now
of Mitchelton-Scott). Dan’s experience
made him the perfect road captain. “It’s
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basically like having a coach inside the peloton,”
Matt told me. “You can see a lot on the TV, but not
everything, so it’s invaluable having an experienced
pair of eyes on the lads up close.”
Dan’s role was essentially to mentor the young
sprinters. Show them how to position themselves
in the bunch, which wheels to follow, when to
move up while navigating those critical final few
kilometres. Dan would be there to help guide Ethan
to sixth on Stage 1 and in return he was allowed to
go for the stage win himself on Stage 2, where he
finished fifth.
Charley Calvert
Charley was a late replacement for
the injured Jim Brown. Matt tells me
he almost made it into the academy
in 2018, missing out “by the skin of his
teeth,” being very unfortunate that the
group they already had was considered
especially strong. He was selected for this
race because they like his attitude on and off 182 182
the bike and they wanted to take a closer look
at him. He performed really well throughout
this race and a handful of other Nations Cup races
where he has also really impressed.
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Sean Flynn
Matt explained that the academy
system is about give and take so when
they can they like to offer opportunities
to athletes who might not necessarily make
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a major contribution to the team’s particular
goals or may have no particular ambitions in
that particular discipline. The federation wanted
to give promising young Scottish mountain biker
Sean Flynn some high-quality race experience and
he repaid them fully by getting in the break on Stage
1. While his focus is mainly on MTB right now he
could well be one to watch for the future.
Ethan Hayter
Matt is visibly enthused when he talks
about Ethan. “Hitter,” he says simply.
Last year was his first Tour of Britain and
184 184 perhaps he lacked confidence. “He still has
not realised just how good he is, but it’s slowly
starting to dawn on him,’’ Matt says. Tour de
Yorkshire was a great opportunity for him to race
against some big teams. He crashed first day and
still got up and back on to contest the sprint. He
went in the break on a hilly last day. The race didn’t
really pan out as they had expected, but Ethan was
versatile and able to adapt to the situation. It was
also an impressive performance considering it was
his first road race of the year.
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Joe Nally
Joe’s stage one ride was described by Matt as
“the performance of his career so far”.
He played it smart in the break all day and
did everything that was asked of him. In the
end he was pretty close to winning and that’s
exceptional for one so young at that level of racing.
The performance he delivered should give a lot of
confidence for the future.
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William Tidball
Will is described as really promising for a
19-year old. This was the biggest race he’s
ever done and he got through it well. He was
able to contribute to the leadouts in the early
stages but unsurprisingly was less effective
on stages three and four. He did well, especially
considering he was thrown in at the deep end.
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Ben Turner
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Ben came into this race off the back
of a full CX season. He’d had a bit of a
rest and was building back up, so the
team didn’t have huge expectations of him in
this race. They know he’s talented and capable
because of his CX performances and so they take
the opportunity to have a look at him on the road
as and when they are able to, then consider if they
can bring him in for major competitions in future.
Sadly he got sick during stage 2 and was unable to
complete the race.
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established. There has been phenomenal multiple Olympic success, notably
by the likes of Sir Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton and Sir Bradley Wiggins.
British riders have had an unparalleled period of success on the road too
in Grand Tours with Sir Bradley
Wiggins, Mark Cavendish,
Geraint Thomas and of course
Chris Froome. Arguably
though the academy has not
fully delivered its potential
in contributing to the road
success in the same way it
has to track, and perhaps the
UK could have enjoyed even
greater success with a broader
base of talent. So many other
riders like Matt himself have
been forced to find their
own way as a pro outside of
the medal factory that is the
Podium Programme.
Matt’s experience as a young
rider on the programme, who got let go, then
forged his own pathway to ultimately learn his trade, becoming multiple
national champion and making it with some of the biggest teams in the
world can offer invaluable insight into delivering a programme that may
capture more of this talent in the future. His extreme highs and lows have
given him a unique perspective not only on what it takes to make it in the
world of cycling, but importantly on what kind of things drain the motivation
and lead talented athletes to walk away.
The UK domestic road scene is in a strange place. Races such as the Tour de
Yorkshire, Ride London and the Tour of Britain attract huge crowds at the
roadside and on television. But the races that make up what was the Premier
Calendar, and to some extent the national championships rarely capture the
attention of the nation’s fans in this same manner as when the WorldTour
boys come to town.
