I was parked on the couch at home, cracking open a beer when the phone rang. It was the hospital. ‘Mr O’Grady, could you please make your way to the emergency room?’ Apparently, another doctor had looked at the X-rays and in actual fact I had a broken collarbone, a couple of broken ribs and I’d a punctured lung. It’s the first time in my life I nearly dropped a beer.
Anne-Marie drove me straight back into hospital. Half an hour later, I was lying on a hospital bench with a doctor driving a tube into my chest trying to get air back into my lung. I can’t explain the feeling of having a pipe being pushed into your ribcage when you’re still awake, but it bloody hurts.
So there I was, two years after the crash that nearly wiped me out, once again propped up with pillows on the couch, ringing a little bell for a glass of water. My old friend pain was back to visit me again.
And there was more to come. I was in Hamburg for the Vattenfall Cyclassics in August 2012—the scene of my 2004 win so I had happy memories of the race. But the real reason I was so motivated was because it was teammate Matt Wilson’s last race before his retirement and we were really keen to give him the best possible send-off.
As is the case in some races, it took me 150 km to start feeling good, but we had the whole team up the front and everything was going to plan. It was a hot day and coming through a feed zone was my last opportunity for a water bottle. Normally I wouldn’t take one that late in a race—we were going at 60 km/h which is too fast to be grabbing water bottles—but this day it was so warm I changed my mind. We were doing laps of a circuit and earlier I’d noticed water all over the road in a certain section, but it still didn’t register with me to be careful.
As we came into the feed zone, there were riders and soigneurs everywhere. As I reached out to grab the bottle, I realised I was going too fast. Normally the soigneur has a really light grip on it but I was going that fast that our hands kind of gelled together. It was 100 per cent my fault because when our hands came together, my left hand ripped on the brake and my front wheel skidded out from under me right where there was water on the road. There was a big crunch on my shoulder and I banged my head on the ground. I stayed conscious but I was literally seeing stars and I didn’t even try to get up. Again, I was looking up at the sky then the crowd was milling around me. I was so pissed off. It’s one thing to crash when it’s someone else’s fault because that just happens, but when you make a mistake, you hate yourself for it. Then I looked over and saw my teammate Jens Keukeleire bleeding everywhere because he’d come down with me. My chain had sliced through his glute muscle like a knife through butter.
I was in so much pain in the back of the ambulance that after continually saying ‘Pain, pain!’ to the German doctor, he finally whacked an injection into me. I started freaking out. I was in and out of consciousness, then all I could see were trees and it was like I was lying at the bottom of a forest. Weird sounds were going through my head and I was in a really bad place. When the drug finally wore off a good twenty minutes later I said to the doctor, ‘What was that?’ He told me he’d given me a medication that acts in the same way as LSD. He started apologising for my hallucinations but I cut him off. ‘What? Are you joking? You idiot, that’s stupid, I thought I was going to die!’
When we got to hospital the doctors came out and told me I’d smashed my collarbone in three places and I’d need surgery. I knew I’d be in hospital for a while so I told the doctors I wanted to go home; I just needed to be closer to my family. But they convinced me to stay overnight. The next day my team masseur came to visit me and I said, ‘If they let me out, will you drive me back to Luxembourg?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, but do you really want to do that?’ I called Andy Schleck who put me on to a specialist surgeon in Luxembourg. I took a handful of the hospital’s finest medication, jumped in a car and we hit the road.
I had six-and-a-half hours in the car with pillows banked up around me to make me more comfortable but I felt every single little bump. It was the trip from hell; every breath hurt and every bump was like an electric shock of pain through my body.
We eventually made it to hospital in Luxembourg but when the doctor saw how much skin I was missing he said there was no way he’d be able to operate until it had healed. This meant at least a week in hospital before I could even be operated on.
Everything about it sucked. I’d come off a big year for myself and the team with Orica-GreenEDGE, and even though I didn’t win or medal at the London Olympics, it was one of the best days I’ve ever had on the bike. I was so keen to carry that momentum into the next season, but there I was, back on the couch barely able to move for two weeks at the ripe old age of thirty-nine.
