How Cav Won the Green Jersey (8 page)

‘Cav’s a bit difficult,’ he confessed to me one day, as he lolloped around in our production area.

‘Hmm,’ was my reply. ‘Pass us a Haribo, Carno.’

But it was the Doublet and Movico guys to whom he owed his Tour. They are the army of boys and girls who set out the miles of barriers each day, and install the endlessly long PA systems at each finish line, and other such unsung activities. They invited him in daily to share their largely cheese-and-pasta-based affairs, which fuelled them for their tasks. Carno was all over them like a rash. They even ensured that, every now and then, he washed.

On the final transfer from Grenoble to Paris (some 600 kilometres), he played his trump card. Or rather, we presented him with his trump card, since it was not in his nature ever to ask favours of our team. We had discussed it among ourselves, and had reached the conclusion that it might be mildly diverting to allow him into our Espace for that final drive. We had long since run out of new ways of insulting each other, and the presence of an eighteen-year-old force of nature might make the kilometres pass more quickly.

So he threw his by now absurdly distorted rucksack, along with the obligatory half-inched ‘Départ’ sign, into the back of our car, and hopped in. The journey proved pleasant enough. Carno chattered away about the people he’d met en route, emitted a curiously goat-like smell, insulted our music choices by knowing the songs ‘because it’s all the same stuff that my dad plays’, and then fell asleep.

When we reached the lovely little Hotel Alison in the Rue de Surène, it was the middle of the night. Carno had been awake as we’d hit the outskirts of Paris.

‘Where you going to sleep, Carno?’ Woody had asked him.

‘I dunno. Probably won’t. Think I’ll just head for the Champs-Elysées, and wait till it gets light.’

‘No, you won’t.’ It was nice to be able to trump his trump card. ‘There’s a spare room in our hotel. You have it. But don’t come down for breakfast without washing,’ I added. ‘In fact, don’t come down to breakfast at all.’

So it was that we checked him in under a pseudonym. ‘You’re Chris Boardman, if anyone asks, OK? You won the Prologue in 1994, and then again in ’97 and ’98. You run a multi-million-pound bike franchise.’

‘Cheers, guys.’

‘But don’t come down for breakfast.’

He’d made it to Paris. The following morning, the Monday after it was all over, just as we were heading off in our separate directions, Carno came down to breakfast. Or rather, he swayed down to breakfast. In fact, he stepped in off the Paris street from a hugely extended night out, straight into breakfast.

‘What the hell happened to you, Carno?’

He grinned, glassily. ‘Went to the Team Sky party thing. Had to buy some trousers specially. Then went on after that. Somewhere. I think.’ It transpired under interrogation that he’d ended up in some place of ill repute with a clutch of British cycling’s finest talents.

We told Chris Boardman about Carno’s final blag in Paris. He was deeply impressed, but also amused that he hadn’t received an invite to the Team Sky party. I could tell what he was thinking: ‘But I won the 1994 Prologue, and then again in ’97 and ’98. What’s Carno ever done?’

But, Simon, if you’re reading this, I take my hat off to you, my young friend! Just don’t do it again.

* * *

The same could very well be said for Sammy Sanchez, who won the stage to Luz-Ardiden. And well done to him. Genuinely, we were all chuffed to bits for the bony little Asturian with the Olympic rings pinned to his earlobe. Having said all that, it would have been more convenient for us if he chose never to do it again. His victory led to a regrettable moment of broadcast confusion, in three different languages.

Cycling is the very hardest sport to televise. It does not take place within the cosy confines of a stadium. The logistics of covering an event which is played out along a very thin line stretched out over 200 kilometres of public road is one thing. But trying to guess when the game is going to end is quite another challenge. There is no final whistle after ninety minutes. And there can be plenty of extra time.

