The Racer

by David Millar

  They caught Tony in the final 100 metres – only six riders got by him. It was jaw-droppingly impressive. I’ve been in that situation; I know how fast you have to go and how strong you have to be in both body and mind. I lay down on my back on Ryder’s floor, hands over my eyes, exhausted. Ryder filled the silence, ‘What. A. Fucking. Freak.’

  Martin did something similar in this year’s Tour de France, only even more impressive – but that’s another story. For that reason we don’t let Tony get very far up the road. Tony’s too strong to be trusted. Normal rules don’t apply to Tony.

  So we slip into a fairly benign state on this hot bastard of a Stage 5. Tony is being controlled, so much so that he ends up throwing in the towel out of frustration with the peloton’s policing of him, leaving his breakaway companion to continue solo. When Tony comes back and there is just the one rider left up the road, we become complacent, the stage seems a dead cert to be a bunch sprint. The route itself isn’t complicated: there’s a long gradual climb about thirty kilometres from the finish, but it’s on a big road, so shouldn’t pose any threat. About forty-five kilometres to go and our directeur sportif, Bingen Fernández, comes on the radio and tells us there’s a village approaching that we are about to climb up and through, which has a narrow street that we should be near the front for. Doesn’t seem such a big deal. We can see the small hill-top village coming. There isn’t the slightest bit of stress in the bunch. Of course, those are the moments when the most damage can be done.

  We ride up into the village on a big, gentle, rising road, the pace lifting a little as we do so, which is normal. It certainly doesn’t feel like the beginning of something bad. As we enter the village everything slows down, the width of the modern road disappearing as we pass narrowly between the centuries-old buildings on either side of the main street that takes us through the village. Then the road turns an abrupt right-angle and begins to climb rather than rise, and with it the tarmac turns to cobblestones. In that moment the peloton loses all semblance it previously had of a wandering desert caravan and all of a sudden becomes a stretched and breaking piece of string.

  I catch a glimpse of the front of the bunch. It’s yellow, and they are moving with conviction. It’s Alberto Contador’s team. What the fuck are they doing racing on a sprinters’ stage? Oh shit. They know something we don’t.

  I think I manage to reach my radio microphone to shout, ‘MOVE UP! MOVE UP! SAXO ARE GOING!’, then move out of the line and sprint as hard as I can up the outside, trying to move up as many places as I can before we get to the exit of the village, because Saxo will only be doing this if they know there’s something awaiting us on the exit.

  There’s only one thing it can be: crosswind.

  And that means trouble. Crosswinds rip the peloton to pieces, of forming scattesed echelons of riders. If you’re not in an echelon, you’re in the gutter, because instead of the slipstream being directly behind the racer, it is slightly to the side. If the wind is coming from the right, you’ll find the slipstream to the left of the racer you’re following, and vice versa. You’ll position your front wheel next to their back wheel, instead of directly in line behind as you would in normal conditions. This means that the number of riders in each echelon is dictated by the width of the road. A road can only accommodate so many riders racing in this diagonal formation until it reaches the gutter, then unless you manage to make it back into the rotating formation you will be spat out the back where there is no protection from the wind. Very rarely can one rider match the speed of an echelon, so once spat out into the no man’s land between echelons you simply bide your time and wait to jump into the rotation of the echelon that is inevitably chasing behind. If you can, that is. I’ve never let Christian Vande Velde forget his own Day of Shame in one particular Paris–Nice where he got spat through three echelons. All of us have experienced it in one form or another at some point in our careers. Stuck out there in no man’s land watching your previous group disappear up the road into the distance before switching your attention to what’s coming up from behind; repeatedly looking over your shoulder at the rapidly approaching group; getting psyched up while trying to recover from your very recent explosion; then giving another glance over the shoulder in order to perfectly time your sprint up to their speed only to realise you’re actually going a lot slower than you thought you were and they’re already right there on top of you and it’s too late to scrap your way in. You’re bashed about the road as that group shouts and dodges or pushes you out of their way and then, all of a sudden, the stampede is over and you’re left out there in the windy, lonely badlands watching that group disappear up the road ahead into the distance, and you begin the whole process again. That was Christian. Three times on one Paris–Nice stage.