Stuart crashes on the descent of the Cormet de Roselend on stage eight of the 2007 Tour de France. (© Graham Watson)
There came a time around 2006 when I had to change my mentality. I still had to think like a winner, but I knew that more often than not, it wouldn’t be me up there contesting the victory in the final of a race. I still had one eye on the Classics but I knew that the next phase of my career—and ultimately my longevity in the peloton—would hinge on sacrificing myself for my teammates, and passing on as much experience and knowledge as possible.
It’s not an easy transition to make when you’ve spent almost your entire career trying to cross the finish line first, but I soon realised that I got as much joy out of helping a teammate win as I did from winning myself. For a large part of my career I had a team working for me, and now it was time to do the same for others.
My role started changing in my first year with CSC when Bjarne told me that I could ride the Tour de France but I wouldn’t be sprinting for a stage win. Essentially, he was asking me to change my approach from that of a winner to that of a helper—which I accepted and wanted to grasp with both hands. I saw the writing on the wall earlier that year when I was on a training ride in Nice with teammate, Bobby Julich—and I would often think about this afterwards when I was out there suffering on the roads. We were training in the mountains and Bobby looked at me and said, ‘Stuey, so you’re obviously not going to ride the Tour de France?’ I was a bit taken aback and I said, ‘Well, I hope I do, I want to.’ He said, ‘Are you serious? We don’t need a sprinter, we’re here to win the Tour and if Bjarne selects you, I’ll be shocked.’ I thought to myself, ‘Righty-o, now I’m really going to prove you wrong. I don’t just sprint; I can do other things as well.’
I understood I wasn’t a mountain climber but who was going to look after the boys in the crosswinds on the flat or medium stages? The Tour de France is not only won in the mountains but in those hectic finishes where you’ve got to have complete faith in the person in front of you.
I did go to the Tour de France that year, much to Bobby’s shock and horror, and rode my arse off doing my job of protecting our leaders. Frank Schleck won the finish on Alpe d’Huez on Stage 15, which was massive, and our team finished with both Frank and Carlos Sastre in the top ten on the final general classification, so it was a successful three weeks.
Everyone knows what the captain of a football team does; they toss the coin or wear the armband, but ultimately decisions that will affect the match are left to the coach on the sidelines. Cycling is different. Road teams have always had captains but these days the role is more defined. It’s the guy who not only has the most experience but also the ability to read a race. Reading a race means looking at the weather conditions to work out which way the wind is coming from at the start; you’re doing your homework, you don’t just rock up and say, ‘Today we’ve got three mountains.’ You’ve got to put a bit of thought into it.
Every night before a big race I would read the race book, look at the direction we’re going, then watch the news or get online for a weather report. The wind has a massive influence on a bike race because a headwind or tailwind affects your judgement on how many riders can be in a breakaway. You’ve also got to know your teammates and which ones are feeling good on race day. So a
t training or the dinner table, without interrogating the boys, I would ask them, ‘How’s the form?’ Then I’d analyse the team and how we’ll approach the race. Can we play poker? Can we bluff the peloton? If everyone knows we’ve got a top sprinter, other teams will be expecting us to ride on the front. It’s like a giant game of chess.
A lot of those decisions are made on the road, which is why we’re called road captains. We have directors in the car but they can’t feel what’s going on in the race, they can’t see the guys’ faces. But I could, and I could look at anyone in the bunch and see immediately whether they’re cruising or whether they’re hurting. If that doesn’t work—and I could do one of the best poker faces out there when I was hurting—I’d look at the gears they were pushing. Big gears, you know they were tired. One thing Bjarne taught us was to keep our bodies going as well as possible for as long as possible by constantly spinning our legs, eating and drinking. He’d say that time and time again over the radio, so we weren’t damaging our muscles and were fresher for the final.
