The Climb: The Autobiography by Chris Froome

Author:Chris Froome [Froome, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9780241969434
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2014-06-04T23:00:00+00:00

18

2011: Vuelta a España, Continued

Day of Rest

I awoke in the morning from uneasy dreams and found myself transformed in my bed. Yesterday I was a bargain-basement domestique having a good week; today I was a commodity. Forty-seven kilometres changed my life.

We were having a rest day and our team was scattered like furloughed soldiers about the amazing hotel which was actually a castle, a real castle. It was very old and we were the only team staying in the lovely setting. We were impressed.

Alex Carera, my agent, was arriving to meet me. It certainly was an old-world place to be speaking of new-world things like contracts and cash but it had to be done. We sat in the courtyard and talked, where I knew we would be seen.

I could sense that yesterday had caused some unease in the team. ‘It’s still all about Brad,’ Shane Sutton had said to the media. I hadn’t said anything different and told the microphones I was really happy to be in this position, and that I had never expected it, but that we were all here to work for Brad. I went straight for the party line – the safe option.

I hadn’t spoken to Dave Brailsford or the guys at that level. I hadn’t even spoken to Brad.

We went out for a recovery ride in the afternoon and my teammates chatted quietly to me. Dario was very enthusiastic. He said how proud he was to be with me, to be on a team where now we were leading a Grand Tour and defending the jersey. He had taken a lot of happiness from it. He had been there and had seen me struggling in Castilla y León and Catalunya. On a bad day at the Tour de Suisse, he took care of me. He was one guy who saw I had talent but it wasn’t quite showing. I trusted his views.

I asked Dario what he thought. Did he reckon I could keep this up for three weeks now that I had done it for ten days? Or had I hit my limit and was a bad day looming just around the corner? In an ideal world, could I go all the way?

He just looked at me. ‘Why not? Three weeks. You just have to do ten days again and then you are finished. You do a criterium on the last day and that’s it. You have done it now once already. Do it again. Don’t see it as twenty-one days. Look at it as ten days. Start again tomorrow.’

That’s so Dario. Pragmatic, simple, solid.

I was wary of being the man who goes into hospital with a terminal disease and comes out cured but moaning about the bland hospital food and the thin mattresses. I knew that when I came to Spain I would have been happy just to leave with a contract, any contract. After the last ten days, though, I was starting to think I was worth more. All that potential wasn’t counterfeit.

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