  So, at moments like this, you can’t think, you just have to go. It doesn’t matter that I’m looking after our general classification leaders – they have to be acting in exactly the same way as I am, because if any of us hesitates now, when we are clearly too far back and scattered, then we don’t stand a chance. The first few minutes of entry into crosswinds are about self-preservation: you have to try and make it … have-to-have-to-have-to. The more experienced we are the more we recognise the action required and the decimation that’s coming, all the time hoping beyond hope that when it does happen it happens behind us.

  The beginning of it is brutal. It’s a flat-out effort that continues until you blow up, unless you make it into the echelon; the closer you are to the front the shorter the effort because it will take you less time to find yourself in the sanctuary of slipstreams. The team, or riders, that have created the echelon will be turning like machines on the front of the peloton, protecting each other in their echelon. Behind, it’s chaos: nobody helps anybody until they have to. Which is normally provoked by the realisation that they can’t do it on their own.

  If you’re strong and you’ve been caught out you find yourself dodging the riders in front of you who can’t hold the wheel and so let the gap open. There’s no point in teaming up with them because they’ve blown up and are slowing down, so you give everything you have to try to make it to the wheel they just got dropped from. It’s double or nothing, full commitment to make it, deep into the red, in the knowledge that if you don’t make it you’re going to have destroyed yourself in the process. If that happens you’ll have no choice but to slow down to give yourself time to recover, by which time you’ll be in a group of similarly exploded guys who didn’t make it, with the front of the race disappearing over the horizon.

  This all starts to happen as we leave the village. Saxo have had the intelligence and confidence to surprise the peloton; they’ve strung us out before we’ve even left the village, meaning that when we hit the crosswinds (that we don’t even know about) we are like lambs to the slaughter. Almost nobody in the peloton has considered crosswinds affecting the race. Contador’s team must have had an intelligent ex-racer (Andreas Klier-style) in a recon car in front of the race. They must have seen that village and the conditions on the exit and realised that if done with full commitment they could, on this calmest of days, create a storm.

  I watch it all unfold. We exit the village strung out into a long, straight, descending road, the speed constantly increasing to the point where I enter the Suck, only focusing on the wheel in front of me, everything else blurring. I sense the wheel I’m concentrating on losing speed. I glance up and see they are losing the wheel in front of them. FUCK. Thankfully the rider knows to move over to give me a chance to try to close it myself – that move in itself is what every pro should do. It gives me a chance, and it totally ends his chances, because as soon as he does it he knows he will be getting pushed and shoved and refused entry back into the rapidly disintegrating line out. He is no longer moving forwards, only backwards.

  Eventually groups start to form, the gaps between riders being too big to close individually, and that’s when the echelons form. It goes back to game theory: you have to make friends
, lose alone or stand a chance together. It’s at this moment that I start to figure out where I am, and, more importantly, where Ryder and Dan are.

  The only teammate I have near me is Talansky. He asks me what we should do. I say, ‘Where are they?’ He knows who I mean and replies, ‘I think Dan’s here.’

  I get on the radio, ‘Dan, are you here? Can you see me?’ I’m near the front so can see all the riders ahead of me in the group. He isn’t there, so it is up to him to spot me because I can’t keep looking behind as it’s too dangerous amid the chaos and stress; everybody is so cross-eyed from the effort that their spatial awareness can’t be trusted. Everything is strung out and in pieces; even if I did trust the battered riders around me, looking behind won’t help because it’s impossible to see who is where, everybody has their head down trying to hide from the wind, tucked as closely to the wheel in front of them as they can be.

