Higher Calling

by Max Leonard

  Without patous, however, he could never be completely at ease, even on open ground in broad daylight. In the past he had been able to leave the sheep for an hour or two in the static period in the middle of the day, confident they’d be in the same place when he returned. But now he was forced to stay with them, and watching a flock of sheep have a siesta was not the most edifying part of his work. If he needed to leave for more than a few minutes, he had to take them down to the parc, which disrupted their rhythms and drew out the working day if one wanted, as he did, to give them maximum grazing time. Before the electric fence they could roam more freely. Now, they were safe but also exposed: if the wind blew a certain way they might not be able to find a windbreak to huddle against, and if the rain came they were stuck. It pained him. It also pained him that the twice-daily passage of 4,000 cloven feet over the same paths destroyed the mountainside. This did not fit how he wanted to exist on the land, where the impact of the flocks, though great, should be more nourishing than destructive. A thousand sheep can consume five tons of alpine plants a day – that is 500 tons in the season – but without these thousands of living lawnmowers, the Alpine meadows would not be as clear and inviting as we know them. Neither would the mountain forests: larch forests in particular need grazing to lighten the cover beneath the mature trees and make space for saplings to grow. There would be more brambles, fewer paths and bigger risks of both wild fires and avalanches. And the villages in the valleys would lose precious inhabitants, making our passage on two wheels through these cultured landscapes more difficult, less interesting and less rewarding.

  Early October. The shoulder of the year; an in-between time when human life has more or less deserted the high mountains. All the summer’s tourists are gone, there are no cyclists left, and yet the ski lifts still hang motionless above green meadows. The wooded hillsides are a riot of reds, oranges and yellows, and the mountain meadows above them grey from a light dusting of snow on the ochre grasses. It is the first snow of the year and the Bonette road is officially closed for the first time. I have this liminal space to myself, time to play, and to attempt one final ride up into the cold wind. First, the curious thrill of cycling past the ‘Road Closed’ sign, of snatching the improbable from the jaws of the impossible, and then the ascent into the advancing winter up high. At Bousiéyas, where the gîte appears closed, it is 3°C. Above there, the mists obscure first the other side of the valley, then the valley too, and finally almost the road itself. Near the top, a couple of ibex with huge curved horns crash out of the clouds and across my path not 20 metres in front of me. Rocks are scattered across the road – how quickly it is reclaimed – and the only other thing to pass is a solitary police car, emerging out of the nothingness and disappearing just as quickly, completely inattentive to my presence.

  At the top the col is open, and dry, but Jean-Marie and his road-clearing team have ceded the Cime loop to the elements for another year. The steep, precipitous asphalt is now part covered in thin trails of slick run-off-turned-ice, and pebbledash frozen snow that is deepening into ruts. I had been promising myself all the way that however far I got I would not waste time at the top. It is not a place to hang around, but there is a bleak and monochrome soft-focus beauty to the fogged-in scene that is too magical to leave. By the time I am ready to descend a subzero chill has set in almost to the bone.

  Those kilometres downhill through the gloom are the coldest moments I have ever spent on the bike. I descend at a snail’s pace, racked by shivers, hands too cold either to curl or uncurl on the brakes. Cold that causes pain in my fingers like I’ve never felt, and dizziness when I get off the bike at the gîte. I bother the proprietors for a cup of hot chocolate with two sugars and an espresso mixed in, and then another. They only start the process of returning life to fingers and toes, but are perhaps the most delicious things I have ever drunk.

  Somewhat restored, I freewheel to the bottom, and am stopped at the Pont Haut by two pick-ups, a livestock truck and temporary fencing. Two patous patrol the junction as three farmers herd sheep into the fences funnelling them into the transporter. They are packing up for the season, they say, and heading down to the plains of the Var at the sea’s edge, and it occurs to me that I have seen these shepherds before. Years ago, the first time I ever rode up the Bonette, they were here. It had been early October too, but sunnier and a little less cold. We had seen them at the bridge with the same truck, but we had frozen so badly on the descent that by the bottom my companion’s lips had turned a rather special shade of blue. So instead of stopping to observe them we headed down to the village to an Alpine-style restaurant for hot chocolate espressos with two sugars and, it would turn out, the best pizza in the world. A pizza with the thinnest base you could possibly imagine – a result, just maybe, of the thin, high-altitude air into which the dough had been thrown; a pizza with goat’s cheese from the herds grazing by the rushing Tinée river and cured ham; a pizza at least 15 inches across that spilled decadently over the edges of the 12-inch plate it was served on; a pizza to savour, and to turn you from an ice lolly into a human again.

