Tourism is a funny thing. It’s obviously great for the tourists, but for the locals it can lead to a mixture of success and sadness. Success at the money brought to their local economy; sadness at what gaggles of straw-hatted aliens take away with each click of their cameras, by their very presence changing the feel of the landscape. The Mallorcans, however, don’t seem to worry so much – the very road I’m about to try and conquer was built expressly to serve the passage of tourists.

That road is the Carretera de Sa Calobra, which winds its way over 26 hairpins from sea level to the top of Coll del Reis at 686m, and on to Mallorca’s interior. Built in 1932 by Spanish civil engineer Antonio Parietti Coll, the Sa Calobra, affectionately known by many as ‘The Snake’, wasn’t designed to connect the then 32 inhabitants of Port de Sa Calobra with the rest of the island, but rather to make it easier for the holidaymakers to get down to this tiny, picturesque port village on Mallorca’s north west coast. In all, some 31,000 cubic metres of rock and scree were reckoned to have been excavated – by hand, no less – to make way for the road, which over the years has fulfilled its brief many times over, allowing thousands of coaches to ferry hordes of visitors over the mountainous terrain. 

Yet today there won’t be a coach or any other motorised vehicle in sight. The Sa Calobra has been closed for the first time in living memory, and for a few hours it will be given over to the people who worship it most: cyclists. The event? The inaugural Sa Calobra Time-Trial sportive.

Cigarettes and alcohol

‘There’s a fair chance Bradley will be up here in the next couple of weeks,’ says our host and road-closing instrumentalist, Dan Marsh. ‘He’ll be back to Mallorca for a party at some point to celebrate his end of season and world champs TT win, no doubt with a few beers and a cheeky ciggie!’ Even full of booze and smoke, one would imagine Sir Wiggo would place pretty highly among the 14,800-strong list of Strava-logging cyclists who’ve tackled the Sa Calobra. Currently the record for the official climb is held by one David Lopez, at 24m59s, averaging 22.7kmh. He rides for Team Sky so there’s little wonder, but still, as I queue for race registration, I can’t help but set myself the fanciful target of maintaining a 20kmh average. 

I’m not normally one for Strava bashing, but I have to admit I’ve been studying the Sa Calobra leaderboard since I entered this sportive. I want a good time, but never having ridden a time-trial, let alone one that just goes uphill, I have no idea how hard to push or how to measure my efforts. This, of course, is one of the key weapons in any successful time-triallist’s armoury, and one that Wiggo deployed to devastating effect when he took the rainbow stripes in the World Time-Trial – just how hard should I ride and when? After all, I don’t want to blow up before the end, but equally I don’t want to finish knowing there’s more left in the tank. Thus I’ve decided to reach for the stars and touch the sky – or in other words, set myself a goal that’s so unrealistic I shan’t feel disappointed when I miss it. 

A 20kmh average is the target, but I concluded that if I can average 16kmh I’ll be happy and, by my reckoning, safely inside Strava’s top 1,000. Strange how our human brains find round numbers so important.

By the numbers

Not only is the Sa Calobra TT a cycling event, it also encompasses a timed hill climb for those who are fleet of foot. Even the slowest riders should be within the hour mark for the ride, but the runners, I’m told, will be doing well to come in under twice that. Sitting on the crossbar of my rented Cervélo S3, the sun creeping ever higher in the morning sky and beating down even harder on my back, I’m glad I’m in cleats, not trainers. That said, there are quite a few serious types lurking on their bikes who are making me nervous. I reccied the course the night before, partly in a car, partly on my bike, but still these guys look like they know Sa Calobra intimately, and I begin to worry.

Rollers have been taken out of car boots, and well-drilled partners are pinning race numbers to jerseys, fetching coffees and knowing not to talk too much to their highly concentrated other halves. A couple have clip-on time-trial bars on their expensive race rigs, making me wonder if I should have done the same – every little helps, I muse, wondering if perhaps Brailsford’s marginal gains was a eureka moment while watching a Tesco advert.

As we’re ordered to form a queue by the start official, to be set off at minute intervals, I take the last few moments of calm to set my Garmin to just display distance and average speed. Nothing else matters. My time will be what it will be; top speed an inconsequential metric. It’s averages that will count here. Shoot for 20.

By the time the Tannoy calls my name and number, my knees feel like caffeine-injected jelly and my sunglasses are beginning to steam up. As they say, time-trials are the race of truth – just you, your abilities and the clock – and I’m feeling that pressure. Then honk! I race out from under the gantry to a ripple of polite cheers, determined, if nothing else, not to be passed by the minute men and women behind me. 

The first hairpin is only 20m away, but despite the adrenaline coursing through my veins, it seems to take an age to come, and even longer to negotiate. I feel like I’m going so slowly I can pick out every little leaf lining the side of the road, every glinting chunk of black tarmac passing below me in infinite detail. What’s wrong? Have I punctured already? Am I in some ridiculous gear? Yet before I can look down to find any mechanical element to blame for this sluggish departure, the road flattens out and I quickly find myself changing up as I spin out my gear. Bike OK? Check. Me? To be confirmed.

After yesterday’s recce I decided to break the Sa Calobra up into three parts. The first, ending just after the road makes its way through a silvery gash in the mountainside at 3km; the second the relatively straight drag as the trees thin and the road becomes more exposed until 6km; the third the relentless, twisting hairpins that eventually crest the summit. While the overall gradient is a ‘mere’ 7%, that figure belies the ramping quality of the Sa Calobra. Barring the higher gradients at the apexes of hairpins, the first few kilometres are gentle enough to leave you wondering what all the fuss is about, before they steadily increase as the road presses on. I’m determined not to be lulled into a false sense of security and overcook things, but I’m also keen to push a fair pace up these preliminary slopes to offset slow speeds that will inevtiably come nearer the top. I look at the Garmin. It seems to be working. Twenty-two.

Chase is on

I was once told as a rule of thumb that when riding at under 20kmh, 20% of the opposing force comes from air resistance and 80% from rolling resistance – energy lost through the tyres. Over 20kmh those percentages reverse, so besides concentrating on my breathing, I try to hold a relaxed yet purposeful TT tuck, with as flat a back as I can manage, hands balled like fists on the top of the hoods and elbows bent at 90°. Whether this is that efficient in reality I don’t know, but I’m feeling fast. I’d go as far as to say I’m feeling rather good. I can even hear something I don’t think I’ve ever encountered on a climb before – the sound of air on this otherwise perfectly still day rushing past my ears. Looking up, I’m buoyed even more as I catch the glint of a wheel up ahead disappearing round a corner. What do you know – I might even catch my minute man at this rate.

As commentators will often say of the pros, losing sight of your target has a demoralising effect on the chaser. Having it in your sights, on the other hand, can help you find extra power you thought wasn’t there. Right now, it’s happening to me. That wheel ahead is now a rider in the distance, the road having kindly straightened out for stretch. Before I know it I’ve instinctively shifted up and I’m sailing past my competitor. I look down. Twenty one point five. I’m elated. Still 7.5km to go. The joy ebbs.

The giant chasm of rock through which the Sa Calobra threads passes by in a whirlwind of head-down pain – the only real inkling I have it’s there is the prickle of skin as I plough on through the cold, damp air it harbours. Coming back out of its shadow to glimpse for a moment the distant sea has an oddly calming effect. Nearly a third of the way there. 

The sea disappears behind me and the road makes a savage jump to 12% as it cuts back up the rock. For the first time since the start I’m out of the saddle, calling every muscle into service to see me past this tortuous bend and back onto something more gradual. Which it does. If gradual means a relentless drag of 7%. 

If there’s one saving grace it’s that this straighter road, my self-styled second sector, once again has the advantage of letting me see riders further on, so I attempt to distract my mind from my hurt and project it onto these others. Not that I want to demoralise anyone in normal circumstances, but being able to indulge a healthy dose of schadenfreude never did any suffering rider any harm. Goodness knows I’ve been the butt of that on many other occasions. 

I pass the first rider, one of the guys I think I recognise from the rollers in the carpark, and then another, now just a blur through the condensation coating my glasses and the fog of suffering permeating my brain. It’s still a boost to pass them both, not least as during that chase I realise I’ve negotiated turn one of the last phase – a series of 15 hairpins to the top.

By now I’m in something of a state. I rise and fall in and out of the saddle like someone’s stuck me on a piston cam. I realise I haven’t drunk a drop, nor eaten any of the three caffeine sweets I’ve taped to my top tube. A swig of water does wonders – better still the squirt I douse over my head. The sweet, on the other hand, is not such a revelation. My mouth is dry, breathing erratic and laboured, and I can’t chew it without feeling like I’m going to choke. With all the force I can muster I spit it out. It lands back on my top tube pretty much where it had been before and sticks there. Disgusting, but I couldn’t care less. 

Regaining composure

Somehow I’ve settled again. It’s not what I’d call a rhythm, but it seems to be working. I drop a couple of gears before standing to heave myself up and down through the hairpins’ apexes, trying to spin and accelerate before resolutely changing back up as I sit to pedal at a harder, lower cadence as the gradient peters slightly. Whether this is a useful tactic is uncertain, but I have various images of pros rising like startled stick insects from their saddles to attack similar bends, before reverting back to a seated, metronomic pace.

For the first time in what seems like hours I peer tentatively at my Garmin. Despite all the chasing and the feeling that I’m powering on, like I’m actually winning, it displays an average speed of 17kmh. I feel like I want to cry, if only to shed some more weight.

If there’s one good thing about the final stretch it’s that the mountain is so grey and sheer that I can barely make out where the road is snaking off to, let alone how much I still have to ride. In fact, the only sign it’s still there is the occasional brightly coloured helmet of a rider appearing above like an iridescent pin thrust into the rock. The result is I’m riding blind, guided only by the markings on the road. Yet like so many tunnels of pain, like the thud of a punch, it’s over in an instant. Suddenly I’m enveloped by a deafening sound, and looking up I half expect the population of Mallorca to be cheering me on. 

They’re not. Instead it’s a sole enthusiastic supporter shouting himself hoarse in my ear and clapping fervently as he runs alongside. ‘Venge Venge Venge, Allez!’ he screams as we round the corner to the finish. But before I can either fall gratefully into his arms or rip his sunglasses off and toss them down the mountain (I’m unable to decide which), he sprints off back down the road, most likely to get in position to offer such services to the next rider, free of charge.

The official finish is under an archway on a section of the Sa Calobra that sweeps through 270° up and over itself in a brilliant architectural flourish known as the Nus de sa Corbata, or ‘the knotted tie’. It’s quite something, and stunning to behold from above. Which is where I find myself heading. I cross the line and just keep going, because the ‘official’ Strava climb finishes at the highest point, the sign for Coll del Reis, another 100m up the road. 

Once there, I finally stop, alone. I look down the mountain, beyond the knotted tie to the riders and even now some runners strung out on the roads below. It’s a truly exquisite view, with not a coach or car in sight. Just people and their engines, valiantly battling up this beast. Against the clock. Against themselves. My Garmin beeps. Sixteen point seven. 

The TT Sa Calobra runs on the 3rd of October as part of a weekend festival that aims to raise money to support the fight against cancer. To sign up please visit www.ttsacalobra.com

Do it yourself

Travel

Unless you charter a Bond-villain style biplane to the island, chances are you'll be flying into Mallorca's capital, Palma, with prices on budget airlines out of London around £90 return. From there, it's a 90 minute drive to Sa Calobra. Or, if you don't fancy the hassle, luxury tour company Marsh-Mallows will organise airport transfers.

Accomodation

We stayed at the Hotel Esplendido on the scenic harbour of Port de Soller, with a great range of restaurants and bars, plus a gloriously sandy cove to swim in after a hard day in the saddle. The Esplendido's suckling pig is one of the best dishes you'll find on the island. Double rooms from €190 in October.

Thanks

Our stay was arrange by Dan March, or Marsh-Mallows luxury cycling holidays. If there's a good route to ride, or restaurant to eat at, Dan's the man.

If you’ve ever wondered how long you would last on a training ride with a professional cycling team, the answer is 30 minutes and 11 seconds. That’s how long it takes this particular scribe to be shattered to pieces during a ‘relaxed roll-out’ with the Madison-Genesis pro cycling team in Mallorca, which rapidly morphs into the time trial from hell.

As we scorch through the roads out of Playa de Muro – a popular training base on the Spanish island which has become a modern Mecca for cyclists – the group’s speed creeps up from 20 to 30 to 40kmh, and ever higher, until my heart rate begins to mimic a goregrind drumbeat. Riders arrow past me like darting Spitfires. I start frothing at the mouth like a poisoned Bond villain. I resolve to wave the white flag as soon as my Garmin hit 30 minutes. (Those final 11 seconds are simply how long it takes me to slow to a halt from the frenzied pace, despite yanking hard on both brakes.)

Madison-Genesis’s team manager Roger Hammond, the experienced British former pro and two-time national road race champion, comes to the rescue, escorting me into the back of his team car and checking my vital signs as my laboured breathing and overheating body steam up every window of his car. And we haven’t even reached the climbs.

World class

‘The boys have been going hard all week now,’ Hammond tells me. ‘We’ve got some races coming up and they’re all keen to get stuck in. On camps like this, they have the chance to really focus on their training and get in some quality sessions in a different environment with good climbs and good weather. By the end, they’ll be flying.’

I dread to think what it would be like to ride with them in that condition. But camps like this are a key part of the training calendar of teams like Madison-Genesis – who compete at UCI Continental level (two rungs below the top WorldTeam level) in events such as the Tour of Britain – alongside the likes of Team Sky, Movistar and BMC. Training camps are also increasingly popular with amateur riders looking to enjoy a holiday and get in shape for the sportive season at the same time. Tenerife, Girona, Lanzarote, Gran Canaria and Nice are popular, but Mallorca has long been the base for British riders and teams. 

‘We can do proper training out here on quiet roads without distractions,’ says Tom Scully, a 25-year-old New Zealander who rides for Madison-Genesis and won the 2014 Commonwealth Games points race. ‘Training with the other guys keeps it competitive too, because we always push each other on to new levels and have fun. Everybody is doing different things on the same day: some are doing maximum efforts on climbs while others just spin up them, but we all ride out together.’ 

Plan your break

Seeing professional riders train up close provides a fascinating insight into the methods they use to enhance their fitness and performance. But the central theme – and one which any rider can learn from – is that pro riders know exactly what they need to do to meet the challenges ahead and adapt their training accordingly. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for riders. 

‘You have to train for the specifics of the event,’ says experienced 27-year-old Liam Holohan, who has been doing five-minute ascending power sessions to improve his climbing speed. ‘Look at the course of your sportive or race and work backwards. If you know you need to do six sharp climbs, build them into your training.’

Meanwhile, 18-year-old youngster Joe Evans is happy to focus on his stamina with a series of long endurance rides during the week. ‘This is my first time in Mallorca – I’m used to riding 10-minute climbs back home, not 40-minute climbs – so I’m going steady to ensure I can train all week and build my endurance, rather than riding around like a nutter for one day,’ he says. 

Back at the hotel, the riders’ dedication is obvious. The team tuck into a healthy feast of energy-releasing oats in the morning, nutrient-rich fruit and vegetables after training to enhance recovery, muscle-repairing protein sources such as salmon and beef combined with energy-giving carbs like rice in the evening, plus chunks of nitrate-rich beetroot which is believed to help improve oxygen delivery to the muscles. Holohan has to stare longingly at the dessert table to maintain his trim 56kg frame. ‘I’m a climber so I have to be strict,’ he says. ‘It’s the bane of my life. After the Tour of Britain, I always stop at the services on the way home and eat 12 Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It’s my special treat.’

Details matter to professional riders. Erick Rowsell – the 24-year-old brother of Olympic team pursuit gold medal winner Jo Rowsell and the 2015 Tour of the Reservoir champion – pulls on compression socks after every training session to optimise his muscle recovery. Nineteen-year-old Tristan Robbins, the 2014 junior national road race champion, downs an SiS recovery shake within minutes of finishing his training rides. Scully lays out his kit every night to ensure he never gets delayed in the morning. And Holohan even brings his own breakfast oats from the UK, in case the team hotel doesn’t serve them.

Build structure 

But the Madison-Genesis athletes aren’t robots, and they provide a refreshing insight into how they keep themselves sane, despite pursuing superhuman levels of fitness. ‘We got stuck into some chocolate on the rest day,’ admits Scully. Robbins was happy to tuck into a bowl of Coco Pops this morning because he felt he needed a break from the training diet. ‘I’m normally good with my food but it’s OK to treat yourself,’ he says. ‘I burnt 6,500 calories the other day. Training is grim and I can’t eat muesli every day.’ 

During the training camp, the cyclists employ a powerful mix of scientific training methods and old-school techniques. Today, Rowsell has been specifically training at his threshold – the ‘sweet spot’ at which exercise intensity shifts from aerobic (with oxygen) to anaerobic (without oxygen) – to help reach new levels of fitness. But on other days, he’s happy to just ride in a bigger gear to help build strength in his legs. 

‘We want riders to train with structure but not to get too caught up in it,’ explains Hammond. ‘We like them to record training data because it gives them accountability and shows them how they’re progressing, but they have to ride on feel as well. I want the guys to explore their capabilities and see how far they can go.’

After the riders finish training, it’s time to put their feet up and relax. Whether it’s sipping coffee in the hotel bar or strolling along the beach, recovery time is a vital part of training. ‘You don’t improve when you train; you improve when you recover,’ explains Holohan. ‘The training itself just damages your muscles. Your recovery time is when your muscles are adapting and your body is rebuilding.’ 

It’s something a lot of amateur cyclists neglect when trying to balance training and other commitments. ‘Listen to your body and look out for signs of fatigue, irritability or illness as that normally means you’re too worn down and you’re effectively negating all your effort in training,’ says Holohan.

During their down time, all riders follow their own personal methods of mental and physical recovery. Holohan spent his free time in Mallorca reading the book Faster by former pro cyclist Michael Hutchinson, and watching Keanu Reeves flick John Wick with his roommate. Rowsell walks around in compression socks, which improve blood flow to the muscles to flush away the lactate caused by intense exercise. For the same reason, Evans likes to lie down on his bed and keep his feet up off the ground for a few hours. Scully, meanwhile, chills out by watching Colin Farrell’s dark comedy In Bruges. 

Other riders just play games on their iPads, Skype family or partners, or sit and chat in the hotel café. ‘When you’re recovering, it’s good to just switch your mind off, chill out with the lads and relax,’ says Evans. ‘It looks like we’re not doing much, but it’s as easy to over-train as it is to under-train.’

Miguel Indurain slides his rangy legs beneath a table at a hotel in the Italian Dolomites, smiles bashfully and exchanges a softly spoken ‘hola’. The legendary Spanish cyclist is an elusive but endearing enigma, a man about whom cycling fans know everything yet nothing at all. He’s the humble farmer’s son who became cycling royalty, the attention-fleeing introvert who won the global extravaganza of the Tour de France a record five consecutive times between 1991 and 1995 to join Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault in the pantheon of five-time winners. A double Giro d’Italia winner, former World and Olympic Time-Trial Champion, and World Hour Record holder, he still enjoys fixing broken tractors and hunting. By nature modest and reserved, his arrival at our interview is so discreet I’m reminded of a comment made by his ex-teammate, Jean-Francois Bernard: ‘When he comes down for his meal, you don’t even hear him move his chair.’

Standing 6ft 2in tall and weighing 80kg in his prime, ‘Miguelon’ (Big Mig) was as strong and powerful as the bulls of his native Pamplona. Science says he should have floundered in the mountains but his Zeppelin-sized lungs, piston-like femurs (his coach Jose Miguel Echavarri claimed his long thigh bones were his secret weapons) and fabled resting heart rate of just 28 beats per minute (the adult norm is between 60 and 90bpm) enabled him to dilute the challenges of gravity. Venerated for his devastating speed in time-trials, in person his every hand movement, footstep and blink appears to play out in super-slow-motion – a charming lifelong trait confirmed by his contemporaries. It’s as though the Spaniard was equipped with a Formula One-style kinetic energy recovery system that stored up his energy during life’s quieter deceleration phases, ready to be unleashed in fury the next time he accelerated on a bike.

Still athletic at the age of 51, with neat greying hair, retro sideburns straying down his tanned cheeks (not quite Wiggins-esque but there is a definite nod to nostalgia) and dressed in a simple polo shirt and jeans, Indurain remains a glorious mystery. He rarely grants interviews but has agreed to meet Cyclist at the chic La Perla hotel in Corvara, nestled between the jagged pinnacles of Alta Badia, where he is hosting rides for customers of cycling tour operator In Gamba, which runs exclusive tours from the hotel.

It seems only right to begin by discovering some truths behind the legendary figure, starting with that 28bpm resting heart rate. Is it true? ‘Some of the stories are true and some of them are a little bit exaggerated,’ says Indurain. ‘Normally I had a resting heart rate of 30 or 32bpm. The coaches used to measure it in the morning and in the afternoon to see if I was recovering. One day we did a medical test and it read 28, so there is some truth in it. But normally it was a little bit higher.’

Various other extraordinary figures have been affixed to the Indurain legend, including a VO2 max (the maximum rate of oxygen consumption during exercise) of 88ml/kg/min and a cardiac output (the volume of blood pumped by the heart) of 50 litres per minute – both double the human norm.

‘We used to have tests of oxygen consumption, heart rate, body fat percentage and things like that, but I cannot remember them all. There were other people with physical conditions like mine, but you need to know how to bring those qualities out – to squeeze the orange a little bit. You can do nothing with your physical condition because you are born with it, but you need to know how to get a better performance out of it. There are cycling champions who have less peak fitness than their opponents, but more motivation. Others have great fitness but don’t want it as much.’ 

The silent assassin

Indurain’s Grand Tour victories were neatly planned and efficiently executed. He would wait patiently, chasing down attacks only when necessary, seldom going on the offensive himself, matching but rarely beating his rivals in the mountains, and calmly extending his lead during individual time-trials. Ten of his 12 Tour stage wins and all four of his Giro stage victories came in time-trials.

The Spaniard’s style drew both praise and criticism. Teammates admired his quiet authority, metronomic consistency and composure, and fans like the young Bradley Wiggins were enchanted by his elegant style and inscrutability. Others were less impressed by what they saw as a negative approach: Indurain was not a man for dazzling recklessness. Off the bike he defused press conferences with polite platitudes. Bernard Hinault commented in 1992, ‘Indurain is the best rider of his generation, but he has won this Tour quietly.’

The man himself explains that his style was the inevitable product of his personality, physical stature and the circumstances in which he raced. ‘The way I rode is the way I am,’ he says. ‘Ultimately when you are out on the road that is also the way you are with other people. Some say I could have been more aggressive and got more victories but if you don’t behave the way you are, you don’t feel comfortable with yourself.’