  There’s no answer. Ryder comes on the radio: ‘FUCK! Where are you?’ Oh shit.

  ‘Ryder, we’re in the second group. Where are you?’ I fear the worse.

  ‘I’m behind you guys. Where are you?’ I don’t respond directly. Instead I try to confirm that Dan is here. Dan has to be here. He’s Stephen Roche’s nephew; he’s not called Crosswinds Dan for nothing, for fuck’s sake. (The name has stuck since Dan’s first race with Garmin the previous year, battling through the mistral in Provence where Dan, fresh on the team and improbably team leader, had announced to Whitey – Matt White, the directeur sportif – with all the nonchalance in the world, that no one need worry about him, he was ‘one of the best in crosswinds’, something of a specialist in fact. Sure enough, within the first hour of racing, Dan was out the back in the first crosswind section, face covered in spit and snot, with his saddle halfway up his arse and his nose on the handlebars. The peloton up the road ahead was oblivious to the fact that the Garmin team leader had already been dropped. Whitey pulled up next to him, rolled down the window and shouted in his cheery Aussie manner, ‘Crosswinds Dan! How ya doin’, mate?’) Anyhow, now I’m losing my cool at his lack of response, especially as Ryder is clear as day on the radio, and he isn’t even in our group. ‘DAN, JUST TELL ME YOU’RE FUCKING HERE.’ I can’t understand why he isn’t answering.

  Then the directeur sportif comes on the radio: ‘David! Dan is with you, Ryder is behind.’ Thank God, now I know we have no choice.

  I find Talansky, ‘Gotta close the gap. I’ll get it as close as I can. When we hit the hill you go with Dan.’ I know from the profile that we have a ten-kilometre gradual climb coming up – what had been an insignificant element to the profile now becomes the saviour of our race. There is no point in both of us riding as we have limited resources, and other teams are in the same mess. I was one of the fastest bike riders in the world on the flat: I figure I may as well give everything I have on my terrain. I’m not alone: Trek are in the same boat, their general classification rider is in our group and he only has one teammate with him. Fortunately he is a weapon, Fabian Cancellara.

  So, unlike in the past when we always raced against each other, Fabian and I find ourselves in a two-up time trial chasing down the front group, urging each other on, pushing each other when we have to. We go so deep. Others start to join us, but not for long. In one of the respites I look behind and still can’t see Dan and still haven’t heard anything from him on the radio. I lose my shit, and drop back looking for him. He has to be sitting up near the front to be ready to counter with Talansky when we get close.

  I have to go so far back to find him, everything is so strung out, and when I do find him I shout, ‘Fuck sake, Dan! You have to be at the front. Come on, let’s go.’ I battle my way back up to the front with him on my wheel. When we get there I tell him, ‘Stay with Talansky, you two go on the climb.’ I then go back to chasing. At the same time Ryder comes on the radio again: ‘Guys, I need help back here!’

  I hate having to tell him over the radio, ‘Ryder, we can’t wait.’ He is one of my best friends and I am the one having to tell him we aren’t going to help him. What is bad for Ryder is good for Dan, because I know at that moment we have no choice but to fix it. I can’t get to the finish, having sacrificed Ryder for a failed attempt to save Dan. I ride out of my skin the next kilometres; everybody starts giving up, and before long I am on my own on the front slowly bringing the group back. I am so far over my limit I know I only have a few minutes left till I nuke and will be incapable of helping myself let alone anybody else, but the gap is closing and I know that if I get it to within a handful of seconds when we hit the climb Talansky and Dan can do the rest on their own.

  I peel off when we hit the climb, the group in front within reaching distance. As I peel off, Talansky and Dan set off in pursuit, Talansky giving everything he has, ultimately exploding himself, just as I’ve done, but only when he’s got Dan back to where he has to be.