In a cycling team there is a mix of guys. There are those who are ready to sacrifice themselves for the protected rider who will be going for the win, and there are leaders who do a bit of everything and make those key decisions. I guess what made me a good leader was that I’d been in almost every possible situation of a bike race. I’d been a sprinter, a one-day rider for the Classics, won stages of the Tour de France and helped teammates go for the yellow jersey.
I would constantly look ahead and scan the peloton to see where riders were crammed in. Where is Mark Cavendish because that’s where the sprinters will be fighting for his wheel and that will be the danger zone for everyone else. That was part of my job and being able to relay that experience to your teammates is all about communication. Even though we’re hooked up with radios in our ears, a lot of the time you can’t hear anything because of the TV helicopter constantly hovering above or the crowds shouting on the roadside.
Bjarne Riis says Stuart’s eagerness to join his team meant a lot to him and he knew Stuart’s experience would be a valuable addition as a road captain. ‘When you have been a leader you know what it takes,’ Riis says. ‘We had a guy like Fabian [Cancellara] on the team and I think Stu was very important for Fabian, to guide him, put him in the right position at the right moment. I trust his knowledge and experience in cycling, and to make the right decision at the right time in a race.
‘I could definitely use him as my hand in the peloton. I could tell him exactly what I needed and wanted from him and make sure it was done. It was like having a rolling sports director out there.’
Riis says although the pair parted company on disappointing terms, they remain friends. ‘Maybe we separated in the wrong way but he knows maybe it was a mistake. I did what I had to do … The worst thing you can do is never [get] over it, but you have to move on and there is a reason for everything.’
In the final years of my career, it would have been a lot easier to sit back and let someone else make those calls; I could have easily done without that stress and responsibility and just rocked up and enjoyed myself. But I knew I wasn’t there to win anymore and that’s why I was so keen to contribute in any way I could.
Sitting at the dinner table when Andy and Frank Schleck held the yellow jersey during separate Tours de France was amazing, and being there when Carlos Sastre rode onto the Champs Elysées in yellow in 2008—I felt like I’d won the Tour myself. When Fabian won Milan–San Remo in 2008 I was two minutes behind him, and when it came over the radio that he’d won, I was punching the air and screaming, I was that happy.
I began relishing my new role and loved the responsibility and leadership that came with trying to plot a way for our team to win the Tour de France. My 2007 Tour was obviously ruined by the crash, but I’ll always treasure the events of 2008.
In the lead-up to the Tour the team had training camps together. We did mountain reconnaissance and went to all the lead-in races together. A few days before the Tour de France started, Bjarne took me aside and said he wanted me to room with Carlos for the next three weeks. ‘I want you guys to get to know each other, I want you to have an understanding of each other so when you’re on the bike you can trust each other,’ he said. Carlos is a pretty quiet guy, he has very much flown under the radar as far as Tour de France winners go, so I knew it would be a real challenge for me. During the last meeting before the Tour, Bjarne turned to me and said, ‘Stuey, you’re there to protect Carlos, you are to look after him. I don’t want to see him in the wind, I don’t want to see him wasting one single pedal-stroke of energy.’ GC riders can’t afford to lose even ten seconds on the bunch sprint days which inevitably mean crazy-dangerous finishes. So Carlos was to sit behind me with absolute confidence that I’d look after him; that there’d be no time gaps between him and his rivals for the yellow jersey.
The race went incredibly well to plan—which in a three-week tour is pretty rare. We had guys like Jens Voigt in the break when it counted, other guys were covering moves when we had to, the Schleck brothers were on good form, Kim Kirchen held the yellow jersey for four days and Frank had it for two days before Carlos made his move on Stage 17 up Alpe d’Huez. That day was the ultimate team victory and showed why cycling is such a team sport. The breakaway had over five minutes on the peloton when we sent Nicki Sorensen to the front to start pacing up the Col du Galibier. Fabian and I drove the bunch approaching the Col de la Croix de Fer and that’s when the Schlecks and Kurt-Asle Arvesen took over and sacrificed themselves. When Carlos finally launched up Alpe d’Huez, no one was able to go with him and Frank and Andy marked any threats that were left behind, including Aussie Cadel Evans. Carlos won the stage by 2 minutes 3 seconds from Samuel Sanchez and turned a 49-second deficit into a 1 minute 24 second lead from Frank in the yellow jersey. But the biggest threat was Evans who trailed by 1 minute 34 seconds with four stages, including a 53 km individual time-trial, on Stage 20 to come.