The likes of Hinault and Cavendish display a certain killer instinct, but with Indurain it’s only possible to identify a quiet but sincere confidence – a will to win but not to crush. He says his diffidence was a strength: ‘You have to be a thoughtful rider. You have to preserve your energies. You have to be aware of your rivals. You have a lot of details to think about. Ultimately you are going to be racing at a very high intensity so you still need to have the capacity to think about your energy, your rivals and your plans. You need brains to stay at the front.’

Indurain also knew he had to make the most of his unique attributes and opportunities. During his era, time-trials were significantly longer – often covering 120km during a three-week Tour compared to the solitary 13.8km time-trial in the 2015 edition. ‘In my time big riders had an advantage because we had long time-trials of 60-70km each and that is where we made the difference over the climbers and the smaller riders. Later on in the mountains, we weren’t going to make any big gains, but we could still perform well and stay close.’

From the farm to France

Miguel Indurain was born on 16th July 1964 and grew up on his father’s farm in the village of Villava, now an outlying area of Pamplona, with his three sisters, Isabel, Maria Dolores and Maria Asuncion, and his younger brother Prudencio, a fellow cyclist who competed in the Tour de France four times.

‘From a very young age I was on a bike,’ he says. ‘Not a road bike, just a town bike in my village. I remember always having a bike at home. I did athletics and football but I didn’t find the right discipline for me until I signed up to do road cycling at the age of 12.’

After joining his local cycling club, CC Villaves, Indurain took part in his first race in July 1978, finishing second. ‘It wasn’t until I won the Spanish Amateur Road Championships in 1983 that I realised something was possible in cycling. Until then it was just a hobby. After that, people encouraged me and told me I should try to become a professional. From then on I dedicated myself fully to this profession.’

He turned professional with the Reynolds team in 1984 (which was renamed Banesto when the Spanish bank took over sponsorship in 1990) and sampled his first Tour in 1985, pulling out after the fourth stage. ‘I wasn’t supposed to go but my teammate Angel Arroyo got ill so they took me instead. It was a surprise. I wasn’t expecting it. Everything was new. Everything was different. It was a huge shock.’

Indurain completed his first Tour in 1987, finishing 97th. In 1988 he helped his teammate Pedro Delgado to win the yellow jersey and in 1989 he won his first Tour stage – a 147km mountain stage from Pau to Cauterets. In 1990 Indurain won the 215km stage 16 from Blagnac to Luz Ardiden and finished 10th overall, but many claim if he hadn’t been helping a struggling Delgado – who finished fourth – he could have won the general classification himself.

‘I don’t think so,’ says Indurain with characteristic humility. ‘Mentally, I wasn’t prepared to be a leader. When it went well it was because I was feeling calm that I was doing my work for Delgado. If I did well, it was good, but if I didn’t do well, nothing would have happened either. There was no pressure. I had tranquility. Later on, when I was a team leader, I had to handle the responsibility of doing well. That eats away at you all day long. That year I wanted to help Pedro and I did well but it could easily have gone wrong.’ 

Five-star champion

At the 1991 Tour, Indurain was ready to step up and won the time-trials on Stages 8 and 21 en route to victory. ‘The first Tour win was the most special,’ he says. ‘Since I had decided that I liked cycling and I wanted to dedicate myself to it, I had looked at the best race in the world, which is the Tour de France, and I knew I wanted to do what Bernard Hinault did. So when I got my first victory that was the most important one.’

In 1992 Indurain secured the first of his two Giro and Tour doubles, becoming part of an elite club of seven riders (now nine) who have won both in a calendar year. He repeated the feat in 1993. ‘The doubles were very hard – the training as well as the actual races – and you have to be very focused to win both. Maybe 1993 was the hardest. I got a cold in the stage in Andorra and it was harder for me to get to Paris. Achieving it is something I am very proud of. The mountains are harder in Italy but the level of racing and expectation is not as high as at the Tour where you get the best riders in their best form.’

Indurain enjoyed riding in Italy and still does. ‘I come to Italy often and I had a lot of relationships here because almost all my sponsors, apart from Banesto [Spanish] and Time pedals [French], were Italian manufacturers.’ Indurain rode Pinarello bikes with Campagnolo gears. At La Perla hotel there is a special Pinarello lounge that contains one of Indurain’s time-trial bikes. ‘We rode in the Dolomites a lot during the Giro so I have great memories of the place and the people. Italians live for cycling with great passion. In England cycling is a new passion but in Italy it has been like this for years. From races to bicycle manufacturing, cycling is in their hearts.’

Indurain secured his fourth Tour win in 1994 and set a new World Hour Record in the same year, beating Graeme Obree’s record with a distance of 53.040km. He pushed so hard he momentarily lost all feeling in the right side of his body. In 1995 Indurain won his final Tour and triumphed in the World Time-Trial Championships in Duitama, Colombia. What drove him to keep on winning? ‘It is simple, he says. ‘I had ambitions and dreams so I kept trying hard every year.’

The Spaniard attempted a record sixth Tour win in 1996 but fell short, finishing 11th. He won the first ever Olympic Time-Trial title in Atlanta two weeks later, before retiring in January 1997, declaring, ‘My family are waiting.’ Indurain now lives near Pamplona with his wife Marisa and three children.

Speed machine

The story of Miguel Indurain will always be entwined with the speed and power of the time-trial. In his book A Race For Madmen, Chris Sidwells wrote, ‘Amid the flat backs and skiers’ crouches, Indurain rode like a Spanish galleon… [he] was the Bugatti Veyron of cycling: his engine was so big that aerodynamic subtlety didn’t matter so much.’

The Spaniard says the time-trial suited both his physical and psychological strengths. ‘It’s very complicated,’ he says. ‘It’s a very personal challenge against the time and the kilometres. It’s you against the rest. It’s about training, experience and motivation. During a time-trial you’re in a bubble where you’re against everyone and everything. You’re responsible for whether it turns out right or wrong and you have to manage yourself. That is something I always liked.’

He says he was disappointed by the lack of time-trials at this year’s Tour. ‘It is a shame because that is what I really like, as a fan. At the Vuelta I only go to watch the time-trial stages. I don’t go to the mountain stages. To me, the time-trial is the discipline in cycling where you can really see who is strongest. There wasn’t much time-trialling in this year’s Tour and I feel as though it was missing something.’

Which modern riders does he like to watch? ‘I like the ones who give a good show but I feel more inclined towards riders who are complete – the ones who can climb but also time-trial. Of course, as a Spaniard, Contador and Valverde are riders I know and like, but I identify more with riders who are more complete. In Bradley Wiggins’ time, he was very similar to me. Now there is nobody – perhaps Chris Froome is also a time-triallist and a climber. Froome defends himself well in all terrain. I see him perhaps a little bit under pressure. He goes all day with high revolutions so from the outside it’s as though he is under pressure.’

Would Indurain like to be a pro rider today? ‘Practically it hasn’t changed that much. The races are more controlled, but the mountains are the same. What I least like is how much they travel to places like Australia, America and Qatar. I didn’t like to travel. In my time it was mainly in Europe but I don’t think I would have enjoyed long flights to places like Qatar.’

We finish the interview with a walk around the hotel gardens, glancing up at the serrated peaks of the Dolomites high above. Indurain strolls around languidly, smiling and chatting. His shoulders are gently rounded, whether from years spent hunched over a bike or shyness, it’s hard to say. But after an afternoon with him it’s clear that Indurain is one of the sport’s finest gentleman champions. He says he is already looking forward to riding his bike tomorrow.

‘When I cycle now it is just like when I was cycling before. During my career there were hard times but I always did what I enjoyed. At first cycling is your hobby. Then it is your passion. Then it becomes your job. But I will always be happy when I am on my bike.’

Miguel Indurain is an ambassador of La Perla’s Leading Bike Experience. Visit hotel-laperla.it

With great power comes great responsibility. But whether you’re strong as an ox or simply want to add a scientific measure to your training progress, the increasingly affordable option of a power meter has many benefits. Although available in a number of forms – at the hub, the cranks or pedals – all cycling power meters work on the same theory, using strain gauges to accurately measure the torque you make with each pedal stroke, and convert that measurement into a reading in watts on your cycling computer. This allows you to keep track of your performance on the road and then spend hours poring over the data on your computer screen once you’ve uploaded your ride.

Who needs heart rate?

So what exactly is a power meter going to give you that a heart rate monitor can’t? Well, for one thing, there’s consistency. James Gullen, head coach at Go Faster Coaching (gofastercoaching.co.uk), explains, ‘Heart rate can be affected by a lot of other factors – if you’re ill or tired, for example – but power is a constant.’

And according to Dan Fleeman, director of Dig Deep Coaching (digdeepcoaching.com), if you’re using heart rate alone, it’s impossible to perform interval training accurately due to the lag time while your heart rate rises to the desired level and return to a resting state. ‘Using heart rate for a time trial isn’t too bad, because it’s a constant effort,’ Fleeman says, ‘but for anything that includes on/off efforts, such as intervals, it’s not a great tool.’

Don’t go chucking your heart monitor strap in the bin just yet, though, as many coaches still believe there’s a place for it in your training. ‘It’s true that “perceived rate of effort” measurements are still a valuable tool, especially in conjunction with heart rate readings,’ says Tobias Bremer, clinical director and lead physiotherapist at Physio Clinic in Brighton (physioclinicbrighton.co.uk). He adds, ‘A study in 2011 by the University of Florida found that there was no difference in improvement between cyclists using heart rate monitors versus power meters while doing interval training sessions. Both groups improved significantly.’

Nonetheless, Gullen maintains that using your power output to measure performance improvements is far more reliable than heart rate: ‘If you’re putting out more watts in June than you were in January, you know that’s because you’re stronger, but if you’re relying on heart rate across time, the variables involved in working out why your HR is elevated or lower make it an unreliable way to gauge any real-world performance gains.’ He adds that power data makes it easier to compare yourself to your mates (or rivals), suggesting, ‘If your mate’s 90kg and you’re only 60kg, you might not make the same numbers on your absolute power output, but if you use your power to weight ratio, you can track how you compare.'

‘I’m here to read the meter’

It’s clear, then, that power meters have their advantages. What’s not clear is how to make the most of those advantages to make yourself a stronger rider. Fleeman warns, ‘I know some people who’ve spent more than £2,000 on an SRM, and just use it to go riding with. Basically, what they’ve bought is a really pricey speedo.’ In other words, it’s only worthwhile investing in a power meter if you know how to read the data it provides.

It’s fine for the pros: they don’t need to know how to use their expensive power measuring equipment because most teams provide coaching staff. They set a training plan and monitor riders’ data online using websites such as Training Peaks. ‘Teams like Sky do so well because they can look at their riders’ numbers and pretty much know how their riders will perform in certain races if they hit the right watts,’ says Gullen. However, us mortals, unless we’re paying for coaching, won’t have this luxury. So it’s important you learn how to analyse your data to get the best out of your training.

‘It doesn’t matter what websites you use to store your rides,’ Gullen says. ‘You can even use Strava (strava.com) to see what watts you’re making on each segment, and compare identical rides over time. It’s even better if you have access to Training Peaks (trainingpeaks.com), because there you can see your power peaks for five seconds, 10 seconds, five minutes and so on. This is really useful for analysing interval sessions.’

Fleeman would direct you to a book (remember them?) called Training And Racing With A Power Meter. Written by Hunter Allen, it laid the foundations for the metrics used by Training Peaks, such as the Training Stress Score (TSS) and Intensity Factor (IF). ‘Using these measurements gives you a way of quantifying the load of your training,’ he says. ‘You can use the website’s performance management chart too, which plots your TSS over time to plot a graph. From this, you can work out when you’re tired or how to peak for an event.’

Power meter data can benefit your riding in other distinct ways too. ‘A power meter can help flag up strengths and weaknesses in your physiology and bike set-up,’ says Bremer. ‘For instance, you may work at your most efficient at a cadence of 98 while generating 220 watts rather than a lower cadence producing the same power output. Triangulating heart rate readings, cadence and power will help you see this and you could change your gearing accordingly to make you a more efficient rider.’ This may mean poring over a lot of numbers and doing difficult sums, but the reward of smoother, faster riding may well be worth the effort.

Make it work for you

You don’t even need to be hitting the big numbers of a professional rider to benefit from a power meter. ‘It doesn’t matter if you can’t do the same watts as Fabian Cancellara; monitoring your power over time and working on it will bring improvements,’ according to Gullen. ‘Though it helps if you’re actually training for a specific discipline or event,’ he adds.

For most sportive riders, Fleeman recommends that regardless of how hilly your local roads are, you should combine your climbs. ‘I usually go out for a few hours and try to do a combined hour of climbing; it’s best to do this at Zone 4 (see Pro Power Training Plan, opposite) or a little bit above,’ he advises. ‘Or if you’ve no climbs nearby, do five or 10-minute efforts in a bigger gear, so you can still get your power into Zone 4. It’s just as useful for replicating the power you’ll need for the big ascents.’

Racers, meanwhile, can look at their power data after the event and find the areas they need to work on. ‘You can analyse the spots where you’re making big power and work out whether it was because you were out in the wind, or even if your brakes were rubbing!’ says Fleeman. And for time trials? Gullen adds, ‘You can use your average power display to measure the sort of watts you want to be generating, to make sure you don’t blow after five minutes.’

What’s the big news?

One of cycling’s most exciting developments in recent years is the increased affordability of power meters, which puts ownership firmly within the grasp of the recreational rider or club racer. ‘They’re now at a place where a power meter will cost you about the same as a set of wheels, where a few years ago they were the price of a new bike,’ says Gullen.

Dan Fleeman adds: ‘The more inexpensive meters like a Stages crank, which just measures left-leg power, while they only estimate power based on one leg, are forcing everyone else to lower their prices.’ This has to be good news for the consumer, as long as the cheaper models are still accurate and reliable, right? ‘The cheaper power meters are absolutely fine,’ says Fleeman. ‘The most important thing is that you use the same tool every time to get consistent data.’

The danger is you can become a bit Dave Brailsford about these things, and Fleeman is the first to point out that it’s easy to become obsessed with data. ‘Some people will come to me and say “I’m doing this power or that power,” to which I’ll reply, “Yes, but you’re getting dropped in races!” It’s a tool for measuring your progression and performance, it’s not really much use to go out there and keep trying to smash your peak power.’ If racing is your goal, he offers this advice: ‘If you’re looking to win a race, often the winner is the one who pedals least, so hitting big watts is less important. Look at Christian Vande Velde in the Tour de France… In 2008, when he finished fourth, his data showed there were two hours on each day when he wasn’t pedalling. He wasn’t the strongest guy in the race, but in the final week he had the advantage.’

A final thought on the benefits of power measurement from physiotherapist Tobias Bremer: ‘I’ve sometimes used power meters to prevent injuries or manage knee, hip and back conditions by setting the maximum wattage to below the rider’s pain threshold.’ So using a power meter means you can continue riding while completing a rehabilitation programme? ‘Yes, usually at a higher cadence but with lower wattage.’ That ultimately means less down time and getting back to full strength sooner. One thing is for sure – there are going to be thousands more riders with power meters this time next year, so whether you’re a racer or a café-stop wattage boaster, your competition is about to get tougher.

Cyclist: How did you get started at Trek?

Jim Colegrove: In 1990 Trek wanted to build composite parts in-house after a disastrous start using a separate company to build the 5000 frame. That was a made-in-one-piece back in 1988 and 1989. Terrible failure – we got virtually every one back. Key people realised carbon fibre was the future, and I was hired to help bring the manufacturing into this facility. I came from a small engineering firm in Salt Lake City that worked with aerospace clients – Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop, those kind of companies. Jackson Street was where Trek started, which was a red barn in downtown Waterloo [Wisconsin]. Trek started brazing frames there in 1976. Now it houses the CNC tool machining facility to cut all the moulds we use to make our parts. 

Cyc: Do the aerospace and military industries use much higher-quality carbon than is used in bikes?

JC: The material that the aerospace and defence industries use is nearly identical to the material that the recreational industries use. What is generally missing is certification and also verification of manufacture. We use a lot of different fibres, some of which are the same as those used for top-end military and aerospace purposes. M60J, for instance, is an ultra high-modulus Toray fibre. The last time I looked, it was something north of $900 a pound [approx £1,270 per kilo]. Some of these high and ultra-high modulus materials are classified as strategic materials, and that means they are only available in certain NATO countries because you can make weapons out of them. We use almost all the fibres out there, whether it’s Toray, Mitsubishi, Hexcel, Cytec. You name it, we’re using it. 

Cyc: What’s special about the way Trek does things?

JC: One of the key things is how we mistake-proof the process. Any time you put a human into the mix there is the possibility for mistakes. All of our products over the last five or six years have gone through our validation lab, which is a sort of mock factory. We bring in our documentation specialists who tell our operators what they’re going to do. We bring those operators into the validation lab and train them so we have a seamless transition. We try to develop things in a way that will transition well into production. Because when you take things out of a lab environment and into production there are always small glitches – things you didn’t think about.

Cyc: How do you juggle the demands of design and research in the United States while doing a great deal of your production in the Far East?

JC: What I think is really key is that what is learned here is propagated over to our Asian partners. One of the things I feel sets us apart is the fact that we are deeply embedded in manufacturing. We build all top-end Project One bikes in Wisconsin, and we know the factory is expensive, but if we don’t do it here we lose that direct connection to building the product. We can design a beautiful frame and ship it over to somebody but we’d have no idea if what we have designed is buildable and if it is buildable in a good, unique way.

Cyc: How does the composite nature of carbon fibre influence frame design?

JC: There’s sort of a ‘black aluminium’ theory where designers treat carbon as if it were a regular isotropic metal. So, some of the FEA [Finite Element Analysis] used in bike design is done by inputting aluminium as the material and designing the tubes purely on the effect of certain wall thickness. That’s not true composite FEA. That’s fine for getting an acceptable product, but if we want to dial in the type of ride performance that we’re chasing at the top, we need to do things properly. In our design you can see the number of plies and where we’ve placed them, and all of that is driven by our analysis.

Cyc: How has the trend for improved aerodynamics affected the way you approach design?

JC: Aerodynamics has really caused a dilemma for us. Aero tube shapes tend to require larger surface areas, and whenever you add more surface area to any part there’s more weight, right? Also, either it’s so harsh on the rider because it’s such a tall section, or it’s so narrow that the bike is all over the place [because of lateral flex]. That’s where our analysis really comes into play. First of all we analyse the shape from an aerodynamic standpoint, and then once we know that we have a certain aerodynamic shape, then we start plugging that into FEA. If those two aren’t going to play together then we have to add material to meet the aerodynamics, but then the bike is going to be too heavy – that’s not going to be acceptable. So we constantly converge on the best solution.

Cyc: Carbon fibre bikes are half carbon fibres and half resin. How important is the resin?

JC: Very. We don’t talk a lot about it, but we are constantly working with different resins. It’s a composite material – carbon fibre does the work and the epoxy resin holds the fibres in position. So if the resin isn’t doing its job holding the fibres in position, you’re not going to get any real performance out of the fibres. We formed a stronger relationship with [carbon fibre producer] Hexcel because it has a wide range of resins that have unique and special properties. The problem is it further complicates an already complicated concept. There is so much jargon floating around – is it a T700 or a T800 or an IM7 or an IM8, what’s the moduli, strength and elongation? It’s confusing enough without getting into resins. 

Cyc: Carbon sometimes has a bad reputation for having a limited life. Is this true?

JC: People seem concerned about carbon fibre because it’s an unknown. People have grown up with steel and aluminium. Every material has a fatigue life. Take a steel paperclip and bend it a hundred times it will probably break. Do the same with aluminium, and it will probably break in half the time because aluminium is not as good in fatigue as steel. Composites, in general, have an infinite fatigue life. But that depends on the carbon fibre use, the resin use and how well it was processed. In other words, are there a lot of voids in the laminate? Because voids will kill a composite very quickly. That was common years ago, but not any more. This, again, is where complete control of materials, process and engineering play an important role. If you take control of all of that, we can definitively say that a bike you buy today, you can ride for your lifetime, and it will not degrade over that lifetime.

Cyc: Are you on the hunt for new and extraordinary materials?

JC: We’re always looking for new material forms. Graphene is one of those, but it’s still being developed. There are manufacturers of nano-graphene platelets, so you can get it already, but it’s very expensive. The biggest thing for us is that unless we can see benefit in the composite, we’re not completely sold. If we can figure out some way of getting graphene or carbon fibre nanotubes to create the long strings like we have for current carbon fibre, oh my gosh, the stiffness, the strength, the weight would be unbelievable.

Trek.com

This is not the first time that Cyclist has been in a world of pain, but it is perhaps the first time that this world has been given a name: Sufferlandria. To be more precise, I’m in the UCI headquarters in Aigle, Switzerland, which for a short time has been invaded by the twisted minds behind the popular (some would say fiendish) Sufferfest training videos. While the staff of the sport’s governing body go about their daily business, I have joined a group of Sufferlandrians to be put through my paces in a range of training sessions.

The longest week

Over the course of the week-long camp, the morning sessions concentrate on fitness, while the afternoon sessions focus on improving skills in a range cycling disciplines, from road racing and time-trialling to track riding and BMX. But exactly where did the phenomenon of Sufferfest emerge from, and how did it come to take physical form within the offices of the UCI?

‘It started when I was just training for sportives and things like that – trying to be fit in the wintertime,’ says David McQuillen, founder and ‘chief suffering officer’ of The Sufferfest. ‘I was riding an indoor trainer and just dreading it, it was so boring. I remembered when I was racing as a kid I used to watch old Tour de France movies, so I thought I’d go on YouTube and find some.

‘They were inspiring but they weren’t structured workouts, so I taught myself how to edit video, downloaded some clips and made my own videos. I gave them to some friends and they liked them, so I put them up on iTunes as a podcast and all of a sudden thousands of people downloaded it. I didn’t have the rights to the video or the music so I panicked and took them down, but thought maybe I was on to something.’

It turned out McQuillen was indeed on to something. The Sufferfest training videos are now used worldwide by cyclists looking to invigorate their indoor training. As The Sufferfest continues to develop, McQuillen’s original videos have been joined by more recent additions developed by elite coaches, such as Stephen Gallagher of Dig Deep Coaching and Neal Henderson of BMC Racing.

‘I think we really tapped into people’s desire to push themselves to a point where they can be really proud of themselves,’ says McQuillen. ‘The image of most cycling brands is quite boring – it’s all dramatic shots of people looking cool on bikes. So I thought people needed something different to be inspired, something with a story and humour to tell them that suffering is OK, and even that you can love it.’