The existence of high-calibre UK domestic road teams appears as precarious
as ever. Recent years have seen the loss of teams like (Rapha) JLT-Condor,
NFTO, ONE Pro Cycling and now Madison-Genesis. Whilst the perpetual
churn of sponsors has been a fixture of all of pro cycling for many generations
the situation seems set to continue. Uncertainty over a team’s survival can
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never be good for the development of talent and at best diverts valuable
resources to the never-ending search for the next team sponsor. Riders are
constantly unsettled, lurching from one failing or failed team to the next.
The GBCT academy team has an ambitious programme of European racing
as well as guaranteed places alongside WorldTour teams in the biggest UK
races. With Matt at the helm the welfare of these riders on and off the bike will
be better than ever before. The UK appears to now have a fantastic pool of
potential road talent. Perhaps it always has. But maybe the key to transferring
that talent from potential to an unparalleled period of road success will lie in
the strengthening of the academy set-up under the guidance of a man who
genuinely has been there and seen it all.
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1. What you never needed to know about
Ramunas Navardauskas:
One of our all-time favourite riders, we asked
Ramunas some tough questions – and he obliged:
First Memory of riding a bike?
“Me riding an oversized bike. That bike was so
big that I could not even ride on the top tube.
Seat was much higher! So me as a kid riding on a
bike, pushing my hip next to top tube, and myself
sideways trying to hold balance and still going
same speed as my friends! I was not the only one to
ride like that. So it was kind of normal behaviour.”
Most ridiculous moment on a bike?
“All about crashes. But one was super classic. I
crashed before the start and landed on my butt.
It wasn’t painful, we were riding slow and it was
one of those ridiculous crashes. But my shorts
broke and broke in a spot where . . . Well, you could
see the sweet spot . . . For a while I was riding in
the back of the peloton of shame. But at the end,
a race is a race and I was racing. That day I made
many happy faces. I was the star of the day!”
2. Girona – cycling mecca of the pros and
where we call home:
Latest update from the ground here: Robert
Gesink and his wife Daisy have opened Girona’s
latest hotspot – Hors Catégorie Girona. With
an interior to die for (think bench seating styled
like a velodrome) and endless bike storage, the
collaboration with long-esteemed Flax and Kale in
Barcelona has raised the bar once again for postride
eats and brews (coffees and beers of course).
Tacos, Buddah Bowls and Kombucha for the
health-minded, but plenty of guilty pleasures to go
alongside too. Check it out on Instagram
@horscategoriegirona.
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Words & Photography: The Peloton Brief
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3. The Nic Dougall Comeback:
Nic Dougall, the loveable, affable
rider for Dimension Data from
2013-2018 has made a remarkable
comeback in triathlon. His first
ever race, the Barcelona 70.3
event, saw him set a course
record on the bike segment and
then place 7th overall. Turns out
an engine finessed with Grand
Tours and cobbled classics can’t
be stopped, and we can’t wait
to see more from him. Before
the event: “My stomach was a
knotted ball inside of me as I
clicked the button that would
enter me into my first race in May.
All the familiar thoughts of selfdoubt
plagued me. Some big and
scary – ‘What if you don’t finish?
What if you haven’t done enough
training?’ – and some ridiculously
mundane – ‘What if you miss your
flight? What if you miss your start
wave?’ They all have one thing
in common though, they all have
to do with failure. As I clicked
the button I pushed all those
thoughts aside. The fear of failure
has limited me as an athlete up
until this point and I won’t let it
limit me any more. I learnt a lot
from my time as a professional
cyclist but after a lot of reflection
in the last few months, I think this
has been my biggest takeaway.”
We are cheering you on Nic!
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CASQUETTE

Jack Swart is one of the all-time greats
of New Zealand road racing. His
many triumphs in stage races saw
him bafflingly pigeonholed by the
national selectors, meaning he missed
out on many one-day opportunities.
But that wasn’t the only source of
frustration in his career.
Words & Photography: Russell Jones
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It was amongst the pile, squeezed down the side with
the race numbers from the 1980 Milk Race and the 1976
Scottish Milk Race. Bursting at the seams, the cardboard
Chiquita banana box overflowed with memories from
another time. If a picture can tell a thousand words, then
this stage winner’s cap from the 1984 Coors Classic could
tell you so much more.
