A couple years ago I was sent up to one of the least populated areas of France for a stage race I knew very little about. The only info I had was a magazine photo ingrained in my head of Simon Gerrans winning a stage a year previously. The event was a 2 day stage race of 150k a day. From the gun we were all lined up in the gutter in one very precarious line, going uphill at over 50kph. I was hanging on for dear life, praying and hoping I could just hang on to that wheel in front of me. I was giving it everything I had, turning myself totally inside out just to remain an anonymous dot in peloton.
As we twisted and turned our way through the uninhabited countryside, on narrow moss-covered roads at breakneck speeds, my chain slipped off. Needless to say that was the end of me. I was out of the main field and it was now pouring with rain as a few of us formed a group. My small group of dropped riders came around a corner to find a team car sitting in the middle of the road, hood up and smoking. It was my team car! So pulling out and sitting in a warm car was no longer an option. We left my car and its driver for dead, and carried on pedaling on mud covered roads until we got caught by the groupetto with the broom wagon on its tail. Only problem was, the broom wagon was full! We were destined to ride this storm out.
For the finish we were to cross the line once and then do a 10k finishing loop. As we approached the finish line for the first time, they were already taking down the banners and packing everything up. We asked the officials about the time-cut… if we rode fast we might make it. The broom wagon stopped at the finish line and we continued alone with our new found motivation of making the time cut. We flew around the last 10k to find everyone but the finish-line official gone. My group vanished in various directions, and I was left standing in the pouring rain in the middle of the town square with no one in sight. Eventually a guy came running towards me and told me my team car had broken down, and that the hotel was down the hill on the left. It was starting to get dark as I rolled down the hill, turned left and rode out of town. There was nothing here but cow fields. I turned around and rode back into the lifeless town. After an hour of riding around lost, a rival team car came past and waved me to follow them. They led me through a series of twists and turns until we came to a hotel full of freshly showered and changed riders milling around. I found my team and stumbled into my room. My room-mate that race was an ex-Festina rider who had won this event in the past. He had been dropped after 20k and had spent the race in the broom wagon watching me. “Mate, you were flying today!” he said. My dejected and gaunt face stared blankly at him. He was serious. “But I finished with the broom wagon” I replied in the hollow and monotonous voice of someone who’s just spent the day being flogged on a bike.
I was soaking wet, clothes covered in chain grease and cow shit, starving hungry, thirsty, had barely made the time-cut and had been rolling around town lost and freezing for the past hour. I was not flying by any stretch of the imagination!
As we twisted and turned our way through the uninhabited countryside, on narrow moss-covered roads at breakneck speeds, my chain slipped off. Needless to say that was the end of me. I was out of the main field and it was now pouring with rain as a few of us formed a group. My small group of dropped riders came around a corner to find a team car sitting in the middle of the road, hood up and smoking. It was my team car! So pulling out and sitting in a warm car was no longer an option. We left my car and its driver for dead, and carried on pedaling on mud covered roads until we got caught by the groupetto with the broom wagon on its tail. Only problem was, the broom wagon was full! We were destined to ride this storm out.
For the finish we were to cross the line once and then do a 10k finishing loop. As we approached the finish line for the first time, they were already taking down the banners and packing everything up. We asked the officials about the time-cut… if we rode fast we might make it. The broom wagon stopped at the finish line and we continued alone with our new found motivation of making the time cut. We flew around the last 10k to find everyone but the finish-line official gone. My group vanished in various directions, and I was left standing in the pouring rain in the middle of the town square with no one in sight. Eventually a guy came running towards me and told me my team car had broken down, and that the hotel was down the hill on the left. It was starting to get dark as I rolled down the hill, turned left and rode out of town. There was nothing here but cow fields. I turned around and rode back into the lifeless town. After an hour of riding around lost, a rival team car came past and waved me to follow them. They led me through a series of twists and turns until we came to a hotel full of freshly showered and changed riders milling around. I found my team and stumbled into my room. My room-mate that race was an ex-Festina rider who had won this event in the past. He had been dropped after 20k and had spent the race in the broom wagon watching me. “Mate, you were flying today!” he said. My dejected and gaunt face stared blankly at him. He was serious. “But I finished with the broom wagon” I replied in the hollow and monotonous voice of someone who’s just spent the day being flogged on a bike.
I was soaking wet, clothes covered in chain grease and cow shit, starving hungry, thirsty, had barely made the time-cut and had been rolling around town lost and freezing for the past hour. I was not flying by any stretch of the imagination!
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