The Tour does its best to try and help, naturally. In the Race Manual, it prints a hugely detailed table of potential timings; the vertical columns are divided into three ‘schedules’: the fast, medium and slow timings. The horizontal lines relate to points on the map. In other words, the Race Manual helps you to predict that the head of the race will pass the level crossing between Saint-Pierre de Somewhere and St Jean de Somewhere Else at 14.58, provided they are going slow. The problem with this system is that it is well-intentioned nonsense. The race speeds up and slows down organically and often without rhyme or reason. A thirteen-kilometre climb with an average gradient of 9 per cent might take no time at all to get over. But it also might take an age if the heat is out of the race. And besides, there might be a lone leader going hell for leather, stretching out a lead over a wholly uninterested peloton. So who do the timings relate to? And when is the race ‘over’ for the day? When the leader crosses the line? When the yellow jersey group comes in? When the pre-race favourite struggles in five minutes down on him? Or when Tom Boonen finally hauls his sprinter’s frame into view?

All this we have to predict and relay back to the transmission centre in London who fit in the commercial breaks, without which there is no is ‘free-to-air’ coverage. They are nightmarishly complex calculations. Ofcom regulates commercial breaks tightly. There are maximum and minimum numbers of breaks each hour. There are minimum part durations. There are under-runs and over-runs, with all the attendant chaos in the ensuing schedules. And as the race plays out during the afternoon, it is cycling clever-clogs Matt Rendell’s onerous job to advise Steve Docherty, the director, on when to take breaks. Matt is a respected writer, a fine intellect, a phenomenally versatile linguist and a consummate Jazz
Funk
bass guitarist. Yet, this is the hardest of all his disciplines. He must advise on when it will be safe to come off the air, leaving Gary, Chris and myself enough time to wrap up the afternoon’s events without spreading our content too thin.

But too thin was precisely what we were reduced to that day in Luz-Ardiden. Sammy Sanchez had stuffed Matt’s best efforts at predicting the outcome, and we’d ended up with an interminable half hour of airtime at the end of the programme, which somehow we had to fill.

Gary and Chris had looked again at the key moves of the day, glanced at both the Stage Result and General Classification graphic, and talked over the daily parade of self-conscious riders on the podium clutching flowers and cuddly toys and looked forward to tomorrow’s stage. Then it was down to me to get some interviews.

The first of them was easy enough. Straight away, the increasingly shaggy-haired and elongated figure of Geraint Thomas, with his new five-year contract stuffed in his back pocket, made his benign, laid-back way over to the ITV microphone. He’d won the Combativity Prize after joining a mad rampaging breakaway move that had ended in him flying into a grassy ditch just after he’d sped past a bemused-looking lady waving a Welsh flag in his face. Snaking a wildly unstable path between a quad bike and a caravan, he’d executed a perfect comedy fall over the handlebars. Minutes later, he was at it again, this time a parked car was just averted. So, reflecting on his great adventure, peppered with misadventures, Thomas did his usual shtick. Big wide eyes, the flicker of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth and his usual humdrum phraseology.

‘I lost it a bit in my head,’ was his frank assessment of his unusually inadequate bike-handling skills.

I thanked him, and he headed off to the podium to collect his ashtray/enamel bucket/oil painting from the sponsor. The rest of the press pack took little notice of him; such is the fate on most given days of the winner of the Combativity Prize. He’s a footnote.

But the dead minutes of airtime still stretched in front of us. It was clear that we would need another interview before finally getting off the air, or Gary would be left to talk over endless replays of Geraint’s wonderful tumble.

From the TV truck several hundred metres away, Steve noticed, by watching the output from Liam’s camera, that Sanchez was being paraded through the interview zone.

‘Does he speak English, Ned?’ Steve demanded in my ear.

‘No idea,’ I replied. Although I reckoned it was extremely unlikely. ‘I’ll check.’

As Sanchez conducted a Spanish language interview with the Belgian network Sporza, to my side, I caught the attention of his ASO minder.

‘Does Sammy speak English?’

‘No. Why don’t you British ever speak other languages.’ It was a fair point.

‘We do. I do.’ I felt my linguistic hackles rising. ‘Does he speak French?’

‘
Oui
.’

‘
Bon
. Bring it on.’