“We were sitting around the dinner table that night,”
remembers Jack. “We’d all heard about Afghanistan, but we
didn’t really know too much about the politics.”
Jack Swart had made the selection to represent New
Zealand at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the core of the
road squad riding the Milk Race as a preparation event,
just as many of the other amateurs were doing. The twoweek
British stage race was one of the premier races for
amateurs at that time, and with previous winners going
on to win Olympic gold (Kuiper won both the Milk Race
and Olympics in ’72, Johansson the Milk Race in ’75 then
the Olympics in ‘76) it was also considered the perfect
opportunity to size up your Olympic opponents.
The evening after a team time trial stage New Zealand
coach Ron Cheatley received a phone call in their
Llandudno hotel from the Secretary of the New Zealand
Amateur Cycling Association. “They were handing on a
message from Muldoon’s office [The NZ Prime Minister at
that time],” remembers Cheatley. “They told us that New
Zealand was withdrawing from the Games and we were
expected to come home.”
In protest at the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan
the United States had announced they would boycott the
Moscow Olympic Games. New Zealand was one of over
sixty countries which followed suit. Gutted, Jack Swart
would now have to wait another four years for his chance
to ride in the Olympics.
From Good Stock
The first child of post-second world war immigrants,
Jack was raised in the small town of Morrinsville, where
his parents owned a small farm. They had chosen well.
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Unbeknownst to the Swarts, the small Waikato town was a hotbed of
cycling – as the young Jack would soon find out. Interested by the bike
racing that passed by the farm gates, he was embraced by the familyrun
Morrinsville Wheelers and their ‘school hall and tea urn, bring
your number back for a cup of cordial’ racing community.
After a steady start he progressed through the ranks and by 1980
he was a household name in New Zealand. With an Edmonton 1978
Commonwealth Games silver, a win in the prestigious home-based
Dulux stage race, three wins in the Manawatu stage race and two
national road titles under his belt he was a regular choice for the
national squad. Naturally strong, his style of racing was one of riding
at the front and seeing who could stay with him. “I remember Jack
was a big burly bastard,” laughs Phil Anderson, who crossed swords
with Jack during the ’77 Dulux. “He was just a beast. He would be a
good man to be in a breakaway with as he was a hard-working guy. I
was away with him a few times and we’d always try and get something
going.” The then-19-year-old Australian riding his first overseas race
developed throughout the week, pipping Swart to take his first big
win. “Looking back, it was a real stepping stone for me, firstly for riding
in a better-quality field, secondly in preparing me for Europe.”
It was no surprise then when Swart was named for the New Zealand
squad to compete in the 100 km team time trial at the 1982 Brisbane
Commonwealth Games. Cleaning up in the previous year’s Oceania
Games, a ‘shake-out’ event held on the same circuit, the Kiwi team
were not only confident but were also on obvious form going into
the 1982 Games, filling the podium at the tough Australian 226 km
Grafton to Inverell race in the lead-in. But on the day of the 100 km
TTT disaster struck. A slipped chain resulted in the team riding half of
the race missing a rider. Their bronze medal was bitter compensation.
Olympic Dreams
A marked rider on his home course, Jack Swart lined up as favourite
to win the 1983 National Championships. It had been chosen as the
selection race for the ’84 Los Angeles Olympic Games. As he had won
the Waikato regional championships on the same roads just weeks
beforehand things were looking good for Swart.
Watched so closely, Swart was not able to jump across to the early
break on the day. The crucial moment came when he suffered a
puncture. The bunch was quick to accelerate and distance him. To add
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to Swart’s woes, his Waikato support van was up covering the break.
After waiting for a neutral wheel and then attempting to chase an
attacking bunch Swart called it a day – a decision he still regrets.
“I mentally cracked when I saw that they all decided to take off. As
it happened the whole race exploded, and if I look back on it now, if
I’d just ridden at my tempo I would have grabbed them all back one
by one. But that’s all history.”
Despite being one of the strongest road men in New Zealand, by
not finishing the selection race he had not met the tough criteria set
by the Olympic panel. Jack’s L.A. start was now on hold.
