rolling thunder, a cycling tale, part quatre
Following is Part 4 of an excerpt from a manuscript titled “rolling thunder.”
Parts 1-3 of the story are also posted at bicycle.net in the “Hub” under the page for System6. Altogether, parts 1-4 comprise about one third of the total story, so there is still a long way to the end of the road.
Coincidentally, there are about as many chapters to the story as there are days in the Tour de France. We thought you might want to know that.
We’re continuing to post parts of this saga specifically to get feedback from readers/cycling enthusiasts about how much they enjoy reading cycling fiction. So long as it continues to be of interest, we’re likely to keep doling it out.
Once again, before you read any further, our brother in law has advised that this story is subject to copyright by the author. Since he is “in law,” we assume he knows such things. This means we have all the rights to this material, and therefore you have none. So if you were to, say, copy it and call it your own, our brother in law will introduce you to our mother in law. Then you will know what they mean by “the long arm of the law.” We are sure you do not want this.
Now, please enjoy.
ROLLING THUNDER (cont’d)
Chapter 6
The Continental Tire team arrived five days in advance of the ToC to allow for a mini-camp; essentially time to preview the roads they would be racing on in coming days, and to rehydrate and shake off the jet lag. It was a luxury poorer teams didn’t share, often arriving the night before the race and sometimes the morning of, barely in time to slap on whatever gear managed to find its way and go at it with whatever reserves the riders could muster. The team had a block of rooms at the Sheraton on Palisades Road in downtown San Francisco, less than a stone’s throw from where the starting area would be for the race’s first stage. Shamus had room 713, just across from the elevator hall, which he actually liked because he wanted to walk as little as possible so as to save every bit of energy for the bike.
On the night of their arrival Shamus did everything possible to trick his diurnal clock, but found himself wide-awake by nine in the morning – Europe time. Subtracting nine hours of time difference, midnight San Francisco time was when his body wanted him to be up and about. He surfed the pay-per-view offerings but decided against them, knowing it would be far more prudent to try to get back to sleep, rather than watching the TV all night and feeling like hell the next day. He did allow himself to wander down to the lobby for a newspaper and something decaffeinated to drink.
As he crossed the lobby he noted the little store was already locked up, and the cafe was as well, and consoled himself to returning to his room for an expensive raid on the mini-bar, and maybe some ESPN. As he turned back toward the elevators, he noticed a man just entering the lobby via the hallway leading to the hotel parking garage. The man wasn’t particularly remarkable in size or stature, but only for the fact that he wore an entirely black outfit including shoes, jeans, shirt, and jacket, a leather backpack, and even his full-face motorcycle helmet was black and had a smoke-colored face-guard that provided complete anonymity. By the biker’s moderate size – he couldn’t have been more than five foot eight and thinly built – the garb didn’t produce a particularly intimidating look, as it would on someone more physically endowed. It was more likely a fashion statement, Shamus thought. All in all, it wasn’t hardly worth noticing except there was little else to pay attention to in the hotel lobby at that hour while awaiting the arrival of an elevator car to take him back to his place of insomnia.
Shamus entered the elevator and turned and peered out the space between the closing doors in time to see the man remove his helmet on his way to the front desk. For a moment, Shamus had a clear profile of his face — and to his amazement it was a face he knew, though he’d never actually met the man and couldn’t immediately put a name to him.
Shamus had never been particularly good with faces and names anyway. With all the time they spent in hotels, it wasn’t uncommon to come across someone relatively famous, but unless they were, or had recently been, a pro cyclist, Shamus was hit and miss about spotting them in the first place. The face remained clear in his mind and he thought the name would come eventually. However, once he got back in his room, fished a Perrier out of the minibar and turned on ESPN, he ceased focusing on it. However, when he awoke hours later, he found the riddle had been solved in his sleep, and the identity of the mysterious biker was Eddy Pagnoli. The brain wasn’t particularly inactive when one slept – some form of hard-drive reorganization took place that actually made sleep-time a period of high brainwave activity. Somehow this caused dreams, stringing together snippets of conscious and subconscious information the brain needed to deal with and sort out. The brain was also capable of doing constructive work while the body slept, and people were known to wake up with answers to challenging problems they’d been having difficulty with.
