Riding as fast as you could for as long as you could was the main tactic in the early days of road racing when Grand Tours could be won by hours. Now a minute’s delay thanks to a puncture could ruin a rider’s chances over a three-week race and the sport is described as nothing less than chess on wheels. The intricacies and complexities of cycling are what makes it so appealing: an eye for opportunity and a quick mind are just as crucial to success as a ‘big engine’ or good form.
So how do you win a bike race? How do you cope with crosswinds, cobbles, elbows-out sprints, weaving your way through a teeming peloton? Why are steady nerves one of the best weapons in a rider’s arsenal and breakaway artists to be revered? Where do you see the finest showcase of tactical brilliance? Peter Cossins takes us on to the team buses to hear pro cyclists and directeurs sportifs explain their tactics: when it went right, when they got it wrong – from sprinting to summits, from breakaways to bluffing.
Hectic, thrilling, but sometimes impenetrable – watching a bike race can baffle as much as entertain. Full Gas is the essential guide to make sense of all things peloton.
First drawn into the sport while a student in Spain in the mid-1980s, Peter Cossins has been writing about cycling since 1993, contributing principally to Cycling Weekly, Cycle Sport and Procycling. The Monuments, his history of cycling’s five greatest one-day Classic races, was published in 2014, followed in 2015 by Alpe d’Huez, an appraisal of cycling’s greatest climb. He lives in the Ariège in the heart of the French Pyrenees.
ALSO BY PETER COSSINS
Butcher, Blacksmith, Acrobat, Sweep: The Tale of the First Tour de France
The Monuments: The Grit and Glory of Cycling’s Greatest One-Day Races
Alpe d’Huez: The Story of Pro Cycling’s Greatest Climb Ultimate Étapes: Ride Europe’s Greatest Cycling Stages Everybody’s Friend: The Life and Career of Dave Rayner 1967–1994 and His Legacy to Cycling
To Anabel Hernández, an inspiration as a journalist and writer
‘Cycling is a living, breathing art. Those cyclists who forget that are halfway to becoming sloths’
Laurent Fignon, We Were Young and Carefree
It’s late on a baking mid-August afternoon in the French city of Nîmes, which is hosting the start of the 2017 edition of the Vuelta a España. Team buses and trucks are lined out beneath the trees flanking the city’s main boulevard on the western side of the old town, famed for its Roman amphitheatre. Next to some, mechanics are carrying out final checks on equipment, while others provide shelter for riders warming up on stationary turbo trainers for the team time trial that will provide the first test at what is one of cycling’s three Grand Tours, alongside the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France.
With the final reconnaissance of the route already done and an hour until the start, there’s not much for team directors to do except soak up the Midi sun. Wandering through the crowds, I spot Patrick Lefevere sitting in a deck chair doing exactly this outside the bus of the Quick-Step Floors team he has managed under different sponsors for almost thirty years. The silver-haired Belgian is famed for his tactical acuity.
– Excuse me, Patrick. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?
– What about?
– I’m writing a book about tactics in cycling—
– Hah! Good luck!
Lefevere’s booming voice, as deep but not as sonorous as that of Johnny Cash, almost knocks me back and draws the attention of the Quick-Step mechanics and soigneurs, who turn and stare. What have I done to provoke their boss? they’re wondering. And I’m thinking the same.
Lefevere pulls off his mirror shades and looks at me for a few moments, his stare as glaring as the sun. He then points to his right, towards the bike stands and pressure washers where his mechanics have been working.
– See that chair over there. Bring it over here next to me. Let’s talk . . .
Bike racing has been described by American writer Owen Mulholland as ‘chess at 150 heartbeats a minute’, the depiction neatly combining the strategic complexity of trying to outwit 200 other riders when the messages your brain is receiving from every part of your body are telling it ‘slow down!’ Yet, talk to the riders who battle each other within the peloton, that wonderfully seething mass of mayhem that is so mesmerising when seen from the TV helicopters, and to the team directors who are lined out in convoy behind them, and the comparison is more often made to poker. Bike racing is all about bluffing, about hiding what you’ve got in your legs and what card your team is planning to play, about alliances that come together in an instant and are dissolved just as quickly, about keeping your rivals guessing. In the Netherlands, long one of cycling’s heartlands, they have a saying that encapsulates it perfectly: ‘First eat what’s on your neighbour’s plate, then start on your own plate.’
Fundamentally, road racing is a very simple sport. Once the riders are waved away, there are essentially just three different scenarios that can be acted out: a small group of riders escapes and end up deciding the day’s spoils between them; that small group is reeled in before the finish and the best sprinters in the bunch decide matters between them; or the break goes clear but is chased by the teams of the strongest riders, who then dispute the finish between them on a climb.