  There is something about riding in the mountains that elevates simple things – pizza and hot chocolate, hot and even cold – and gives back to them their true value. But more than that. I knew if I came back just before the snows next year, or the year after, these farmers would be parked up here at the bridge, taking the flocks back down. Riding up there was a connection to the seasons and to these natural rhythms, a connection to the old balances and old ways. This time, instead of rushing down for pizza, I stopped to have a chat. Maybe unwelcomely, as most of the ewes were in the loading pen or on the truck itself, but the bellwether had just been separated and needed dealing with. The bellwether is the castrated ram that leads the flock – a wether with a bell around its neck to help the shepherd keep track of where the herd is heading. Locally it is called the floucat, and the tradition is to cut its fleece into distinctive, often funny and demeaning, shapes. He was bulky and strong, and not entirely willing to be manhandled into the back of the pick-up. It took four people while I somewhat awkwardly looked on. But once he was lifted and loaded and locked in, the shepherds showed me some lambs born overnight, the beginning of a new cycle.

  In all probability these little guys would not be here this time next year – these farmers bred their lambs for slaughter – but that was part of it all too, and I knew that there would be more.

  Chapter 10

  IL GIRO

  Or, time to dance under those lights

  The twenty-eighth of May. It is as if reality has been binned in favour of a script stolen from the desk of a writer of melodramas. Actually, nobody would have dared write the Giro thus: even in a telenovela this script would have been chucked out for lacking verisimilitude. But it seems to be happening regardless. The twenty-eighth of May, the day of the final real stage of the Giro d’Italia 2016, from Guillestre to Isola 2000, and the entire race is hanging in the balance. Yesterday, on the descent of the Col Agnel into France, the race leader, Steven Kruijswijk, a Dutchman riding for LottoNL-Jumbo, through misjudgement or fatigue drifted wide on a left-hand bend, hit the bank of snow bordering the road and somersaulted over his handlebars. Those he was descending with – Vincenzo Nibali and Esteban Chaves – were those who had most to gain from the crash, and to make matters worse Alejandro Valverde, a veteran racer also high up in the standings, passed him too. Kruijswijk dusted the snow off and remounted, but his bicycle needed attention from a mechanic and by the bottom his maglia rosa was hanging in the balance. Valverde, Nibali and Chaves pushed the pace ahead of him on the final climb to Risoul and the Dutchman cracked, losing minutes to them all. ‘I’ve lost the Giro, I’ve fucked up everything,’ Kruijswijk said in Dutch to the media that followed him to the hotel.

  For Vincenzo Nibali it was a remarkable resurrection. The Italian had been the pre-race favourite but in the first two weeks he had looked a no-hoper. In the big Dolomites stage to Corvara he had lost 37
seconds. The following stage, a 10.8-kilometre uphill time trial, his chain came off, but even accounting for that his performance was poor and he lost around two minutes to Kruijswijk, Chaves and Valverde, the other pink jersey contenders. A further loss of one minute, 47 seconds on the relatively easy mountain stage to Andalo, after the rest day, confirmed something was up. He was a long way off top form and the team sent him for blood tests (later, it would be revealed that he had been suffering from stomach problems). But Nibali had not thrown in the towel and had kept riding. And now, thanks to a spectacular and costly mistake by his main rival, he was back in it. The Italian media were breathlessly talking about legendary comebacks by Fausto Coppi and Charly Gaul, and the Giro was again within his reach. Before the race, Michele Acquarone had predicted a Nibali win and he had kept the faith through the first two weeks, despite being ribbed by a journalist friend for his choice: ‘After the first week, she said, “What about it?”’ he told me. ‘I said, “I think that Nibali will win at the end because he’s the strongest. No Valverde or Dutch rider can compete with Nibali.” After the second week she rang and said, “Can he still do it?” I said, “Sure, because the Giro can be completely crazy. Even if you lose minutes in the first and the second week, there’s always the third week. And then the two final stages where anything can happen.”