In Shamus’s case, he’d woken up with several pieces of information about Eddy Pagnoli he would have sworn he hadn’t ever known, but obviously had picked up and filed away. Eddy Pagnoli was a pro cyclist who retired around ’99 or so. He’d been a fixture in all the big races, but a factor in none. He was a world-class domestique who carried water bottles to and helped shield the wind from many a fine Italian rider over the years, including the world champion climber, Marco Pantani. Eddy had been, quite simply, a workhorse who rode his legs off for Mercatone Uno, the team was named the supermarket chain that sponsored them, but not for himself. He often put in such phenomenal efforts he’d be completely spent when he finally pulled off, and would finish so slowly he’d miss the time-cut and get booted from the race. Mercatone’s team president, Luciano Pezzi would wait patiently for Eddy to roll in and, with great appreciation for the man’s efforts, hand him a train ticket home to Milan to rest up for the next race.
As an amateur racer, Shamus grew up consuming cycling magazines, which until the Armstrong years were almost about European teams and riders and equipment, and he’d also read books written about great riders like Pantani, who personally enhanced such book sales and mythology by ending his life via a dramatic weeklong cocaine binge in a room at the hotel Le Rose, only a few miles from his birthplace in Milan. Eddy Pagnoli, himself a world class athlete, was demoted to a mere footnote in the bigger than life story of Marco Pantani, known as Il Elephantino, or the Little Elephant, because of his pronounced nose and large ears that protruded tangentially from his bald head, by those who didn’t care how badly this hurt him, or as Il Pirata, a preferred alternative he’d chosen for himself.
Shamus couldn’t recall much else about Pagnoli, but his distinctive face had appeared nearest Pantani in so many epic race photos as well as mournful photos of Pantani’s funeral, that it had somehow become etched into Shamus’s memory to such an extent that, notwithstanding a decade of aging, Shamus had made the improbable connection when he’d seen the man downstairs very early that morning.
Having pleased himself with determining who he’d come across, he was naturally curious about what brought Pagnoli to the Tour of California week before it kicked off. From the race brochure the sponsors provided, he failed to identify any Italian pro teams participating in the race, but it was entirely possible Pagnoli was merely on holiday and following the races for the fun of being around the youngsters, as some former retired pros liked to do when the chance presented itself.
Shamus picked up the phone and asked to be connected to the room of Mr. Pagnoli. If the man were staying at the hotel, it would be a great chance to meet him and talk about the old days, including perhaps his experiences on and off the bike with Pantani. At the very least, they’d have a good dinner on the town. However, the receptionist indicated that there was nobody in the hotel by name, so Shamus’s hopes were quickly dashed.
“However, Mister McDonough, there is a package left for you at the front desk, would you like me have someone bring it up?” said the disembodied female voice. Shamus thought quickly. He knew the only package he expected would be coming from Daniela, and he had no desire to be seen carrying around anything of that sort.
“Sure, he said, I’ll be leaving the hotel shortly, so please have somebody place it in my room if you don’t mind.” At least he could deny knowledge of what had been shipped to him if he’d never touched or been seen with it.
“No problem, sir, and is there anything else we can do for you this morning?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” he said, hanging up and gathering what he’d need for a ride about the city. He wanted to be far away when the package of bidons was delivered.
Parked in the garage behind the hotel was a truck used by the team’s mechanics and helpers to contain the bikes, tools, supplies, power generators, and even washers and dryers to keep the team running while on the road. Shamus walked out the hotel’s back entrance hallway, the same one he’d seen Pagnoli entering through, to the parking lot to retrieve his bike. As he approached the glass door, he could already see the truck outside and mechanics at their work stands, tuning and cleaning and inspecting the bikes. Shamus could see one of the mechanics standing near the back of the truck, though it wasn’t clear what he was doing. As Shamus emerged from the hotel onto the concrete lot, little else was stirring, but he noticed a lone motorcycle exiting the parking lot onto Palisades avenue. Naturally the rider was clad entirely in black, but weren’t they all lately?
“Morning, Wrench,” Shamus said approaching the truck.
“Hey, Shamus, how’s our number one man this morning!” Roger Wrench McAllister shot back. He was an Englishman, which made him nearly kin to Shamus, who hailed from Ireland but harbored no grudges against his brethren from the Empire. Shamus’s view on Irish/English politics was pragmatic – he hadn’t an ounce of influence over the politics between their countries or their respective churches, so he didn’t feel accountable for the actions of those who did. Beyond that, he and Wrench needed to stick together to balance out the French contingent within the team.
