The Pain and the Glory: The Official Team Sky Diary of the Giro Campaign and Tour Victory. Chris Froome
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suffering!’ said Urán. ‘Every rider is picked with his own job to do. We all know what our job is and once we have done it we drop back at certain pre-planned points. On a high-mountain stage, once the group is down to the 30 best riders, the pain starts and then I attack. I have other attributes, but I really love climbing.’
‘In the morning meeting it was Brad’s idea to be aggressive with Rigo, and Brad would follow,’ said Danny Pate. ‘We would ride the Sky way, on the forefront, and everyone would just pack up. The plan was to be aggressive and, I guess, progressive. You want to have your own plan and execute it.’
‘It was an incredible day, the teamwork was strong and we rode hard all day to put pressure on other teams,’ said Urán. ‘The plan was for me to attack at 7 to 8km out. Looking at the stage profile card, I knew that meant 30 minutes of effort, giving my maximum at gradient, right on the limit. I knew if I scaled my effort according to the distance, I could win. Over the radio, they were telling me the finish line was close, but when you hear that, it somehow stretches out! You feel you’re never going to reach it. When I actually saw the finish, I felt energy flood through me, even though I was riding off the scale. It was an unforgettable moment. After three Grand Tours, it was a massive thing to win my first stage, an emotional day for me – and for the team, after all the expectations on Bradley and the problems we were encountering. To pull off that win was a special moment.’
‘Rigo’s win was a huge boost,’ said Pate. ‘You finish a tough day with a result like that and it makes you look forward to the next one. If you remember you won on the last hard day, you almost start to look forward to them.’
The day began slowly courtesy of an armistice in the peloton. The previous day’s exertions called for a collective decision to ride a gentle first 60km. Riders enjoyed an easy warm-up before a walloping 120-odd kilometres over the mountains to Erto e Casso. Harried directeurs sportifs, following in team cars, also had a welcome respite from being in ‘red alert’ mode, ever-poised to assess the race pattern through swishing windscreen wipers, to deliver crucial information over radios that don’t always work in mountains and rainstorms, and to offer tactical support as the daily peloton fireworks exploded.
‘DS-ing the Giro, I think, is the hardest job in the world. It’s so chaotic and stressful,’ says Dan Hunt. ‘Marcus, the senior directeur sportif, was doing a great job in very hard scenarios. As it turned out, very few more things could have gone wrong than did in this year’s Giro.’
The fundamental responsibility for everyone lay in ensuring Bradley Wiggins got from Naples to Brescia, safely, healthily, more quickly than his rivals. Wiggins was supported, not just by his eight colleagues in the saddle, but by a Team Sky staff of 22, a roll-call that included directeurs sportifs, performance staff, doctor, physiotherapist, carers, mechanics, chef, press officers and bus driver. All play a crucial role around the clock, but during a race it’s the riders and directeur sportif alone in a bubble of competitive survival. Riders have a manual for the race, but on a bike they can’t access that or glance at a map. They’re in a high-pressure environment – the argy-bargy of the peloton – so it’s vital to receive info over race radio about wind speed or direction, cautions about crosswinds or crashes, wet patches on the road or emergency vehicles, and to receive a countdown of the distance to the start of a big climb so that the team can position itself.
‘The car is there for back-up, with a mechanic and the doc, but often we see what’s going on, or we know where Bradley is, before race radio,’ says Danny Pate. ‘The dynamic inside a race is a weird thing and it’s different each day dependent on how the overall standings are looking. There’s a bigger mind-set on any given day depending on who’s on what time, who’s going for the mountain jersey, the sprint points, the young rider category, who’s in a breakaway, who’s got personal vendettas. Each of these scenarios could play a big role in each day’s action. You have to be aware of these, plus the tactical problems too. Your GC contender can’t ride with the top ten guys on the road all the time. You have to be attentive. If a group goes away and there’s someone dangerous in there, you might have to chase it back. You have to stay on top of all that stuff. It can be complicated.’
It could have been a gentle few hours on the flat while the sprinters eyed up their chances on this shortest stage of the race, but the journey to Tarvisio was another sodden, wind-buffeted, nose-drippy battle along slippery asphalt. In tune with such contrasts, Mark Cavendish surged to his 100th professional stage win while his compatriot and old friend Bradley Wiggins was dropped by the peloton as it pressed forward relentlessly to catch five breakaways. The Team Sky leader finished a forlorn 3 minutes and 17 seconds back, dropping to 13th place – a full 5 minutes and 22 seconds adrift of the man hogging the maglia rosa, Vincenzo Nibali.
‘It’s a long time since I’ve seen Brad dropped on the flat,’ said Brailsford, after announcing that Rigoberto Urán, lying third overall, would take over the team leadership. ‘When he opened the curtains this morning, feeling sick, the last thing he wanted to see was the pouring rain. He showed a lot of courage to try to battle through the stage.’
Confirmation came that Wiggins was struggling physically. Earlier in the race he had told the media that he had caught a cold; he updated them when it turned into a chest infection. He was facing up to the fact that it had become very serious. ‘Christian Knees, Danny Pate and Bradley Wiggins all had upper respiratory tract infections with a productive cough,’ explained Richard Freeman. ‘A lot of people had it in the peloton and they’d cough on the floor, cough on the move. It was horrible. Another rider from another team had already been sent home. Bradley did his best. He didn’t want to give up, but the peloton is a damp, cold place to be. He was on antibiotics, but we weren’t getting on top of his infection.’
Others had watched him silently fight this predicament. ‘For the last few days you could see he was really suffering, but everybody was hoping for the best,’ said Ljungqvist.
‘I had the same chest infection, but I had a little bit of luck in that mine started on the rest day,’ confirmed Knees. ‘Also, in the mountains, my job is done early in the stage and I could go easier and rest until the finish line. But, in Bradley’s position as team leader and GC contender, he needed to push hard every day. He couldn’t hide. He was the Tour de France winner and Olympic champion. He couldn’t go easy even for a day to allow his body to recover. He did everything he could.’
‘It’s one bike race of many. Ultimately, someone had to make a decision. Health is more important than bike racing. That was my job, to take myself out of the bubble of the close-knit team and make an objective decision,’ said Freeman. ‘Bradley wasn’t for giving up. It was an immense disappointment when I ordered, recommended, demanded, asked Bradley to go home.’