This narrative is integral to every video and a unique aspect of The Sufferfest. The brutal interval sessions are tempered with humour and a sense of belonging to a wider community – the nation of Sufferlandria, which has its conceptual capital city at Sufferlandria.com. Here members can learn the culture of the nation, with a Facebook group providing a forum for them to communicate and engage with a supportive community. The solidarity between Sufferlandrians is enhanced by the smart way the training sessions remain relevant to all riders, regardless of ability or fitness.

Neal Henderson, coach at BMC Racing, says, ‘There’s no comparative element when using The Sufferfest videos to help you train. Everything is based on perceived effort, so even while some people might be strong and powerful racers and others just hobby cyclists, each person is working at their own effort level. It’s this common ground that allows people to relate, so that community feel was an inevitability.’

From virtual to physical

The popularity of Sufferlandria as a national identity inspired McQuillen to look at running a national team camp. ‘Just like I initially made the videos for myself, I designed this camp for me. I’m a normal guy with normal commitments. I don’t have a lot of time to train and I was never a very good cyclist but I always dreamed of being on a national team. So I thought, well, we’ve already created a nation so why not create a national team that I could be a part of, and also give other Sufferlandrians a chance to do something they’d never normally be able to do? We first approached the UCI two years ago, and initially it refused. It’s not a commercial organisation and this was a commercial camp, but thanks to the brilliant efforts of their sponsors coordinator, Emmanuel Blanchard, it saw that this was a grassroots opportunity to open up the UCI.’

Louis Chenaille, press officer for the UCI, explains the decision: ‘One of our aims is to encourage people to take up any form of cycling. The Sufferfest has been a sponsor of the UCI for several years and we love that it encourages people to cycle whatever your lifestyle or time commitments.’

The purpose behind these camps, according to McQuillen, is to make anyone a better rider. ‘The Sufferfest videos are different to normal videos so The Sufferfest camp had to be different to normal camps,’ he says.

Reports from those who Cyclist talked to afterwards suggest the Sufferlandrian National Team Camp was a runaway success, with people highlighting the friendly competition and emphasis on personal development. Many commented that it maintained the tone of The Sufferfest videos. Even UCI president Brian Cookson seemed impressed: ‘Feedback was really positive and the camp has given us valuable insight for joint activities in the future.’

As the camp’s venture comes to a close, McQuillen concludes, ‘I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved, but more than anything else, I’m most proud of the incredible community of Sufferlandrians that has emerged. I’ve never been a part of something so fun, positive, supportive and inspiring. And painful. Yeah, it’s pretty painful.’

Contact: thesufferfest.com

Matt Brammeier has a weakness. ‘As with all cyclists, he likes a beer,’ explains Brian Smith, manager of team MTN-Qhubeka while commenting on Brammeier’s intermediate sprint win during the 2015 Tour of Flanders. Brammeier – rewarded with his weight (73kg) in Steene Molen beer (75cl bottles) – was in for a good night. There’s even research from Granada University that shows how beer after a session in the saddle is an ideal antidote – quenching thirst and replacing energy that water can’t. But exercise physiologists and the sports scientists advising the pro teams aren’t often asked the kinds of questions posed by many amateur riders most weekends such as – which beers are best for riders? Or – how do you crash-cure a hangover ahead of a 50-mile Sunday stretch? Allow us to illuminate…

According to the aptly named John Brewer, Professor of Applied Sport Science at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, drinking alcohol in the days prior to a big ride is hardly performance enhancing. ‘A session on the beer a night or so before a big event decreases skill and coordination, and makes it harder to focus on targets or goals,’ he says. ‘It‘s also a diuretic – this means it can cause dehydration, rather than rehydrate in the way that non-alcoholic drinks do,’ Brewer explains. ‘Since scientists know that even relatively small amounts of dehydration impact negatively on performance, so alcohol is not recommended for this reason.’

If you’ve ridden with a hangover and found yourself gasping for breath, that’s most likely the booze taking its toll.

Dehydration doesn’t just present itself in the form of a dry mouth and increased thirst. Every alcoholic drink you have reduces the liquid component of your blood (plasma volume). The knock-on effect of this means your heart is put under extra strain to provide the muscles with the volume of blood it’s used to – especially when those muscles are challenged to work harder by hills. If you’ve ridden with a hangover and found yourself gasping for breath or aware of a rapidly racing ticker midway uphill, that’s most likely the booze taking its toll. Most infamously, this combination – along with a ‘chaser’ of amphetamines – is believed to have been the cause of the tragic death of legendary Brit cyclist Tom Simpson while climbing Mont Ventoux during the 1967 Tour. 

Beers & breakdowns

During the body’s processing of alcohol – metabolising it to the point where it can be flushed out – it’s turned into acetaldehyde, a substance that’s toxic to brain cells and causes blood vessels in your brain to dilate.

‘This is one of the reasons for a post-binge headache,’ explains Nigel Mitchell, Head of Nutrition at Team Sky. ‘Alcohol also saps the body of its ability to maintain blood sugar levels, depleting organs – including the brain – of their main power source, slowing your thinking as well as your reaction times. There are no miracle cures for alcohol-induced dehydration and the effects of a booze binge can leave the body below par for several days.’

Don’t think that because you’ve got a full 24 hours between a Friday session on the sauce and a Sunday one in the saddle that you’ll be fully fit. Prevention really is the key. ‘The best way to reduce the impact is to drink plenty of non-alcoholic fluids before, during and after a night in the pub,’ Mitchell adds. He suggests taking on water between bottles of beer (as opposed to pints, ideally) or to drink spirits (clear ones like gin or vodka) with substantial amounts of mixers. ‘Drink water when you get home, take a pint of water to bed with you and look to bolster those blood sugar levels at the end of session, too. Though perhaps not with a greasy fat-filled kebab. Then eat a high-fibre, high-carbohydrate breakfast to slowly raise your blood sugar levels the next morning.’

Fatter not fitter

The side effects of a night on the tiles won’t just leave you nursing a sore head with a tongue like a cat-owner’s carpet. It can also seriously hamper your body’s ability to burn fat, with punishing repercussions for weight management. (Those cyclists chasing the holy grail of body fat reduction and Lycra-friendly leanness may want to look away at this point.)

Within minutes of sipping a drink, your fat metabolism will go for a metaphorical nap. The body doesn’t recognise alcohol as a socialising stimulant and means of transforming one into a confident bar-room wit and move-busting dancer. No, both body and brain see beers, wines and spirits – or any other form of alcohol – as a potentially lethal toxin. As such, its removal from the system becomes the body’s number-one priority. Research from Laval University in Quebec highlights how this need to deal with alcohol causes the body to stop burning its usual stored carbohydrates and fat for energy. The focus switches to flushing out the alcohol – so the rest of the body’s natural calorie-burning processes are also compromised.

‘That’s dangerous for your waistline,’ warns Mitchell. The number of calories in alcohol is high, at around seven per gram (7kcal/g).’ Carbs are usually around 4kcal/g and only fat, with 9kcal/g, is more calorific. Even if the body burns a percentage of those calories when it’s busy metabolising the booze, it’s not the kind of fuel source it can burn through quickly. Instead, alcohol burdens the liver with a process that takes several hours.

Once you’re out on the bike, your body will convert any carbs for energy as they’re more rapidly processed – pushing alcohol down the list, which is bad for metabolism. The amount you drink, plus sugary mixers and salty snacks, will add to your fat intake and hamper your energy production. ‘Alcohol calories result in energy intake that’s in excess of energy expenditure,’ Mitchell explains. Even though cyclists come in a variety of sizes and guises – with genetics also influencing each body’s processing of booze – it takes around one hour for the average male to metabolize 18ml of alcohol (the amount in a 330ml bottle of beer at 5% ABV). US studies, published in the American Journal Of Clinical Nutrition, found that people who downed just two cocktails showed a remarkable 73% reduction in fat-burning after two hours.

Apnea hour

‘It also cripples a cyclist’s crucial sleep patterns,’ warns John Brewer. While a beer or wine late in the evening can give the impression of helping relax both body and mind in preparation of a good night’s rest, for cyclists gearing up for an early morning start, it could be a sleep-sabotaging move.

Research in the Journal Of Clinical Psychopharmacology from the University of Zurich reveals how alcohol disrupts the second half of the sleep period. Study subjects were observed to suffer less fitful sleep, especially during the deeper, more recuperative period, along with waking from dreams and returning to rest with difficulty. This in turn led to daytime fatigue with inevitable repercussions for riding times, performances and even injury risk. An unsettled sleep cycle upsets the body’s ability to store glycogen, according to a new study into performance and alcohol by Professor David Cameron-Smith of the University of Auckland, with a range of detrimental effects including decreased mental sharpness.

Some quantities of alcohol in your system can raise the levels of the stress hormone cortisol. This can have the drastic effect of reducing the levels of human growth hormone (HGH) in the blood by as much as 70%. HGH is vital for building and repairing muscle tissue as well as increasing muscle strength and promoting injury recovery. 

Ale is not lost

But immediately after a race or long ride, when there’s no immediate need to be clear-headed the next day, celebratory drinking sessions have been used as successful tools among many pro teams. Well-timed drinking sessions can help unite teams, bond riders and relieve the pressure to perform.

Australian research published in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition And Exercise Metabolism, even found that ‘adapted ales’ – with the alcohol content lowered to 2.3% and with added electrolytes – could work as sports drinks. In tests on endurance athletes, this lower-alcohol mix hydrated the trial group better than traditional-style ale. Beer has also been shown to have some anti-inflammatory and antioxidant qualities, according to German research. A range of positive physiological effects include its propensity to boost the immune system of those undergoing prolonged strenuous exercise – which in turn makes them less prone to upper respiratory tract infection.

However, the International Journal of Sports Nutrition And Exercise Metabolism study also confirmed that alcohol slows down muscle protein synthesis – key to exercise gains and muscle recovery – by nearly 40%. So, for Matt Brammeier and the rest of us, it may be wisest to make the first post-ride pint a protein shake, before hitting the bar. 

One for the road

Bavaria Radler

(German for ‘cyclist’) Crisp, citrus-like and low-alcohol to the point of being shandy, purportedly invented in 1922 by an innkeeper swarmed by 13,000 thirsty cyclists. At around 2.5% ABV, it’s deemed a ‘safe’ mid-ride refresher. 

Moor Rider’s Revival 

Made by Bristol’s Moor Beer Co for London bicycle café Look Mum No Hands, this pale ale is brewed with Chinook hops and green tea. Fragrant, slightly bitter and just 3.8% abv, it’s a perfect post-ride refresher. 

San Miguel

A study by Professor Manuel Garzon, head of the medical faculty at Granada University, found that cyclists performing intense drills recovered better while drinking Spanish beer rather than plain water. Can we take part next time, prof?

Bitburger Drive Alcohol-Free

The beer of choice for the German national football team, it’s a fully matured Bavarian lager and best served well-chilled. It delivers some nice malt and biscuit notes on the palate and little bitterness.

Erdinger Alcohol-Free

According to globetrotting beer writer Tim Hampson, it’s the use of wheat that gives this classy beer its crisp refreshing flavour, while classic German Hallertau hops lend it a pleasantly earthy aroma.

Why Bhutan? It’s the question everyone has been asking recently. Perhaps it’s to be expected – few people have heard of the Kingdom of Bhutan, and fewer could point it out on a map, so taking my bike a third of the way across the globe to ride in this remote nation has met with a certain amount of confusion.

One glance at this Himalayan landscape, though, and the answer seems obvious. This is true mountain territory. The peaks feel like the prehistoric ancestors of the Alps – they are bigger and steeper, hotter at the bottom, colder at the top, and blasted by Himalayan winds. It’s truly epic terrain to tackle by bike.

We’ve been invited out to sample the roads of Bhutan by Live The Adventure, a travel company that’s promoting Bhutan’s first cycle race – the Tour of the Dragon, which this year takes place on 5th September. The route tracks across the main national highway (a one-track mountain lane) from Bumthang in the east of the country to the capital Thiumphu in the west, and we’ll be covering the 268km distance over three days of riding. It takes in three gigantic climbs – the Yutang La, the Pele La and the Dochu La. The three climbs all top 3,000m of altitude, and only brief stretches of the route drop below 2,000m (the summit of Ben Nevis is 1,344m). So far, only mountain bikes have been used for the event, and rumour has it that we’re the first people to ride a road bike in Bhutan.

The Lost Kingdom

Bhutan has been called the last Shangri-La – the mythical mountain utopia. Indeed, the concept of Shangri-La was born in these very mountains. In 1627 a Portuguese missionary called Father Estevao Cacella became the first westerner to make a detailed account of the region. While staying in Bhutan he wrote of a kingdom named Shambala, a place that he was assured was never far away but which he never managed to reach. The mystic realm of Shambala later formed the idea of Shangri-La in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, and in the modern world perhaps no other nation evokes the idea of a lost paradise as much as Bhutan.

The King of Bhutan only allowed his subjects to watch TV in 1999, and it wasn’t until 2008 that the internet reached the population. The national religion is Buddhism, and rather than GDP, the country gauges its success with a Gross National Happiness index, measured by an expansive census investigating the wellbeing of the people.

It’s certainly a complex place. Ancient temples set into the desolate mountainsides overlook neon cities that are expanding fast. Our ride from east to west is like an accelerated history of the nation, with much of the landscape differing very little from the descriptions of unchartered mountain wilderness that those early missionaries wandered through in the 17th century.

That blend of ancient tradition and the modern world couldn’t be more apparent as I climb through a pack of yaks on the final kilometres of the climb to Yutang La, which peaks at 3,400m. The scene would have been little different 300 years ago, aside from the yak herder talking on his iPhone. As I tip over the summit, the scenery switches from lush and grassy to sparse and dry. The roads may lack modern quality, but they make up for it with breathtaking views. Every metre of the road so far has been as technical as a crit circuit and as undulating as a Grand Tour queen stage. I’m convinced that the hardest cycling races in the world will someday take place on these roads. 

The descent is taxing, requiring me to scan the road ahead for cows or yaks. The surface is sketchy, and I’m wary of hitting rocks or crevices. It’s tough, but it’s some of the most fun I’ve ever had on a road bike. By the time I reach the base of the descent, the mountain valley still drops away for more than 1,000m below me. This is a vast landscape. The next climb will take me upwards again for 2,000m of elevation over a distance of 70km to the peak. It’s hard to get my head around the scale of this place. It’s time to grab some lunch.

The way of the Dragon

Last year the Prince of Bhutan, a keen cyclist himself, led out the Tour of the Dragon, which boasted only 40 brave competitors. Of them, less than half finished, but I can’t help but be impressed by the Nepalese mountain biker who won in a time of 10 hours and 43 minutes. Averaging 25kmh on the flatter stretches of these roads is incredibly hard – to average 25kmh over these climbs, descents and against the prevailing wind of the valleys is truly phenomenal.

After a lunch of the local speciality, ‘chili cheese’ (cheese, chili and rice – very much an acquired taste), I set off again, rolling up the valley, skirting along the hillside with a vast forest as a lingering distraction from the sap of the mild gradient and the high altitude.

Riding from one wooden farmhouse to the next, dotted at random on the hillside, it becomes obvious how separate the country must have once been. Cut off from the rest of the world, Bhutan existed as a collection of small fiefdoms and warring regions until relatively recently.

Bhutan was first consolidated in 1616, right before Father Cacella’s account of the nation. The King who unified it was a lama (priest) from Tibet who was famed for having lived alone for three years at the top of a mountain, meditating all day and receiving food and water via a pulley. In 1885 the country was united under one dynasty, the Wangchuck family, which still rules today. The current king is referred to as ‘Fourth King’.

The Royal Family and religion are the two hinges of the national identity. Despite ascribing to Buddhism, the Bhutanese still have a strong belief in spirits of all kinds and the roads are lined with altars, relics and shrines. Often the walls are covered with paintings to welcome good spirits and ward off evil ones, with one practice being to paint large phalluses to drive away the evil eye. In my current state of exhaustion, such murals seem a little surreal.

The Bhutanese take their supernatural traditions very seriously, and one of the favoured tales is of Padmasambhava, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism, who flew from Tibet on the back of tigress and landed in a cave in the cliffs where he meditated for three years, three months, three weeks and three hours. A temple now sits on that cliff face, known as the Tiger’s Nest. I could do with a long rest myself. Night is beginning to fall and I still have a few kilometres to the summit. It’s beautiful, though, with mist sitting in the valley below, illuminated by the low light.

After 110km of riding I manage to get to a set of white flags that mark the peak of the Pele La. My legs are totally shot and it’s now pitch black. The first day of the route is over and I’m thankful to get into the photographer’s car to drive to our hotel in the nearby valley of Phobjikha. Tomorrow morning I will return to the summit to begin the long descent to Wangdue.

Down to Wangdue

There’s a scene in Father Ted that has suddenly popped into my head. Bishop Brennan is preparing to leave Craggy Island but is informed by Mrs Doyle that ‘the roads have been taken in’.

It comes to mind because this morning Bhutan appears to have taken the roads in. The descent ahead was meant to be mirror-smooth tarmac, but as part of the constant road building process here in Bhutan, they’ve removed 10km of the road to be re-laid later, leaving only gravel, rocks and dirt.

This route, the Lateral Road, is a significant one. It has played a big part in bringing national unity to the country. Up until 1961 the main way of travelling across the country was by foot or on horseback, and it took six days to reach Thiumphu from the Indian border. The road has been a consequence of Indian and Nepalese efforts to increase international stability, and the Indian Border Road Organisation still maintains the road.

The roads are often thinly laid blacktop tarmac set directly over the dirt and gravel. When freshly laid, it’s heaven, but it quickly degrades to cracks and rubble. The monsoon season and frequent landslides do nothing to help the maintenance of the roads either.

It’s challenging terrain to navigate, and I have to clear the next 10km in less than 20 minutes, as a roadblock will come into action at noon for two hours. The sun is gleaming, and this side of the valley has the exotic landscape of a rainforest, but the road is so technical and undulating that I’m barely able to appreciate it.

I manage to clear the roadblock just as the workmen are whirring into action. Back on smoother roads, this is by far the most leisurely part of the ride, as I head to the riverside town of Wangdue. The surface is perfectly paved and the wind is billowing eagerly behind me as I descend into the valley, with the sun glinting off the river water.

Wangdue is the largest town I’ve seen so far. It has a bustling sense of energy and is surrounded by building works. This valley is sandier and more arid than what we’ve seen so far, and feels more like an exotic Caribbean island. We grab a spot of lunch and head to the ancient capital of Punaka for the evening. Tomorrow we will take on the legendary climb of the Dochu La, which rises for 37.5km at a 5% average. A trip to the vast temple of the Punaka Dzong, and some hearty self-reflection below the sacred Bohdi tree prepares me for the task ahead.

The last leg

‘The way to the kingdom of Shambala is very difficult,’ wrote Father Cacella in the 17th century. He was right. Climbing the endless slopes of the Dochu La, I realise that travellers must have had to envisage a utopia on the other side of the peak in order to summon the will to cross it.

Of all the terrain on our Himalayan expedition, this is the most distinct. With thick cedar trees and sheer cliff faces, it feels as though I’m riding through the set of Jurassic Park. The altimeter on my Garmin ticks over painfully slowly. When the trees clear, the view across the Himalayan landscape is overwhelming – the greatest panorama in a trip of perfect panoramas.

It’s over two hours before I see a glimpse of the summit. I began in 40°C heat and now it’s just 15°C. When I finally reach the cluster of flags at the top, I roll to a halt at the base of the monument, erected to honour the 108 Bhutanese soldiers who died fighting Indian rebels in 2003.

The climb has been my last true exertion of the journey. From here it’s a coast down to the capital of Thiumphu on a wide tarmac road (two-lanes at points, but cows still roam on the highway), but the wind is against me and even on a 5% decline I find myself pedalling hard to sit at 25kmh.

As I descend towards the capital, I feel a sense of elation from the scale of this journey through new lands and customs. It’s no wonder that legends of a nearby paradise once spread infectiously through these mountains. Even against the savage winds and neverending climbs, the beauty of the region has kept me moving, desperate to see what lies over the next ridge.

Jan Ullrich is in a relaxed mood. Content to wander the streets of Palma in Mallorca for Cyclist’s photo shoot, he looks healthy and comes across as softly spoken and down to earth, the kind of guy you’d be happy to go for a beer with. As he sits soaking up some Mediterranean sunshine, it’s hard to see any signs of a cycling career that has witnessed triumphs, disappointments, scandals, recriminations and despair.

The young Jan

Jan Ullrich burst onto the cycling scene in 1993 when he won the Amateur World Road Race Championships in Oslo, Norway. At those same championships, the pro race was won by Lance Armstrong, and the two men would become fierce rivals at the Tour de France in the late 1990s until Armstrong’s (first) retirement in 2005. The years before and after would feature very mixed fortunes for both men.

Ullrich was born in Rostock in former East Germany in 1973 and, like so many riders before him, was inspired to take up cycling by a family member, in this case his older brother, Stefan. Their father had left when Jan was six. Aged 13, Ullrich was already considered gifted enough to join the Kinder und Jugendsportschulen – the children’s sports school in East Berlin, where they gave him a decent bike and set about turning him into a cycling superstar.

‘The support we received as athletes was very good,’ Ullrich tells Cyclist. ‘My mother wouldn’t have been able to afford a road bike for me because it was ridiculously expensive, so having one was something very special.’ Closed off from the West, Ullrich and his friends had to find their sporting heroes closer to home. ‘At that time, we were pretty much completely isolated from Western culture and its events, even in cycling. You got some information concerning the Tour de France, but it wasn’t the big cycling event in the GDR [German Democratic Republic]. Our equivalent was the Peace Race,’ he says.

That was a two-week stage race that ran each May from 1948 to 2006, predominantly in Poland, East Germany and former Czechoslovakia. ‘It was the “Tour de France of the East”, so that was where I found my first cycling idols: Olaf Ludwig [winner in 1982 and 1986] and Gustav-Adolf Schur,’ who was the first East German to win the race, in 1955, and who, like Ullrich, was Amateur World Road Race Champion, in 1958 and 1959. Later, says Ullrich, his big cycling hero was Spain’s Miguel Indurain: ‘He was the one rider I always admired.’

As things began to change after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ullrich signed a professional contract for the 1995 season with Telekom, and was quickly promoted to the German team’s Tour de France squad in 1996, aged just 22. Together with Danish team leader and eventual winner Bjarne Riis, Ullrich set about dismantling the hold his hero, Indurain, had had on the Tour since 1991.