“Need to get out for a ride. Is my bike ready?”
“All set.”
Shamus gave it a quick once over, making sure the quick release levers were closed so that the tires would stay underneath him, checking that the brake levers did their job, and that the seatpost was firmly in place. He trusted Roger, who had been doing this professionally for almost two decades, but lately he’d become more concerned with double-checking the safety items before hopping aboard.
“You know who I saw last night?” Shamus asked as he clipped on his helmet and donned his sunglasses.
“Brittney Spears, I hope,” Roger shot back, “leaving my room!”
“Not so pretty, actually. Do you remember Eddy Pagnoli, rode with Pantani?’
“Pagnoli, you say,” Roger mulled. “Remember the name, of course, but I haven’t seen him since ninety-nine or so. Strong rider that one. Kinda threw in the towel when Pantani died, as I recall. You sure it was him?”
“Pretty sure. He came into the hotel late last night dressed like Terminator. I asked if he was staying here, but they don’t have him listed. Curious what he was be doing here so late at night. He wasn’t out with anyone.”
“You never know, probably on holiday and looking for a chance to run into some of you young guys and impress you with what it was like in the good old days.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Shamus finished, then clipped his left shoe onto the corresponding pedal, pushed off with his right one and rolled away to warm-up. The rest of the team would be out within an hour and a longer ride would ensue.
As he headed off, Roger stopped his work and watched Shamus roll onto Palisades avenue, just as Eddy had done on his BMW motorbike when they’d finished chatting, right before Shamus had appeared. Roger wasn’t happy about having lied to Shamus about this. He didn’t mind being deceptive, it’s not like they were friends, after all, but he worried about getting caught in his lie. It made him uncomfortable that Shamus had recognized Pagnoli, and he wondered what Shamus might know. Roger smiled when it occurred to him how much better Shamus seemed to be riding these days. He was one of the favorites to with the ToC, having made a lot of progress since his miserable performance in Australia.
Wonder how he managed that? Roger thought to himself, and then went back to his tasks.
When Shamus finished his solo spin he met the team and they rode together to the south. Later they lunched in San Jose, choosing a sandwich shop where they could get the lean, high protein food they lived on. Then they saddled up and rode back to San Francisco. The mood was upbeat and they kept a healthy training pace, meaning they were working hard and maintaining a twenty five miles per hour pace. It was clear the team felt strongly about its prospects to finish well up in the rankings this time, and, knock on wood, possibly win the overall race and a stage or two along the way. They had their top eight riders on hand and this would be a fast course favoring sprinters, time trialists, and all-arounders, as they were called, with far less need for the mountain conquering capabilities required for European tours.
Five hours and a hundred and twenty five miles later, they were back at the hotel to resume their daily routine of resting, massage, being fed and waited on, and sleeping. Aside from the massage, their lives off the bikes often resembled those of babies.
When Shamus got back to his room, all was as he’d left it except for the cardboard box that now sat on the small desk at the far end of the room. He approached and lifted it, measuring its heft, which wasn’t much at all. After all, it contained only plastic drink bottles without any liquids at this point. He sensed that on cursory examination it wouldn’t appear to be a particularly suspicious package – because it wasn’t heavy enough to actually contain much of value. In theory.
Without removing his riding gloves, he opened the box and found a half dozen bidons, each with an eighteen ounce capacity and the team colors and logo painted on. At any time, he probably had a couple dozen of these scattered throughout his apartment, duffle bag, and hotel room, and a couple more snugged into the cages on his bike. They were ubiquitous around cycling teams. That made them potentially very handy as a place to stash things, as long as you remembered which ones were which.
He felt each one, without removing them entirely from their spot in the box. Two were slightly heavier than the others. They contained his supplements. He looked inside one and saw the familiar plastic vials. He flipped the safety latch on the door, so as not to be interrupted by the maid at just the wrong moment, donned a pair of full-fingered cycling gloves, then emptied the vials on the bed. He took out his cell phone, and snapped a photograph of the boxes, bidons, and vials. The vials he placed in a small padded envelope of red, white, and blue with a pre-addressed shipping label on its front. Making a quick trip to the lobby, he dropped the overnight express mailer in the U.S. postal box and headed back up to his room.
Eve had asked Shamus to provide them with the vials from each shipment he received from Daniela or her colleagues. These would be used both for lab analysis, to determine what they held and possibly even which lab had prepared them, and for evidence.
