Me: ‘Cadel? You ok?’
Cadel [very slowly]: ‘Sure. Er, things are good. . . Really good. . . Thanks . . . for asking.’
And so begins a series of questions that take for ever to get a response. When each answer does come, despite great thought and contemplation, they are short and un-complex.
So a sequence of inviting questions from me come back with: ‘Good.’ ‘Fine, yeah.’ ‘Tough, yes.’ It’s as if he thinks I would be entirely incapable of coping with the real answer he has been contemplating during the long pauses. These far deeper answers have now been locked away in a cerebral golden casket to be retrieved later. Much later, when the Sun implodes. It’s not good TV.
Of course, Cadel’s legs responded far faster than his tongue. Lucky for him. Not for me. Cadel went on to become a Tour de France winner and World Champion. I watched him thrive with great fondness. He was and indeed remains among my favourite riders of all time.
His interview skills did get better. A little.
But I still hear bells when I think of him.
‘He’s a bit of a Swiss army knife rider – he can do anything.’
25
The Party’s Over
29 July 2018
I stand at the end of the Champs Elysées after the awards ceremony and idly kick a bit of yellow confetti off my shoe. It’s another British winner of the Tour de France, the sixth one in eight years. Incredible to think that before 2012 no Brit had ever won.
I feel a sense of great pride – and relief. This, mixed with a combination of a mild patriotic tingling and extreme exhaustion, makes me well up with emotion. I’m given to that even on air, as you know. But I don’t have to choke it back this time and my eyes duly fill up with tears. I blink them away and turn towards the Place de la Concorde, not far from the finish. I take a left up to Place de la Madeleine. This square is off-course and the taxi rank near the boutique for Maille mustard is usually accommodating. Apologising softly, in that very English way, I bump past revelling spectators in the street. My job on this Tour is done.
It’ll be a quiet night on my own. I’m too spent to join the rest of the TV crowd for the wrap party. I just want to be somewhere really quiet and not speak another word. I feel like the time triallist who gives his absolute all, right up until the finish line, whereupon he collapses into an exhausted heap. I’ve given it everything too, and now it’s all over I can barely mutter a word.
For those who have been locked in a production truck, this is party time! For me, I’ve been the party host on every single stage. I have been ‘up and on it’ for three weeks. Most of my colleagues have been quiet and focused for the same period. So the graphics guys, editors, producers, directors, play-in staff, and so on now have a chance to let their hair down. I have very little hair. And what I have left will not be going anywhere near a nightclub.
I always take a quiet modest hotel next to the Gare du Nord, where I go deep into monk mode, as I call it. I buy a Chinese takeaway – as un-French a meal as possible. After 21 stages, I’ve usually had my fill of the local stuff. Maybe I’ll have a beer, but Belgian or German only.
I hole up in my room. No company, no TV, no bright light. Quiet.
I just sit there on my own, eating as slowly as I can – unlike the refuelling feeding style I’ve endured for too long at work. As I dine, I reflect on the past three weeks of excitement, fun, boredom, exhaustion, good and bad meals, nights in stuffy rooms, nights in luxurious rooms, thousands of kilometres of tarmac covered in a hire car, the camaraderie and enmity of colleagues, the incredible feats of heroism and brilliance from the riders and, of course, the thought that another British rider has added to the chagrin of the keepers of cycling’s Holy Grail – the French, Belgians, Italians and Spaniards. I smile. I am at peace. I am alone.
Tomorrow I have a first-class ticket on an old-fashioned train with super-comfy seats that will whisk me to Rue station near the Picardy coast. My lovely wife, Steph, and our adorable kids, Margot and Teddy, will meet me there and whisk me off to paradise: Les Tourelles is a chateau hotel full of old-world charm right on the beach at Le Crotoy, a humble fishing village at the mouth of the Somme estuary. It has a harbour dotted with a few modest restaurants and a tidal beach with sand as soft as milled white pepper. Room 14 overlooks the sea, facing south-west. I can sit by the open French windows and the little balconette to breathe in the fresh air and drink in the beautiful view, along with a glass of Jupiler draft beer from the lovely bar downstairs. Here I can come down as easy as a seagull gliding off a cliff. Silence. Well, for about half an hour. ‘Come on, Dad!’ Forget cycling. It’s now time to wrestle. I’ve missed my gang!
26
And So It