‘No one really expected much, including me,’ remembers Ullrich of his first Tour de France. ‘At the beginning, I just rode, taking in every second of it, just trying to enjoy myself.’ But he was the revelation of the race, more than capable of helping Riis in the mountains, and still strong enough after three weeks to win the penultimate stage of the race – a 63.5km time-trial between Bordeaux and Saint-Emilion.

‘Of course, I still admired Indurain, even though he was my rival,’ Ullrich says, ‘but when I managed to beat him in that time-trial… I can’t describe how happy and proud I was. I still remember it as one of my biggest victories. I still think back to that Tour with feelings of joy. It had a huge impact on my whole career.’ Ullrich had finished second overall to his teammate Riis, and was quite rightly being touted as a future Tour winner. Indurain’s reign was over. Ullrich’s all-powerful Telekom team had relegated the Spaniard to 11th place, almost a quarter of an hour down on Riis. Indurain retired at the end of the season, aged 32. He was a five-time Tour winner, and it was time for a new generation to shine.

Rising to the top

The following year, in 1997, Ullrich was expected – and expected himself – to ride in support of Riis again, to help the Dane make it two in a row. ‘Sure, the pressure was bigger and the expectations higher, but I wasn’t the captain of my team. That was still Bjarne, which took a lot of weight off of my shoulders,’ Ullrich says. But on stage 10, a major day of climbing with a summit finish at the Andorra-Arcalis ski station, Ullrich’s class shone through, too brightly. The German was strong enough on the final climb to ride away from everyone, and he won the stage by more than a minute from Italian climber Marco Pantani and French favourite Richard Virenque. It was enough to give Ullrich the yellow jersey.

In Riis’s autobiography, Riis: Stages Of Light And Dark, he writes, ‘The team’s hierarchy had been decided, as it had been impossible to follow Jan in such form. It was a relief for him, too, as it at last spelled an end to what had seemed like endless speculation. There was no reason for me to show any bitterness when I talked to the press.

‘“Jan was the strongest,” I told them, then added, “and no, it hadn’t been planned. I simply couldn’t keep up with him. I’m pleased that he was able to show how strong he is, and that no one else could follow him. It was great to see, and now I can just be pleased that we’ve been able to keep it in the family.”’ Ullrich enjoyed full support from Riis and the Telekom ‘family’ from there on in, and, less than a fortnight later, Germany could celebrate its first (and still only) Tour winner. At the tender age of 23, it was a life-changing moment for Ullrich.

‘In the weeks following the Tour, I was on the road for most of the time and didn’t really have any time at home. It wasn’t until the beginning of the next year that I really noticed how much things had changed,’ says Ullrich. ‘And in the beginning, it was really great. However, as it is with many things, there were two sides to the story. Suddenly everyone recognised me. I couldn’t set foot outside my house without people wanting to talk to me, take pictures and everything. I’m a pretty calm and introverted person, and I like my privacy, so that was a huge change for me.’

And then came the weight of expectation, as everyone wanted more of the same: ‘The media expected me to perform, as did the people. It took me a while until I learned to handle that pressure.’ Whereas the British cycling boom came thanks to success from multiple riders – including Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton and Bradley Wiggins on the track, and Nicole Cooke, Mark Cavendish, Chris Froome and Wiggins on the road – back in 1997, Ullrich almost single-handedly ‘boomed’ cycling in Germany.

The press nicknamed him ‘Der Kaiser’ – ‘The Emperor’ – just like another of Germany’s other sporting heroes, footballer Franz Beckenbauer. But Ullrich would never reach such heights at the Tour again. First, Pantani showed him a clean pair of heels at the murky 1998 race, and then, from 1999 onwards, it was all about Armstrong. Pantani emerged from that 1998 Tour as a ray of hope after Virenque’s Festina squad had been thrown off the race after a member of the team’s staff, Willy Voet, had been stopped with a car boot-load of drugs, destined for the riders, three days before the start. Despite the gloom that pervaded the first week, which all but ruined its Grand Départ in Dublin, Ullrich and Pantani set about animating the Tour. However, just a year after his Tour win, and just halfway into the race, Ullrich seemed like a spent force.

On stage 15 – a filthy wet and cold day in the Alps – Pantani attacked on the Col du Galibier. Ullrich looked paralysed and spent the rest of the stage in some distress, grinding his pedals around in the vain hope that he could keep Pantani in sight. Riis, who had been left behind, rejoined Ullrich on the climb up to the finish at Les Deux Alpes, doing his best to shepherd his young teammate home. They finished almost nine minutes behind Pantani.

Hero to zero

The next day, on stage 16, Ullrich gritted his teeth – the French TV cameras showed it, literally – and set about trying to make up some of the time he’d lost. But Pantani, now in yellow, matched him pedal stroke for pedal stroke, and they arrived in Albertville together, just the two of them, where Ullrich sprinted to the stage victory. The race, however, was already over. Pantani’s almost six-minute buffer was too much, even for Ullrich.

The Tour can do that to people – what it gives one year, it takes away the next. Indurain had been superseded by Riis, who was superseded by Ullrich, and then it was Ullrich who had to give way in 1998 to Pantani, who never won the Tour again and died of a cocaine overdose in 2004. Like the Italian, Ullrich had his demons. In June 2002, while suffering from a knee injury, he tested positive in an out-of-competition test for amphetamines – claimed to have been taken recreationally. That came just a month after Ullrich had been banned from driving after crashing his Porsche in a drink-driving incident.

Having professed his horror at his own behaviour, fans and the media appeared willing to forgive him. What seemed less forgivable, perversely, was his propensity to gain weight during the off-season, only for him to arrive at the Tour each July in top condition and at fighting weight. ‘How good could he have been if only he’d been able to conduct himself more professionally?’ they cried. It was an argument levelled at him his whole career.

Having failed to defend his Tour title in 1998, when he finished second to Pantani, Ullrich finished second another three times to Armstrong between 1999 and 2005. He was in real danger of being forgotten as ‘Der Kaiser’, and becoming ‘The Eternal Second’, the French media’s nickname for Raymond Poulidor, who in fact only finished second at the Tour three times in total in the 1960s and 70s. As for the man who most often kept him in the shadow, Ullrich says of Armstrong, ‘Our relationship was pretty much non-existent. We didn’t talk much or really have any contact at all. But when we did, it was always respectful. Lance always said I was his biggest threat and I always treated my rivals equally respectfully.’ And when Armstrong retired after his seventh Tour victory in 2005, the way looked clear for Ullrich to return to winning ways.

Then Operación Puerto happened. Suddenly, the sport was plunged into as much – if not more – chaos as it had been in 1998. A Spanish doping investigation into ‘sports doctor’ Eufemiano Fuentes had cited various cycling star names, including Ullrich and the other favourite for that year’s Tour, Ivan Basso. Their teams were forced to pull them out of the race before it had even started, and while Basso eventually made a comeback after serving a two-year ban for his ‘intent to dope’ – and is still racing today with Tinkoff-Saxo – it spelled the end of the road for Ullrich. He announced his retirement in February 2007, still adamantly denying that he had ever doped.

In June 2013, five months after Armstrong’s doping confession on Oprah, Ullrich felt it was the right time to admit his doping involvement with Fuentes, having already been found guilty of doping in February 2012, when he was stripped of all results from May 2005, which included his third place at that year’s Tour de France. Armstrong had beaten Ullrich again – albeit in the ‘race’ to be first to admit that they’d doped. The stress, and possibly the guilt, in the years since his retirement led to Ullrich being diagnosed with ‘burn-out syndrome’ in 2010, and he spent the next few years trying to recover. ‘I managed to pull myself out of that difficult situation, with the help of my family. I’m proud of that,’ he says. Now he’s come out the other side, and a retroactive two-year ban (imposed in spite of his being already retired) ended in 2013. Ullrich is philosophical about the rights and wrongs of what he’s done, even if what he did, and when, remains hazy.

‘I’d certainly do some things differently,’ he admits. ‘Of course it’s easy to talk about mistakes you’ve made in the past, because, with hindsight, you can see them as mistakes. But the individual athlete didn’t play a major role back then. It was the whole system around you: the teams and the people you had contact with. It would have taken a lot to have gone against the grain, and to most likely have sacrificed your own success as a result.’ Ullrich is contrite, and remains humble, which appears to be enough to have gained him some forgiveness in Germany. Certainly no one has tried to take his 1997 Tour title away from him, just as Riis, who admitted in 2007 to having doped, has been allowed to keep his 1996 title.

‘I mean, it’s never good for the sport if you just cross out several years of victories as if they didn’t happen,’ Ullrich says of Armstrong’s seven docked Tour wins. But there is no talk of Ullrich being handed the titles for the three years he finished second to the American, which would have made the German a four-time Tour winner. Until the time comes when Ullrich says more, you’ll have to draw your own conclusions.

Looking ahead

As a result of further doping cases in German cycling, national broadcaster ARD ceased coverage of the Tour after 2011. But now, thanks to the perception that the sport has gone some way to cleaning up its act, the world’s biggest race will be back on German television in 2015. ‘Now that ARD has decided to show the Tour again, it’s great for the sport,’ Ullrich says. ‘It will be back in the public eye and hopefully lots of people will tune in again. German cycling will benefit from it, I’m 100 per cent sure.’

Currently, Germany doesn’t boast any riders who look like they could win the Tour any time soon, but instead the nation’s strength in depth of top-notch sprinters and one-day specialists – headed by Marcel Kittel and John Degenkolb – bodes well for the future. And Ullrich doesn’t rule out returning to German TV screens himself, but for the moment he knows that his relationship with German cycling fans is still a complex one, so don’t expect to see him behind a microphone when the Tour rolls out from Utrecht this year.

‘I talked to the people involved and we agreed to leave the past behind,’ Ullrich says. ‘But the directors decided to play it safe for this year and they don’t want to make any mistakes. After everything that happened, I’m still a polarising person and they don’t want to offend anyone. I get that. Maybe we can work together in the future.’

Ullrich is well aware that more time may need to pass before he is pardoned for past transgressions, but he remains hopeful that the cycling community will come to see him in a more forgiving light. ‘People say to me, “You haven’t changed much. You’ve always been yourself, during both the good times and when everything seemed to be crumbling around you.” I really hope people will remember me like that and say, “Ulle always stayed true to himself and was always down to earth.” I’d like that.’

Scientists have been puzzling over what makes a bicycle balance since the days of ye olde penny farthing. Many experts suggested those spinning hoops make the bicycle behave like a gyroscope, but it’s not that simple. A group of engineers from Nottingham University identified 25 separate variables that affect a bicycle’s motion, citing that, ‘A simple explanation does not seem possible because the lean and steer are coupled by a combination of effects, including gyroscopic precession, lateral ground-reaction forces at the front wheel, ground contact point trailing behind the steering axis, gravity and inertial reactions…’

What is known is that as long as a bike is moving at a speed of around 14kmh (9mph), it can remain upright without the presence of a rider. But again, scientists can’t explain why. Against that backdrop, throw in the added dimension of a bend and calculating the angle that you can lean while cornering before you hit the tarmac is clearly a complex affair. In the right conditions it’s possible to see angles of 45°, but how do we get to that point?

‘We know there are three real forces acting on the bike and rider,’ says Rhett Allain, keen cyclist and associate professor of physics at Southeastern Louisiana University in the US. ‘There’s the gravitational force pushing the bike and rider down; there’s the road pushing up, which we call “normal” force, and there’s a frictional force pushing the bike towards the centre of the circular path that it’s moving in.’ 

The fake force

There’s also centrifugal force. ‘This does have an impact but it’s a fake force,’ says Allain. Many physicists argue that centrifugal force doesn’t exist and is simply a lack of centripetal force – an inward-pulling force that ensures the bike moves in a circle similar to gravity pulling inward on a satellite to keep it in orbit. It’s calculated via the equation F = mv²/r, where F is the centripetal force (Newtons), m is mass of bike and rider (kg), v is velocity (m/s) and r is the radius of the corner in metres.

‘The physics of riding a turn is that you do it by accelerating radially inwards, which is down to centripetal force,’ says David Wilson, emeritus professor of engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ‘The force has to come from the tyres. The bike has to lean so that the combination of the reaction from the tyre and the radial force is in line with the resulting force of the bike plus rider.’

Also key to how far you can lean is the coefficient of friction, which is the ratio of the force of friction between two bodies and the force applied on them – in this case the tyre and tarmac. Most dry materials have friction values between 0.3 and 0.6, whereas rubber in contact with tarmac can produce a figure of between one and two. When the surfaces are moving relative to each other – as per cycling – this figure decreases slightly.

For the bike to remain upright, the side force (centripetal) must equal the coefficient of friction, and this figure can be surprisingly large. For instance, a 70kg rider on a 10kg bike speeding at 20mph around a curve with a radius of 20m experiences a centripetal force of 316 Newtons. This force has to be generated by the tyres, and if the force didn’t exist, the bike and rider would simply carry on in a straight line.

Using some impressive trigonometric calculations that would fill a whole book, the coefficient of friction is equal to the tangent function of the maximum lean angle. ‘The wheel will slip when the coefficient of friction is exceeded,’ says Marco Arkesteijn, lecturer in sport science at Aberystwyth University. ‘This can be due to friction force increasing [due to tightening the line through a corner for example] or normal force decreasing [due to, say, a depression in the road].’

The coefficient of friction can also change due to a change in surface. That’s why cornering on a white line can be perilous. ‘This is especially true in the wet,’ says Arkesteijn. ‘Paint is less porous so the water doesn’t disperse.’ 

Rider weight

To complicate matters further is the issue of rider weight. ‘Physics-wise, smaller guys should be able to lean more,’ says Arkesteijn. ‘They’re also usually more agile, which helps.’

Allain is not quite as definite, suggesting that while rider weight matters a ‘little bit’, of greater importance is the rider-plus-bike’s centre of mass. ‘Ultimately, that’s the most important factor,’ he says. Heavier riders tend to be taller riders, especially in the pro peloton, meaning their frame sizes are larger and their centre of mass is higher. You also need to factor in road conditions. If you’re at the limit, a bump in the road can lead to a loss of traction and a fall. UK roads are sometimes grippier than those of our mainland European cousins because they’re more porous to absorb rain and prevent a slippery surface. That’s why our roads are coarser. But they’re often bumpier and in worse condition because of frost damage, hence why cycling and driving in France is an absolute joy when it’s dry.

After all that, what is the maximum lean angle? For mechanical and engineering professor Jim Papadopoulos, that can’t be answered until you throw in one final factor – trail. This is an imaginary line that’s projected down the steerer tube to the ground. If this point is in front of the wheel contact point with the ground, it’s deemed ‘positive’ and is more stable. Behind and the bike is more likely to tip over. Trail reduces the more you lean.

‘Cyclists tend to stay in the positive trail region and don’t exceed 45° of lean,’ he says. ‘It’s usually less, though when the turn is greater than 5m radius, you can reach 45°. That’s because trail becomes less of an issue – then we return to the issue of traction.’

So 45° is possible on a fast, wide, well-surfaced turn, but with so many variables at play, there is, unfortunately, no definitive answer. How far you can lean is a case of trial and (hopefully not too painful) error.

David Millar runs a hand through the dark curls tumbling over his forehead and confesses with wry understatement that he has experienced ‘a very interesting life’. The enigmatic British rider retired last winter after 17 years as a professional cyclist during which his fortunes swung wildly from historic Tour de France success to a ban for drug use and a final public atonement. Through the many peaks and troughs of his professional life, the Scotsman always seemed different to his peers. Stylish, articulate and opinionated, Millar combined a bohemian spirit of nonconformity and rebellion with an aristocratic elegance on the bike – pedalling with a style and grace which French cyclists admiringly refer to as souplesse. Yet in races, he appeared to be fuelled by a ferocity and ambition that evoked the courage of the farm labourers and adventurers who raced so unflaggingly in the earliest editions of the Tour de France. Genteel yet gutsy, the dashing Scotsman was as hard to pin down as he was to race against.

Born in Malta to Scottish parents, Millar enjoyed an itinerant childhood in Scotland, England and Hong Kong, before forging a path into the world of professional cycling through the French amateur racing scene. Unlike modern riders, Millar succeeded in an era when cycling remained a niche sport in Britain and financial support and training help were almost nonexistent.

During his career, Millar won four individual stages of the Tour de France, five stages of the Vuelta a España and one stage of the Giro d’Italia. He became the only British rider to wear every coloured jersey at the Tour de France (yellow for the general classification, green for the points classification, polka-dot for the climbers, and white for the best young rider) and was the first British cyclist to pull on the leader’s jersey in all three Grand Tours.

However, as an impressionable and disillusioned young rider, Millar was sucked into the maelstrom of performance-enhancing drugs that pervaded cycling during his era, and he was banned from racing between 2004 and 2006. After a period of self-doubt and regret, he returned to professional cycling and went on to achieve yet more success as a clean rider, becoming a vocal anti-doping campaigner in the process.  

Country life

The truth is that I got into cycling because I liked the fact it was a little bit mad

Today, Millar, 38, lives with his wife Nicole and sons Archibald and Harvey in a farmhouse close to the cycling mecca of Girona in Catalonia. It has been more than six months since his retirement. How does he reflect on his career? ‘You can’t change anything about the past. But, of course, I would be perfectly happy to start again today as a 19-year-old coming through the British Cycling system,’ he says. ‘It would have opened up so many more doors – with the [British Cycling] academy system and Team Sky and I would have enjoyed a very different life and missed out on the doping era. But at the same time, I’ve had a very interesting life and I am quite thankful of that. I think I’ve had more experiences than most people. The truth is that I got into cycling because I liked the fact it was a little bit mad – having to go off to France as a teenager and chase your dream – and because it’s such an interesting world to be in.’

Tall and lean at 6ft 4in, Millar admits he hasn’t been on his bike much since retiring but he has enjoyed a new sense of freedom and fun after years of strict training. He enjoyed taking part in the Maserati Tour de Yorkshire Ride sportive – for which he’s an ambassador – with his father Gordon in May. A week later he announced on Twitter that he had completed another sportive, enduring five punctures, but happily finishing the ride with a cold beer. Freed from the shackles of team sponsorship, he’s also enjoying the chance to sample new kit and is currently riding a sleek black Factor bike.

‘It’s nice to look forward to a ride and just enjoy cycling,’ he says. ‘Before now, it’s always been a part of my job. Now when I ride, it’s because I want to. I don’t have to worry about hitting numbers in training. I can have a chat and enjoy it. It’s the opposite of what I used to do. I’m a bit more “fair weather” now, too.’

City Racer

This renewed passion for the simple pleasures of cycling takes Millar back to his earliest childhood affection for the sport. He first raced BMX bikes and can remember riding a Raleigh Super Tuff Burner. At the age of 13, he moved to Hong Kong with his father – an airline pilot – after his parents separated, and soon discovered the joy of road cycling.

‘As a kid, I went through all the genres: BMX, mountain bikes, time trialling, road cycling… everything,’ he says. ‘The reason I got into road cycling was because I wanted to race. I had been watching the Tour de France and I fell in love with it.’

Millar would cycle at 6.30am before the roads of Hong Kong became choked with traffic. He also enjoyed exploring Hong Kong’s country parks. ‘It probably set me up nicely for riding in the peloton as the roads in Hong Kong are pretty hectic. I liked riding in the country parks in the early morning, but sometimes I would ride right into the heart of Mong Kok which is pretty wild. Hong Kong is hilly too, so it’s a great place to ride.’

Millar was a keen student of his sport. He says he ‘saturated himself’ with cycling books and magazines and spent many hours trying to ape the smooth pedalling style of Italy’s 1988 world road race champion Maurizio Fondriest and Spain’s five-time Tour de France winner Miguel Indurain. From an early age, he showed an innate talent for time trialling – a skill which would drive his future success in mid-race breakaways and late attacks as well as time trials. He competed in 10-mile time trials in the UK whenever he returned during the school holidays. ‘I think physically and genetically I was quite good at that, but there is also the technical side and my positioning on the bike too,’ he explains. ‘I spent a lot of time working on that. I remember when I raced in the national championships as a junior I was the only guy there on a road bike with clip-on bars. All the others had all the best time trial kit. I think it’s a shame kids now use special time trial bikes as it means a lot of other kids can’t easily get into the sport if they want to.’

Tour de France

After completing his A-levels, Millar moved back to England to live with his mother, Avril, in Maidenhead. But he was determined to pursue a career in cycling and moved to France to race for the St-Quentin amateur team. Today, young British cyclists are able to learn their trade with the British Cycling academy, typically honing their talents on the track before joining professional road teams like Team Sky. But in Millar’s era, riders took the old-school route to the top, racing in amateur ranks in Europe, hoping a pro team would eventually offer them a contract.

‘St-Quentin was good for me because that kind of immersion meant I had to learn French and train and race hard,’ he recalls. ‘I had to be at my best, so I was deeply focused and driven about what I wanted to do. I could have no excuses over there.’ It was a courageous move for a young teenager, but Millar says his passion for cycling and cosmopolitan childhood made the move simpler. ‘I was an expat, so moving abroad was fine. When I was in France, cycling was my whole life. It was me against the world.’

After winning eight races with St-Quentin, Millar was offered a professional contract by five different teams in 1997. He signed with French squad Cofidis under team boss Cyrille Guimard, a former pro who had won seven stages of the Tour de France. Millar competed in the Tour de France for the first time in 2000 and won the first stage – a 16.5km time trial at Futuroscope (a theme park in Poitiers) to claim the yellow jersey, which he had first seen on television back in Hong Kong.

‘It felt pretty amazing, but it is so hard to describe,’ says Millar. ‘The yellow jersey of the Tour de France is the reason I got into cycling – so to wear it was surreal. But I never expected to win it on the first day of my first Tour de France. It’s an iconic jersey, so you get natural respect from the bunch and you see people pointing at you at the side of the road.’

More success followed over the next three years as Millar won additional stages of the Tour in 2002 and 2003, stages of the Vuelta in 2001 and 2003, and the individual time trial at the UCI Road World Championships in Canada in 2003. At times hedonistic and rebellious, Millar enjoyed the trappings of his success, partying in VIP clubs near his home in Biarritz and buying a grand house with a cinema room and wine cellar. He celebrated his World Championships win by flying to the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas.

The fall and rise

However, Millar had been hiding a dark secret. Competing in an era in which drug abuse was rife, he had descended into the murky world of doping, a traumatic and dangerous experience which he described in detail in his 2011 autobiography Racing Through The Dark. Having originally decided that he would race clean, Millar was disillusioned by the sight of doped-up rivals winning races. Over time, he convinced himself of the need to take testosterone, cortisone and erythropoietin (EPO).