Shamus grabbed his cell phone off the bed and typed a text message to Daniela. It said All OK here. Thx much, & hope u r well. Wish me luck. He hit send. After a moment, the phone screen confimed the message had been sent sucessfully.
Shamus sat on the edge of the bed. It wasn’t dinnertime yet. He should nap, or watch a video. He should avoid burning calories. But he couldn’t shake off the nervous energy from being involved in something risky, something he didn’t fully understand. He grabbed another four-dollar bottle of Perrier, and his thoughts raced as as drank it. Too much coincidence. A proverbial black motorbike arrives at his hotel in the middle of the night, and the next morning he’s got a box of EPO in his room, easy as you please. Daniela had referred to colleagues who helped her, and suddenly a racer who fell off the grid almost a decade ago is in his hotel lobby at midnight, and then he’d seen a black motorbike out by the team support truck this morning. Maybe the same one, maybe not.
He rang Eve and explained all this to her. She could barely contain her excitement, which scared Shamus more than it helped. He wanted calmness and professionalism from her, like he wanted from people he rode with. It worried him when others got excited, because that led to distractions and distractions often led to crashes, which he’d come to learn could be more than painful. Sometimes they were fatal.
By the time race-day arrived, Shamus was acclimated to the West Coast time zone, as well as its cuisine, its endless supply of breathtakingly beautiful young women, its endless lines of expensive cars that seemed in no hurry to get anywhere, and winter weather that at its worst moments was like a June day in Europe.
The race itself was somewhat enigmatic. The Tour of California could have more descriptively been called the Tour Of The Part Of California That Mattered. The state was over a thousand miles long and three hundred wide, but the race would cover only 600 miles in seven daily stages, and a rest day was provided because at some point they’d have to move whole pack post-haste past Parts That Didn’t Matter so they could resume the fun and games in more attractive and populated venues.
The areas they planned to skip over or not bother with far outnumbered the areas they would grace. For example, there were no stages through the seemingly endless, flat and parched farmlands of Bakersfield Valley, in the state’s midriff. Nor would the race venture into or anywhere near the Mojave Desert that blanketed a vast portion of its southern latitudes. And everything north of San Francisco, including the fourteen thousand foot tall Mt. Shasta and some of the world’s most pristine and undisturbed beaches, were to be ignored altogether, as if they’d been conceded to Oregon, because the natural beauty of these areas reflected that few people actually chose to live there, and tours went where the people were.
San Francisco was scheduled for a good taste of the Tour because millions of people lived nearby and the race’s main corporate sponsor, Amgen Pharmaceuticals, was headquartered there, presenting the profound irony of having the top U.S. cycling race be sponsored principally by a company that produced a whole array of drugs, few of which a rider could take and then pass the Doping Controls. Details.
After San Fran, they’d head to San Jose and the Silicon Valley which, though represented by rather small dots on the state map, positively oozed people along with a hugely disproportionate share of the state’s wealthy ones, at that. Then it was a pedal-as-fast-as-possible route down to Santa Barbara, where photo ops against some of the world’s most expensive beachfronts would be abundant, as would cameos of numerous movie celebrities who’d bought up these beaches for their own private sandboxes.
Following that, they’d all pedal into L.A. and spend days performing amid the tens of millions of people who had crammed themselves into this former slice of heaven. Before leaving there, they’d have a short race-against-the-clock from Santa Monica down to Long Beach, the resting place for the Queen Mary, Spruce Goose, and other tourist traps that made a fitting backdrop for this rolling carnival. On the final day, they’d all make a long pilgrimage down the Pacific Coast Highway to the uber-trendy and mega expensive La Jolla section of San Diego, notably passing along the way the San Onofre nuclear power plant which was built directly atop one of the country’s most active earthquake faults, and where one of the country’s nuclear near-misses had occurred two decades earlier, permanently shutting down one reactor and, if local surfers were to be believed, forever after making the ocean waters nearby a scoash warmer than beaches to the north or south.
It would be very easy to become cynical, Shamus thought.