Eager to turn this around, Swart went out and duly won the Tour of
Southland. Riding again from the front he attacked into the wind
on stage 5, distancing the field. He went to win the Dulux tour once
more, again sealing his win on the 175 km New Plymouth queen
stage. “I wanted to show them I could ride,” says Swart referring
to the Olympic selectors. “I knew before I rode Southland and the
Dulux that I wasn’t going to the Olympics as I wasn’t selected, so
that’s why those races were so important to me – to do well and to
show them.”
Still not getting the nod, Swart was asking himself just how much
more he would need to do. Regardless, Cheatley still trained Swart
with the squad, in the hope that the Olympic selectors would
see sense and find him a place. “In those days,” explains Cheatley,
“you nominated your athletes to the Olympic committee and they
handed that on to the cycling selectors for final ratification. Jack
Swart got turned down on the basis that he was supposedly just a
tour rider, which was an absolute joke!”
“Enough of this Sunday stroll”
Like the Milk Race in the previous Olympic campaign, the
Colorado-based Coors Classic was used by many teams for pre-
Games tuning. The high-altitude, tough American stage race even
modified some of its stages to replicate the Californian Mission
Viejo Olympic course. Cheatley asked Swart to join the New
Zealand team, the coach still praying for a last-minute reprieve.
Swart, forced to pay his own way, did so in the hope his Olympic
dream would still come true.
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“They told us that New Zealand was withdrawing from
the Games and we were expected to come home.”
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Not surprisingly, the American squads were strong. The stillamateur
7-Eleven squad fielded medal hope and criterium
specialist Davis Phinney to sharpen his sprinting legs against
Canadian favourite Steve Bauer, while the likes of Andy
Hampsten and Alexi Grewal were out to duel on the climbs
against Colombians such as Fabio Parra.
As if it wasn’t already a big enough circus, the race was followed
by a crew making the feature film ‘American Flyers’. Riders were
used as cast members, the route doubled as a set and the young
and moustachioed Kevin Coster joined the peloton at the start of
chosen stages in his Shaver Sport kit. Not in the script was Alexi
Grewal’s positive drug test. The American hope was immediately
suspended but allowed back for the Olympic race.
Feeling on form racing at the high altitude, no mean feat coming
from the lowland Waikato countryside, Swart saw his opportunity
during the 100 km 18-lap Aspen stage. Although referred to as a
criterium, at 2438 m and including 900 metres of climbing, this
was certainly no Dutch or Belgian kermesse like Swart had ridden
on previous overseas sorties.
“The circuit had a climb towards the end,” recalls Swart, “and then
it went about 1 km down the main street to the finish. They were
all out of wind on that last lap, so I attacked from the back in the
biggest gear I had and just went for it! Got around the corner and
figured I could be just as fast as they can, and that was it. Phinney
couldn’t catch me. I held them off. It was 10 seconds on the line.
It was a big deal, and what made it such a big deal was that it was
a slap in the face to the Olympic selectors. I was riding with the
Olympic team, winning a race against most of the Olympic riders
and the Olympic race was only a week away.”
Cheatley remembers watching Swart on the podium next to
Phinney in front of 20,000 people, shedding a tear while ‘God
Save New Zealand’ played in the background, gleefully looking
forward to sharing the good news back home with the selectors. “I
naturally perceived that they would rubber stamp Jack’s selection.
It didn’t happen. They rejected it on the basis that they still
thought he was a tour rider and not a one-day rider. I remember
putting Jack back on the flight to New Zealand while we carried
on down to Los Angeles, I remember saying to him, ‘Jack, you’ll
come out and smash them in the Nationals, you’ll win it and show
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them that you are more than just
a tour rider,’ because he was more
than that, he’d won a lot of one-day
races. It was really sad Jack Swart
never became an Olympian, really
sad.”
For years he’d juggled with the
continual balance of training
combined with full-time work, and
as the eldest of six he’d helped to
support his family after his father
had died. Now with a new family
of his own, sitting alone on the
plane home Jack faced reality. “I
knew then I’d never to go to the
Olympics. I wasn’t going to be
around another four years for the
next one as our kids were just
about to go to school.”
Watching out for his mates, he
tuned in for the race back in New
Zealand. The Kiwis struggled in
the heat, their best rider finishing
18 th . Grewal returned from his
ban to nose out Bauer for the
sprint. Phinney was 5 th , but his
wife Connie Carpenter Phinney
completed an American sweep of
Olympic road race gold.