A breakaway posing no threat to the yellow jersey won Stage 18, and Stage 19 was about recovering so Carlos could give absolutely everything in the decisive time-trial before the ride into Paris. Carlos had never been a great time-trialler and 1 minute 34 seconds wasn’t a lot of time up his sleeve over a guy like Cadel; to be honest my money was on my countryman catching him.
Carlos and I didn’t talk much about the time-trial in our room the night before. He is generally super-relaxed, so I was just an open ear in case he was feeling the pressure. The media frenzy was insane and you can’t really prepare for journalists filling your head with insecurities by asking, ‘What if, what if?’ So I just told him, ‘Geez, you’re going well mate, you’re pedalling well, you look unbelievable on the bike.’
The following day Carlos was amazing. He rode above himself and it had to be the maillot jaune sitting on his shoulders. Wearing the yellow jersey gives you that 10 per cent extra to go deeper into the hurt box. Cadel only gained 29 seconds on Carlos who rode the time-trial of his life, and we protected him all the way into Paris.
I was incredibly honoured when the boys said they wanted me to lead them onto the Champs Elysées. There were guys who had been in the team a lot longer than I had. Kurt-Asle Arversen and I had shared the road captaincy all year, and for him and the other boys to say that they wanted me on the front because of my influence on the team meant a hell of a lot.
It was an incredible Tour de France for CSC-Saxo Bank. Carlos won the yellow jersey, we won the teams classification and a fresh-faced 23-year-old Luxembourger named Andy Schleck won the white jersey as the Tour’s best young rider.
I was at a race in Germany in 2005 when Andy completed his very first race with the professionals; it was like looking at a fifteen-year-old kid. I joked around with him that I’d look after him. Little did I know back then that one day we’d be teammates and the best of friends. I was really intrigued by him and his brother Frank. They were incredibly talented but it was as though they didn’t quite know what they were
capable of.
After the 2008 Tour de France, Andy came into our room to sign our jerseys and he thanked us for our help. I looked at him and said, ‘Mate, you know that you can win this and I’m going to make it my ambition in life to help you win the Tour de France.’ It eventually came true in a roundabout way after Andy was awarded the 2010 Tour de France crown retroactively after Alberto Contador went positive. When the decision was handed down, Andy and I weren’t even on the same team because I had joined Orica-GreenEDGE but he came to my house and told me he remembered our conversation of four years earlier. He said, ‘Even though I’ve won it in different circumstances, you have helped me achieve my dream.’
Despite achieving so much in my cycling career, I knew I could never win the Tour de France, so helping guys like Carlos and the Schlecks was as good as it gets.
Andy Schleck’s earliest memory of Stuart was being invited to celebrate the Australian’s birthday after his debut race in Germany. Since then, the two have become close friends. When they were not racing they were regular training partners in Schleck’s native country, Luxembourg. ‘I don’t know what it is, but somehow we’ve got the right connection,’ Andy says.
It was Stuart’s loyalty on the bike that won him over. ‘He’s one of the most committed guys I know. He would die for his teammates on the road. I don’t know anyone else who went that deep and pulled for so long for his teammates that he almost couldn’t finish the stage himself; that’s what makes him so special, and it’s why so many guys like him and look up to him.’
Frank Schleck remembers meeting Stuart on a military-style pre-season training camp when they were at CSC. ‘He wasn’t necessarily the strongest guy at the boot camp who knew how to build a bridge or make a fire, but he was very good at coordinating,’ Frank recalls. ‘He would say, “Okay, you do this, you take care of this, watch out for this,” and he was one of the guys everyone listened to.
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