Chapter 7
The seven-day Tour of California kicked off on Sunday morning with a Team Time Trial from Fisherman’s Wharf in downtown San Francisco across the Bay Bridge to Berkeley, whose renowned university was Mecca for young liberal leftists who learned to thrive on a steady diet of granola and cannabis. Provided no riders got lost in the smoke, they’d take University Avenue to Martin Luther King Jr. Way, make a quick roll through the center of the university, then reverse the route back to Fisherman’s Wharf. It was twelve miles out and twelve back, with climbing sections limited to crossing the east and west spans of the Bay Bridge, which peaked at about two hundred feet above the waters of the San Francisco bay.
By grace of the race’s weekend launch, traffic chaos would be less than usual. The Bay Bridge carried more than a quarter million autos a day to and from San Fran, and under normal circumstances any pedestrians or bicyclist attempting to traverse the bridge was subject to being arrested after being run down by a stream of raging drivers. For the ToC, the racers would have sole use the upper bridge deck, which was shut down for the entire day, and auto and truck traffic flowing in both directions were diverted to the five lanes on the lower deck.
The winning team would have to keep an average pace of more than fifty kilometers, or thirty miles per hour, across the entire course, and finish the run in less than fifty minutes. In TTT’s, as they were called, teams weren’t racing others, per se, but strictly against the clock. Each team would leave the start line in a predetermined order, three minutes after the prior team. At the end, the team with the shortest time over the course was the winner, and all riders on the team were given the time their team had earned, based on when the fifth of their eight riders crossed the line.
To prepare for a TTT, they’d practiced for hours riding in a tight, single-file line to form a moving tunnel in which the front rider rode as hard as humanly possible for as little as fifteen seconds, then gracefully moved aside and drifted to the rear of the group, resting in the slipstream for two minutes until he’d been shuffled up to the front again. The visual effect was like watching a slowly spinning chain on a bicycle, with each link moving forward until it reached the front sprocket, then drifting back while others moved forward. From the air, teams appeared to perform an athletic ballet of sorts, moving slowly and smoothly as one unit, each man wearing body-skin outfits and elongated teardrop-shaped helmets, and tucked as low as possible over their handlebars to cut wind resistance. Eight sets of legs moved in virtual synchronicity, with the continuous promotion of each man to the front for a brief explosive effort before sliding back to restart the process.
The TTT was a favorite of teams who had a roster of riders well suited to the particular course, since this format took advantage of the strength of all riders. On the other hand, weaker or less balanced teams could find themselves finishing several minutes slower than the best team, virtually locking out any chances for their best riders to win the overall contest. Therefore, Tour of California officials, taking a controversial page out of the Tour de France playbook, evened the effects by placing a limit on the time loss of any team. They concluded that a maximum one minute limit would be applied, even if a particular team came in several minutes slower than the best team. One minute never sounded large, but the dynamics of bicycle racing often led to the winners of month-long tours being decided by less than a minute’s difference.
Shamus liked his team’s chances even though their roster included four mountain specialists who presumably weren’t as well oriented to sustaining high-speed, all-out efforts on what would be considered a flat course, by professional standards. However, they only needed to get five riders across the line to stop the clock, so they planned to employ an unusual approach to this TTT; they nicknamed the tactic they’d devised Apollo 13.
Protocol was for the best teams to go last in any time trial event, so Continental Tire was to be second to last team out on the course — based on their high ceding among the teams participating in the race. Shamus liked this, because they would get to see the finishing times of all of the team who finished before CT departed, and, more importantly, they’d know the split times or the amount of time it had taken the fastest teams ahead of them to hit certain waypoints along the course. With this information, their sports director, following closely behind them in the team car, could radio information as to whether they were keeping a winning pace, or needed to push faster.
By the time CT got to the start line, the quickest time had been set by team CSC, which was one of the most successful teams in the modern history of the sport, and year after year accumulated enough wins by its talented roster of riders to be rated the best team in the world. Unfortunately, this rating meant little of itself, since the team also had a unique capability to achieve this while not winning major tours, which the sponsors would have preferred. CSC started the first stage strongly, posting a twenty second advantage over the Spanish team Saunier-Duval, and ended minutes faster than most other teams. Their final time of forty eight minutes and two seconds proved to be the time to beat. Only TC and the German team T-Mobile were yet to ride.
When their five second countdown began, CT was formed up at the starting line not eight abreast, which was customary for a Team Time Trial start, but in two lines of four deep. The line on the left contained three of the team’s climbers, or mountain specialists — presumably the least suited for a long high-speed outing – ahead of their best-suited man, French time-trial champion Marcel Clerc. In the line on the right were Shamus, Trinidadian George Crowley who mastered mountains but also had the ability to go fast as well, and the Austrian and Italian sprinters Francis Chiarello and Flavio Ramoli, respectively, who positively enjoyed cooking along at thirty to forty miles per hour and then sprinting ahead for wins at up to sixty miles per hour.