On 21 June 2004, Millar was dining in a restaurant in Biarritz when he was approached by three policemen who had been monitoring him. After searching his apartment, they found empty phials of Eprex – a brand of EPO – and two used syringes. Millar spent the night in a cell and after 47 hours in custody, he finally confessed. Millar was fired by Cofidis and suspended for two years by British Cycling. He lost his home and spent months in an alcohol-soaked gloom. ‘It was the same shit every day – I got drunk a lot,’ he says. ‘But I was helped by my family and friends, by Dave Brailsford [then head of British Cycling] and by the British Cycling team who were up in Manchester.’

Devastated and repentant, Millar moved to Hayfield in the Peak District to be close to the Manchester velodrome and the headquarters of British Cycling. He began training and rediscovering his fitness. In 2006, at the end of his suspension, he returned to the Tour de France with the Spanish team Saunier Duval-Prodir. The following year he moved to the Garmin-Slipstream team (now Cannondale-Garmin), whose boss Jonathan Vaughters advocated a staunch anti-doping ethos. Millar became a passionate anti-doping campaigner and an athlete committee member for the World Anti-Doping Agency. ‘No rider gets into cycling to take drugs,’ he says. ‘Today, nobody will have to go through what I did, which is great. Cycling has had a pretty brutal past with drugs, but it’s not like that now.’

In the second half of his career, Millar achieved more success on the road, proving to himself that he could reach the top as a clean rider. In 2006, he won a stage of the Vuelta and the British individual pursuit title on the track. In 2007, he was victorious at the British national championships in both the road race and time trial. In 2009, he won another stage of the Vuelta and in 2011, a stage of the Giro. His most memorable moment was his victory on stage 12 of the 2012 Tour when he won a cat-and-mouse sprint after a breakaway with three other riders. ‘Winning the stage in 2012 meant that my career either side of my doping ban was almost identical,’ he says. ‘I’m proud to have come back and replicated most of what I had achieved before the ban, but doing so clean. It felt good. It felt like closure.’

Since retiring last winter, Millar has been busy. He’s writing a second book, due in October. Then there’s his clothing range with Castelli. ‘It’s strange doing all the conference calls and working on the production, but I’ve always been creative, so it’s been brilliant fun.’

He’s also done a spot of punditry, appearing alongside Chris Boardman and Gary Imlach on ITV4’s Tour de France highlights show. ‘To the recently retired like Jensie [Voigt] and me, now paid to view from the outside, we suddenly realise why the public view Tour de France riders as superheroes,’ he says. Millar has also been coaching his former team-mate and friend Ryder Hesjedal. The Canadian cyclist won the Giro d’Italia in 2012. ‘He’s an experienced rider, but sometimes you just need a sounding board,’ he explains.

After 17 years of glory, shame, excitement, despair, hope and redemption, Millar’s philosophy for the future mirrors his blueprint for battling through a long, hot mountainous day in the Pyrenees. ‘There are moments when you think it’s all over and you feel like giving up but as you get older, you realise you can make it through,’ he says. ‘That ability to not throw in the towel comes when you’ve been in those tough situations before and have got through them. You realise you can survive anything.’

David Millar is an ambassador for Maserati GB

Maps are beautiful things. Their contours, lines and symbols chart history as well as topography, and record detail as well as distance. Even a free handout from the local tourist office, such as the one we receive on arrival in Sardinia, is packed with more intrigue and romance than the flashiest GPS device.

So it always breaks my heart when a hotel receptionist or tour guide takes out their biro and scribbles all over a map just to illustrate the quickest way from A to B. It shows scant respect to the skill and courage of the explorers, navigators, pilots and cartographers who devoted their lives to producing this patchwork of coordinates, elevations and measurements. Maps are extraordinary artefacts and should be treated as such. And now here’s Marcello taking a felt-tip pen to my 1:285,000 scale Carta Stradale Sardegna and defacing its colourful geometry with his thoughtless scrawl.

In one careless swipe he has obliterated a medieval castle, a seaside marina, a spectacular coastal corniche and various centuries-old historical monuments, including Spanish watch towers and megalithic tombs. And this senseless redrawing of history and geography has all come about because I happen to have a cold.

‘So can you suggest a loop that’s not too long?’ I ask, pointing at the map. ‘150 kilometres,’ is the reply.

Until arriving in Sardinia, I hadn’t been out on the bike for two weeks. For the first of those weeks I had been mainly confined to bed. And for 32 consecutive hours of that first week, I had slept solidly, dosed up to the eyeballs on Lemsip and paracetamol. My first bout of man flu in five years had left me as weak as a kitten.

But this counts for nothing in the eyes of Marcello who, like most Mediterranean natives, simply cannot grasp the concept of the common cold. No matter how many times I have tried to convey through gestures and words that my body is not operating at optimum capacity, I am met by polite but blank-eyed incomprehension. It would be easier trying to explain custard.

‘So can you suggest a loop that’s not too long?’ I ask, pointing at the map. 

‘150 kilometres,’ is the reply.

‘Hmm, that’s a bit long. And it’s quite hilly. And I’m still feeling a bit congested.’

Marcello’s mind is clearly wrestling with the abstract concept of a virus triggered by an intemperate climate. He repeats, ‘150 kilometres.’

I take the map. ‘What about this?’ I say, pointing at a squiggly white line that lops off a big chunk of lumpiness. And that’s when Marcello strikes with his felt-tip, defacing hundreds of years of exploration and measurement before finally announcing, ‘That will make it about 40km shorter,’ but in a tone of voice that implies he is no nearer to understanding why anyone should want to do such a thing. (Remember that squiggly white line, by the way – it has a major part to play later on…) 

The VIP treatment

Our hostess Maria Cristina greets us at breakfast at the Villa Asfodeli hotel with the slightly nervous air of someone who is dealing with a potential troublemaker.

‘And for breakfast we offer something a little different, because we know you have special needs,’ she says. She appears to think scissors and other sharp instruments should be removed from within my reach just because I’m wearing Lycra shorts and having trouble walking in my cleats. But in fact she’s embracing Sardinia’s new, welcoming attitude to cyclists, which can roughly be summed up as: ‘We know you are normal people just like us, really.’

As Marcello says, ‘Hoteliers see cyclists a bit differently, so we are trying to reassure them they don’t have to worry, that cyclists like the same things as other tourists.’

Marcello’s company, Sardinia Grand Tour, has been operating adventure itineraries for 12 years, but has seen a noticeable growth in demand for road cycling tours only recently. Sardinia might not have the roadie reputation or heritage of other Mediterranean islands such as Mallorca and Corsica, but it claims to have roads and landscapes no less impressive. Now that we’ve finally agreed on a route, I’m about to see for myself.

As we leave the hotel in the village of Tresnuraghes, a stream of immaculately turned-out locals is arriving at the church opposite for the Sunday morning service: young boys in ill-fitting suits and ties; giggling teenage girls with ribbons in their hair and phones in their hands; men with designer sunglasses and stubble; their wives clutching babies and matching handbags. They are smiling and happy. None of them arrive by bicycle. The emptiness of their lives shocks me.

We leave the village and are soon presented with a panorama of Sardinia’s west coast and its rippling, scorched hills. It’s a cloudless, still day. We follow the road down to the river Temo, soon arriving at the beautiful, bustling town of Bosa. We cross the river via a stone bridge before entering a maze of narrow, cobbled streets and tall, pastel-coloured buildings. For a Sunday morning, it’s a hive of activity. Tourists sit outside bars and restaurants, or wander between trestle tables laden with wine and cheese (it’s a wine festival, says Marcello). They are smiling and happy. None of them are riding bicycles. The emptiness of their lives shocks me.

OK, so Marcello has told me there’s a 12km climb coming up, and I’m feeling a bit jealous of all these happy, smiling people who are enjoying coffees, eating lunch or tasting wine without the spectre of a 12km climb looming over them. I put it down to the antibiotics I’m still on and Marcello’s wanton vandalism of my map which, even before he’d taken his felt-tip to it, hadn’t given any indication of something so arduous as a 12km mountain climb so early in the route.

We have a macchiato outside a bar. Marcello tells me how he studied ‘cycling and wine tourism’ at university. I ponder how those words would never have cohabitated in the same sentence a few years ago. He tells me how all cyclists are ‘big children at heart’, but he’s worked hard to convince hoteliers and other service providers that they expect adult levels of service: ‘Good food, nice rooms and a quiet night.’ That’s why Maria Cristina had been so anxious to satisfy my ‘special needs’ earlier.

We pay the bill and click clack awkwardly across the cobbles to our bikes to ride back along the palm-fringed riverfront and over the bridge to a supermarket. The next village is at the top of the climb, and Marcello isn’t sure whether its restaurant will still be open for lunch or not, so we decide to stock up on bread, cheese and fruit.

The start of the climb takes us tantalisingly close to the grey, bleak castle that dominates the hillside above Bosa. Beneath its 800-year-old walls, another row of trestle tables is dispensing wine, food and happiness to the tourists, but the scene is callously snatched away from me as the road veers sharply to the left. Suddenly it’s just me, Marcello and a road that disappears up into the heat haze ahead. There are no more smiling churchgoers or happy tourists. In fact, for the rest of the day, there will be hardly any traffic at all.

Marcello tells me that Sardinia – which is bigger than Wales – has a population of only 1.5 million. That’s the second-lowest population density of any Italian region. As we climb gradually, we see the hills and ridges of the island extending eastwards. The usual signs of civilisation – pylons, radio masts, chimneys, the smudge of a village or distant blur of a motorway – are all missing. It’s just a rolling patchwork of scrubland, forests and barren slopes. Its emptiness shocks me.

From McEwen to Aru

The most traffic this area has ever seen was in 2007 when Stage 2 of the Giro d’Italia came thundering down these slopes on the way to a sprint finish (won by Australia’s Robbie McEwen) in Bosa.

The following day’s stage to Cagliari was the last time the Giro visited Sardinia, although Marcello is optimistic it may return soon thanks to the exploits of the island’s most popular cycling son, Fabio Aru, who was born about 100km south of here. ‘We were all supporting him during this year’s Giro [where he finished second overall to Alberto Contador],’ says Marcello. ‘He had a reputation as a strong rider when he lived here. He won lots of the local races before he left for the mainland when he was 18.’

I wonder if Aru ever practised on the climb we are grinding up now. It’s not especially steep, but it drags on forever. With no traffic or roadside buildings, the regular, lazy curves are the only distractions from the relentless incline. We have soon lost sight of the Sardinian Sea behind us. Ahead of us, a section of false flat punctuates the climb before thrusting upwards once more. Yet again – and not for the last time – I’m struck by the emptiness and quiet of it all. Quiet, that is, apart from my pneumonic wheezing as I try to hold on to Marcello’s wheel.

I think the name of the village we finally arrive at is Montresta, though the last couple of letters on my map have been obliterated by Marcello’s felt-tip. It’s perched on a slope overlooking forests of cork and oak trees and a plant whose bitter scent has been acting like a Vicks inhaler on my nostrils all the way up the climb, the asphodel, which is used to weave the baskets and ornaments on sale in many Sardinian souvenir shops and beloved of certain types of tourist.

As feared, the village’s only trattoria is closed, but we douse our thirsts with Cokes from a nearby bar. One of the locals is nattily attired in a pair of knee-high, intricately laced-up, polished leather gaiters. We learn from Marcello that he’s a shepherd, and the gaiters are essential to protect him from stinging nettles in the surrounding fields. I’m suspicious. His legwear looks a bit too immaculate. And where are his goats? Sure enough, as we leave the village, Marcello reveals that it had in fact been the shepherd’s day off, but he’d put on his best gaiters to spend his Sunday loafing around at the bar. The road plunges downhill for a few kilometres before a sharp left turn and the resumption of duties in the small ring as we commence an even longer 15km ascent that will take us up to a ridge and the highest point of our route.

From the undulating spine of the ridge we get sweeping views of Sardinia’s interior. Flat-topped mountains rise from lush valleys. It’s late spring, so the island’s vegetation hasn’t yet been drained of its colours by the heat and dryness. As the road flattens, I realise I’m hungry. Ravenous, in fact. But the only sign of civilisation is a church, stood on its own in the middle of nowhere. Once again, the emptiness of this place is startling. If the church is still in use, its Sunday worshippers have long since departed. On the opposite side of the road is a drinking fountain and stone benches in the shade of a tree. We pull over and wolf down our picnic. The restorative powers of a slightly squashed ham and cheese supermarket baguette should never be underestimated. 

The squiggly bit

We crest the next rise and are reunited with our view of the sea. A bit further on is the modern hilltop town of Villanova Monteleone, where Russian rider (and current Tinkoff-Saxo team member) Pavel Brutt led a five-man breakaway on the way to Bosa in the 2007 Giro. The road continues to the popular seaside resort of Alghero, but we are due to take a short cut – the ‘squiggly white line’ so contemptuously dismissed by Marcello and his felt-tip several hours earlier. We find the turn off and ease out of the saddle for another short but testing climb. We arrive at the top to find another spectacular view of the coast, but it’s not the turquoise seas or distant mountains across the Bay of Alghero that have caught our attention. Directly below us is something far more exciting.

The road we are on – that ‘white squiggly line’ that looked so unprepossessing on my map – unspools down to the sea in a long and labyrinthine series of curves and hairpins. We spend a good 20 minutes looking down and trying to plot its course as it regularly disappears behind clumps of trees or beneath rocky overhangs. It looks like a big grey snake slithering in and out of the undergrowth.

On the map, it doesn’t merit a number. It doesn’t even connect two settlements. It joins one bit of emptiness to another. Nor does the map do justice to how sinuous and sprawling this stretch of asphalt actually is. As I was saying at breakfast, maps are wonderful things, but there are some roads even they can’t capture the exhilarating, magical nature of.

Needless to say, the descent is a delight. I feel my mucous cobwebs being blown away once and for all. At the bottom, we join the coast road back to Bosa. The fun hasn’t finished yet, because this 36km stretch of road is a rollercoaster, cresting rugged cliffs and skirting remote coves. The ridge above me is dotted with the ruins of watch towers built by the Spanish during their 400-year rule over the island. Near the top of the longest undulation, after almost 10km with just a couple of brief respites, I encounter the first line of traffic since leaving Bosa: a convoy of tourists riding mountain bikes and wearing flip-flops and sun hats.

Instead of retracing our route through the picturesque streets of Bosa we continue for a couple of kilometres along the coast, where the road comes to an abrupt end at a huge wall of rock. The final 7km of our ride will be solidly uphill.

With my respiratory passages feeling as unclogged as they have in weeks, Marcello and I begin attacking each other with gusto. He has the advantage of knowing where the steep bits are – he launches one attack just as a ‘10%’ sign looms into view – but I have the impetus of a grudge that has been festering all day under the hot Mediterranean sun. When I pip him to the ‘finish line’ outside our hotel, I have finally got my revenge for him desecrating my map with his felt-tip pen seven hours earlier.

Do it yourself

Travel

The nearest airport to Tresnuraghes on Sardinia is Cagliari, which is served from the UK by several airlines. The transfer time to the village is about two and a half hours. Alternatively, you could fly to Olbia, which is in the north east of the island, but this would add about an hour to your transfer time. 

Accommodation

We stayed at the charming, family-run Villa Asfodeli Hotel (asfodelihotel.com, doubles from £60 B&B per night including bike rental) in the centre of Tresnuraghes. As well as providing for cyclists’ ‘special needs’ with a generous buffet breakfast, the hotel offers a fully equipped bike station where you can hire a road bike or service your own. The hotel boasts beautiful gardens and a swimming pool overlooking the Sardinian Sea. 

For food, there is a pizzeria next door, or you can travel the 7km down to the riverside town of Bosa where there is a range of restaurants. We enjoyed a slap-up meal of Sardinian specialities – including sea urchin, tuna carpaccio and cuttlefish in its own ink, washed down with a bottle of the local Nieddera rosé – for €30 a head at the Borgo Sant’Ignazio restaurant in the old town.

Thanks

Thanks to Marcello Usala for arranging the logistics of our trip. His company, Sardinia Grand Tour, offers guided and self-guided cycling tours around the island, including hotel accommodation and bike hire. Seven-night guided tours, including airport transfers, accommodation and most meals, start from €1,090 (£776). More details at sardiniagrandtour.com.

Leaving Istanbul, over the so-called 'Gateway to Asia' that is the Bosphorus channel, was a timely occurrence. After ten days among the bazaars and minarets, allowing our European battle scars of numbed toes, chapped lips and grumbling coughs to heal, Rob and I departed with a desperate need to again rid ourselves of the sedentary life and get back on our bikes.

But we had learnt a valuable lesson on the way in to the city, and rather than tackle the urban carnage of Istanbul's streets again, we opted to get the ferry across the eastern tip of the Marmara Sea to the town of Yalova, where we guessed we would be able to ride into Turkey proper without the traffic. Our ferry was of course late, and by the time we docked in Yalova it was after dark. We began riding in what we thought was the direction out of town, but the road seemed to just ebb from one residential cluster to the next, with no sign of a potential campsite anywhere.

One valuable lesson from our travels thus far was to not fear looking for help however, and with no wild camp opportunities presenting themselves, we stuck our noses into a convenience store which had some land attached to it and asked if we could set up our tents there - a tactic I had used plenty of times before with pubs, petrol stations, shops and houses. In normal circumstances this would probably be thought of as a bizarre and quite possibly intrusive question to ask of a stranger, but another lesson that had been thoroughly driven home over the previous six weeks was that rarely does a cycle tourist find themselves in normal circumstances, and people are generally only too happy to help.

As it happened, our man gave a heartfelt apology and sent us on our way, but not ten minutes later, just as we were slogging up an incline and cursing our late departure, a young lad pulled up alongside on a moped and hailed us down. He had come into the same shop a few minutes after we left, had no doubt heard the story of the two idiot foreigners with bikes and a tent, and had thereupon set out after us. Another short while later, after much enthusiastic beckoning, the three of us were sitting in Ufuk's semi-built loft conversion, cooking pasta on our stoves, sharing amusing lifestyle trivialities, and as for Rob and I, happy to be living the unknown once again.

Wishful thinking

Throughout Europe, with its snow, rain, and wintery temperatures, Turkey had come to assume the role of a cycling Eden in my head. There would be sun, there would be warmth, there would be greenery and springtime pastures galore. Perhaps we would even enjoy the first days of summer on the beaches of the Black Sea, I optimistically fancied.

But little did I realise just how optimistic such dreams were. It was of course still only early March, and as we began to climb up onto the lofty plateau upon which much of inland Turkey lays, the temperature again dropped, evoking memories of Europe, whereby anything other than pedalling or sleeping was uncomfortable. Abandoned, derelict, or unfinished buildings became a prerequisite in the daily campsite search, as we craved the extra protection that these brought, as well as the added conspicuousness. Even better was when we woke up in a soon-to-be chicken shed and unzipped the tent to the sight of an entire team of builders, totally unfazed by our presence, and only too quick to slide a glass of chai (as tea is generally referred to eastwards of Europe) in our direction.

We were to discover that this sort of unassuming hospitality, as well as that of Ufuk in Yalova, was typical of the Turkish, and our entire crossing of this mammoth peninsula was punctuated by these small acts of kindness, which gave as much personal warmth as the hot tea.

Our initial destination was Cappadocia and its network of ancient cities, burrowed beneath the ground in labyrinthine warrens, or built into the curiously formed rocks above with a level of sophistication that The Clangers could but dream of. A couple of rest days were spent under its charm, and a tremendous show of light and colour came by way of watching over a hundred hot air balloons drift into a dawning sky over the town of Goreme, before we turned north east, in the direction of the Black Sea, and Georgia.

Plain to sea

On the road east our paths crossed with another cycle tourist for the first time, and we duly spent the next five days in the fine company of Will, from Ireland, whose intrepid route through Eastern Europe provided many a tale in the evenings - the three of us cooped into a two man tent to eat, or sleeping under motorway bridges to escape the elements.

The landscape of Turkey unravelled magnificently beneath our tyres, and suggested our crossing from one continent to another equally as fully as the cultural, religious and ethnic pointers. Great expanses of land - the sort whose scale one just doesn't find in Europe - fell away on either side of the road for kilometre after kilometre. Strings of mountains, with shades of umber that were again distinctly un-European, could often be seen lurking on the horizon, but the road, almost always perfectly sealed, seemed to take a path that never fully confronted them; they were mere guardians of these empty inland plains, watching our three specks make their way slowly pass through.

The fluidity of the road, the largely rural, small town nature of Turkey's interior, and the ongoing constraints that the weather was dictating, combined with our growing familiarity with life on the bike, combined for some of the most rhythmical times that my trip would experience. From trivialities such as how each item I was carrying had now found its natural place within my panniers, or recognising the right people to approach for information, to the efficiency with which our campsites were now constructed and dismantled, and the sheer mileage that our post-lunch through-and-off sessions were able to deliver.

But as we drew closer to the coast, the unobtrusive mountains that had defined Turkey's tectonic arsenal up until that point became far more offensive in character as they took the form of The Pontic Mountains. We waved goodbye to Will, and to the rhythm of Turkey, at an anonymous junction between Sivas and Erzincan, and watched his solitary figure, framed on an empty road passing beneath two imposing walls of rock, slowly slide from view; as Rob pointed out, a poignant, if a little cliché, image, of the cycle tourist facing his opponent.

Back in the (former) USSR

After over a month of riding we eventually reached Georgia and the Caucasus, a trio of countries – Georgia, Armernia and Azerbaijan – caught between continents, former empires, and great frontiers of physical geography. I was immediately captured by the uniqueness that permeated so much of the country, from the distinguishable Georgian complexion, cuisine, and totally undecipherable language and script, to the ornate, timbered architecture that abounded from central Tbilisi to the high Caucasus mountains themselves, and spoke of a mysterious, degenerative opulence. Christian Orthodoxy continues to be a mainstay of life in Georgia too, but while the country has retained these character traits, something equally as noticeable were the telling signs of our entering the former USSR, with soviet architecture providing a juxtaposed partner to the traditional Georgian style, and peeling Cyrillic signs often frequenting the roadside. Added to the monumental beauty of the country, and Georgia would prove itself to be a treat.

There was of course a price to pay to enjoy these curiosities though, and a small bout of arduousness descended upon us on the 2020m Goderdzi Pass. The paved road had stopped over 30km ago, and after effectively two days of climbing, we had bounced, skidded and pushed our way to the summit, between two walls of snow that lined the roadside. As a curious side note, a group of men then appeared from the mist wielding a dead eagle, which was presented to us, along with the obligatory offer of vodka, before they disappeared back down the mountain into the now-falling snow and darkness.

