At Speed: My Life in the Fast Lane (11 page)

When Bernie had to quit the race on the fourth day because of a virus, for a day or two I felt completely bereft. Without Bernie, without Renshaw (who’d had a long season and been left out of the Aussie worlds squad because they were worried that he’d be tempted to work for me!), without Tony Martin, I was working with a brand-new, you could say makeshift, sprint train, but one that could still deliver me in style. Gossy was flying, and he was doing a fantastic job, but he was different from Mark; his style was jerkier, more erratic, and it took more balls to follow him. In the first week there were four bunch sprints, and I didn’t win a single one, mainly because I’d got it into my head that it would take a long sprint to win on the worlds course in Melbourne and that I needed to simulate that here. I was kicking with 350 meters to go and dying before the line. Eventually, though, we were bound to win one, and in a technical finish on stage 12 into Lleida, Gossy dragged both of us so far clear going into the last corner that for a second I hesitated, hoping that Gossy would carry on to
take the win himself, only for him to nod me through. The next day we dominated again, so much so that I didn’t even have to sprint off Gossy’s wheel—I merely carried on at the same speed as he peeled off. I even had time for a bit of showboating, bunny-hopping over the finish line. In hindsight, that wasn’t particularly wise: Going by the letter of the law, I really ought to have been disqualified, as lifting both wheels off the ground was considered “dangerous riding.” The jury overlooked it, I think perhaps because they knew they should really have relegated Tyler Farrar for blocking me in a sprint earlier in the race but had turned a blind eye there, too.

The two back-to-back wins had given me a solid lead in the points competition. Consequently, I now felt duty-bound to push on through to Madrid, nurturing my form ahead of the worlds as I went. We also had Peter Velits riding high in the general classification, and I was determined to help him wherever I could.

Above all, I was enjoying it; if the Giro was three weeks of beautiful chaos and the Tour just a huge, slick, and scary machine, the Vuelta was the decaffeinated grand tour—with all of the flavor of the other two but minus some of the stress. There were hardly any journalists; the starts were comfortably late; and the stages generally settled quickly, with a break going down the road and the peloton slowly cranking up the pace to bring it back in the closing kilometers. The one element that wasn’t to my liking was the climbs—the Lagos de Covadonga, the Bola del Mundo, and other horrors that had more in common with rock climbing than professional cycling.

I managed to get myself one more win, in Salamanca on stage 18, again superbly set up by Gossy. It would have been two more, I’m quite certain, had I not pinged a spoke 4 km from the finish in Madrid on the last day. With my brake pads rubbing on my rear rim and
my power meter showing that I was putting out 800 watts instead of the usual 500 just to stay on Gossy’s wheel as we entered the last kilometer, I was in knots by the time Tyler Farrar snuck past me to nick it on the line. I consoled myself with my first victory in the points competition of a major tour and only the second ever by a British rider, after Malcolm Elliot’s in the 1989 Vuelta. I was delighted with my form and increasingly confident about my chances of pulling on another jersey: the rainbow jersey of the world road race champion.

The following day I flew back to Tuscany, but it was only a short stop; I’d made plans with the other two members of the British team for Melbourne, David Millar and Jeremy Hunt, to fly to Australia early and get acclimatized. The size of each nation’s team at the worlds is determined by the rankings points scored by riders from that country across that season, and it hadn’t been a vintage year for British riders; I’d had my slow start from January until June, and Brad Wiggins had, by his own admission, flopped badly at the Tour after his fourth place the previous year. That had left us low on rankings points and with a team of only three riders, whereas other nations would have as many as nine. Luckily, among the stronger nations were those who had sent guys to check out the course or had seen it on video and also decided that the best bet would be riding for a sprint finish; they would control the race.

One of only two Austrians to qualify for the race, Bernie had also gone out early, and he, Jez, Dave, and I trained together in the week before the race. In my desperation to hold the form I was taking out of the Vuelta, I was pushing harder than the other guys up the climbs and doing extra kilometers when they headed back to the hotel at the end of rides. All three of them and Rod Ellingworth, my coach and the GB team’s that week, kept telling me that I needed to calm
down. They told me I was doing too much, but I was adamant that I was getting even stronger than I had been at the Vuelta. As the days passed, I convinced myself that I was going to be the world champion, even to the point where, in interviews, I was employing a tactic that had worked for me before Milan–San Remo in 2009: I started bluffing. I told the press that, having now seen and ridden the course, I’d realized that it was much harder than it had looked on paper and on tape and, actually, I had no hope of winning.