When the final tone sounded and the starter waved his hand forward, signaling for the team to get underway, both lines moved out in parallel at increasing speed until they’d gotten a hundred yards up Pier 36, then just before they turned onto Embarcadero street Shamus lead the right line in behind the riders in the left line, and a train was formed. French mountain specialist Jacqui Vinot sat at the front, hunched as low as possible and churning his legs powerfully. Uncharacteristically, as minutes passed he stayed at the front, clearly giving maximum effort. He had a slight build but stout legs accustomed to spinning up steep mountains for hours at a time. However, the leanness that made him float up mountains also meant he lacked the muscle mass to push the bike along in high gear for long periods. Shamus and sports director Philip Olivier had discussed ways of minimizing the drag of CT’s relatively numerous mountain men on the squad, and after considering dozens of options, they’d borrowed the services of a PhD statistician kindly provided by one of their sponsors, VonBoss Electronics, and found that, at least on paper, a better result for the TTT could be achieved by using up the mountain men early on and jettisoning them, ala the stages of an Apollo rocket.
The risk was that once these men were jettisoned, there were fewer left to share the work for the remainder of the ride, and should any rider experience a flat tire or other problem along the route, the remaining group might not have a fifth rider along to stop the clock. These were the tradeoffs. Shamus and Marcel concurred that beating the powerful CSC team, which sported both the U.S. and World time trial champions, in a time trial race, depended on bringing something extra to the race.
They turned right on Embarcadero and a half mile later made a left on Harrison, and yet Vinot still sat at the front. Another minute passed and they merged onto the I-80 ramp toward the massive eight-and-a-half mile long Bay Bridge, whose west and east spans were each two miles long and hung suspended in the air almost twenty stories above the frigid, shark-infested waters. The clock ticked past five minutes as they began ascending the west span, and Vinot was out of his seat and dancing on the pedals to power up the incline, a task he was actually quite well suited for, and the entire team followed with each bike mere inches apart and riders arranged in the same order they’d established at the inception. After another minute they reached the apogee of the west span, and Vinot’s work was done for the day. He pulled off after approximately six minutes of work and didn’t bother trying to get on the back of the group as it went by. All that was required was for him to pedal a comfortable pace around the course and cross the finish line so that he would remain valid to race tomorrow. Whatever time it took him to finish this stage would be irrelevant and not recorded.
The second rider in the chain was the time trialist Clerc, who would perform a very brief spin at the front of the group while they accelerated down from the peak of the west span onto Yerba Buena Island, which served as the connector for the two great spans of the bridge. Having pulled them up to top speed, he’d roll off the front just before they began the mile long climb up to the peak of the east span, leaving Sean Gallagher, the English climber, at the front to pull the group up over the top and to continue at maximum effort until his six minutes of hellish effort was finished, at which time he’d call it a day as Vinot had done.
By the time they finally cleared the entire Bay Bridge and rolled north along the barricaded lanes of I-80 that had been blocked off for the race, the plan seemed to be holding up, as their split times showed them right on top of CSC’s at the point they’d cleared the bridge. Only three men had taken any work at that point, and Clerc’s had been brief and relatively easy job of piloting the group down the back side of the west span. So two men had been set adrift and the team was down to six to complete the job, with about thirty-five minutes of work remaining.
The group began rotating, preserving their third climber, the Austrian Roger Milam, to pilot them back up the east span once they’d made the turn at the university, then he’d be released as well, leaving five men to finish the race. Heading inland from the bay, the elevation rose only modestly, and then flattened out as they traversed the university. Within blocks they’d made the turn back toward the Bay Bridge and the finish line.
The final sacrifice hitter for the team, Roger Milam, was a jockey-sized man with overstuffed muscled legs that resembled sides of lean beef as a result of a lifetime of riding throughout the Alps. Just as his teammates had done, his charge was to put in a mere six minutes’ effort. He’d spent somewhat less time than his mates had warming up before the race, saving energy for his big pull and knowing it didn’t come until after the midway point of the time trial. When it did, he was ready. His heartrate hovered at a cool and collected one hundred and twenty beats per minutes, reflecting the relative ease of following in the slipstream, even at high speed. Once he was on front he was pounded by a blast of air and he lowered his head into it and focused on nothing except maintaining a safe line up the street and pushing his legs for all they were worth.
