On 20 November 2016, Bradley returned to the city of his birth, Ghent, to partner Mark Cavendish in a Six Day, for what turned out to be the final run of his career. He spoke of remembering the smell of embrocation on the legs of the riders when he’d been there as a child, how it felt like coming home. On the very boards that his father had raced on 30 years earlier, Wiggo and Cav won the title – a fitting end to an extraordinary racing career. Once the formal interviews were over and the TV networks were off air, my co-commentator Tony Gibb and I hung back to watch. Brad took his time but finally held the auditorium mike and addressed the crowd, who’d packed into the track centre, where the celebrations were about to start. Deafening cheers rang out.
‘Hold on, hold on, quiet for f--k’s sake! I just want to say thanks to all of you and particularly to this man.’ [Gives Cav a shoulder hug.] ‘I couldn’t have done this without him.’ [Cav starts to cry.] ‘I love this man and I love this place.’
That night, Cav went to bed early as Brad went to the nearby bar owned by the father of Six Day specialist Iljo Keisse and joined the attempt to drink the place dry. Two weeks later, Brad retired from all forms of cycling.
I often think of Sir Bradley as being more of a club rider in terms of his persona, rather than a star of the sport, which he certainly is. He’d probably take that as a compliment. He’s what actors call the very best in their trade: ‘a natural’.
Chris Froome
Interviewer: ‘It must be a pleasure to stuff all the criticism back down your detractors’ throats?’
Chris Froome: ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but yes, winning feels pretty good.’
If cucumbers could talk, they’d say ‘as cool as a Froome’. A brilliant climber, expert time triallist and superb strategist, he’s the ultimate cold-blooded competitor, who has won a remarkable four Tour de France yellow jerseys as well as the pink and red of the Giro and Vuelta – victory in Italy in May 2018 meant he wore all three at the same time. Chris seemingly has no inner demons. He himself is the demon. Just ask any member of the French press corps. Or indeed any rider.
Polite to a fault and quietly spoken he may well be, but he’s dogged. His nickname is Froome-Dog. A fitting moniker to wrap around the most single-minded, ambitious, dedicated and committed rider of his generation, perhaps of all time.
Froome’s public persona is, to be honest, a marketing man’s worst nightmare, but a PR man’s dream. He comes across as very ‘safe’ if not a little bland. You don’t expect to hear any expletives from Chris. Of course, when he’s interviewed in public he is nearly always accommodating and diplomatic. His replies generally toe the party line, as he is so well briefed. This is a very bright man, who is very conscious of the consequences of his words. When he’s in PR mode, he gives away nothing. He thanks his teammates for the great job they did on the day, he’ll pay respect to his rivals and fashion a modest outlook on his prospects in the race. Everything he says is safe, couched within standard responses.
In person he’s more convivial and charming than he comes across on TV, but he’s not exactly chummy. The character that he presents to the world, his public persona, is a construct, a facade that hides the traits of a cold-blooded, calculated competitor, a man with hidden depths and passions who has overcome illness to become the most dominating cyclist of his generation. Domination is the key word here: his force of personality has enabled him to overpower rivals, both within and outside of his team, in his quest to be the best. He is the most decorated of our heroes: a four-time Tour de France champion, he has six Grand Tour titles in total and at one point held all three – the Tour, Vuelta and Giro – at the same time. Simply remarkable.
When paratroopers train, they do so in full kit with a rucksack on their back. When they take the kit off, they can run for another 16km (10 miles). Chris Froome trained for years with a similar handicap without even knowing it. He discovered in 2010 that he’d contracted bilharzia from swimming in a lake in Africa. Known as river blindness, it’s an infection caused by a parasitic worm that lives in water in the tropics. The parasite can remain in the body for many years, causing damage to bladder, kidneys and liver.
From his arrival at Sky in 2010 until his startling ascension in the 2011 Vuelta, Froome suffered a grey patch of results that were so dismal his team were considering letting him go. Jonathan Vaughters was lining him up to join his team at Garmin. Froome puts his poor performance down to the effects of bilharzia, which weakened him and left him incapable of reaching his true potential until it was finally diagnosed at the end of 2010. The parasite feeds on red blood cells, making his body less capable of storing oxygen – a significant performance hurdle. Even after treatment he succumbed to a series of chest infections because the illness had damaged the immune system of his body.
Once cured, he began to assemble a series of remarkable results. Rather like the paratroopers shedding their backpacks, Froome was suddenly able to perform without the effects of a debilitating condition he’d carried for so long. He was free.
If you look at Froome’s physique and body shape in the 2016 Tour, it’s remarkably different from the chubby, baby-faced kid who