“I’ll have to revise my ambitions,” I lied, holding back a smirk. Sadly it was the course and my rivals who had the last laugh, and Jez, Dave, and Bernie who could say, “I told you so.” The race started in Melbourne, and from there we would ride 83 km to Geelong before completing 11 laps of a 15.9-km circuit. I, though, hadn’t even got to Geelong—hadn’t even made it out of Melbourne, in fact—when I already knew that my confidence had been badly misplaced. Within minutes of us rolling over the start line, we’d come to the bridge curving gently over the Yarra River.

I’d shifted my weight forward and into the slope, lifted myself up off the saddle … and felt my legs turn to timber. There was no spring, no zip, nothing. It dawned there and then that I would not be going home with the rainbow jersey. In fact, I wasn’t even going to finish the race. I abandoned with three laps to go.

m
y turbulent 2010 season had almost drawn to a close, but before I could put my feet up, I had one more long flight and one more important race. The Commonwealth Games wouldn’t rank particularly highly on a lot of eligible riders’ lists of priorities, but for me, as a Manxman, they were a rare opportunity to compete in my
island’s colors. It was also a chance to give something back, and to ride with guys I’d been training with since I started cycling seriously in my early teens. The 2010 Commonwealth Games, held in Delhi, were being snubbed by a lot of top riders because of concerns over venue safety, terrorist threats, and hygiene standards. I summed up my feelings on the matter, perhaps going into a bit too much detail, in the press at the time: “The guys who stayed away made a mistake. If you look at the chance of catching disease in India; if you look after yourself you won’t catch anything. As a single guy you run a risk if you sleep with a girl. Risks come with everything.”

These weren’t the only comments I made that caused quite a stir in Delhi. For a few months now, my frustration with Bob Stapleton’s seeming inability to offer me an improved deal, and also his failure so far to find a sponsor that would secure the team’s future beyond 2012, had been slowly simmering to a boiling point. As far as I could see, no progress was being made on either score. As I’ve already touched on, Bob had also started trying to tie my most trusted and valuable domestiques to long-term deals, I suspected in an effort to also somehow shackle me to the team. The latest contract renewal to be announced had been Renshaw’s a few weeks after the Tour, and I’d made no secret of my disappointment to Mark. I’d told him to wait, promised that I’d get him the deal he wanted, but he’d gone ahead and committed to Bob for another two years before I’d been able to offer an alternative. He said that it was good money and that at 27, he had to start thinking long term, about retirement and his family.

I could understand that but still disapproved; it was in both of our interests, both sporting and financial, to stick together, and his new deal made it conceivable that we would be on different teams from the end of 2011, when Bob’s contract with HTC ran out, if not earlier.

My status with HTC-Columbia had been uncertain for months. In the spring, before Tirreno–Adriatico, Bob and Rolf Aldag had arranged to meet me in Tuscany, supposedly to discuss my future and the team’s. We’d booked a table at a restaurant near my house in Quarrata, sat down, made small talk for almost the entire meal, then finally got on to business over dessert.

“So,” Bob said. “What do you want to stay with us?”

I’d answered bluntly, honestly, and without any hesitation.

“More money, Bob,” I said. “I want more money.”

Bob asked me how much.

“How much am I worth to you? That’s how much I want,” I replied.

Bob said he’d have to go and see what he could come up with. The atmosphere when we left the restaurant, suffice it to say, hadn’t been as jovial as when we’d arrived.