Its complexity derives from each of as many as twenty-two teams beginning the race with a specific strategic objective, which might be as straightforward as ensuring one of their riders is in that break, or more far-reaching with the stage victory or the leader’s jersey as their ultimate goal. Once the race referee has signalled the start of racing, the twenty-two tactical plans, which will have been agreed on just a few minutes earlier at the briefings held behind the tinted windows of luxury team buses, start to impact on each other like water molecules bouncing around a saucepan over a flame. That there will be a result is inevitable. But what happens in between that flag being dropped and the finish-line banner cannot be predicted and can be totally incomprehensible, especially to the occasional fan but even to someone like me who has spent a quarter of a century watching and writing about bike racing.
In an attempt to better understand and explain the constantly evolving and frequently quite exquisite tactical puzzles that every bike race sets and every rider within it contributes to, I’ve spent a season watching races with a different perspective, focusing more on the various processes that lead to a rider winning a race, and less on the finale and the words and personality of the winner. It has been enlightening and captivating. In doing so, I’ve fallen back in love with the sport that drew me in during the early 1980s, and much more passionately than before. Indeed, I confess that I’ve discovered the full scope of its beauty for the first time.
The result is Full Gas, an explanation of the how and why of bike tactics. It delves into the sport’s history to understand where tactical thinking began and to highlight its development over a century and more. More than anything, though, Full Gas is an experts’ guide into the intricacies of top-level bike racing in the modern era and the tactics that are both its essence and provide so much of its colour. The expertise is not mine, but comes entirely from those who know bike racing from the inside – as racers and team directors. I am extremely grateful to each and every one of them.
And why Full Gas? It is the in vogue term for riding flat out, giving absolutely everything left in the tank. It is the most fundamental tactic of all.
Ally MacLeod thinks that tactics are a new kind of mint.
– Billy Connolly
Before getting too deeply into the subject of cycling tactics and how they have developed, a more fundamental question needs to be tackled: do they actually exist? To be precise, are tactics any more than a rider’s instinctive reaction to what is happening around them, a response that is impulsive rather than pre-planned?
In order to answer these questions, it is useful to understand the difference between strategy and tactics, terms that are frequently used interchangeably, but are significantly different in what they describe. Strategy defines a long-term objective and the plan set out to achieve it, a mission statement, if you like. For example, a team might begin the Tour de France with the aim of winning the yellow jersey in Paris. Each morning, almost as soon as the team’s bus arrives at a stage start, the staff who direct the team on the road hold a briefing to provide the riders with the strategy for that day, framing it within the longer-term view for the race as a whole. So, for a flat stage that is likely to end in a bunch sprint, their sporting director would probably define the strategy as ensuring that the team leader finishes up towards the front of the peloton so that he does not lose any time to his rivals in the battle for the general classification.
Tactics are the more concrete methods that are employed to guarantee that this strategy is carried out successfully. On this hypothetical sprint day, these tactics might include certain riders being designated to set the pace on the front of the peloton, or others riding close to Froome with their bikes set up in a similar way so that they can be quickly exchanged if the Sky leader suffers a mechanical problem. Smaller in scale than strategy, tactics happen within a shorter time frame, they are the initiatives intended to achieve the next step towards the overall objective.
In sport, a team or an athlete’s strategy is usually very easy to define. Most obviously, it is victory, although for some it might be a top-three finish or a place halfway up the table or division. Tactics, too, are generally quite easy to decipher. A football team might, for instance, line up with five defenders against a better or more in-form team, or the coach might ask two of their players to double up on an opponent who is particularly vital to the success of the rival team.
In cycling, however, although a team’s strategy is often clear-cut, tactics are much less so simply due to the number of teams trying to implement tactics designed to achieve their strategies. Almost from the very start of a race, the strategic plans drawn up by many of those twenty-odd teams will be in tatters, perhaps because they haven’t got a rider in the breakaway and a rival outfit has, or they’ve been affected by one of the many unpredictable factors that can always affect a bike race, even on a day when there is not a great deal of action – the punctures, the crashes, the weather changing, a rider not eating or drinking enough.
Does this therefore mean that much of what then happens within a race is instinctive rather than tactical? For instance, when Mark Cavendish is asked about his tactics when sprinting, he insists that he has none, that everything he does in the final 200 metres of a race is completely instinctive. Is a rider attacking on a climb or a descent responding to reflex rather than reflection? Are riders who react to a change in wind direction by moving up through the peloton to ensure they are at the front in case it splits also acting in the same intuitive way as the likes of Cavendish and Marcel Kittel do when a gap opens up amid the mayhem of a bunch sprint that provides them with a clear run to the line?
While readily accepting Cavendish’s perspective, I would suggest that almost everything else that takes place within a bike race before it reaches that point 200 metres from the line is the result of the strategies that the riders are given before a race being applied by means of tactics that are skilfully and often subconsciously employed. Indeed, Cavendish’s ability to employ his unparalleled intuition as the best sprinter road cycling has ever seen depends on that strategy and those tactics working almost perfectly time after time. In short, they provide the opportunity.