After a few minutes we found ourselves in a modest blizzard, and in the muck my brake pads duly wore out on the descent, forcing me to adopt a 12-year-old's tactic of dragging my foot along as a speed-checker, while squinting through the snow in an attempt to negotiate the many crater-sized pot holes. It was simply too cold, dark and miserable to stop and adjust anything - we just needed to get off the pass. Refuge (he says) came by way of the village of Adigeni at around half past eight, and we set up our tent in the basement of an abandoned building, desperate to get inside. But it wasn't until we began cooking dinner that we noticed the entire floor was formed of congealed cow pats, and in the corner of the room were the very obvious pointers that this was also a popular human toilet too.

A bat then appeared and began flapping all over the place in the fearful, capricious manner that only a bat could manage, and the silhouette of a stray dog padded around the entrance of our shameful pit. It took all of five seconds to decide whether or not to move on: Too cold; too much snow; too hungry; too tired. The Toilet Towers resort of Adigeni, mysteriously absent from the Lonely Planet guidebook, would have to do.

The race is on

Time constraints, namely the fast-approaching start date of our 19-day Azeri visas, and the necessity to get there on time in order to obtain visas for Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as well as organise passage on a freight ship to Kazakhstan, before they ran out, meant that we were unable to explore too much of the Caucasus mountains proper. But we nonetheless endeavoured with a motorised excursion that took us to within 10km of the Russian border, to a town called Stepantsminda, for a hike up to the impressively located Gergeti Trinity Church.

While not having the time to explore these mountains by bike, we simply couldn’t leave without seeing what, by some definitions, are classed as the highest mountains in Europe, due to their peaks falling on the northern side of the Caucasus watershed. Mount Elbrus, the tallest, reaches 5642m. In the same way that the plains of Turkey betrayed their proximity to Asia, so too do the Caucasus; their scale and proportion seemed too great to be west of the Black Sea, and rather than the watchful, overbearing closeness of a range such as The Alps, the Caucasus were aloof and unconcerned with our presence, as though they didn’t have to remind us of their might. To not have the pleasure of appreciating this from the saddle was a great regret, if not for the heightened experience then for the difficulties of taking photos from the middle isle of a packed mini bus. ‘Sorry buddy, can I just lean over you there? Spasiba.’

Through Gori, the birthplace of one Joseph Stalin, we raced, and on past the capital of Tbilisi, to the only open border with Azerbaijan, which nestles on a plain at the base of the first ramps of the Caucasus and provides a spectacular panorama of the range.

Our final few days in Georgia appeared to have coincided with the much welcome signs of a change in season, and once in Azerbaijan we were blessed with enough sun and low altitudes to even ride in t-shirts. But again, the real warmth came from the people, and where the Georgians had been reserved in their approach to us, the Azeri way was far more vociferous and confident, which belied their Turkish heritage only too obviously.

Tea, rather than the thick, rich Georgian coffee we had been enjoying, again became the drink of choice, and the spoken language - a kind of Turkic-Russian hybrid - was a lot easier to grapple with. With our chosen route across Central Asia, a land with strong Turkic and Russian links, these two languages would become very important to our everyday lives. Words that I had learnt in Istanbul would continue to serve me over six months, and 10,000km, later in China's Kashgar, and the basic Russian that I struggled with upon entering Georgia would mature into conversational chat with yurt-dwellers, on family, food, religion and work, by the time I left Kyrgyzstan.

But Kashgar and Kyrgyzstan felt so far away at this point, as we rolled into the capital of Baku on the shores of the Caspian Sea, with the adventure of Central Asia lying beyond, that they may as well have been in another world. Indeed, in some respects they were, as we continued to learn that despite the trans-continental travel, the world of the cycle tourist is by default often incredibly parochial, with the immediate concerns of food, water, direction, and one's immediate company, almost always taking priority. Our world was the bubble we rode in, from one day to the next, through awe-inspiring landscapes, mundane towns, remote backwaters, and boundaries of nation, ethnicity, language and belief system. We cycled and lived them all. 

For Part 1 of the journey: Preparing for the off

For Part 2 of the hourney : The adventure begins

You can follow Josh on Twitter: @coshjunningham

Hexham doesn’t want cyclists to leave. It’s not so much its historic architecture, nor the twinkling Tyne that exert a restraining pull. Instead it’s good old-fashioned gravity. The town sits in a basin of hills, meaning that whichever way you leave gives you an abrupt start to a ride.

I’m pedalling along the southern exit out of town, the B6306 that’s also known as Gallows Bank, a name with an appropriate sense of impending doom. My cold muscles try to find a rhythm to cope with the climb, but as I pass the Kingdom Hall Of Jehovah’s Witnesses, barely a kilometre into the ride, the thought flickers that I might stop, knock on the door and ask for salvation.

Deciding that it’s way too soon to be calling for divine intervention, I focus on following the wheel of my riding companion and Hexham local, Philip Kennell. He’s wearing merino arm and legwarmers, unable to believe the day has dawned as perfectly as this. The flawless sky and minimal breeze have prompted me to set off in short-sleeve jersey and bibshorts, buoyed by the knowledge that locals wear less than this for a night out in nearby Newcastle… in February.

‘How are you doing?’ asks Philip, in what becomes a regular refrain as my complexion runs the range of reds on the Dulux pain palette, from Blossom White to Volcanic Red, calibrated by the incline we’re tackling.

‘Magnificent,’ I reply, and I mean it. Sometimes life deals you a royal flush and the only thing to do is thank the croupier. This has all the makings of an unbeatable day.

As we clear the outskirts of Hexham I expect the road to flatten, but the climb goes on, and on, and on, an Ariston of an ascent (for those old enough to remember the catchy adverts). Bar the occasional plateau, the road continues to gain altitude for the better part of 25km as we ride through a mosaic of moorland. Come August a tsunami of purple will wash over the heather, but in early summer colour is in short supply, grey stone walls holding back peaty soil and drab undergrowth. The only relief comes from the bright green roadside verge and the blue waters of Derwent Reservoir, sparkling like the window display at Tiffany’s. But I’m not complaining – these are the Pennines after all. 

Spine tingling

The Ford Transit once laid claim to being the backbone of Britain, but the geographical spine has always been the Pennines. Rising in Derbyshire, this rugged ridge of moor and mountain heads north to Scotland, separating Sheffield from Manchester and Leeds from Liverpool, cleaving the Yorkshire Dales in half and slicing Cumbria from Northumberland.

Rugged, frequently inhospitable and surprisingly remote given the cities in their foothills, the Pennines are a watershed for the top half of England. Raindrops that fall to the west of this lumbering ridge flow to the Irish Sea; precipitation to the east ends in the North Sea. The Pennine Way, which rolls from the Peak District to the Scottish Borders, is the daddy of all long-distance paths, but the days when a three-week trek along its topography featured on every student bucket list have long gone. Today it’s Kilimanjaro rather than Keighley, the Himalayas not Halifax that lure backpackers.

All of which leaves the Pennines in the unenviable situation of being familiar in name yet difficult to pinpoint on a map. There’s no standout pointy peak to give the range a shorthand identity, like Mount Snowdon does for Snowdonia. Instead there is simply 400km of hills, as gnarled as the knuckles of a prizefighter’s fist, covered in heather, rough grass and bog. It’s a landscape of rare, wild allure, home to three national parks, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and 20 Sites of Special Scientific Interest.

In short, the Pennines are the perfect counterpoint to cluttered, congested daily life, and today they’re wearing their Sunday best as Philip and I dive down a 20% switchback into Blanchland, on the border between County Durham and Northumberland.

It’s a Hollywood-pretty conservation village, constructed of stone pilfered from the remains of a 12th-century abbey. Buildings include an old schoolhouse, now converted into the White Monk Tearooms, which Philip has been talking up as a popular cycling stop. We’re only 15km into our ride, and I’d never normally take a break so early, but I’m still disappointed to see the ‘closed’ sign hanging. I could do with a shot of caffeine to contend with what lies ahead, a relentless 7km climb up Bale Hill. This type of unbroken ascent feels rare for the UK, especially on such velvet-smooth tarmac.

‘It was all relaid recently for the Tour of the Reservoir race,’ Philip says. To our west, chimneys of disused lead mines pepper the fells, and as I stand out of the saddle, I imagine I’m nearly as desperate for lungfuls of air as the 19th century miners who once choked in the poisonous lead fumes. These days hard graft has given way to fast grouse, the moorland now a playground for game shooters.

Eventually the Ordnance Survey map’s contour lines turn in our favour, and it’s a blistering 6km dive into the market town of Stanhope. We swoop round bends with gleeful abandon, crouched low over the bars as the road tumbles in a double-digit gradient. This same road in reverse is a famous local hill climb.

With a diplomat’s tact, Philip says there’s nothing much to detain us in Stanhope. We’re now in Weardale, a valley sandwiched between the Tyne Valley and Teesdale, our route resembling a ride over the ridges of a giant corrugated sheet. First we pedal west, and after the head-clearing silence of the high moorland, the noise and speed of traffic on the road to St John’s Chapel comes as a rude awakening. Forced into single file, we take turns to lead, motivated by the prospect of a coffee stop. 

A local place for local people

‘Where are you sitting?’ asks Cameron, owner of the Chatterbox Cafe.

‘On the patio,’ I reply. ‘You mean outside – we haven’t got a “patio”,’ he says. ‘You’ll be calling this a bistro next! Where are you from?’

Clearly not from round these parts. My survival instincts kick in and I change my order from skinny latte to mug of coffee. As we wait for scones to finish baking, Cameron comes out with a fresh jug of filter coffee for free refills, clearly keen to welcome cyclists. The cafe itself is the timing/refuel stop of a new, ‘any time’ sportive ride called the Chapel Challenge (aka the Chatterbox Chain Snapper) that takes in the highest roads in England, claimed hereabouts as the ‘Roof of England’, and there’s a leaderboard inside for those who complete the ordeal.

Re-caffeinated, it’s time to see what the fuss is about as we steer our front wheels skywards up Chapel Fell. At the foot of the climb, a sign warns cyclists of the dangers of being caught here in bad weather. It’s seriously exposed, the snow poles along the gutter a telltale sign that the tarmac is prone to vanishing below a blanket of the white stuff.

Today, however, conditions are as hot and breathless as Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President’. Not that this makes the battle with gravity any easier. Viewed in its entirety, Chapel Fell rises 300m over 4km for an average gradient of 7.5%, which doesn’t sound too scary, but as with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, it’s the horror sections that stick in the memory.

As we finally reach the summit my ears pop and Philip turns to me, grinning.

‘You know that bit that seemed to flatten out?’ he asks. ‘That was actually 9%. It just seemed flat because the other bit was 16-20%.’

I understand now why it merits the nickname Vomit Hill, although frankly any one of a number of inclines we encounter on this ride have the capacity to help riders re-examine their breakfast. Posing by the ‘Thank you for visiting Weardale’ sign I’m sorely tempted to Tippex a ‘Y’ in the middle – Wearydale seems more fitting.

A thrilling descent with wide, lazy bends plunges into Teesdale before we turn our backs to the sun and head north. This turns out to be my favourite stretch of the entire ride, cresting the dinosaur-backed hills as we pedal towards Garrigill. We’re now in the South Tyne Valley, where Yad Moss ski station, complete with button lift, gives clues to the climate and contours. To the left, farms snuggle close to the river, idyllic on a bluebird day like today, but terribly isolated in a blizzard. Philip used to live nearby and recalls how when it snowed he would park his car by the main road and rely on a quad bike for the final miles to and from his house.

We push on past farmhouses with flaking whitewash and bruised 4x4s – I suspect that knowing the colour or age of your off-roader would mark you out as a newcomer. ‘Move to the country’ crowds have yet to discover this part of the Pennines.

A sharp turn in Garrigill takes us past a warning sign for cyclists on the classic coast-to-coast route, and as the asphalt pitches upwards again I pity any rider tackling this on a touring bike burdened by tent, sleeping bag and camping gubbins – it’s tough enough on a race-weight road bike. I don’t think I’ve ever spent so long in the little ring, and I greet the discovery of a lower gear on the climb out of Nanthead with the delight of finding a tenner in an old pair of jeans.

‘How are you feeling?’ asks Philip again, which makes me wonder what shade of red I’ve now reached. Ready for lunch is the answer, as I hit the drops for a fast left-hander on the charge into Allenheads. The Forge Studios does us proud with baguette, carrot cake and what Philip refers to as the ‘£5 plunger of coffee’, named in tribute to one of his cycling club who can’t pronounce ‘cafetière’.

Holding out for Hadrian

From here the landscape starts to change, the brown smudge of moorland replaced by the green of broadleaf trees and grazing pasture.
The route I had originally planned headed straight back to Hexham, but with the reckless abandon of a gambler convinced his luck will hold, I decide to go all-in and extend the ride with the hope of seeing Hadrian’s Wall.

Initially it seems as though the bet has paid off, especially with the chance to accelerate fearlessly down a sublime, needle straight descent that’s perfect for a scaredy-cat downhiller like me.

But as we pass Haltwhistle and pick up the Military Road that runs parallel to Hadrian’s Wall, it becomes clear that we won’t get close enough to the Roman fortification for a good view. What’s more, while the Tour of Britain will ride this road when it’s closed to traffic, we have to contend with fast-moving cars and vans, the drivers distracted by the desire to get a good look at the wall.

I decide to push my luck no further, and at the first opportunity we turn off to begin a leisurely roll down to Hexham. Braking to a halt, my Garmin shows the ride to be 145km with 2,600m of ascent and a top speed of 88.5kmh, but all I see are ace, king, queen, jack and 10. Today the Pennines certainly dealt us a winning hand.

Plenty of riders have made the same journey as me – from the Sunday club run to the sportive, to the cut-and-thrust of the race circuit. I have a feeling that to really earn membership into the ranks of the fully fledged cyclist, however, I have to go up against my peers in a properly sanctioned road race. But as I discover, it’s not as simple as turning up on the day with a bike and a positive attitude.

Each weekend, road races are held on a variety of official courses around the country, and the popularity of them is staggering, with many restricted only to members of an official league, with riders requiring a certain number of racing points. Many sell out within hours. Luckily I’ve managed to find an event that’s slightly undersubscribed (a rare occurrence indeed) and secured a place without being part of a team. It’s a 117km race (nine laps of a 13km loop) in Welwyn Garden City, part of the Eastern League, and it’s on open roads.

Wet behind the ears

On race day it’s pouring with rain and I’ve barely slept. Racing is always nerve-racking, but the idea of being in a jostling peloton while mixing it with traffic has me genuinely scared. Amateur road races almost always take place on open roads. That brings with it certain obvious dangers and, although rare, accidents do happen. The most notable in recent years was the death in 2013 of elite rider Junior Heffernan, who hit an oncoming vehicle on a fast descent. But the dangers are minimised as much as possible thanks to the conscientious efforts of organisers and marshals.

‘The rules and regulations on how to organise events are now very strict to ensure rider safety. It makes it a little bit frustrating trying to get it right,’ says today’s race organiser, Stavros Socratous of Finchley RT. The measures include three cars to sit ahead of and behind the race, as well as between the main group and the breakaway where necessary. For certain courses, and in the event I have entered, National Escort Group (NEG) motorbike lead riders are also required to warn traffic of upcoming riders and ensure roundabouts and junctions are clear when the pack arrives. The officials have no authority to stop traffic on open roads, so marshals will request that car drivers stop at junctions, but should drivers ignore these requests and drive into the path of a moving peloton, the riders must stop.

Despite this, and the weather, race HQ (a local football club) is crammed with riders ready to race and a few dozen on the reserve list hoping for a place. ‘The police don’t like us,’ shouts an official during the briefing, ‘and that’s why it’s important to obey the rules. If you cross over a solid white line, or move from the inner lane of the dual carriageway – you will be disqualified.’

Duly warned, we line up behind the race director’s car for the neutralised start. Accelerating to race pace in a pack of 70 riders on open roads is alarming, but I can soon see the appeal. With the support cars and motorbikes in close proximity, and with a feeling of tension buzzing through the pack, this really does feel like the racing I grew up watching. Ahead, riders begin to jostle for position as the initial neutralised phase ends. Feeling slightly out of my comfort zone, I drift to the back of the group.

Once off the leash, the pace explodes and I have to sprint to keep up. As any keen tactician will know, riding this far back in a group offers the benefit of shelter from the wind, but has its disadvantages. I can’t see the road ahead, so corners and shifts in gradient come as an unwelcome surprise. Several riders attempt to force a break, but an excited bunch is chasing down anything that moves. I’ve been edging forward where possible, before sheepishly drifting back each time I fail to take a corner with enough speed. After only 40km has passed I’m certain I don’t have long left in the race before my reserves of energy are totally spent.

Then the rain eases for 20 minutes, and so does the pace. The efforts of the first hour have taken their toll on many, and we settle into a more consistent rhythm. As we tick off the fifth lap, there’s a move ahead. Two riders have made a break, and two others are trying to bridge the gap. Given my woeful sprinting prowess, finding a place in the break is my only hope of a respectable result, so I ditch caution and set off at full speed to escape the pack.

Through the industrial outskirts of town I’m in pursuit. With the race spread out between four groups, the cars can’t cover each section, and a van somehow finds its way in front of me. I overtake it and dig deep to catch the two ahead just as we approach a long dual carriageway. Working together – although after the breathless chase I can’t contribute much – we manage to latch onto the two leaders just as two others bridge over to us. We’re now a fully fledged breakaway. When the race director’s car moves in behind us, we know the gap is over 30 seconds. For three laps we work as a chain gang, and I find the effort overwhelmingly hard. Then, to our shock, the director’s car passes us just as we reach the final lap. The pack less than 30 seconds behind.

Boom and bust

We’re caught by a group of riders, at which point one of my original breakaway comrades pulls off and goes back to the clubhouse. The effort of breaks and chasing packs, as well as the day’s meteorological misery, has seen the original pack of 70 riders whittled down to 23. A rider with a beard pops off the front, but no one is willing to chase. Some are saving energy for the sprint, others are too exhausted. I know I have no hope in the sprint, so for reasons I can’t exactly place, I set off in pursuit, in a move so blatantly reckless that no one attempts to pursue me. The group falls back, but the leader is a far-off dot. I hunker down, rest my hands on the bars and ride as fast as I can. When I reach the base of the climb at the end of the dual carriageway, the pack is close and I realise my number is up. They sweep past me on the ascent. Ahead, the lone rider manages to stave off the pack, while a heated sprint takes place for second. I roll in one minute behind the group, and finish 22nd.

I’m soaked, frozen and exhausted, but I’m satisfied that I have now had one the truest tastes of the sport. It was tough, but I’ll be back.

As any sage will tell you, the key to building something of quality and strength is to get the foundations right. And any bike fitter will tell you that correct bike position and power transfer through your pedals has to begin with the feet.

‘Get this wrong and it’s like the man that built his house on the sand,’ says Mick Habgood, sports podiatrist at Cyclefit, as he talks me through some simple exercises and specific movements while staring intently at my feet. ‘Building on a concrete base is the best situation, and by using customised orthotics we can provide that for your body – a stable, optimally positioned, well-supported platform from which to drive with. The most important aspect of the testing is identifying what type of forefoot the client has and how this position affects the chain of muscular and joint effects at the ankle, knee then hips during each cycling revolution.

‘What’s unique about cycling compared to, say, running is that the variables are much more limited, so what you see in the clinic translates much more into real world scenarios outdoors,’ he adds. ‘The foot remains static and it’s not the sagittal movement [heel to toe] that’s important but the lateral [side to side]. As such, orthotics for cycling are very different as I’m trying to block and balance the foot, not encourage it to move.’

Habgood examines my feet both at rest and during movement. There’s no hi-tech equipment involved at this stage, just his trained eye, a notebook and a pen. Only once he’s finished does the technology arrive. I slip into my cycling shoes, now fitted with wafer-thin, Gebiomized pressure-mapping mats beneath the standard insoles, and climb aboard the fitting jig. ‘We could do this on a turbo trainer, but by using the jig we can quickly dial in your position and also simultaneously check the alignment of your knees using the Dartfish system,’ says Habgood.

As I pedal through a range of intensities, Habgood’s eyes are trained on the monitor, the software providing a real-time, visual representation of the magnitude and spread of pressure my foot is exerting in the shoe. I’m not allowed to see the screen, just in case I’m tempted to alter my natural pedalling style to improve the data. A snapshot of that data is taken and Habgood tells me he’s already certain we can make some improvements, and he produces a disembodied skeleton’s foot to help explain his findings.

‘My goal is to identify asymmetries and to evenly distribute the forces across the entire forefoot from the 1st to the 5th metatarsophalangeal joint (MPJ) so that when you’re attempting to generate maximum power during each pedal stroke you’re not wasting time and energy.’ 

Getting plastered

As Habgood lays strips of wet plaster over my foot, I can’t help admitting that the sensation is rather pleasant. He says, ‘You can use 3D scanning, or take foam impressions or some other weighted impressions, but the reason I do plaster casts with the foot unweighted is because then I’m the one directing what the foot does, not you. When you stand, your foot is not balanced, so not in its neutral position.’

The plaster cast moulds of my feet are used to craft the customised orthotics using carbon fibre, a process that takes a few days, so I have to make a return visit for the final part of the process. Orthotics have evolved a great deal over the past decade. Whereas previously they would have been bulky and heavy, modern use of carbon fibre for the structural element means they can now be thin and strong, making them stable and rigid while adding very little weight or bulk to the shoe. I’m eager to find out whether these fancy inserts can actually improve my riding.

‘There are two main things we can aim to improve: pain and performance,’ says Habgood. ‘Everyone’s foot is different. It doesn’t matter what the foot looks like – it’s how much it moves. In the majority of cases people have an elevation of the first ray. That means their big toe MPJ sits higher than the others when the ankle is in its most neutral position. This is called supinatus.

‘In order to generate power during the down stroke, the foot collapses and pronates [rotates inwards] until the first MPJ sufficiently contacts the sole of the shoe to be able to transmit power. In doing so it slows down the transfer rate of power between the body and the pedal; it increases pressure along the lateral column of the forefoot, and it increases the potential mal-tracking of the proximal joints [ankle, knee, pelvis] throughout the cycling revolution, which increases fatigue and injury prevalence.

‘The greatest benefit of the orthotics is simply to bring the ground up to the foot, and as such the foot is prevented from rotating or drifting unnecessarily and the pressure is distributed over the whole foot and not just one specific area, which is inefficient and would inevitably lead to pain,’ Habgood adds.

As a final step, it’s back to the fitting jig to undergo the same riding protocol as before, only this time with the custom orthotics fitted to my shoes. Once again the Gebiomized pressure-mapping software shows the pressure points on my feet as I pedal. Once the test is over, Habgood shows me the before and after snapshots. The new images show a more even spread of pressure across the whole of my forefoot. Red areas – pressure points or hotspots – have been eliminated entirely. From my perspective, I feel more of a connection with the bike when I pedal, and I’m not aware of there being any one contact point inside the shoe, which Habgood says is the ideal outcome.

