The Racer

by David Millar

  When Andreas was racing he was the absolute master of being in the right place at the right time. Nobody thought of him as the strongest, yet everybody considered him to be the smartest. His was the wheel to have – that is, if you could get it. Some riders and teams would base their race on marking Klier; he was the ultimate guide through the bedlam. This skill was the fruit of his Flemish labours – he had taught himself to be more of a Flandrian than any other, born or bred.

  Unlike many, he has always shared his knowledge with teammates. To the degree that in the second half of his career, and while still a rider, he found himself effectively leading team meetings and calling the shots. Everyone bowed to his knowledge. When it came to the Flanders Classics he was constantly the smartest guy in the room. The reason he was allowed to lead team meetings while still a rider was because he never posed a threat to anybody. This was due to him being a lovely man: there is little to no ego and he genuinely cares about people which, considering the domain he excels in, is something of an exception.

  Most directeur sportifs forget within a matter of months of retirement from racing what it was like to be a rider. I’ve only known two who have remained truly empathetic to what it’s like to be out there doing it: Matt White and Andreas Klier.

  This is what makes Whitey and Klier so much better than everybody else out there: they remain fully aware of the difficulties involved in being a pro bike racer during the race. As racers we always joke about how easy it must be to make decisions in the team car – some directeurs order us to act as if it’s a computer game, oblivious to the fact that’s the easiest way to lose the respect of your riders. Whitey and Klier are, suitably, the only two directeurs I know who we’ve given nicknames to: ‘Whitey’ because he’s Aussie; and ‘Klier’ because we needed to give him a nickname and the only thing we could think of was his surname, which makes him sound hard and German, which mostly he isn’t.

  Yet when it comes to strategy Andreas is so German. He’ll break the race up into sections and give them different levels of difficulty. He’ll allow us moments to relax and others where we have no choice but to be fully engaged at the very front of the race. There are even moments in the first 100 kilometres where we congregate at the front as a team at a relatively non-stressful moment, preventing us from slipping into complacency or switching off completely in the calm before the storm, and so reminding us of what’s coming. This is where both Whitey and Klier are different from all other directeurs: they remember we can’t be switched on all the time; they remember what it was like to be out there on the bike, in the race.

  We have moments in the race that Andreas refers to as ‘red alarms’. He doesn’t use yellow or orange: it’s straight to red. These are pivotal moments where the race won’t be won, but it could most certainly be lost. We have had three red alarms before we get to the holy mother of moments: the Taaienberg cobbled climb at 223 kilometres. This is crunch time. Being such an important moment it can be called only one thing on Planet Andreas Klier: a dark red alarm.

  Unfortunately, before even getting there we already have our own dark red alarm. Sebastian has been caught up behind a crash just as the final phase of the race is beginning. I wait for him and call on Steele to do the same. Eventually we get him going again, and I start to bring him back in as controlled a manner as I can. The nature of the Flanders roads means we’re already losing sight of the front group we’re chasing. Then things get worse when Sebastian’s rear derailleur snaps. It has obviously been hit in the crash, but not enough to break at that moment: now it gives way under the load. He raises his arm and starts to pull over, all three of us slowing to a stop. I look behind and can’t even see the lead following car coming up in the distance – that could at least give me some hope of the team cars arriving before long. All I can see are random stragglers from the crash scattered along the road, some chasing desperately while others have clearly given up, almost thankful to be out of it.

  It seems the race is over for Sebastian – all the support cars are still clogged up behind the crash and, being single-track roads, have no way past. We have no idea how long it will take for the car to get up to us. I look at Steele, then I look at Sebastian. I realise they’re a fairly similar size. I shout, ‘Give him your bike, Steele!’ Steele doesn’t hesitate, he hands it over. Sebastian doesn’t really know what to do, so I tell him, ‘Seba, you have to take his bike or the race is over. We’ll get your spare when we can.’ His head is clearly shot. He must be thinking, ‘That’s it, my race is done.’

  He throws his bike in the ditch and jumps on Steele’s. Steele gives him a running push-off and Sebastian and I set off again, with Steele shouting, ‘Seba, my brakes are the other way around!’ We leave Steele to walk back to fetch the broken bike out of the ditch and wait for the team car, his race now finished.

  We have a fairly long chase, mainly due to me wanting to pace it as steadily as possible in order to stop Sebastian making too much of an effort on my wheel – but also to show that I am calm and in control, knowing this will rub off on him and allow him to get his head back in the game. Eventually we make it back to what is left of the peloton – then, just as we join the back, there is another crash. Neither of us are involved but it blocks the road in front of us. I make it through on the grass but Sebastian is well and truly blocked behind. I continue to roll along, waiting for him to pick his way through and catch up so we can begin the chase anew.