There is no better way to illustrate both the existence and necessity for tactics than by looking at a masterclass in their planning and implementation.
It is the afternoon of the nineteenth stage of the 2017 Vuelta a España. The 149.7-kilometre route that meanders from the tiny village of Caso in the remote Parque Natural de Redes through a series of steep-sided Asturian valleys to the port and resort of Gijón on Spain’s Atlantic coast offers a final opportunity for glory to the 150-odd riders within the peloton who aren’t specialist climbers or lightning-fast sprinters.
It will be, says Tejay van Garderen, one of the climbers saving his reserves for the following day’s stage to the summit of the Alto de l’Angliru, a day for ‘some of the savviest guys around. The breakaway artists who know how to win from a group on a stage like that are the riders who are blessed with real tactical skill. They have to know how to expend as little energy as possible when trying to get into the move in the first place and how to save all the resources they can when they’re in the breakaway. Crucially, they also have to know how to win out of that breakaway move, be it in a sprint or by escaping with an attack at just the right moment.’
A little more than three-and-a-half hours after the peloton has rolled away from Caso, after crossing four categorised climbs, the last of them a mere fifteen kilometres from the finish, victory in Gijón will go to Thomas De Gendt, one of the canniest of breakaway specialists. ‘It’s very simple for me,’ De Gendt says of his approach. ‘If I stay in the bunch then I can’t win the stage. It doesn’t matter how good my form is, I’m never going to win a mountain stage because there are so many other good climbers. The same goes for a sprint. I can’t contend with those guys on a sprint stage. As a result, the calculation is effectively made for me: if I want to win, I’ve got to be in the breakaway.’
As the Vuelta peloton gathers at the start line in Caso in the early afternoon, De Gendt’s task is complicated by the fact that he is the one rider every other breakaway hopeful has in his sights. Winning on days such as this has become his signature as a racer, the reason for his renown and popularity among cycling fans. Having already claimed stage wins at the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia, the rider in the red, white and black colours of the Lotto Soudal team is looking to add his name to the elite group of racers who have won stages in all three Grand Tours. But how do you win when everyone has you down as the man to beat?
For a start, it certainly helps if your team has won three stages of the race already. Thanks to the bouquets claimed in earlier breakaways by teammates Tomasz Marczy ´nski (twice) and Sander Armée, the latter coming just the day before, De Gendt is under less pressure to succeed, from his team at least. Three wins for a line-up that lost its nominated leader, Rafael Valls, in a crash just before the Vuelta and started without a recognised sprinter is an exceptional haul.
‘When Valls couldn’t start we were all asked to focus on winning stages,’ De Gendt explains. ‘When Sander Armée won our third, the morale within the team was very good, as you can imagine. Not having a leader makes it easier to get into moves like that – you can do whatever you want – and the stage into Gijón gave us our final opportunity to take advantage of it. It was mentioned in the team briefing that a lot of guys from other teams would also be keen to get into the break, and that this would give us a real chance of winning the stage.’
During the briefing, Lotto Soudal’s sporting directors gave their riders vital information about the stage route, including the difficulty of the climbs and descents, as well as likely tactical scenarios. But De Gendt’s personal plan of attack was already extremely well formed, the seeds having been planted as early as the day of the announcement of the Vuelta route just prior to the start of the season.
‘You look at the stages a bit when they first announce the route and think about possible days that might suit you, but you can only start to make a firm plan once you get the road book and have a good look through that,’ De Gendt says of the race ‘bible’ that all riders receive from race organisers. ‘At the same time, though, you don’t want to look too many days ahead of where you are because you don’t want to lose your focus on the days that are coming. It was only two days before that stage to Gijón that I thought it would be a good one for a breakaway. I think I even said after stage sixteen that stages eighteen and nineteen would be very good for a breakaway, and both times they went to the finish. So I just look two days ahead. Then you need to have the legs in the morning and it’s only then that I make the decision whether I’ll go or not.
‘That day was a good stage to choose because it was a bit too hard for the sprinters, but not hard enough for the climbers. It was typical of the kind of day when breakaways often go all the way to the finish. Usually there’s a big group on days like that. There tend to be three, four, five days on a Grand Tour like that, and on those days it’s just a case of being in the right place when the break starts to form.’
From the start in Caso, the route initially takes the Vuelta riders on a steadily descending and very fast road past a series of hydroelectric reservoirs to what is now the rather inappropriately named town of Rioseco. Within moments of race director Javier Guillén brandishing the flag to signal the official start of racing, Juan José Lobato (LottoNL-Jumbo), Edward Theuns (Trek-Segafredo) and Laurens De Vreese (Astana) accelerate away from the peloton. Within a minute or so, three have become nineteen as De Gendt and fifteen others bridge across to the breakaway group.