‘Any insole that offers an increased level of support is probably better than nothing, but the difference between a prefab [off the shelf] and a full custom orthotic is basically on a scale of varying levels of support and specificity,’ he says. ‘With a full customised orthotic we can consider the foot as forefoot and hind-foot separately and stabilise each accordingly. A regular mistake of prefab insoles is to concentrate too much on the forefoot, as this is the area where the power is being transferred through to the pedal, but so much of the forefoot stability comes from stabilising the hind foot.’

The custom option doesn’t come cheap – these ones cost £395 – but when you consider the money that many riders are prepared to spend on bikes and kit for a few ounces of weight saved or a smidgen of extra speed, if the right orthotics can keep you riding efficiently and injury-free, then they’re surely worth every penny. 

Contact: cyclefit.co.uk

‘Yes that is a real cannon, and yes it has been fired. The fire department was not super-stoked. Why do we have a cannon? The same reason we have a tank I suppose… nobody really knows.’

Military hardware lies at every turn of the 100,000 square-foot (9,300sqm) site of Oakley’s headquarters on the outskirts of the small town of Foothill Ranch, California, and the company’s R&D representative, Stephen de Mille, points out the vintage weaponry in one of the building’s many wide, immaculately kept corridors.

On the driveway to the hilltop facility, visitors are greeted by an Oakley-branded tank aiming over the valley below. Closer to the entrance, a torpedo is mounted in the middle of the car park. A stylised skull and crossbones flag flutters above the building, as if to demonstrate Oakley’s position as the alpha brand in the world of sports eyewear. Don’t mess with Oakley, it seems to say.

Shoot on sight

Within this grey behemoth are those responsible for every step of the eyewear-producing process, from research, testing, design, engineering and marketing, right down to the 500-strong army that constructs each pair of sunglasses in the company’s on-site manufacturing facility.

On entering, I almost feel I should be retina-scanned, but past the imposing exterior and vaulted reception area it gradually becomes clear that Oakley’s philosophy is the antithesis of the military facade. This company seems to feed off infectious creativity and enthusiasm.

De Mille says the $45 million building was originally intended to be the house of company founder Jim Jannard. In 1975, Jannard created a new kind of handlebar grip for motocross bikes, and this is where the Oakley story began. He soon moved into producing goggles and sports eyewear, and eventually sold the company in 2007 for over $2 billion – enough to build a home that looks like the secret lair of a Bond villain.

We enter a test lab, and De Mille requests I don safety glasses for a demonstration that makes me feel like I’m in the best bit of any Bond film – the scene where Q shows 007 how to shoot a villain from 20 paces with a fountain pen.

His presentation of Oakley’s High-Definition Optics starts with a laser test to replicate the left and right eye focusing on a point 15 feet away. To pass, the two red laser dots have to stay together. I’m already visualising sniper sights.

He explains Oakley’s advantage in terms of optics: ‘Our lens material is at its thickest in the optical centre of the lens. Then, as it moves away from the centre, the material becomes thinner. Other manufacturers can only make a lens taper like this horizontally or vertically – they can’t do both at the same time because we patented it in 1989,’ he says. ‘The thickest part of the lens attracts the most light, but by tapering the lens on both axes as you move away from the optical centre, we allow light to come in at its true angle, which creates no distortion whatsoever.’

Holding granules of polycarbonate lens material in his outstretched hand, he adds, ‘Also, we don’t use any glass in our lenses. Although glass tends to provide good optics, it doesn’t provide UV protection. A lot of competitors take a UV filter and sandwich it between multiple glass lenses. This layering process, along with the use of adhesives, causes distortion.’

What’s more, glass is not very good at taking an impact, as we’re about to see. I take charge of the R&D lab’s high-velocity impact test, and fire a steel ball bearing at 102mph into the face of a spec-wearing dummy. Wincing as I push the ‘fire’ button, the projectile shatters the glass lenses. Of course, Oakley’s lenses remain intact under the same test. My ballistic abuse of rubber people continues when I drop a pointed steel weight on to another dummy, this one known as Tommy (I wish they hadn’t named him). Again, the Oakleys survive the impact.

Leaving the sealed testing chamber for the manufacturing area of this labyrinthine bunker, we encounter Woody the terrier sitting patiently on his owner’s desk. De Mille explains that employees’ dogs are more than welcome here. ‘The company was actually named after our founder’s dog, an English Setter called Oakley.’

Optic nerve centre

Noise hits us as a door swings open and De Mille leads us into the powerhouse of the operation. Such is the seriousness of the battle for global dominance that we’re asked to lower our weapons (the camera), for fear of what he terms ‘proprietary information’ being leaked. ‘We manufacture everything here,’ he says. ‘We have three eight-hour shifts running 24 hours a day.’

Humming, jumping, buzzing, manically vibrating machinery fills a vast industrial space. Technicians check readouts and punch buttons. This is an atmosphere of total precision.

‘The raw materials to build one of our iridium coating chambers cost a million dollars,’ says De Mille. ‘Lenses go in face down while a technician uses a computer to choose which minerals to add and how long to keep the lenses in the chamber to get each colour of iridium coating. A vacuum sucks out all the air and vaporises the minerals, which form a molecular bond on the lenses that’s thinner than one molecule.’

Cutting machines bevel lens edges with a diamond tip to create a rounded edge. It has
to be within a tolerance of one 8,000th of a millimetre to meet quality standards. All the lens-cutting machines are named after beers (Stella and Guinness among them), and for quality-control purposes it’s possible to track each lens back to the machine that produced it.

The strangely soothing sound of multi-frequency, ultra-sonic soundwaves emanates from lens cleaning machines. ‘Different frequencies eradicate different sized particles of dust, oil, dirt and fingerprints. This is the cleanest your lenses will ever be,’ says De Mille.

The area reserved for final assembly is like a crime scene tent, plastic sheeting taped from floor to ceiling to keep dust and dirt out. Lenses are popped in, and important people in red tops are there for final quality control.

As we move on, we pass the ‘Ballistic Eyewear’ department. Our guide explains that, behind the tightly locked door, Oakley glasses supplied to the US Special Forces are subjected to even more stringent impact tests – being shot at from multiple angles with 405mph projectiles.

Taking a detour past the office of CEO Colin Baden (who was also the architect of the building for Jannard almost 20 years ago), we peer inside to see a rocket launcher and custom motorcycle. Four ejector seats taken from B52 bombers serve as chairs in the waiting area.

Taking Cav into battle

As Rosie the Staffordshire bull terrier vacates the second-floor conference room, I’m seated before a fan of sketches presided over by Oakley’s director of design, Nick Garfias, and director of concept development Ryan Calilung.

‘Our most recent cycling product, Jawbreaker, was a collaboration, and athlete involvement was really important,’ says Calilung, whose previous work has included Sram’s Doubletap system, and electro-mechanical baby toys. ‘If you want something designed in a primary colour, I’m your man,’ he says.

‘Cav is really technical and gives great feedback. We wanted to give him as much protection as possible, without them being goggles. One of the first inspirations was a samurai helmet. Cav wanted something he could put on to go into battle. I wasn’t allowed to buy the helmet – it was an art exhibit – but it was one of my biggest inspirations.

‘Cav was there from the start. We checked in with him throughout the process, but I couldn’t get him to sit at my desk for a month and a half… it just wasn’t going to happen. So we took it to the lab. Some of us attempted to sprint while using eye-tracking technology to tell you where you’re looking through the lens. This qualified what it meant to have enough field of view. We found the upward field of view was really important. We saw that a lot of areas of the lens that we thought were important turned out not to be important, so we could add ventilation and a new Switchlock mechanism. Then Nick’s team got involved, to capture the emotion.’

‘When we did the first sketches, if we’d put in everything we wanted it would have been gigantic,’ Garfias says before explaining the first steps of taking a concept to a design: ‘We get a list of technical requirements from the engineers – who it’s for, what it’s for, what it costs, how many pieces there are, what kind of hinges, does it have rubber socks [the bits of rubber on the arms of the glasses that grip the side of your head]? Then we start doing sketches. We’ll hone it down to three of four ideas. We’ll refine for a few weeks until we can solidify our idea and take it to the model shop. Then the modeller will create a crude mock-up, with no mechanical stuff in it. But we’ll consider what the engineering guys tell us.’

The power of the pro

Passing Calilung’s desk en route to Oakley’s backyard test track, he explains how even people who are often working with household names still get star-struck. ‘When I was growing up, Greg LeMond was the first American cycling hero. This picture on my desk was the centrefold from Winning magazine, and I framed it because I always wanted this bike, and have had it on my desk for a long time. One day, our global sports marketing manager, Steve Blick, came up to my desk and said, “I want you to meet somebody.” Greg LeMond was standing right there, and he signed the picture for me.’

LeMond was one of the first pros to adopt Oakley sports glasses, and certainly the one who did the most to make the brand the icon it is today among pro riders. Images of him winning the 1986 Tour de France resplendent in Factory Pilot Eyeshades set the style for the peloton for the next 30 years, and Oakley is well aware of the importance of being connected to the big stars of sport, which is where Steve Blick comes in.

Blick looks after Oakley’s sponsored riders, of which there are a great, yet undisclosed, number. While we talk beside the off-road track he helped dig, multiple mountain bike world champion Brian Lopes does a few runs. ‘Peter Sagan was here on Monday, and I surprised him by introducing him to Brian,’ says Blick. ‘Peter was shitting himself – Brian’s his hero!’

I wonder out loud why there’s a gaping hole in the patio. ‘That’s our barbecue pit,’ Blick smirks. ‘We were trying to figure out how to make eyewear from magnesium, and also having parties out here, throwing pallets of wood on to make fires. Someone threw a great lump of magnesium on there and it didn’t go out – it just burnt a hole straight through the concrete.’

That seems to sum up the Oakley experience – a strange blend of machismo, science and fun. Yet for all its posturing and playfulness, it’s also a business that goes to great lengths to protect its position in the global market. Don’t mess with Oakley. It’s got a tank.

Huddled beneath the soaring bell tower of a solitary red-brick church near the northern Italian town of Treviglio there lies a secluded labyrinth of factory buildings, gates and fences painted in the iconic mint-green ‘celeste’ of the venerable Italian bike marque, Bianchi. This secretive complex in Lombardy is the modern headquarters of one of the world’s most stylish and respected bike manufacturers, which was founded 130 years ago by the Italian engineer and inventor Edoardo Bianchi.

Proudly performance-focused, the Bianchi brand has historic associations with Grand Tour-winning cycling champions such as Fausto Coppi, Felice Gimondi, Marco Pantani, Mario Cipollini and Jan Ullrich, and its elegant two-wheeled creations have been raced to victories in 12 Giros d’Italia, three Tours de France, two Vueltas a Espana, 19 Milan-San Remos, seven Paris-Roubaixs, four Liège-Bastogne-Lièges and five Road World Championships. Bianchi also oozes an Italian style that appeals to aficionados of fashion and design from the art galleries of Shoreditch to the bustling cafes of Tokyo.

Established in 1885, Bi anchi claims to be the oldest bike-manufacturer still in existence. Its founder was an orphan who was working in an ironworks by the age of eight. A talented engineer and inventor, he went on to manufacture products as diverse as medical instruments and electric doorbells. In 1885, at the age of 20, he established his own small two-room workshop at 7 Via Nirone in Milan, about 35km west of Bianchi’s current base in Treviglio, and began tinkering with bike designs.

The Italian helped to pioneer the development of ‘safety bicycles’ with equal-sized wheels and lower pedals, which offered a game-changing upgrade from the unwieldy and unsteady penny farthings of previous years. The first safety bike had been developed by the Coventry-based inventor and industrialist John Kemp Starley with his commercially successful ‘Rover’ bike of 1885. In 1888 Bianchi added to his own personal bike designs the pneumatic tyres created by the Scottish veterinarian John Boyd Dunlop for his son’s tricycle, introducing comfort as well as safety. By making steadier and more functional machines, Bianchi was able to promote a new model of bike that would dominate the future of recreational and professional cycling.

Bianchi’s creations were soon cherished by everyone from competitive racers to the landed gentry of Europe. In the 1890s he was asked to visit the Royal Villa at Monza, the home of the Italian Royal Family of Savoy, to teach Queen Margherita how to ride a bike. It was an honour that earned Bianchi the right to a royal seal, one which over time would be developed into the silver eagle that still adorns Bianchi bikes today.

By 1914 Bianchi was producing 45,000 bikes a year, and by the 1930s his factories employed 4,500 people. Today, Bianchi bikes are sold in more than 60 countries. The Bianchi brand also manufactured cars and motorbikes until the late 1960s, but bikes – of all varieties, from road and mountain bikes to electric and city bikes – are the company’s sole focus today.

Throughout Bianchi’s history, prominent associations with successful racers have helped to strengthen the brand. The company’s first sponsorship was of Giovanni Tomasello, winner of the 1899 Grand Prix de Paris sprint competition. Bianchi’s most famous relationship, however, was with Fausto Coppi, the Italian cycling legend of the 1940s and 1950s who won five Giros d’Italia, two Tours de France, Paris-Roubaix and the Road Race World Championships. The late Marco Pantani, who won the Tour and Giro double in 1998, was apparently the most demanding of Bianchi’s sponsored athletes, requesting 30 different frames a year and often demanding minute alterations involving just a few millimetres in the length of his top tube or a few degrees in the angle of his stem. Today Bianchi sponsors Team Lotto NL-Jumbo in the men’s UCI World Tour and Team Inpa Bianchi Giusfredi of the UCI Women’s Road World Cup.

To cycling fans the Bianchi brand will be forever linked with the celeste (pronounced ch-les-tay in Italian) colour that decorates many (though not all) of its bikes. It’s one of the most recognisable shades in the bike industry, though the history of the colour scheme is shrouded in mystery.

In the Bianchi factory canteen, where motherly Italian figures ladle giant portions of pasta, pizza, fish and cheese onto plates for the assorted Bianchi workers, Claudio Masnata, a former Italian track cyclist and now Bianchi’s marketing and communications manager, explains the most popular theories of the origins of the Bianchi celeste. ‘There are two versions, one romantic and one more practical,’ he says. ‘The romantic version is that Edoardo, who was the official supplier to the Italian kingdom, made the colour to honour the colour of the eyes of Queen Margherita, whom he was teaching how to ride a bike. The less romantic theory is that Edoardo acquired a huge quantity of grey and blue paint left over by the navy during the First World War and he mixed them together to form the celeste. Nobody knows for sure.’ 

Into the blue

Our tour of the Bianchi complex begins in the distribution warehouse. With its towering shelves of boxes it resembles the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark. ‘These bikes are being shipped to everywhere from France to Canada,’ says Masnata. ‘We are very popular in Italy and America but the Asia Pacific region is the biggest growth area now. Bianchi has a lot of fans in Japan. It’s huge over there.’

As with most Italian bike brands today, Bianchi’s frames are manufactured in Asia to help keep costs down, but the bikes are designed, tested and pieced together on site in Treviglio. The factory is an Aladdin’s cave filled with racks of bike frames, boxes of components and trays of shiny new wheels. The factory staff – who are mostly dressed in T-shirts decorated with flashes of Bianchi celeste – assemble about 100 bikes per day, with a total annual production of 25,000 bikes. Bianchi sales grew by 20% last year. The brand’s road bikes range from the high-end Oltre XR2 and Oltre XR1 to the race-focused Infinito CV and Sempre Pro, the Aquila CV time-trial bike, the Dama Bianca women’s range and the entry-level Impulso and Via Nirone 7.

If you own a Bianchi it might well have been built by a tall, bald man called Giovanni who works in the Treviglio factory. Giovanni has been building Bianchi bikes for 27 years. He says it takes him about 20 minutes to piece together the components needed to make one bike. ‘Every bike is put together by hand,’ says Masnata. ‘We call it a vertical assembly process, with one man per bike. It’s about responsibility and quality control. If a bike has been assembled by the same person we can identify who made it and we know it has been well looked after. It is also a tradition that the Bianchi eagle sticker has to be applied by hand. It is not a Bianchi bike without the eagle.’

Entering the inner sanctum of a major bike factory can be a revealing but slightly frustrating experience. Any visitor wants to learn about technological innovations and production methods in order to discover what makes a particular bike brand special. But invariably in-house staff are wary of revealing too much, in case rival brands get a sniff of new designs or important secrets. Today our poor guide Claudio walks the tightrope between hospitality and security, and my dictaphone is filled with a series of nervous pleas: ‘Sorry, not here.’ ‘This is off limits.’ ‘Don’t photograph this one please.’ ‘Not that frame, it’s not out yet.’ Before he finally begs: ‘Don’t hate me, please.’

Innovation and technological advances have always been important to Bianchi - from the introduction of its novel front wheel calliper brakes in 1913 and the development of special folding bicycles for the Italian military in 1914 to the adoption in 1939 of Campagnolo’s Cambio Corsa derailleur, which helped riders switch gears without removing their rear wheel. ‘Edoardo Bianchi was like an inventor and that spirit of invention is still in our soul,’ says Masnata. ‘We always want to be innovative and to stay on top of technology and advanced materials. Since the beginning, Edoardo wanted his bikes to be tested in races. The first CEO of Bianchi was the rider Giovanni Tomasello, which just shows the importance of racing to the company. That is why Bianchi has such a big history with riders like Coppi and Gimondi.’

Today Bianchi is particularly proud of its Countervail technology: a vibration-cancelling composite, developed in conjunction with the materials company Materials Sciences Corporation and tested in NASA facilities, which features in the Infinito CV and Aquila CV bike models. ‘Countervail is a kind of elastic carbon material that cancels vibrations by up to 80%,’ says Masnata. Research has shown that vibrations, as well as causing discomfort, can also increase muscular fatigue. ‘This is a very successful patented technology, which is particularly good for the Classics such as Paris-Roubaix and Flanders. Juan Antonio Flecha said the Infinito CV was the best bike he ever had in the Classics and when he retired he came to Bianchi to buy one for himself. Of course, we gave one to him, but it shows how much he loved it.’

As we tour the factory, Masnata points out the Ultra Thin Seatstay technology on the Oltre XR1, Oltre XR2 and Sempre Pro models, which helps absorb shock, reduce any impacts and limit overall weight. The Oltre XR2 also features Bianchi’s X-TEX Cross Weave system, which uses extra carbon strips moulded into the structure of the head tube and bottom bracket to increase torsional rigidity and improve power output.

The factory itself is an endearing mix of cutting-edge machinery and old-fashioned, wood-handled tools. ‘We still use a lot of the machinery and tools that were developed over the years in-house by Bianchi,’ says Masnata.

The ‘Laboratorio Tecnologico’, hidden behind a ‘Restricted Area’ sign, is where the Bianchi bikes are tested and monitored. On the promise that we’ll cover our eyes at the sight of Bianchi’s 2016 models, we are invited in for a quick exploration. The facility resembles a medieval torture chamber for bikes, with components and frames being yanked, pulled and shaken about by ominous machines. One poor seatstay has big yellow and green weights dangling off it. A fork nearby is being repeatedly pulled to check its resistance to horizontal force, while another one is being subjected to repeated vertical impacts to mimic dropping down a curb.

‘We do four main performance tests,’ says Andrea Valenza, engineering and quality manager at Bianchi and an aerodynamics expert who used to work for Airbus. ‘We test the bottom bracket, the chainstay, the headset and the rear triangle. We are very thorough. If the standard fatigue test involves 100,000 movements, we will do 150,000. The most important part for performance is probably the bottom bracket. For stability, it’s usually the headset.’

Secrets of success

Feeling a bit sorry for the bike components being tested to destruction, but reassured that the finished bikes can hold their own in the real world, we finish our tour with a visit to the design centre on the other side of the factory. There’s a quick check of the whiteboards to ensure we don’t see anything we’re not supposed to. All new Bianchi bikes are designed here by a team led by product manager Angelo Lecchi. Fabio Belotti is the creative designer who completes the finished look of the bikes.

‘We have CAD [computer-aided design] software and rapid prototyping machines to create models so we are able to optimise the geometry and improve the design, shape and engineering of the bikes here at the factory,’ says Masnata. He shows me a bike frame made from blue resin, which has been produced by a 3D printing machine. It looks as though it has been constructed from melted Smurf bodyparts but this kind of technology has proved to be a huge help to bike manufacturers worldwide. ‘With these prototypes we can do extensive testing before the bike gets produced,’ says Masnata. ‘Only then will it go to production.’

Prototype models are also examined in the wind-tunnel at the Magny Cours F1 race circuit in France, enhanced using Computational Fluid Dynamics and tested by a team of eight professional riders. ‘In one week we can turn an idea into a real model,’ says Masnata. ‘But the feedback from riders is still one of the most important parts of the process. Every bike has to be good and efficient and enjoyable to ride.’

Examining the Bianchi bikes enshrined in the factory’s reception area, from Fausto Coppi’s vintage 1953 Bianchi Corsa to the slick, carbon Oltre XR2 of 2015, it is easy to see why the company continues to appeal to style aficionados as well as world champions. Bianchi now has fashionable branded cafes in Milan, Stockholm and Tokyo for urban bike enthusiasts to visit, and has teamed up with glitzy partners such as Gucci and Ducati to produce special-edition products that look like they could be showcased in the Tate Modern.

‘Our most distinguishing trait is that we try to perfectly combine technology and performance with Italian design and passion,’ says Masnata. ‘We are Italian and we want to be creative. This is a country rich in fashion and artists so it’s part of our culture. Bianchi bikes have to be technologically advanced and ready to race. They also have to be beautiful.’

Bianchi.com

Fuelling the professional peloton has changed beyond recognition since the days when recipes comprised pasta, pasta and, for variety, brown pasta. Many of today’s team chefs are now minor celebrities in their own right, with social media providing them with a global platform to parade their latest recipes even as the pros are tucking into them after each stage. A few examples from this year’s Tour: ‘Chicken and tomato w/ coriander and roasted fennel,’ Hannah Grant @dailystews (Tinkoff-Saxo). ‘Mussels from #Bretagne, chervil, tarragon, dill fresh, fennel, garlic, carrot and ginger,’ Soren Kristiansen @TheFuelingChef (Team Sky). ‘Fresh carrots with walnuts, garlic, goat’s cheese, garlic toast with humus caviar and anchovies,’ Sean Fowler @Larryvich (Cannondale-Garmin).

‘Twitter has become a useful tool for communicating with recreational riders,’ says Trek Factory Racing’s chef Kim Rokkjaer, who Cyclist is shadowing for the day during Stage 17 of this year’s Tour – 161km from Digne-les-Bains to Pra Loup. ‘We’re also on Facebook and WhatsApp. They’re great for sharing ideas,’ he says as he prepares the breakfast that will fuel the team for what’s ahead.