I should probably make it clear at this point that money both was and was not the real issue. I felt that Bob was reaping the benefit of the naïveté that I’d shown in signing a contract that I’d negotiated myself in 2008 when I was 23 and that severely underestimated my future value. The bonus scheme was also almost nonexistent. Accepting these terms had been my mistake, I would acknowledge, but at the same time I wanted Bob to show some recognition of the fact that I was worth at least double the salary that I was earning, and verbal offers that had come from other teams were proof of it. I was desperate to stay with what I regarded as by far the best team in the world, and I was willing to make a financial sacrifice to do so, but there was a point where loyalty ended and stupidity began. As the first flush of rookie exuberance and the novelty fade, the realization sets in that, ultimately, it’s your job, your livelihood, and you’re a professional. You can’t undersell yourself, which is effectively what I
ran the risk of doing if I pledged my future to Bob for half of my real value, then went on winning and gaining tens of millions of pounds’ worth of exposure for a corporate sponsor.

As things had stood in the spring, I was contracted to Bob and the team until the end of 2010, and there was an “option” for me to stay on similar terms in 2011. This clause had been the source of intense speculation in the media, along with a lot of uncertainty.

Initially it wasn’t clear whether it was my option to stay another year or Bob’s to keep me. Finally, though, I’d given the contract to my lawyers, and to my dismay, they’d confirmed that the option merely served as protection for Bob as the team owner, in the eventuality that we had no sponsor and the team had to fold. The fact was that in 2011, HTC would continue to fund us for at least one more year, the team would continue, and therefore I was obliged to stay.

Which was fine—as long as Bob showed willing, and there was some more money in the new contract.

It hadn’t taken long after our dinner in Italy for him to call another meeting. He was in the UK, he said, and could I meet him in his hotel at Heathrow airport, where he’d be waiting to get on a plane back to California. I did a quick bit of research and found out that I could get to Gatwick from where I was training in Italy but not Heathrow, not unless I took two trains and jumped through several logistical hoops. Bob couldn’t change his arrangements, so we had a dilemma, which, as I tapped away on my laptop trying to solve, I explained to my Italian mate, mentor, and confidant, the former rider Max Sciandri.

Max, who was born in Britain but couldn’t be more Tuscan if you bottled him and called him Chianti, leaned forward in his chair, claiming to have a solution.

“Cav,” he said in his languid Anglo-Italian drawl. “You’re probably going to sign the biggest contract of your career when you’re there. Why not just take a private jet?”

Private jet? Fuck. Rod was always telling me to travel first class if it meant training or racing better when I arrived, but a private jet?

“Priva—… I don’t know about that, Max.”

“Look,” he said, “you’re going to sign a massive contract, plus it’ll make a good story, won’t it?”

Max had convinced me, and in any case, there were no other options. I forked out the two grand an hour that it would cost to hire a plane and flew to Heathrow. It’s just possible that I walked down the airstairs and toward the terminal building at Heathrow with a little more swagger in my step than would ordinarily be the case.

Bob was staying in one of the big, corporate hotels inside the airport complex, I think the Hilton or the Sofitel. I’d asked my manager, Chris Evans-Pollard, to come with me since I didn’t want to be sweet-talked, as I now felt that I had been when I’d negotiated a new three-year deal on my own at the 2008 Tour. Chris and I found Bob waiting with Rolf Aldag in his suite. He seemed surprised that I’d brought Chris and immediately asked whether he and Rolf could have a few minutes with me alone. I said no, that I wanted Chris there, to which he replied that we might as well all leave then. We finally agreed that Chris would wait downstairs.

Bob was a tough customer to deal with. In some ways he was your archetypal Silicon Valley millionaire, having made his fortune through the sale of his telecommunications company to T-Mobile in 2000 (the press commonly referred to him as a “billionaire businessman,” which he didn’t like and said vastly overestimated his
wealth). T-Mobile and the teams that it sponsored had been his pathway into professional cycling, and since taking over what was then the T-Mobile men’s team in 2006, he had seen us become the most successful “franchise,” as he liked to call it, in the sport. About 5 feet 9 inches tall, with a grey goatee that gave him an affable, avuncular air, he could be the “Cuddly Bob” that the journalists loved or, when it came to business, a hard-bargaining American businessman. He never raised his voice, but he had a slow, deliberate tone that could freeze over like a lake. He could be intensely demanding and sometimes ruthless; as riders, we were all slightly intimidated by him.