‘Being in the break is half the task,’ De Gendt continues. ‘If you’re one of ten guys in the break, then you’ve only got to beat nine other riders rather than the whole bunch. But the key thing about getting into the break is that you’ve got to have the legs to go. If you’re feeling a little bit tired from the day before then you’re better off holding back. But if you’ve got the legs, then any stage is a good one to go.’
As Orica-Scott don’t have a representative among the nineteen-strong group, Chris Juul-Jensen is given the thankless task of achieving the same junction on his own. The Dane makes little headway until the cavalry arrives in the form of a clutch of riders whose teams either ended up with not enough or, like Orica, not a single rider at the front.
The opening climb, the Alto de la Colladona, is the toughest of the stage’s four categorised ascents, rated first-category and, therefore, significantly more difficult than the three third-category tests that come later. Davide Villella (Cannondale), wearing the blue polka dot jersey as leader of the King of the Mountains competition, is first over the summit, with De Gendt second over the top.
‘I came into the Vuelta a little short of my best form, but I knew it would come. When it started to come good, I could see that other riders were realising I was in good shape because they started to watch me much more,’ De Gendt explains. ‘That was the case when I got into the breakaway on stage seven to Cuenca. That day I was with Alessandro De Marchi, Alexis Gougeard, Arnaud Courteille and Davide Villella, and we made a little plan. We decided to go steady until we got to the final fifty kilometres, then we’d go full gas.
‘We all knew what we had to do and by collaborating it gave us the chance to surprise the bunch, but when it’s a flat finish like that then in ninety-nine times out of a hundred there is no chance you will be able to stay away. However, there is that little possibility that the sprinters’ teams may not have enough power to close the gap or they allow just a little bit too much of an advantage to the breakaway. That’s what you’re always hoping for. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out and I didn’t end up winning. But missing out that day may have helped me at Gijón as some of the riders perhaps thought I wasn’t up to it any more and were looking at other guys in the break, which suited me perfectly.’
While he missed out on that stage to Cuenca and the energy expended meant that he had to sit in the pack for the next few to recover his physical resources, De Gendt believes that all time spent in breakaways is useful. Some breaks may be dismissed by commentators and fans as kamikaze, as offering those involved no more than the chance to position their jersey and its myriad brands and logos in front of the television cameras, but he laughs that off.
‘Every time you get into a break you’re giving yourself a chance of going for a good result. I also think you need to be in as many breaks as possible to get the experience you need to win. If you only get into a break three or four times a year, I don’t think you’re going to get enough insight into what it takes to win from a break. That’s why I’m always looking for opportunities to join a break and why I went in the break so many times in the Tour de France,’ says the Belgian, who featured in half a dozen in the 2017 race.
‘By experience, I mean not only the simple fact that you’re fighting for a possible victory, but also that you’re getting a look at the other riders. At the Vuelta, for example, I was in the break with De Marchi two or three times, and that enabled me to see not only how strong he was in that race, but also how he reacts in certain situations. That’s vital when it comes to knowing how they might react if, say, another rider in the break attacks, whether they’re good in a sprint, or if they climb well, and whether they do their share of the work. I know that some guys who get in breaks won’t do that many pulls [on the front] until the last thirty kilometres. But you need to be in the break to see all of those things. If you stay in the bunch you’ve got no idea at all.’
Although there are riders who track De Gendt’s intentions when they are sizing up whether or not to get involved in what can often be a drawn-out and extremely draining battle to get into the breakaway, he dismisses any notion that he’s distracted by such calculations. ‘I don’t look at certain riders trying to get into the break and think, “He’s usually a good guy to work with so I should follow.” It’s more a case of getting into the break and then seeing who’s there with you.
‘That said, usually when I go, other good riders go as well. At the Tour, for example, you tend to see the same selection of riders in the break, the same six or seven names – not in every break, of course, but I guarantee you’ll see very familiar names in the big breaks that have a good chance of making it. Once they do come together, I know who’ll ride full [gas], and which are the riders like Rui Costa who won’t fully commit,’ De Gendt says of Portugal’s 2013 world road race champion. ‘He’s one of those riders who’s always more towards the back of the breakaway group, looking at other riders to do the work and saving as much energy as possible.
‘When someone like Rui Costa is in the break with me, I try to save some strength for when they attack or I push a bit harder on the climbs so that they also have to suffer. On flat sections, you can save some energy when you’re on a wheel, but if you go really hard on a climb they have to go hard if they want to follow, even if they are on a wheel. It’s not so nice for someone who has been saving energy to suddenly have to go full on a climb. It’s hard on their legs, so I’ll do that a few times and see how they react.’
De Gendt’s presence close behind mountains leader Villella at the summit of the Colladona highlights that he’s already putting this tactic to use. With nineteen riders at the front and French star Romain Bardet part of a chase group that is only a minute and twenty seconds behind, De Gendt is already pushing on strongly. Every time a rider drops out of the breakaway group, the Belgian’s chances of prevailing improve.
