After crossing the finish line, all nine of us freewheeled, having squeezed out the most forceful pedal strokes in the final metres of the event. It was 2009, and we had just finished the opening stage of the Giro d’Italia, a team time trial. As we came to a stop just before the throng of photographers, team personnel and journalists, about thirty metres from the finish, I felt a teammate’s hand on my shoulder. It was Michael Rogers, a time-trial specialist who was one of the most accomplished riders in the squad.
“I have never gone that fast in a TTT. That was awesome. Good job, dude.”
I was still gasping for air. I nodded and, between breaths, said something like, “Thanks, you too”.
Michael, who was a three-time World Champion in time trials, had been the engine of the team. Since he was a boy, he has raced. He grew up in a family of cyclists and he has always been world-class. As a teenager he began racing in Italy with the Australian Institute of Sport, signed for the top professional team in the world at the time, Mapei, then married an Italian woman.
For most of his career he had lived and trained in northern Italy. With our feet on the ground, straddling our bikes, the nine of us were ushered to an area behind the podium reserved for the fastest team. Having been the first of the twenty-two teams to start, we were told to wait in the holding area, a vinyl tent with nine chairs inside, until another team beat us. Even though the conditions could become more favourable for other teams, Michael was convinced we would win. This was our third season racing together. Without hesitating, we knew each other well enough to bolster a teammate in his moment of weakness or propel him when he was strong.
The route was up and down the Lido de Venezia, a flat island near Venice. Being the first team off, we couldn’t gauge our performance using the other teams’ time splits at the time checks. This worried the directeurs, but we were convinced that time checks would have made no difference to our performance.
As individuals we had committed to the team and done our best. Nobody wanted to be the one who let the others down. All we had to do was wait for the other teams’ results to fall into place. That was out of our control.
The team time trial is the purest team event in cycling. The teams start one by one at intervals, aiming to complete the course in the fastest time. Five riders need to cross the finish line before a team receives a result. It is as much a technical test as a physical one. The team must find and share the rhythm of a metronome, steady yet fast. Each rider takes a turn in the wind, sharing the workload while his teammates ride in line
in his slipstream. He must maintain a designated speed during his effort on the front, careful not to accelerate too violently or to slow haltingly, before ticking over from the front and then moving as quickly as possible to the last position in the line to conserve energy until his next turn in the wind. Each rider must consider his teammates in his every movement.
In the tent, the soigneurs towelled us off as we sipped on energy drinks, cans of soda pop and bottles of water. Sweat continued to drip down our faces and torsos. Each rider, sitting on a plastic and steel chair, spoke with loud exuberance about the race, in English and Italian, each recounting a different vignette.
There had been tentative moments that had us on edge: we had sped around a tight corner and someone had come close to touching the curb; we had rubbed shoulders and touched bars. We congratulated each other, not always directly, sometimes talking about a rider’s impressive turn on the front, in the wind, or the consistency with which one took another’s place on the front. The language we spoke was our own. We had all felt the seamlessness of the team riding as one, held together by nine riders’ common focus, determination and commitment.
We had complete trust in each other. We sat close behind one another, with only centimetres between our front wheel and our teammate’s rear wheel. We sped through roundabouts without touching our brakes, trusting nobody would make a miscalculation in trajectory or speed. Small errors, like a rider out of position, were easily corrected.
But one pedal stroke too many into a corner could have caused the team to crash. The directeurs and the mechanic in the team car that followed were the closest witnesses to the performance, but only the nine of us had felt every pedal stroke and movement the team made, good or bad. Those were ours.
In the tent, our bodies seemed to continue racing. Our hearts kept thumping hard and fast with the thrill of the race. The sensation of speed that co-operating cyclists can reach together is unparalleled.
Mark Cavendish entered the tent last, having been interviewed by a journalist after we’d completed the course. If we won, he would have the honour of wearing the race leader’s pink jersey, the Maglia Rosa, as he was the first on our team to cross the finish line.
In the tent, I sat quietly for a minute or more, still reabsorbing and digesting the effort from the race. I had pushed myself harder than I might have alone. With teammates, not wanting to let them or myself down, I often reach beyond where I might in a solo event.
It’s also a competitive instinct: it’s worse to feel incapable of doing a job and to be dropped from a team than it is to feel even the harshest pain from exertion. In the last moments of the ride, as we neared the finish line, the effort narrowed my vision of focus: everything on the periphery blurred. I focused completely on the rider in front, his brake, his rear wheel and the road. This was the way I’d ridden in races since I was a boy.
‘Ride until you see Jesus,’ said Walter Golebiewski when I was fifteen.
Each of us drives himself toward the finish using a different mental energy to overcome the pain in legs and lungs. Cav’s mental energy comes from fury. In the finale, his personality shifts, he loses perspective and he becomes annoyed with trivialities.
The energy is what drives him to win, but it also gets him in trouble. He says things he shouldn’t, things he doesn’t really mean, and he regrets saying them later. Now, as he entered the tent, the ambiance shifted from elation to tension. He was clearly frustrated and angry. He berated two teammates for making small mistakes midway through the race. Like Lance Armstrong, Mark expects perfection from himself, and his expectations
affect the team both positively and negatively. His leadership brings a team together. He makes riders feel accountable, and they raise their performance accordingly. But their
temperamental personalities also alienate riders who don’t follow their example. As Cav swore at his teammates, Michael cut him short. He told Cav to shut the fuck up. Now.
Then, in an Australian accent tinged with Italian, Michael repeated what he had told me after the finish. Michael speaks calmly, and the rest of us listen to him. He also commands respect because of his experience. He is level-headed. He said we had gone fast enough to win, that we would very likely win and that all of us had done the best we could. Cav went quiet. As he cooled off on the hot plastic chair, he smiled and began to apologise in a calmer tone of voice. We were all accustomed to his initial outbursts. We understood that the heat of the race changed his personality. It was how he had learned to cope with the danger and intensity of a sprint finish. The mindset drove him to win, distinguished him from the rest of us and made him a champion. Internally, every champion has a demon that stokes the fire. Every champion can flick a switch and become a ruthless, driven fighter. Several teams had finished by now, and we were still leading. Instead of forcing us to wait for an hour or so in the tent, the organizers and commissaires allowed us to go back to the air-conditioned bus, where we could relax as we listened to our rivals’ finishing times over the team radio.
The team time trial was only the first stage of twenty-one, and our objectives were lofty. Michael had a chance of finishing in the top three in the overall classification, and we had the team to win numerous stages.By the time the last team finished, we knew we had won. On the podium, we embraced, spraying champagne and then dousing each other in it. For the next day, at least, Cav would wear the Maglia Rosa. For a moment, we were on top of the sport.