  It’s like Milan–San Remo all over again. I’m off the back doing an effort that would have taken me off the front of the peloton. Once we make it back on I wait until our team car is behind us and then drop back to explain what is going on. In these circumstances I always prefer to speak to Andreas directly rather than over the radio, and tell him we’ll change the bike as soon as the moment is right. This means the next big road, and when it’s clear the peloton is grouped and in a steady state. Sure enough, the moment comes and I tell Sebastian to stop, and we change his bike. Then, out of the blue, the peloton starts stretching out again, making it a total bastard to get him back on and up to the front. I drop Sebastian off a handful of kilometres before the second time up the Kwaremont. I’m deep in the red from the repeated chasing. I watch the race disappear up the road before we’ve even reached the dark red alarm. I’ve done my job; I can’t be too upset that my last Flanders is ending this way.

  It’s quite an experience riding the next ten kilometres with my head disengaged from the race, because I get to look around and take in the carnage. There are riders everywhere. I catch up with guys who’ve had mechanicals, others who are injured from crashes. I see two riders who’ve missed a fast corner on a descent and are now sprawled in an adjacent field. Then there are guys flying by me, chasing like I was not long before. The motorbikes and official cars are screeching and honking, squeezing by all of us, while the whole time the buzz of overhead helicopters and nearby screaming fans fills our ears. I haven’t really paid attention to any of these things while in the race.

  Before long there’s a little group of us riding along. When we get to the bottom of the next climb, the Koppenberg, there isn’t any hesitation: we all file left instead of right. I didn’t even know there was a short cut back to the finish. I look right, think about it, then go left with the others. I don’t need to finish. I’d rather keep the memory of the good times at Flanders than a long, lonely, sad slog to the finish. That isn’t necessary.

  At the finish Finlay and Martin are waiting to film me as I cross the line. They follow me back to the bus. They aren’t expecting me so soon, but fortunately they get me arriving at the bus, so all isn’t lost. They then film a fair amount of footage of me sitting out the front of the team bus in my tracksuit, talking to fans and getting my photo taken a lot. Which is better than nothing, I suppose. Sebastian ends up finishing tenth, a brilliant result in the circumstances. It makes me feel like my final Flanders hasn’t been entirely wasted.

  Scheldeprijs

  Scheldeprijs isn�
��t much of a race, although saying that it must be something because this was the 102nd edition. It’s a 200- kilometre loop that starts and finishes in Antwerp. If there’s a flatter race in the year I don’t know it. Most of the peloton is lethargic from racing Flanders and weary at the thought of the following day’s Roubaix recon, so all in all it’s a fairly mundane day out. We have an out-and-out leader for the race in our sprinter, Tyler Farrar. He’s won it before, and with it almost always coming down to a bunch sprint he’s the obvious candidate for us. We have a fairly simple plan: do nothing, then position Tyler for the sprint. Easy.

  Only it’s really difficult, because everybody has the same plan, and I mean exactly the same plan. I’ve been put in my old faithful lead-out position: penultimate lead-out man. It’s my job to place Tyler and his final lead-out man, Raymond, in the perfect position, as near as I can to the finish. I’ve done this countless times for Tyler in the past. Most of his biggest wins have come off the back of such a lead out, only instead of Raymond there has been the Kiwi Julian Dean in the final position.

  We’ve lost our touch somewhat of late. First of all I’ve been finding it harder and harder to motivate myself to do lead outs and, secondly, Tyler isn’t getting the results. It’s a vicious circle: the less I believe in Ty the less I am willing to put on the line for him. I’ve been unstoppable in the past – helping the climbers through mountains one day, trying to get in a break the next, and leading out Tyler the rest of the time, while going full gas in every single time trial. I’d considered that normal behaviour at the time. I took for granted my physical ability to do all those things, and so it hadn’t been much of a demand, psychologically. But as soon as I started to find it harder physically I was affected psychologically. Yet the moment I’m strong physically all the enthusiasm and motivation comes flooding back.

  I know I’m getting stronger with every race. Although I didn’t finish Flanders I was confident I was going well: to have spent so much time out the back bringing Sebastian back into the race took some strength. And so it proved in the final of Scheldeprijs: I was able to revert back to my old self. Tyler knew when he saw me relaxed in the final, while it was going nuts all around, that it was like the old days. I, in contrast to many other sprint lead outs, like to sit a bit further back and await a moment to punch through. In other words, just doing one big and important move rather than a protracted drag race with other teams at the front. This has become a bit of a trademark of ours: we essentially hijack the work of other lead outs who’ve been slaving away on the front for numerous kilometres. This is mainly due to the fact that we were a general classification team with a small sprint train. We’ve had to find a method that works with our limited resources: we are a three-man band.

  I’m told the most important moment in Scheldeprijs is the right-hander at four kilometres to go, which takes us off the road parallel to the canal and brings us back in through the suburbs to the finish line. If you find yourself badly positioned into that corner then you’ll be sure to be terribly positioned coming out of it and can kiss goodbye to your chances of a result. Clearly everybody knows this, and so we have the whole peloton fighting to be first through – all of which wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t had a headwind.

  The headwind means that we are swamped across the road from left to right, because there is no way of stringing the peloton out – it’s impossible for a team to stay united in the constant hustle and bustle, pushing and shoving, braking and accelerating. If you are on the wheel you feel like Superman because you are so protected from the headwind, so you think it’s easy and try to get past. Everybody is doing this, then, when a rider gets to the front and faces the wind for the first time, they last a short amount of time before exploding and being swamped again. It is nigh-on impossible to hold a constant position; you just have to keep nudging forward. If there’s a gap you jump into it; but even with this constant sense of moving up you are often just sliding back through. It’s like walking up a descending escalator.

