How I Won the Yellow Jumper (38 page)

A few days prior to our arrival in the Alps, their company had, purely by chance, been contacted by Team Sky. The cycling team wanted to know if they could print and apply a new logo to the side of their bus during the rest day. You should not underestimate how important logos are to Sky. I was present back in September of the previous year when they test-filmed six different designs for the team kit to see what the jerseys looked like in ‘race conditions' on TV. Some of the of the logos were blue, some white, some transparent, like their poster campaigns on billboards which allow the ‘content to shine through'. They had started the 2010 Tour in Rotterdam with a straightforward silver logo on the side of their bus. Then, when Geraint Thomas had briefly, brilliantly, worn the white jersey, they had changed the logo to white. Now that he was no longer in white, they flipped once again, this time settling on a blue metallic number.

So our hostess had spent the Monday applying the latest version to the bus. The third design in just over a week. It was a high-pressure sticker, no doubt about that. I dread to think what might have happened to her if she'd left any bubbles in it.

The stickers worked. The bus worked. The Jaguar team cars worked a treat, as did the personalised number plates.

The huge satellite dish that unfolded from the top of the bus roof worked, too.

On a couple of occasions I knocked on the curtain (if such a thing were possible) that divided the cool air-conditioned interior of the bus from the baking rest of France, and popped my head inside. Dave Brailsford, Rod Ellingworth and few others would be sitting in the front few seats of the extravagantly equipped coach, watching the Tour on a huge pull-down HD projector TV.

That all worked fine. The only problem was the rest of it. The actual race. Geraint Thomas's gutsy ride across the cobbles aside, it was a pretty damp squib for the world's best-equipped cycling outfit. No stage wins.

And no challenge from Wiggins.

Having been so captivated by 2009, this was the biggest disappointment of all. Watching on from South Africa during that first week, I had a hollow feeling as I absorbed how he fared on the climbs. I watched him fall off the pace on the climb up to Avoriaz. Even from that distance of several
thousand miles, it was abundantly clear that he was not the same rider as he'd been the previous year. I knew that I was heading to France the next day. I wasn't particularly looking forward to our first encounter.

Our paths didn't cross for a good few days, and when we did meet, it was a relief. Wiggins had finally got it off his chest, deciding that a little frankness would loosen the pent-up pressure that had so far stifled his Tour.

‘I have to confess, last year was a bit of a fluke,' he told us, dramatically understating his considerable achievement of 2009.

We stood in front of the team bus, Wiggins talking humbly and sensibly. Then the Sky press officer gave me the traditional ‘off camera' guillotine sign, and I thanked him for his time.

He sloped away and, aside from a cluster of British cycling fans, no one seemed to take much notice. Dave Millar summed it up when he spoke of the difficulty in matching up the expectations not just of his huge salary but also of the fact that he now had a team solely built around propelling him up the General Classification ladder.

Perhaps Team Sky's stated aim to produce a British Tour de France winner within the next four to five years was never really going to be about Wiggins. There are a number of much younger home-grown talents who were supposed to sit on his metaphorical wheel over the next few years, before themselves assuming the mantle of team leader. That ambition seems some way off right now. And who knows how many logos they might have gone through by then.

Much has changed in the landscape since I was first introduced to this race. The British have arrived, the American has gone and, even though the Devil may still be jumping up and down in his red leotard, the race has shape-shifted year on year into something else.

The arrival of Team Sky has moved it on again. In September
their much-loved team bus parked up in rainy, windswept car parks up and down the country during the Tour of Britain. Wherever it went, from Blackpool to Colchester, the fans besieged it, the clamour for autographs equal to almost anything you are likely to see on the Tour de France. And that probably tells you all you need to know about what might happen should they ever win the big one.

Team Sky has given the growing ranks of British cycling fans a point of focus, a spiritual home. One day soon, I am sure, it will graduate again to give them a point of genuine pride.

But, as far as I'm concerned, Sky, as a broadcaster, can keep the cricket, rugby, golf, speedway and boxing. As long as they leave the Tour to us. Please?

That hot afternoon in Châteauroux in 2007, Mark Cavendish won his first stage on the Tour de France. I caught a glimpse of him as he shot past me.

Three images: he is bent double over the handlebars, mouth suddenly gaping hugely at the realisation he's won. Then a split second later, sitting up and holding his two fists to his helmet, a gesture of incredulity, with something of the devil in it. Then he whacks the air, catching it with a violent right hook, keeping his arm extended. Somewhere in between these flash frames, he blurred past me, unfolding upright. A wild smudge of blue.

That moment blew to pieces all my assumptions about British racing on the Tour. The noise as it burst and fell around me was the sound of a glass ceiling shattering. This was suddenly a different game.