  ‘I lived the Giro and I know that it’s always like that. The weather, the craziness, people get tired. It’s a very tough race.’

  For his comeback to be complete, today Nibali has to win back 44 seconds from Chaves, Orica-GreenEdge’s cheerful, pint-sized Colombian who is wearing the maglia rosa that fell from Kruiswijk’s shoulders in the crash. Kruijswijk is in third, another 19 seconds back, though nobody knows how badly injured he is. Behind him lurks Valverde, a tenacious, experienced racer with a knack of being in exactly the right place at the right time.

  Elsewhere in the myriad battles that comprise the race, Team Sky’s Mikel Nieve took second place in the stage yesterday behind Nibali. That puts him in prime position for the mountains classification jersey, so that will also be decided today on the stage over the Bonette. And then there is Joe. Back on the top of Teide, five weeks earlier in Tenerife, the Cannondale-Garmin Giro squad had been in good spirits. Joe had been looking forward to riding for Rigoberto Urán, an easygoing but committed rider who already had two Giro second places under his belt. ‘He may be the key guy in Rigo’s run for the win,’ Jonathan Vaughters, the team boss, had said to the CyclingTips website. Urán had been in good form too. The team had navigated the windy, tricky opening flat stages in the Netherlands without hitting any problems, but after the race transferred to southern Italy for the long and bumpy haul back to the finish line at Turin, the plan seemed to falter. On Stage 6, which was the first uphill finish and which happened to be on Joe’s birthday, Urán had not been at the front of the dwindling peloton on the 17-kilometre road towards the summit. The team had had to work hard to bring him back to the favourites when Tom Dumoulin of Giant-Alpecin attacked and the bunch exploded. Then Urán had a bad time trial – not the uphill one where Nibali struggled, but 40 kilometres in the rolling hills of Chianti on Stage 9. An illness was putting paid to his GC ambitions. However, in a minor echo of Nibali’s tenacity, Urán had also gritted his teeth and kept going, and on the eve of the stage over the Col de la Bonette he was sitting in a creditable eighth position overall. That’s bike racing, as they say.

  As a climbing domestique, Joe had had licence to go easy on the flat days and had kept a low profile in the first week. Then, with Urán fading, he’d had the opportunity to ride a little for himself. Mauro Vegni, the race director, had told me to watch out for Stage 13, in the Friuli region right on Italy’s border with Slovenia, since it was much harder than it looked on the route profile and had the potential to spring a surprise. In a small act of industrial espionage I had passed this insider tip on to Joe, figuring all is fair in love and war and bike racing. Joe chose that stage to get in the break, and then, with Mikel Nieve, to ride right off the front for a bit. And although he could not quite stick with Nieve, the eventual stage winner, and finished minutes back, everything augured well. He repeated the escapade in Stage 16, making the selection with Steven Kruijswijk, but was frustrated when he was gapped on the flat and the chance for a stage win slipped away. It was exciting to watch from the sofa as he repeatedly found himself in contention when the final move was made. And Joe had told me after the Vuelta that he’d learnt that the third week of a Grand Tour would present him with some opportunities: ‘Honestly, the first week of the Vuelta I was getting blown out. But then, by the third week, I could just move around and do what I wanted, it was awesome,’ he said. ‘I realised that those guys who can smash it sprinting out of every corner and can ride in the wind every day are the same guys that are in the grupetto every day in week two and three, and they’re not going to be in your way any more. OK, you’re going to be really tired and not feel good, but nobody feels good: everybody is tired and everyone has a cough and nobody’s sleeping well. But if you’re strong, then in the third week you see who’s really there and who’s not.’

  The signs were good, the head was good, the legs were good, Joe was repeatedly in the right place at almost the right time. But time was running out. Three more mountains for him to make his mark. His home roads, his parents coming from the States to cheer him on, my mountain to climb (although my joke that I was expecting big things from him on the Bonette was really wearing thin). Plus Mikel Nieve bidding for King of the Mountains, and the GC for the taking after an encounter with a snowdrift.