‘Once you are in a group with just six or seven riders you have to do some pulls. But when you are in a group of, say, twenty riders it’s a bit easier to hang around at the back without anybody noticing that you’re not working. If there are lots of guys in the group, I always try to lose as many of them as possible on the hills or over the last fifty kilometres so that I can ride with a smaller group in the final part of the race and it’s easier to see who is working and who is not.’
Despite De Gendt’s efforts, the breakaway group re-forms on the descent of the Colladona and the valley roads beyond it. Bardet’s hastily formed gang is closing in too. With sixty kilometres covered, the leaders reach the base of the second climb, the third-category Alto de Santo Emiliano. Here, Trek’s Edward Theuns decides to keep the chasers at bay and splinter the lead group again by pushing hard as the road ramps up. When De Gendt’s compatriot is two kilometres from the top, Villella joins him. But he’s not arrived with the intention of collaborating. Instead, the Italian swishes away from Theuns to amass maximum mountains points, his advantage at the summit a minute on the now twenty-six-strong group just behind that’s been boosted by the arrival of Bardet’s little band.
As well as the Vuelta’s King of the Mountains, the break also features Matteo Trentin, leader of the points competition. Winner of three stages thanks to his finishing speed and, it has to be said, the lack of distinguished rivals in that area, the Italian wants to strike a double blow in his attempt to secure the green points jersey in Madrid. Firstly, he wants to secure maximum points at the day’s intermediate sprint at Pola de Siero, which lies in between the final two climbs. Having achieved that objective, he will then turn his focus to the stage win in Gijón. Consequently, while Trentin sits in the big breakaway group, his Quick-Step teammate Bob Jungels ups the pace on the front of it in order to bring Villella back into line. Soon after the group passes the MUMI, the Museum of Mining and Industry, housed in one of the many derelict collieries and factories located rather incongruously at the bottom of what are otherwise beautifully wooded valleys, Villella is reeled in by the group with Jungels still in the vanguard.
German climber Emanuel Buchmann is the first to upset Jungels’ shepherding work with an attack as the road heads up the third climb, the Alto de la Falla de los Lobos. Bardet breezes across to him and pushes on harder, with De Gendt also quick to help with sustaining this injection of pace. Lobato, De Vreese, the now tiring Villella and, crucially, Trentin are the first to yield at the back of the group. When De Gendt leads over the pass, he has just seven riders for company.
‘I was looking at the battle for the green jersey and I knew that Trentin would want to be in the break because if he could win in Gijón, then pick up some points at the intermediate sprint on the Angliru stage, he would only have to be in the top seven in Madrid to edge out Chris Froome for the points title. So, I was watching him closely right from the start,’ De Gendt reveals, highlighting the calculations that are often required when assessing who is going to do what. ‘When the group swelled to almost thirty riders, I pushed up the pace on the climbs a little in order to try to get rid of some of the sprinters and also even the odds up in my favour because there were some teams who had four guys in the break and several that had two, and I didn’t have anyone from my team there with me. I deliberately tried to drop the guys who were there to help their teammates win the stage. Unfortunately, they all came back after the climb so my plan wasn’t a total success.’
Although De Gendt is eager to press on, when other riders at the front won’t commit fully the group swells again to number more than twenty riders. By Pola del Siero, Trentin is back with them and is first over the line at the intermediate sprint.
Once again, there are too many hangers-on, too many riders sitting in the wheels and waiting for the final climb before showing their hands. Cannondale’s Simon Clarke and Villella attempt to take advantage of the lull by attacking, but each is chased down. Young Spaniard Iván García is luckier, though. Racing towards his home city in his first Vuelta, which still awaits its first Spanish winner, the UAE rider manages to make his attack stick. His lead has reached almost forty-five seconds when the Quick-Step duo swap roles, Trentin setting the pace for Jungels, who will be the stronger of the pair on the final climb.
Ascending the Alto de San Martín de Huerces, García pushes his advantage out to almost a minute. ‘By that point I was keeping a close eye on Bardet. I knew that he was going to attempt to get across to the lone leader on the final climb,’ De Gendt continues. ‘However, when he did make his move he went so fast that there was no way that I could follow him, and I couldn’t go with Rui Costa and Nicolas Roche either when they started to chase after him. So I started tracking Bob Jungels and that proved to be a wise move.’
Bardet, Chris Froome’s most dogged rival at the Tour de France just a few weeks before, trims back all but a dozen seconds of García’s lead by the summit of the final ascent. A brilliant descender, he soon bridges across to the youngster with Roche and Rui Costa fifteen seconds behind. For the next few kilometres, the race becomes a two-up time trial, the Frenchman and Spaniard sharing the pacemaking in order to keep the Irishman and the Portuguese at a distance. The chasing pair win that little battle, though, and two becomes four at the front.