  Riders are becoming stressed and trying dangerous moves, attempting to squeeze through gaps that clearly aren’t there. If I see that happening I try to give them room in anticipation of the inevitable fuck-up. The last thing you want near you in a stressful situation is a stressed person.

  I make the executive decision to stop fighting and to sit back a bit to wait for the unavoidable parting of the peloton. I figure the kamikaze peel-offs (when a rider literally rides so hard and fast on the front that when their turn is done they peel off and sit up having totally maxed out, to then have another rider begin what they’d just finished) will start in the final 500 metres before the corner and so stretch out the peloton a bit, allowing me to move up the side. Ty is on my wheel. I give him the sign to stay there, then I just relax and ready myself to go the moment it all opens up. Sure enough it does, not far from the corner, probably 300 metres, but enough for me to take Tyler right back up into the mix.

  When we come out of the corner I see that we have limited options. The entire Giant team are forming in order to begin their lead out. Being such a well-drilled team Giant, I have no doubt, will nail it, which means we’ll be stuck in the battle behind them for position. We’ve lost Raymond and the rest of the team in the mêlée leading into the corner, so can only rely on each other. I don’t fancy banging around fighting for wheels behind Giant because, well, it’s fucking dangerous and I don’t want to crash.

  So with four kilometres to go I take control of the race. With Giant on the left I start going on the right. They trust my ability to go long, so instead of drag racing me they swing across and get on my wheel, which gives Ty the opportunity to slot in among them, a chance that he wouldn’t otherwise have got. This is in their best interest, too, as the pair of us aren’t exactly a threat, and they can use me as an extra in their lead out and in the process save themselves two guys. I ride for two kilometres until I make my peel-off, then Giant begin their machine-like lead out with a full complement of riders thanks to my contribution. In the meantime Ty has been able to position himself perfectly on to Giant sprinter Marcel Kittel’s wheel. Unfortunately Kittel is a giant of a man himself and proves unbeatable, but Ty gets a respectable second place, which turns a fairly shit day’s racing into a good one. Good results tend to do that.

  The Hell of the North

  It’s one thing to love watching a race, it’s another to love doing it. Paris–Roubaix is an example of this: it’s easy to love as a fan, much harder as a racer. I’ve started it three times and none of those times ended particularly well – which is another way of saying I didn’t finish.

  It’s known as ‘the Hell of the North’, something people often mistake as being attributable to its renowned difficulty and the famous images of exhausted racers looking like they’ve been to hell and back. It actually originates from the 1919 edition, when it was held for the first time since the First World War had ended, and travelled through a devastated northern France – the journalists and riders who took part could only describe what they saw as ‘hell’. Henri Pélissier, speaking of his 1919 victory, said, ‘This wasn’t a race. It was a pilgrimage.’

  The recon on the Thursday before the race is, much like the Flanders recon, a tradition. Most of those starting Roubaix will have raced Flanders the previous Sunday and Scheldeprijs on the Wednesday, with the recon the day after that. In typical cycling fashion it’s not exactly a light week; but there is a reason for this – the best performances at Roubaix are almost always achieved by the riders who have raced at Flanders and Scheldeprijs. The overload seems to do us well.

  The Roubaix recon is a fixture in itself. There will be fans out watching, as well as photographers and film crews, all of which adds to the feeling that it’s a race like no other. The recon is an opportunity to refresh our knowledge of the parcours – a necessity before Roubaix as it’s the only time in the year we race on these ‘roads’. (The only other time would be if the Tour de France decided to include some of
the cobble sections in its early stages – it does once every decade.)

  As we step out of the hotel, the bus is sitting out front, ticking over. It looks and feels like the morning of a race: all the team cars are lined up, loaded with bikes, and there is the general buzz of a big race day. This is the effect Roubaix has on everybody: it’s still four days away, but we’re all gibbering with a mixture of excitement and fear. Once we’re on the bus and moving, everybody relaxes a little, remembering that we’re not actually going to a race. Morning quiet descends. Headphones are on, phone calls home are made, a car magazine is flicked through; one or two of the young guys are studying maps of the course trying to memorise the sectors.

  We park up in a supermarket car park in Denain, northern France. The Trek and Team Sky buses have chosen the same start location. This isn’t a surprise: often these rally points have been used for years – many of the guys running the teams will have raced together on the same teams and learnt the same routines. Thirty years ago there was probably a friend of a directeur sportif who had a house near this supermarket where they would all get changed and have a coffee in the days before luxury team buses.

  One by one we get off the bus. I tend to be first. I don’t know why, because without fail I then stand around getting pissed off at everybody else for being so slow and not respecting the schedule. I’m of the school of thought that says you’re not on time unless you’re early – always have been when it comes to my racing life. This no doubt annoys everybody else as much their tardiness frustrates me.