  3,166 kilometres raced, 297 to go. How had it come to this?

  I arrived in Saint Étienne de Tinée a few days before the stage to see the final preparations for the race’s passage, just after a spring snowstorm had closed the pass. There had been weather problems at one of the Giro’s lead-up races, the early-season Tirreno–Adriatico, which had caused Nibali to threaten not to race the Giro. His point was that Tirreno had been materially affected as a race by the cancellation of a mountain stage due to bad weather: why should he, as a climber and a GC contender, commit to the Giro if the stages where he might make his talents count might be nixed at short notice? Briefly, in Saint Étienne, his diva moment seemed to be justified. There was consternation in the local press, but it was short lived. Acquarone believed, he had told me, that climbing through big walls of snow was integral to the magic of the highest climbs, but he acknowledged the jeopardy: ‘That’s how cycling legends are created,’ he had said. ‘Of course if you are in July you can wear shorts, get tanned and have fun, it’s great. But the race can be a little bit boring. The weather can do something magic. That’s why I love the Giro in May. It’s totally unpredictable.’

  Almost the first person I saw in Saint Étienne was Aurelien, the snow-clearer. He was on his way home from work, near the subdivision headquarters on the one road in and out of town. He had cut his hair. It was looking trim, much better. ‘The work keeps going, that’s all,’ was all he had to say about the snowstorm. It had, in fact, also snowed the previous day, and because of the wind everything had become blocked again. But it was all OK now. ‘You see, it falls and you just have to keep working,’ he explained, a Sisyphus of the snows.

  The forecast was set fair now, if a little gloomy and cold for race day. The Giro organisers had played Russian roulette with the weather over ten 2,000-metre-plus passes, and it looked like the gamble would pay off, and the race would come out unscathed the other side.

  The next day I rode up the col. All around was evidence of activity. Where the surface had cracked near the bottom were deposits of fresh black asphalt to smooth it over. Hay bales were piled against protruding retaining walls, the roadside bushes and trees were being trimmed, and further up a truck was descending, sweeping away any last pebbles and thorns. It was past the customary clocking-off time when I reached the highest slopes, but the ballet of the snow-moving machines was continuing, Bernard and Aur
elien cutting and chopping and tipping the snow from the sides of the road to make more room for spectators.

  After two days in the village I meet my friends at the walkers’ gîte at Bousiéyas, the night before the race. The plan is to stay here, halfway up the mountain, and ride up the next day over the top, so that we watch the riders climb rather than the Technicolor blur of the descent. That evening a group of park rangers stop by for an aperitif, and they proceed to pour cold water over my excitement about the next day’s stage even as they pour cold water over their Ricard. There will be no caravan, they say. No garish commercial sideshow chucking trinkets and product samples to whip grannies and toddlers into a frenzy before the riders come – not a single vehicle even crossed the border. And no helicopters. Or rather, the high-altitude aircraft that serve as relays for the signals from the TV motos will fly, but the park’s rule forbidding (wildlife-disturbing) overflying at less than 1,000 metres above the ground will stand. The Giro had been fighting the park police, but it had not prevailed. ‘They didn’t understand that they don’t have the same privileges. Only the Tour de France,’ one of the rangers said. Riders will be warned not to litter, and they are not even allowed to take ‘natural breaks’ while in the park. An overreaction? Do wolves shit in the woods? In addition there will be no parking allowed outside of certain designated bays (this is a sensible precaution given the narrow, precipitous road), with the closest to the top still three kilometres away. There has also been widespread confusion about when the road will open or close. Perhaps the road below us is already closed to traffic, perhaps not. One of the beauties of the mountain in the evening is when the daily traffic stops and peace descends, but tonight it is preternaturally still. The park police leave and we stand in the middle of the road, scanning the mountainside opposite for herds of deer. Tomorrow will be quiet, almost silent in Grand Tour terms. No Apocalypse Now-style helicopters advancing up the valleys below, no glorious sweeping aerial shots of riders snaking up and down the road, no tourist advertisements for the barren beauty of the Cime de la Bonette and the surrounding peaks, as Jean-Marie-André Fabron had hoped. It is as if the race is on manoeuvre in enemy territory.