With half a dozen kilometres to the line in Gijón, Roche attacks. Thanks to his show of force on the final climb, Bardet has revealed he’s the strongest, and Rui Costa and García look to him to respond. The Frenchman does, and Roche is reeled in with four kilometres left. The quartet barely have a chance to size each other up again, though, before Jungels bridges across to them with Navarro, De Gendt and two others glued to his wheel.
Roche, once quick in a sprint before a greater focus on climbing drew much of the speed from his legs, signals his lack of confidence in this critical skill by attacking with a little less than two kilometres remaining. Navarro and De Gendt jump across to his wheel. The trio have a small gap racing into the final kilometre, although neither the Spaniard nor the Belgian comes through to help the Irishman with the pacemaking.
Tactics may not play a significant role in a bunch gallop, but De Gendt now demonstrates the advantage they can offer when contesting a sprint within a much smaller group. Like Navarro, he keeps glancing backwards as Jungels closes the gap, with four riders on his wheel. The fact that they’ve not assisted Roche suggests they are both confident that they’ve got the resources and fast-twitch fibres in their sculpted legs to give them an edge. Both men are breakaway specialists, but Navarro’s a typical Spanish climber, light in weight and dangerous in an uphill finish. He’s not used to sprinting for victory on the flat, and his window of opportunity closes when Jungels brings the chasing quintet back on terms just before Roche leads around the sweeping left-hand turn with 700 metres to the finish.
With eight riders trailing him, Roche is now in the worst place, with everyone in his slipstream waiting for the right moment to attack off his wheel. He ups the pace, making a long effort that plays even more into the hands of the riders lined out behind him. With 250 metres to go, García accelerates from eighth place with all he has left. He gets two bike lengths clear before De Gendt darts leftwards from third in line and begins to open up his sprint. For a brief moment, we appear to be on the verge of a fairy-tale result in Gijón. However, as García’s speed drops, De Gendt’s increases and at the line he’s two bike lengths clear, clenching his fist to celebrate the victory that completes his Grand Tour set.
He barely has time to enjoy the moment before he’s guided into the TV interview area. ‘That last climb was really steep and I had to go full just to keep on the wheel of Bob Jungels,’ he explains. ‘There were four guys away so I thought we were going to ride for fifth position but the gap was never more than fifteen seconds and we were going full to catch them. Nobody was skipping a turn. Once we caught them, it was like poker. I had good cards so I had to go all in when Nicolas Roche went in the final. I have a fast finish but I didn’t know all of the guys. I just went full and did the sprint of my life.’
Reflecting on the victory a few weeks later, De Gendt insists that he was lucky that his group managed to catch the four leaders in the final couple of kilometres, but agrees with the adage that sometimes you make your own luck.
‘I went in the breaks at the Tour almost every day and that was too much. But at the Vuelta I was a lot more selective and that’s probably why it worked out,’ he says. ‘That’s the key to cycling, that you can always learn and, if you pay attention to those lessons, you will benefit in the end. Experience counts so much when it comes to winning.’
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Across a century and a half, bike racing has developed from a primitive state, where racers generally rode with pacemakers and time gaps were measured in minutes and hours, to become what many perceive as a rather bewildering sport, where the leader is rarely seen at the front and a three-week event can be decided by a few dozen seconds. Over that period, the fundamental development has been the primacy of the team over the individual, a change that the UCI is attempting to counter with a series of initiatives intended to shift the sport backwards towards an age when the major events weren’t so controlled, when technology had less of an impact and when racing, we’re often led to believe, constantly thrilled.
Racing began with Paris–Rouen, the first recognised event to cover a significant distance – 123km – and provide a coherent structure. Held in November 1869, its organisers laid down that ‘All velocipedes, all mechanical machines moved by human force, either by use of weight, by action of the feet or hands, monocycles, bicycles, tricycles, quadricycles or polycycles are eligible for the race. They will only be able to carry a single person, who will drive and steer them, and changing the instrument employed during the event is prohibited.’ The rules added, rather confusingly: ‘Riders are allowed to ride in company or in caravan, but without giving each other any assistance. Two or more riders can’t ride at the same speed or provide each other with mutual assistance via the use of ropes or chains.’
Did this prohibit or permit drafting behind another rider, taking a position in their slipstream in order to avoid cleaving the wind, the first and most fundamental tenet of road racing? Rule-making over the next half-century would suggest the former, but at this point the regulation was ahead of its time. The winner, Paris-based Englishman James Moore, covered the course at an average of just 11kph, well below the speed at which any following rider would gain significant advantage by ‘sitting in’ on a rival’s wheel. Indeed, when it came to tactics, the 118 men and two women who lined up had very few options. The race essentially boiled down to one simple strategy, and Moore undoubtedly spoke for most of the competitors when he described: ‘As soon as the signal was given I pressed on the pedals with all my might.’