“For me the course was OK,”
remembers Stephen Cox, Swart’s
training partner and New Zealand
teammate, “but the conditions, I’d
rather see trees and rain sideways
than the 40 degrees we had that
day. The temperature destroyed
me rather than the course, and
I don’t think it would have been
much better for Jack.”
“I don’t like the heat, not like that,”
agrees Swart. “That and what those
Americans did with their blood
doping program, well . . .”
In early 1985 Rolling Stone
revealed that the cyclists on
the USA team had been using
blood infusion practices prior
to the Olympics. Although
not yet deemed illegal by the
International Olympic Committee,
this revelation, together with
the Grewal positive, certainly
blemished the American success.
A Salute
Ironically, in 1984 the New Zealand
National Championships were
held in the small South Canterbury
town of Pleasant Point. Ironically,
because Swart made a not-sopleasant
point when he accepted
his winner’s trophy, saying “Well,
that wasn’t too bad for a tour rider,”
to the gathered crowd after soloing
to the victory.
Continuing another two years,
Swart announced his retirement
on the top step of the podium of
the Raleigh Cycle Classic, a new
version of the Dulux race. In doing
so he equalled the record of race
wins. Next to him on the podium
was his brother, Stephen, winner of
the last stage. It was an emotional
occasion – a passing of the baton,
as it were. Jack was stepping down
from racing after being a stalwart
of the domestic scene for so long.
Stephen, after seeing his brother’s
career dictated to by internal
politics, turned professional the
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very next year. In a nine-season career that saw him ride at
the top level in Europe and America, he returned to this very
podium in 1995, victor in the newly named Colonial Cycle
Classic, this too his last race.
But Stephen Swart’s tale is another story for another day . . .
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“I remember Jack was a big burly bastard”

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POSTCARD
From The Peak
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Words & Pictures: Tom Owen
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The Isle of Skye is the greatest climb in England.
On this point I will brook no argument. Nowhere
near Scotland, it’s a 6 km climb out from Greenfield
(on the Mancunian side of the Peak District), up
into the moorland of the northernmost part of
the National Park proper. I believe it is named
after a pub that is no longer there but used to be
somewhere near the top. The climb is tree-lined
and claustrophobic at its foot, but opens out into
something spectacular.
In the summer of 2018, the one that went on
for aeons, wildfires raged all over the moors. In
town, with the streets choked in the smoke of
burning heather, Mancs could barely clear their
throats enough to belt out ‘It’s coming home . . .’
as England marched improbably onward in the
FIFA World Cup. In Saddleworth, people popped
out to the shops in second world war gas masks to
protect their eyes from the stinging smoke.
Meanwhile, helicopters shuttled between the
Dove Stone reservoir at the bottom of the Isle of
Skye and the tops of the moors carrying slings
filled with water. Was this Yorkshire, or Yosemite?
California or Castleton?
You go over a roundabout to start the climb,
which sucks out any speed you might have hoped
to carry into the initial ramp. The first part is the
steepest and can sometimes be slippery because
it’s shady – although not back then, in the summer
that would never end. A dry stone wall acts as the
barrier to your right, over which you can catch
glimpses of the reservoir. Stand up and kick
through the pedals and grab a sight of sailboats
pulled up on the far side.
As the road curves left and gains height the land
behind the wall is no longer flat enough for tall
trees or cottages. From here to the next layby it’s
open. Knuckle down and turn the pedals. The
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187

“
When you do
look, drink it
in. This is the
best climb in the
country
“
188

gradient starts to dwindle down to something
more manageable. A right of way crosses the
road and it broadens out for just a little bit to
accommodate a gate on the left and the layby on
the right.
Once you’re past that you’re about halfway and
the scale of the valley becomes apparent. Look
up and ahead and pick out the road as it snakes in
and out with the contours of the hills, but slowly
turns to the right. Put in a few more watts and suck
down some water. Don’t look back and over your
right shoulder for as long as you can resist.
When you do look, drink it in. This is the best
climb in the country. See the water far below now
and the towns of Mossley and Uppermill in the
background, hemmed in by the hills that obscure
the city’s scruffiest outer reaches.
One more turn to make and you can drag your
attention back to the tarmac in front of your wheel.
It rolls out in front for miles, all the way down to
Holmfirth, or Slaithwaite, or Masham or Meltham
and a hundred other glorious climbs.
189

STAY COOL OFF THE BIKE
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