The first sign that everything was not quite as it was came when Mathieu Perez sought me out. In recent years, Mathieu has risen to prominence in ASO. He is the unshaven, unslept, pastis-guzzling chain-smoking doyen of the press. If he cared enough about his ambitions, I suspect he would have all it takes to rise through the organisation and one day become the race director. Only he's far too laid-back. Students of Tour coverage will recognise him. He's often to be glimpsed hanging
on the left or right shoulder of the
maillot jaune
, holding an umbrella to keep the sun or rain off the shoulders of the anointed one, or simply coordinating things with a nod and a wink, like an understated auctioneer. He's the guy you see edging closer when the questioner has taken too long, placing a hand on the outstretched arm that holds the microphone, or grimacing displeasure when one too many questions are fired in. He's the conductor. We're the orchestra, albeit a multinational and unwashed one. And if the French, American and German media are the first violins, brass and percussion, we the Brits are accustomed to being the bassoons.

Yet it was the bassoons who got the nod that day. Mathieu indicated with film-noir nonchalance that we should make our way around the back to the inner sanctum, the holy of holies, the area directly behind the podium that teems with cycling's chosen few: podium girls, former champions, directeurs sportifs, stage winners and jersey wearers. We negotiated our way past the security, our passage eased by Mathieu's calm authority.

My first task was to conduct what is known as the ‘Eurovision' interview. This is the first interview the winner gives and is broadcast by all the TV channels worldwide who either don't have a reporter on-site, or who don't have the airtime to wait for their own exclusive. I was handed a microphone by a smiling French floor manager. A cameraman arrived. A shining aluminium and leather stool was placed in front of me, and behind that one of those hideous and ubiquitous advertisers boards that bore the logo of a dozen different companies. But no Mark Cavendish.

And then all of a sudden there was. Hobbling in on his cleats and grinning widely, his progress hampered by waves of well-wishers and peers throwing their arms around his neck in congratulation. He was finally guided onto to the stool in front of me. He shot me a brief look of acknowledgement,
and then drew long and hard on a tin of something cold and fizzy as he waited for me to start the questioning.

So where to start? This is the question: what is the question? A win is a win, surely.

What we want now, what TV demands to know, is the stuff that has remained hidden to this point, the stuff the blank stare of the lens cannot hope to unearth. The joy goes without saying; the delight is self-evident. TV wants to find out what the rider has within him: the hidden agenda, the feud resolved, maybe, the personal motivation born from some sense of grief or injustice or anger. Can the rider blurt this emotion out? Can he paint words for us all, which bring back the thrill of watching the win unfold? What can he say to make a good feeling better? And, I return to my initial question: where do I start?

I refuse to ask, ‘How does it feel?' It's tempting, but I know that reporters who ask that are a pet hate of my dad, and the last thing I want to be aware of is an image of him sitting at home cursing the inadequacy of the question.

No, ‘How does it feel?' is taboo. It's off the table. But
actually it's the question most closely related to the answer you want to hear. You want to hear precisely that: ‘Oi! Superman! How does it feel to save the world?' These athletes, these ‘gladiators', do things that none of us will ever experience.
How
must that feel? How does it
feel
to win a stage of the Tour de France? How
does
it feel?

‘Mark. Congratulations. What a victory.'

With my BAFTA for incisive journalism firmly tucked away in my back pocket, I sat back and listened to Cavendish relive the race with a minutely detailed memory. He was wide-eyed with pleasure.

Later that night we found ourselves at the Campanile hotel in Châteauroux. The sun was just beginning to dip as Mark Cavendish made his way, post shower and massage, across a lawn towards us. If you could ignore the drone of traffic moving along the bypass the other side of a threadbare hedge, then it was a very special place. We sat down under a pine tree, and he talked again of his win, the relative quiet of our situation intensifying his thoughtful words. The shrill clamour of the finish line must still have been ringing in his ears, but I guessed the noise was fading.

His phone rang, mid-interview. It was his mum. ‘Just doing the telly, Mum. I'll call you back.'

An hour or so later, we watched on and waited to film. We felt like unwanted guests at a private function, while team Columbia sat at their dinner table quietly delighted with themselves and their new star. Cavendish sat in the middle of the lot of them. He was flanked by George Hincapie and Kim Kirchen. A strip of late evening light fell horizontally into the dining room making him squint, as he, along with the rest of the team, raised a glass of red to the win.

Standing in a corner of the room, just a few feet away from this quiet, satisfied scene, I don't think I have ever felt more removed from the riders, nor felt as keenly the distance between
those who can and those who can't, those who talk and those who act. I've drunk plenty of wine, but never, I would hazard a guess, a glass to rival how good that must have tasted to Mark Cavendish that night.