On rough roads that became very cloying in the wet weather, Paris–Rouen proved little beyond the fact that velocipedes were liable to frequent breakdowns and that bicycles rather than tricycles were the most efficient racing machine. Crucially, though, it triggered enthusiasm for the sport in France and beyond.
It is difficult to establish who provided the first demonstration of physical strength allied to tactical insight in the nascent sport. Among the most celebrated illustrations of what could be achieved by marrying brain and brawn during that era occurred in the inaugural edition of Bordeaux–Paris in May 1891. Established by Bordeaux-based newspaper Véloce Sport with the aim of increasing its circulation, the 600-kilometre race was also pitched as a duel between the best French and British riders. However, Britain’s top racers, who were all amateurs, were prohibited from competing against France’s top men, who were professionals. In order to guarantee the international flavour of the race, the organisers yielded to the British officials, which left George Pilkington Mills, Montague Holbein and Selwyn Francis Edge as the favourites in the thirty-eight-rider field.
Twenty-six hours after the 5am start in Bordeaux, Mills was the first to reach the Boulevard du Porte Maillot in Paris, with Holbein next to finish an hour and a quarter later. Yet, Mills’ success was no solo grind to victory in the way that James Moore’s had been in Paris–Rouen, and for two reasons. Firstly, although the British riders were not allowed to race against professionals, they were, however, quite happy to employ them as pacemakers and draft behind them. Secondly, thanks to his collaboration with one of these pacemakers, Mills, a colonel in the British army, pulled off road racing’s first significant strategic coup a few kilometres beyond the control point at Angoulême. Mills got back under way following this enforced stop after only a few minutes, to the huge surprise of spectators and officials who were expecting the racers, having covered 127 kilometres, to take a nap. However, while his rivals dallied, Mills rode off to rendezvous with champion racer Lewis Stroud, who was both speedy and very durable. By sitting in Stroud’s slipstream, Mills built up an unassailable lead.
Later that year, France’s leading rider, Charles Terront, produced a performance that eclipsed that ground-breaking success and led to him becoming his country’s first veritable sporting star. Competing in the first running of Paris–Brest–Paris, a 1,200km race that would keep Terront on the road for just thirty-eight minutes short of three days, the Frenchman adapted Mills’ tactic in a manner that would be extremely familiar to riders and fans in the modern era. Rather than using one or more pacemakers to ‘break the air’ ahead of him, Terront sat in behind one pacer while a second man rode on whichever side of him the wind was gusting from, providing him with additional shelter. Incidentally, the same man also carried an alarm clock, letting it ring when Terront appeared on the verge of dropping off and only relenting when the Frenchman was roused from his drowsiness to shout ‘Enough! Enough!’
Three years later, the growing importance of tactical insight in racing was highlighted in two very different ways. The first occurred in the French national kilometre championship at the Vélodrome de la Seine in Paris. Six riders lined up, including Maurice Farman and the favourite Lucien Louvet. All six started off at walking pace and got progressively slower before rolling to a halt and doing a track stand, poised almost stock still and perfectly balanced on the pedals.
Farman was the first to yield, but only made a couple of pedal strokes to take him up to the top of the track’s banking, inviting his rivals to take his place at the front. As he waited for them to move, Farman realised that, with his rivals almost stationary and with the track’s gradient in his favour, he had an opportunity to ambush them. He accelerated hard, gaining twenty metres before his rivals even realised what he was doing. When they did, none of them were keen on taking up the pursuit, and Farman extended his advantage to fifty metres before Louvet finally reacted. At the bell, Farman led by forty metres, but Louvet was gaining, towing the other four riders on his wheel. Going into the final bend his lead was twenty metres. Coming off it, Farman’s rivals were almost on him when Louvet, exhausted by his 600-metre effort, threw in the towel. Farman held on to win by ten metres.
Writing in La Bicyclette, A.M. Peragallo commented: ‘The end of this race seemed to have conclusively proved the result of the championship was false, because Louvet had shown clear superiority, not only over the five [sic] that he had led for more than a lap, but also over M. Farman, on whom he regained more than half of the distance initially lost. However, like the hare in the fable, he had set off too late! Louvet demonstrated the power of his thighs and M. Farman showed the power in his head.’
Fittingly given Peragallo’s conclusion, the publication of Henri Desgrange’s seminal training manual, La Tête et Les Jambes (The Head and the Legs), took place that same year. Although it was six years before Desgrange took up the position of editor at L’Auto-Vélo, which would later become L’Équipe, and nine before he announced the first edition of the Tour de France in the pages of that yellow-papered publication, Desgrange was already well known in French cycling thanks to his racing exploits, which included setting the first Hour Record in 1893, when he covered 35.325km on the Buffalo track in Paris.