  Ryder never makes it back. He passes me (an empty shell by then) not long after I’ve peeled off and come to a near standstill. I’m incapable of giving him the slightest bit of help. Talansky, on the other hand, has recovered enough from his effort helping Dan that when Ryder gets up to him he is able to help him to the finish. It is a seminal moment for Andrew; he shows what he is capable of as a loyal teammate when the chips are down. That is something we haven’t been sure of until now. He gains more respect from us this day than any victory could bring.

  Day 6

  Today we took control of the race. There are two reasons: 1) we believe Dan stands a chance of winning as the finish suits his abilities; 2) we want to prove to ourselves we are better than yesterday.

  There are easier ways of doing it than this, though. We foolishly play bluff with other teams, in the process allowing a two-man break to take fourteen minutes after forty-five kilometres. I should know better, but, given the near complete disaster of yesterday, I allow us to commit to chasing a gap we should never have let get so big. We have 120 kilometres to close the fourteen minutes (that represents an almost ten-kilometre advance on us) – doable, but with the heat and terrain it stretches us to our max. It stretches Dan as well. He isn’t able to race for the win having gone so deep sitting at the front of the peloton, behind his team in a position he isn’t accustomed to. On the bright side we’ve made everybody else in the race suffer. On the bus afterwards we take that as consolation. The fact I am too tired to shower is neither here nor there.

  Day 7

  Ryder goes on the rampage today. He’s been pretty down after the Stage 5 crosswind débâcle, which is understandable. He’s worked hard to be in shape to race general classification – now any chance of doing well here is gone, it means there is only one thing to do: go for stage wins. We cover all the attacks at the beginning; I’m feeling particularly good, forcing moves and bridging across to others. I’ve told Andrew and Ryder to hold back until we hit the first big climb after thirty kilometres. If the break hasn’t gone by then it’s sure to go there. So Nathan and I cover the majority of the moves leading into it. I’m in a break that’s caught at the bottom of the climb, which isn’t ideal as I’m super-deep in the red. The climb is nine kilometres long, steep the first half before levelling off the second. Ryder moves from the bottom, which is the last I see of him till the team bus after the race. He goes full berserker, the race is in pieces by the top, everybody scattered as far as the eye can see, each of us having to find our own maximal sustainable rhythm just to survive it and stay in the race. Ryder is already minutes up the road by the time the peloton regroups twenty kilometres later. It’s mind-blowing. Three other racers eventually make it up to him. The four of them together are uncatchable, even when teams became fully committed to bringing them back. I am convinced Ryder has it wrapped up.

  He would have done if he hadn’t crashed on a fast corner twenty-five kilometres from the finish – proper bad luck, as Ryder is one of the best bike handlers in the world. The roads in Andalusia are weirdly slippery; the fact it almost never rains means dust, grease a
nd dirt accumulate on the polished smooth surface, and you never know what the next corner has in store. Ryder got caught out big time.

  All of us are gutted for him – he finishes second but he deserves the win. I am worried the two big blows in three days will leave his head shot to pieces (no question that would’ve happened to the younger Ryder, but he is more resilient these days). I’m in full roomie-psych mode, keeping his morale up and trying to make light of it all. We’re at the Vuelta, after all – even if it’s going badly it’s still good.

  We are having fun, even during our less than stellar first week. All of it has been made slightly more comical by the fact the air-conditioner broke on the bus on the first day. It’s been like a goddamned sauna since. We are putting ourselves under the most extreme conditions possible, and as much as I know that saunas can be beneficial in training I’m not so sure about putting our bodies under more stress. There’s only one thing for it: shandy.

  The race is sponsored by Amstel, and they are pushing their new ‘panaché’ beer called Radler. Ryder and I have ensured our bus is stocked up at all times. Instead of jumping in the air-conditioned cars to race back to the hotel we commit to the leisurely cruise home on the hotbox bus, Radlers in hand, music jacked up, sorting the world out, living the dream. Shandy will never taste as good again.

  Day 8