And then, before I could guess what live television horrors were about to descend on me, the Olympic champion and stage winner was brought before, looking undeniably very Spanish, and not even remotely French. Before I could say
Ola
!, I could hear Gary throwing to me. I turned to the camera, and effected an introduction.

‘OK, Gary, we’ll try this very quickly. I’m going to speak French, he’s going to reply in French. He speaks Spanish, and I don’t really. So this is going to be interesting.’

Beads of sweat were already building up. I turned to him.

‘
Une victoire superbe. Une étape extraordinaire pour vous
.’ Not a question, more a poorly pronounced statement of the obvious, really. But it was French-sounding enough for me to feel like I’d got away with it. Sanchez understood perfectly, and launched into his reply. In Spanish.

Twenty seconds later, he’d stopped talking rapidly in a language I did not understand. So, I guessed, he didn’t speak French after all. I turned and looked imploringly at his soigneur. Perhaps he could translate. All soigneurs can speak a bit of French after all.

I pushed the microphone his way. ‘This had better be good,’ I quipped, by now thoroughly alarmed at the prospect of having to listen to the soigneur’s answer, and translate it back into English for those benefit of viewers at home who hadn’t lost the will to live or kicked a hole in their HD-ready plasma screens. The soigneur, a short bespectacled chap clutching a bouquet and an umbrella, started to speak.

At first I thought I understood one or two words.

‘
Pour l’equipe c’est incroyable. Il y a
…’

But that was the end of anything intelligible.

On he went, by now drifting into some ghastly Pyreneean hybrid of every major, and some virtually extinct, southern European tongue. ‘…
desinges arroyal lesciggarres ici paralos arablo importante corbaranarntobalinos baranquintonitntiones marrraqueltanimonositcallemntes
…’

Laughter exploded in my ear. Which didn’t help. Facing away from the camera and towards my strange interlocutor talking utter nonsense at me, I narrowed my gaze, and wondered what my next move should be.

‘…
jalamentariostoqui ameris cointabios bono bono lamareica
…’

Even Sanchez had stopped listening, too, and had by now started to drift his attention away to the next interview in the line.

‘…
hamos barandos pinteria Luz-Ardiden
.’

He was done. I thanked him, using all the clipped English insincerity I could muster.

I turned to the camera. There was nothing for it but brute honesty. There was no wool to pull over eyes, and probably no eyes left watching anyway. I felt like I could say what I wanted. It was almost liberating. I didn’t choose my words carefully. I just said the first thing that came to mind.

‘That was the most confusing interview of my life.’

Which, in the polyphonic matrix of the Tour de France interview pen, is saying something.

* * *

The next day, and still reeling a little from my encounter with Sanchez, I was buying a coffee, which seemed like the right thing to do. An espresso, with a little sugar to combat an early morning, mid-Tour slump. Suddenly there was a giant clap on my shoulder.

‘Hey. What about the Tour of Britain? Fucking great race.’

I turned round, and was face to face with the marvellous, nearly murdered, Johnny Hoogerland.

‘Mr Hoogerland,’ I said. And I put out my hand. I have no idea what turned me so formal.

‘Call me Johnny.’

And so I did, feeling giddily blessed. After all, here was a hero. No doubting it. He sat next to me at the bar, and over coffee we spoke about Colchester and Swansea, Blackpool and London. He seemed fascinated by the plans for that year’s Tour of Britain.

Hoogerland. Roll it around the tongue. It is a great sound. Marry it up with that classic Northern European rocker’s throwback first name ‘Johnny’, and you’re in business even before you’ve hurled yourself over your handlebars and into Tour Legend.

I have to say, that I’d seen the Hoogerland thing, or at least something like it, coming. Not literally of course. No one could have predicted that the France Télévisions’ car would suddenly surge up the left-hand side of the road, and then swing violently right in an attempt to assassinate Sky’s Juan Antonio Flecha. But I had come to the Tour knowing intuitively that one of that marauding mob who go under the collective umbrella of Team Vacansoleil would do something to leave us all both awed and aghast.