‘This is my little corner,’ he says of the steel workplace squeezed between a sink and trays of freshly dishwashed cutlery in a corner of the Ibis hotel where the team is staying. Grey plastic trays brim with knives and forks, and the tiled floor is cluttered with large Tupperware boxes that are filled with smaller Tupperware boxes. It feels like a school canteen kitchen, albeit with French radio blasting over the aroma of croissants (for Ibis public customers, not the riders) rather than the paroxysm of adolescent chat.

‘I cook the riders’ food only,’ Rokkjaer says. ‘Over there is space for the soigneurs, who’ll make the staff sandwiches. There are around 24 support staff at the Tour so it would be too much for me to cook everything on my own.’

‘This place is fine to work in,’ he says, gliding between hob, workplace and ingredients with the smooth, calm authority of an electric gear shift. ‘In fact, it’s almost luxury staying at the same hotel for three nights in a row.’ That rare event is made possible due to the previous stage’s nearby finish and a rest day between them. ‘Mind you, we stayed at the same hotel for around six days at the start of the Tour because we arrived the Tuesday before. That’s too long. Time moves slowly at the Tour when you’re stuck in one place.’

Some of the guys only eat white bread because they want quick sugar. It might not be textbook but it’s the riders who ride, not the nutritionist...

Rokkjaer’s typical day follows a metronomic schedule throughout the Tour. Two hours before the riders descend to the dining area he begins prepping breakfast. That’s usually 7.30am depending on the transfer distance between hotel and the start village. At the 13.8km prologue in Utrecht, Rokkjaer had nine riders to feed. Then Fabian Cancellara crashed on Stage 3 and retired after the finish with a broken back. Eight dropped to seven on the morning we infiltrated the kitchen, with Luxembourg’s Laurent Didier failing to start due to gastrointestinal issues.

‘Not your cooking?’ I joke. No reply is forthcoming, and I can only hope the French radio drowned out my potentially ill-judged remark. Or perhaps I was saved by Rokkjaer’s food processor that’s currently blending a mix of berries, orange juice, banana and Yop strawberry yoghurt for an antioxidant-packed start to the day.

‘The riders will also add vitamin powder to the smoothie, or cherry juice, which is pretty big right now,’ Rokkjaer says with a raised eyebrow, indicating that he’s a little dubious. ‘Whether it will become a mainstay, I’m unsure. Six months ago I wasn’t allowed to give vitamin C because research appeared that said it prevented the muscles adapting properly post-ride. Every day there is something new. Maybe I’m a little old fashioned but a lot of these things are fads.’

Gluten-free vs white

There is stronger evidence relating to the dough mix that’s expanding in transparent bowls next to the whizzing berries. ‘Normally I make the bread mixture one day before it’s baked, but today I’ll make the batter for the next two or three days. I make a mix of white and gluten-free. Gluten-free’s better for digestion, but some of the guys only eat white because they want quick sugar. It might not be textbook but it’s the riders who ride, not the nutritionist or doctors. The riders know their bodies.’

Rokkjaer then tells an anecdote about how the team doctors tested Bauke Mollema and his teammates, and said that 80% of them were intolerant to eggs and shouldn’t eat them. ‘I said to the doctor, “That’s great, just great.” Thankfully nothing came of it. Sometimes feeding the riders can become overcomplicated.’

It certainly would be without eggs. As on every Tour morning, Rokkjaer is making porridge with organic oats, honey, salt, olive oil (‘for good fats’) and water. The riders are then presented with an accompanying Tupperware trough of every nut known to man (including almonds, walnuts, pistachios) plus dried fruit. But it’s the humble omelette that provides the protein-packed core to the riders’ breakfast.

‘Every rider has them every morning, usually served with white rice, though sometimes brown if it’s a particularly brutal mountainous stage. They can add ham, cheese and/or turkey slices, depending on their preference.’

Rokkjaer cooks the omelettes in a drop of olive oil but only when the riders are sat comfortably at the table. The first rider to hit the Ibis diner is 22-year-old Bob Jungels, who would go on to finish fifth in the young rider classification and 27th overall, serving notice of his potential. The 6ft 2in Luxembourg rider, tanned and squeezed into compression socks – like all the Trek riders at breakfast – is followed soon after by Colombian climber Julián Arredondo, who measures a whisker over 5ft 5in. ‘Whatever their size, I mix up a three-egg omelette,’ says Rokkjaer. ‘In this hotel I’ll cook them in the kitchen but, if the kitchen’s a distance away, I’ll take a hob out to the table and cook them in the dining room. It’s quicker and means I can keep an eye on who’s coming down.’ 

Permanent pots

I mention the issue of catering envy. Grant at Tinkoff-Saxo and Kristiansen at Sky have mobile kitchens that dominate the hotel car parks. But those are mere pigeon fodder compared to Bora-Argon 18’s truck that measures 19m in length and includes a glass cube and trailer for the world to observe the alchemy within. Rokkjaer has to make do with sharing the kitchen with the Ibis chef, who’s becomingly increasingly agitated with the presence of a writer, dictaphone and photographer.

‘Don’t mind him,’ says Rokkjaer. ‘But kitchen envy? Not a bit of it. It would drive me mad working in a truck all day.’ Instead he liaises with the respective hotel manager and head chef beforehand to ensure there will be a little culinary corner of France reserved for him. By the look of this French chef, who oozes aggressive gallic flair when carving the cardboard tray of eggs in two – one for the public, one for Trek – the Tour chef requires the diplomacy skills of Kofi Annan.

‘Sometimes the kitchen’s main chef doesn’t want you there. That’s when I go to the hotel manager and say we have Alain Gallopin [DS, uncle to Tony and masseur to Laurent Fignon for 10 years] in the team. He still has power in France. I also compliment the chef on whatever they might be cooking at the time. A bit of charm often helps.’

The 43-year-old Dane clearly had it by the bucketful in 1999 when he met his wife. Rokkjaer was a head chef in Bordeaux at the time; his wife an au pair. ‘After that she went to university to study French – she’s Danish – and then she looked for a part-time job at my restaurant. So I gave her a lot of stress in the kitchen! We now have a girl of 17 and boy of 11.’

Similar to the riders, Rokkjaer is away from home for 140 days each year and has been since 2011, when he completed his first Tour. That’s not easy for anyone with family commitments but, in Rokkjaer’s case, it might have saved his marriage.

‘I used to sell wine and coffee, and I was fed up with it. I quit and was down for about six months. I didn’t work – I didn’t do anything. Things were tense between me and my wife. But then I had the opportunity to work on a privately owned super yacht, so I went to New Zealand for two months and was head chef for the rich owners. We were on this 66-metre boat with 18 staff and only six guests. I cooked for only 10 days during two months. The rest of the time was vacation, diving… It was amazing. Soon after I got a call from my friend Nicki Strobel.’

Strobel is now cook for Orica-GreenEdge but was working for Saxobank at the time, in 2010. He’d broken his arm and asked Rokkjaer to cover for him at the Tour de Suisse. Rokkjaer agreed and it went well. The following season, the team split and morphed into Leopard Trek. Their cook had also morphed from Strobel into Rokkjaer. ‘I guess I took his job but we’re still friends. I think the team just wanted someone a little bit older.’

The French Tesco

Rokkjaer soon settled into a pattern. He’d bring basic condiments along to the races (‘stuff like olive oil, balsamic, jam, Nutella’) and then source fresh meat, fruit and veg locally. So does Rokkjaer spend his day seeking out the finest organic ham from nearby charcuteries? ‘No. I always go to Carrefour [the supermarket chain that sponsors the Tour]. They’re always well signed and easy to find.’

Sometimes he’ll source meat and fish from the hotel but only if the product – ‘and staff’ – are up to scratch. This is rare in France, even rarer in Spain. ‘The worst place to cook is in Spain. Nine out of 10 regions have no hygiene rules whatsoever. Once I saw 30 staff in the kitchen and they hadn’t washed their clothing for more than a month. They were hosting a wedding with maybe 600 people. I felt for those people. Three times in my career I’ve said to the doctor, “No one is eating here,” and always it’s in Spain.’ This proved a logistical nightmare. UCI rules mean the riders must stay in their hotel.

Mollema is the last of the riders to leave the breakfast room. He’ll go on to have a disappointing day but, come Paris, he’ll recover to finish seventh overall. ‘The rest of my day today will be quite quiet,’ says Rokkjaer, sipping an espresso from the Trek coffee machine. ‘The riders come back here so the day is pretty clear. But I’ll make a special effort. It’s a tough stage, the start of the Alps, so I’ll source a nice piece of venison for tonight’s dinner. Part of my job is to ensure they recover quickly and properly, but none of them will do that if they don’t enjoy the food. Ultimately, beyond the science, that is the secret to fuelling every Tour rider.’

Pele lifted the World Cup three times, AP McCoy rode to 20 Champion Jockey titles, Muhammad Ali won three undisputed World Heavyweight titles and Michael Schumacher took seven World Drivers’ Championships. But arguably none were so dominant in their sport as Edouard Louis Joseph Merckx. And it’s not just the number of races won, it’s the sheer quality, depth and breadth of his wins that sets him apart: 11 Grand Tours, 28 Classics victories, three World Championships, 17 six-day races, an Hour record that stood for 28 years. He spent a total of 96 days in the yellow jersey, took 34 stage victories in the Tour de France, winning every jersey along the way including the maillot jaune five times, his first by a margin of 17mins 54secs.
He entered some 1,800 races during his career, winning 80 as an amateur and 445 as a professional. As fellow Belgian rider Noël Van Tyghem once remarked, ‘Between us, I and Eddy Merckx have won everything that can be won. I won Paris-Tours, he won all the rest.’

As a young man Merckx was noted for his Elvis Presley looks – a shock of jet black, coiffured hair and sideburns – offset by dark, brooding eyes, a shy personality and the aura of a fragile winner. While there are many archive photographs of Merckx being held aloft, a bouquet in one hand and a wide grin across his face, there are more of the man aboard his machine, mouth slightly open, eyes transfixed on the road a few metres ahead, his expression a beguiling mixture of concentration and indifference. To say, as many of his peers did, that Merckx was difficult to read was an understatement. He would probably have made just as successful a poker player.

As I wait nervously in the foyer of the Eddy Merckx Cycles factory on the outskirts of Brussels, it’s this face that I’m expecting. Merckx rarely grants interviews, and I’m convinced that he’s not going to be an easy customer. Yet as the door finally opens and Merckx strides through, the stoic, slightly unimpressed look on his face vanishes into a warm, almost cheeky smile. ‘Hello Mr Merckx,’ I say, proffering a hand. ‘Just call me Eddy,’ he replies.

Now and then

Although now 70, thicker set and with greying hair, Merckx still cuts an instantly recognisable figure. With him is his grandson Luca, a professional field hockey player in Belgium who bears an uncanny resemblance to his grandfather. When I point this out Luca laughs. ‘Sometimes I see photographs of my grandpa when he was my age, and it’s like looking in a mirror!’ ‘But I was better looking than him, no?’ Merckx retorts with a machine-gun chuckle, which, surprisingly for a man dubbed ‘The Cannibal’, quickly becomes a trademark of his conversation. But between such quips is the same calculated, slightly disarming expression Merckx used to wear on his bike, like he’s analysing and scrutinising not just every word I’m saying, but every thought I’m thinking. In his more contemplative moments he appears more psychologist than former bicycle racer, like he knows something you don’t. It’s a trait that he’s happy to admit to turning to his advantage.

‘I think the hardest race for me was the 1972 Giro d’Italia. I was racing against [José Manuel] Fuente, who had just come from the Vuelta [in those days held before the Tour, and which Fuente had won]. He was a great climber. At the time the Giro was not so fast – not like the Tour de France was – and so the climbers arrived at the feet of the mountains not having suffered that much. He was a better climber than me, so to beat him I had to make him make errors. I had to make him nervous. Psychology is important in racing. He never beat me.’

It’s true, that year Merckx won the Giro. Although Fuente led for four stages, Merckx slowly clawed back time despite Fuente’s fine climbing performances, eventually beating the Spaniard into second by 5mins 30secs. As Graeme Fife recounts in his book, Inside The Peloton, a journalist took a bike and joined the riders on Stage 6 to conduct some impromptu interviews. Italian rider Guerrino Tosello grabbed the microphone and rode up to Merckx – who although safely in the maglia rosa was still attacking relentlessly – and asked him why he couldn’t follow the unwritten code of cycling etiquette and give the other riders a chance of stage victories. Merckx replied, ‘You can say what you like… I’m indifferent.’ So what drove Merckx to these lengths to be dominant, time and again?

‘Because cycling is a passion. Since I was a kid I always dreamed of being a cyclist – in the school holidays I would play Tour de France outside. Why? No one in my family was a cyclist. Why do some people become priests?

‘I always rode my bike but as a kid I never rode big distances, and when I started racing I did not train that much. I was doing lots of other sports as well, mostly basketball because there was a club near where I lived. And swimming, football and tennis, but it is very expensive playing tennis – I could not pay! I just wanted to be a cyclist, and why I didn’t know. It was a passion.’

‘Passion’ is a familiar word amongst cyclists, but it drove Merckx to extraordinary lengths. Perhaps most famous was his breakaway in the 1969 Tour de France. Already leading Frenchman Roger Pingeon by 8mins 21secs, Merckx went into Stage 17 from Luchon to Mourenx knowing all he’d have to do was to ride conservatively to defend the lead. However, he did anything but.

‘I attacked over the Tourmalet and coming down I had a one-minute lead. I said to my directeur sportif, “What shall I do, wait?” He said, “No no, go!” I always used to ride with a little bit in reserve, not full gas, but I just kept riding and the other riders at the back kept losing time, more and more and more. I arrived in Mourenx something like seven minutes 50 seconds ahead. It was a long break, hoo-ey,’ Merckx exhales theatrically. ‘And I was already in the yellow jersey. It was stupid!’

Afterwards Merckx famously said to the gathered journalists, ‘I hope I have done enough now for you to consider me a worthy winner,’ which if that sounds like a barbed comment it’s because it was. He was understandably bitter. At the Giro earlier that year he had tested positive for fencamfamine, a drug not on the banned list but one that had similar affects to amphetamines. He was promptly ejected by race director Vincenzo Torriani, despite wearing the maglia rosa, and suspended from racing for a month. The circumstances, thinks Merckx, were suspicious.

‘The hardest day of my career was Savona [Italy] at the 1969 Giro, for doping. I don’t have anything more I can say about that. Only two days before someone came to me with money to sell the Giro, but I said I’m not interested. They said, “Eddy, think about it, it is a lot of money.” But I said I don’t even want to know how much, so it doesn’t play in my head. It was the worst.’

Merckx looked set to miss that year’s Tour, but the ban was latterly overturned by cycling’s then governing body, the FICP (the Fédération Internationale de Cyclisme Professionnel). The inference from the Merckx camp was that he had somehow been sabotaged for refusing to throw the Giro, with the situation made doubly sore by the fact that Italian Felice Gimondi had tested positive for the same drug the year before but had been let off. Merckx went on to race the Tour, destroying allcomers and providing a highpoint to contrast the year’s early woes.

‘The 20th July 1969 is for me the best memory of my career. It was a dream come true – 30 years since a Belgian rider had won the Tour. I can always remember when I came into the velodrome [de Vincennes]…’ at this point Merckx trails off, and for a moment the dark eyes that have remained almost unblinking look to the ceiling before he closes them. ‘All these people, ooofff! “Eddy! Eddy! Eddy!” Riders say you cannot hear the noise of the crowds, and it’s true, you are so focused. But when you arrive in the velodrome and there are 25,000 people saying your name… I cannot remember much about the second and third Tours, but 1969 was the nicest memory of my career.’

Ride lots

Merckx rode as a professional for 13 years, from 1965 until he retired in 1978, aged 32. By today’s standards that might be considered quite young. Bradley Wiggins was 32 when he won the Tour de France, Cadel Evans was 34, and the likes of Jens Voigt and Chris Horner have ridden professionally into their forties. It’s a fact not lost on Merckx.

‘In 1975 I rode 195 races, big races, small races, and I think some years I rode even more. My generation, we rode all year. Now they focus only on the Tour de France because, OK it is the greatest race of the year, but there are other races. I liked to win the Classics, the stage races, the Tour of Italy, the World Championships. Now with the money involved the Tour de France is more important. But you know there is only one rider who can win it each year.’

Merckx does not, however, harbour any resentment towards the modern sport. Rather he is philosophical, and if anything is pleased at the way things are going. ‘You cannot compare then and now. We received more money than the generation before our generation: me, Gimondi, de Vlaeminck, Ocaña, Poulidor. After our generation the generation of Hinault started to get more money, because we gave a lot to cycling by racing lots and making the sport very attractive to sponsors. It was also the beginning of TV.

‘In our time we were professionals with the hearts of amateurs, now they are professionals with the hearts of professionals. But I think it’s OK – cycling is the hardest sport in the world, so why shouldn’t riders earn similar money to football players? But you do sport because you like the sport. I don’t think you can be a good athlete if you do sport just for the money.’ Yet money has clearly weighed heavily on Merckx’s mind in the past, only it wasn’t necessarily himself he was thinking about.

Each year the big-name riders would get paid (and indeed, still do) to appear at criteriums, the greatest, most profitable of which would come after the Tour. Team leaders such as Merckx would give the winnings away to their teammates as a means of rewarding their often poorly paid help during the big races. Riding one such race – a derny-paced track event at the Blois outdoor velodrome in France – nearly cost Merckx not just his career, but his life.

‘My crash in Blois in 1969 was the worst. I woke up in hospital and they were cutting my head. I say, “Argh!” I have pain, my bone is broken [he had in fact ‘only’ twisted his pelvis and bruised his back]. I stayed in bed for six weeks because of concussion. But I tell you it would maybe have been better if I had broken my hips so it would have taken longer to recover and I could have started riding again rehabilitated. But there was not the education, the osteopaths, at the time. I went back to racing too early and I was never the same in the mountains after the crash.’

Tragically Merckx’s derny-pacer, Fernand Wambst, was killed in the accident, dying from head injuries before paramedics could get him to hospital. Merckx admits this was a harrowing experience, so it’s testament to his mental resolve as much as physical toughness that he was back racing a month later. It wouldn’t be the last time his irrepressible spirit and passion to cycle would come back to bite him.

‘The big mistake in my life was finishing the Tour de France in 1975. I crashed and broke my cheekbone [on Stage 17] but I carried on because I wanted to give the money I earned to my teammates. And then the week after I couldn’t ride criteriums – I felt so bad for my teammates. Still, I should have retired and come back fresher in 1976 [Merckx finished second, just 2mins 47secs behind Bernard Thevenet]. If I have one regret in my life that is it. Sometimes you can have too much courage. I was stupid. But that’s me, I can’t stop.’ 

Not pulling punches

Today Merckx is still involved in cycling, both in the internal machinations of the sport as well as the enthusiast side. ‘I am on the board of Ettix–Quick-Step, and advise for the Tour of Qatar and Oman. I’m also involved in charity rides – like this Sunday I’m going to ride for an MS charity, which I have been doing for the last 15 years. I also did a granfondo in Italy in June and I will do another in Austria in September. I watched the Tour de France and it was good. Froome was very present in the Pyrenees, then towards the end he was suffering a bit, but then Quintana was not so good in the beginning. He did not have enough racing before the Tour de France, which is not the best way to start. You can never train like you race in competition. He got better by the end, but it was too late.’

So what did Merckx make of the treatment of Team Sky by the French press? Or indeed Richie Porte being punched by a spectator on Stage 10? After all, like Porte, Merckx was punched by a French spectator on his way up the Puy-de-Dôme during Stage 14 of the 1975 Tour. (According to cycling journalist Richard Moore in an article on the website Bicycling, once Merckx finished the stage, in third, he went back down the mountain with the local gendarme to identify his assailant, a man named Nello Breton. Merckx pressed charges and the French courts ordered Breton to pay a symbolic one franc in damages.)

‘You know the French, they are strange people!’ Merckx says, chuckling ruefully. ‘You hope that kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore, and that they can take that guy and put him in jail for a few months. But what can you do? There are stupid people.’ And the press?

‘Oi yoi yoi,’ he replies, puffing out his cheeks in exasperation. ‘They think they are better than everybody. They have what we say I think translates as “a big neck” – not modest. So they don’t like it when Froome is winning – they always prefer a Frenchman. They’ve always been like that. When Ocaña won he was French. When he lost he was from Spain!’ At this remark Merckx is momentarily beside himself, his face creasing up in that mischievous grin again, the room reverberating to his barrel laugh. I get the impression it’s a longstanding joke, perhaps one he’s shared with Ocaña, a man who ran Merckx close on a number of occasions.

The most notable of such was in the 1971 Tour, where Ocaña, 7mins 23secs ahead in the general classification, crashed while descending the Col de Menté on Stage 14 and was forced to retire. It speaks as much of Merckx’s sense of justice as it does of Ocaña’s talent that Merckx refused to wear the yellow jersey the next day out of respect.

End on a high note

It’s a tough thing to wind the interview to a close. There is a genuine warmth to Merckx, who for so long in so many accounts and old black and white pictures is portrayed as aloof, somewhat anxious, but with a mechanical spirit that helped him crush his competitors. Yet in real life he is different – a gregarious gentleman with an endearingly mischievous side.

I’m reminded of this just before I leave. As he poses for one last round of pictures, I casually ask if he might sign something for me. ‘No problem,’ Merckx replies, cracking a laconic smile. ‘But do you know how many autographs I have to do? This is why I do not go to many races. Too many interviews, too many people, too many autographs. That’s for the young guys, that’s not me.’

I’m slightly taken aback, worried that I’ve offended him at the last moment. All I can think to say is that I once heard that Mick Jagger had laid eyes on more people, through his years of gigs, than any other human in the history of mankind. ‘Perhaps you’ve signed more autographs than anyone else in the world?’ I tender. I’m not sure Merckx has quite understood the question, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

‘Yeah, yeah! They’re great, the Rolling Stones, they’re unbelievable. Still!’ Merckx enthuses. I ask if he listens to them. He replies yes, and The Beatles, and Elvis Presley and Little Richard. ‘What’s your favourite Beatles song?’ I say. At this, Merckx turns away from the camera and his eyes light up. ‘Michelle!’ he says emphatically, and starts to sing and sway like he’s slow dancing. ‘Michelle, ma belle, sont des mots qui vont tres bien ensemble. Tres bien ensemble...’ It’s the last thing that I expected to happen, but then again, it’s Eddy Merckx. He can do what he wants.