Based on his competitive experiences, Desgrange structured the book as if offering guidance to his teenage self on how to train and race in order to reach the top level of the sport. Featuring a good deal of the misogynistic hokum that would later be common in L’Auto-Vélo’s pages, Desgrange also included a good deal of advice that is still fundamental when training and racing now. In his preface, fellow journalist Ernest Mousset stated: ‘The head and legs! It is impossible to express in fewer words and in a more effective manner what cycle sport demands of those who want to devote themselves to it, two qualities that are quite different to each other in nature, but which complement one another. One must have both in equal measure if one is to become a complete racer.’
Desgrange expanded on this, affirming, ‘An intelligent man always beats a brute. The great racers are all intelligent: what I mean is that they all have their special kind of intelligence, clear and lucid understanding of the precise means that they must employ to attain their goal.’ To back this up, he advised: ‘The way in which a rider finishes a climb is, for me, an infallible indicator of their intelligence. And I will even add that it’s at the end of climbs that road races are always decided. The rider who knows how to stay within his limits on a climb, who saves himself for the final metres, who can finish without being overly breathless and is quickly onto the descent or the flat section that follows has victory within his grasp. He will perhaps not drop his rivals the first time, but he will do the third, the fourth or the fifth time.’ More than a century later, this remains an essential piece of advice for road racers.
Desgrange’s instructions on how best to select pacemakers and employ them during competition now reads like a basic guide to building a strong team around a general classification rider. Middling riders are well suited to this role, he suggests, as they tend to take better care of the man they’re pacing. He adds that one of a team of pacemakers should be riding a bike that matches the rider’s own, so that they can swap in the event of a mechanical incident.
He suggests that adversaries be sized up at any sign of fallibility. ‘You must quickly learn to recognise his weak points, test them out from time to time, push the speed up on a climb, in the corners,’ Desgrange advises. These words could equally well have been uttered by modern-day baroudeurs extraordinaires, such as Thomas De Gendt, Jens Voigt or Thomas Voeckler, breakaway specialists renowned for their ability to go clear of the pack and then pick off their rivals in that escape one by one.
While La Tête et Les Jambes does drift into the ridiculous on frequent occasions, Desgrange counselling his charge, for instance, to practise holding his bladder for as long as possible to avoid the need to stop to relieve himself and to get used to parching heat by rinsing his mouth with water and a touch of vinegar after training without swallowing a drop – ‘Only when you can withstand thirst for eight consecutive hours will you no longer need to worry about this,’ he instructs – there is much that evokes comparison with contemporary training and racing, and some sections that offer food for thought about current racing practice.
For example, he rebukes his rider for waiting for a rival who has punctured to fit a new tyre. ‘In racing, as I told you recently, there is never any room for sentiment … The fans will perhaps whistle at you, but what does that matter? You know all too well that the fans know nothing and only focus on the trivialities of racing … It’s necessary for your rivals to think that you are a single-minded man, as someone who can’t be swayed, has no weakness and from whom nothing can be expected. Once that’s been established, they will never ask you for any concession again.’ What, you wonder, would Desgrange make of today’s unwritten rule of racing that results in riders waiting if the race leader is set back by a mechanical problem or a crash?
Desgrange then presses home his belief that riders always need to be cunning and ready to mislead their rivals. ‘If you feel a little under the weather, that’s the moment to proclaim that you’ve never felt so good. When you’re in good form, I can see good reason for loudly stating that you are ill or that you can’t be bothered … don’t let anyone know your true feelings,’ he advises.
Given that long-distance races on the road were still relatively rare, Desgrange’s perceptiveness when explaining how to best prepare for an ‘endurance race’ is startlingly correct. ‘The pace at the start is always terribly quick and we’ve often seen the best being dropped in the opening laps because they’ve been in a bad position,’ he says. ‘Mistakes that often pass unnoticed in a sprint event cannot go unseen in an endurance race … Most of the time it’s the excessive pace being set by a rival that stands out, even though they’re completely unaware of it. You will spot this mistake easily … you will see your man tire bit by bit, struggle to follow the pace; his movements will be erratic, and quickly incoherent. That will be the moment to give a nod to your pacemakers and say goodbye to him in the most gracious way.’
Towards the end of the book, Desgrange exhorts his rider, who is now in his mid-twenties and racing at the highest level, never to allow himself to be dropped. ‘Fight with all you have for as long as you can. Who knows, the rival who drops you may perhaps have made an effort that is beyond his means,’ he asserts with power meter-like prescience.
Desgrange’s insight appears to have influenced racing for a considerable time, or at the very least corresponded closely to tactical thinking in that period, especially in regard to getting the most benefit from pacemakers, who were then very much part of the sport. ‘It’s not just a case of being strong and skilful if you want to win Paris–Roubaix, you also have to select your pacemakers very carefully,’ said Frenchman Maurice Garin after finishing third in the inaugural 1896 edition of what quickly became one of the landmark events on the racing calendar. Seven years on, Hippolyte Aucouturier employed no fewer than thirty-five when he triumphed in Bordeaux–Paris.