When Milam had rotated to the front of the group, it stopped its rotation, and the Austrian now had the job of leading them up to the top of the east span. He approached the effort as he would prepare to attack another rider on a steep mountain – picking the right gear that would allow him to accelerate quickly and hold that tempo to the top. As they rose up the span, the mountain specialist kept a torrid pace over thirty miles per hour while his teammates virtually rested in his slipstream. Milam felt the power draining from his legs, and after six minutes and a litle bit more than three miles covered on his shift, he slid gently to his left and let the train go by.
He’d taken them to the top of the east span, and after a mile of ascending to its apogee, virtually exploded within himself. His heart rate topped out at 189 beats per minute, unsustainably high up in the red zone. Even after he pulled off, the accumulated lactic acid from those six minutes’ effort seared his muscles. There was no doubt in his mind that he’d given his all.
The remaining five riders immediately began taking thirty second pulls, except for Crowley, the last climber in the bunch, who was to take only ten second pulls until the final one mile ascent up the west span, which he would lead to the top and then finish the race without any further appearances back at the front and Shamus used his pulls to set the tempo, bringing the team’s speed up each time he got on front, wanting to show his leadership and fitness, and of course wanting to win the race. Each member of the team responded by trying to keep that pace, which Shamus successively tried to raise it even higher.
At the final time check, where they crossed back over Yerba Buena island, they heard from an excited Philip Olivier that they were ten seconds faster than CSC, and he coaxed them to pour it all into the final three miles. Leg muscles pumped to their maximum, feet spun the pedals over at a rate of two times per second, serious and strained looks plastered on their faces, each rider flawlessly taking his turn at the front, sensing their chance to actually win the opening event. They cleared the west span at over forty miles per hour, aided by the mile long, twenty story descent from its midpoint. Once they were back on land, the work was virtually done and winning was a matter of avoiding crashes, which they did.
As they crossed the line the clock showed they’d held onto an eleven second lead over CSC.
The German team T-Mobile had been the final squad to launch into the time trial. They’d departed last, going out three minutes after CT due to their top ceding to win the overall race. Nevertheless, they hadn’t been favored to win the TTT.
They were still on the course, but through race radio Olivier had kept the CT riders informed of T-Mobile’s split times, which had been slightly slower than CSC’s at the point they’d reached the turnaround at Berkeley. By the time they reached Yerba Buena island on the way in, T-Mobile was now running a fifteen second deficit to CSC, and was eliminated from chances of winning the day’s stage. Nevertheless, Shamus and his teammates waited until the race clock showed T-Mobile’s final time exceeding CT’s, and then let loose with raucous shouting, hugging and backslapping.
The joy lasted only moments before the race marshall directed them all toward a trailer reserved for Doping Controls.
In addition to randomly testing athletes throughout the course of the race, there was mandatory testing for any riders winning a stage of the race or earning any of the coveted awards for best sprinter, best climber, most aggressive rider, best young rider, and so forth. The quick walk to Doping Controls was a serious one, taking the air out of their momentary celebration.
Riders realized the risk that being found positive of a doping test brought virtually assured ruin to their career. To the extent a rider wasn’t highly worried about their own results – and even the Virgin Mary would have had reason to sweat the outcome because of notoriously weak and inconsistent lab test procedures that raised the prospects of false positive results — each knew it would only take a single positive result among the squad to cause chaos within the team, and quite conceivably force the team’s sponsors to pull out. Risks were especially high following a team time trial event, where a single positive would nullify the results of the entire team and therefore result in disqualification of the entire squad from the tour – sending them packing for home in humiliation and disgrace.
They were, in fact, never stronger than their weakest link. Almost worse was that it would take days for the results to be known because their urine samples had to be flown to an approved lab to be tested.
After they’d each donated bodily fluids in full view of the white-coated technician, they were ushered out by race officials for the awards ceremony where they were saluted for their first place finish on the day. News people with their cameras and microphones congregated near the podium and the riders took brief moments to be cordial and dutifully get the sponsor’s logo in front of them. They issued rehearsed answers completely incapable of generating controversy. After they were done with the media, they moved off to the side and signed autographs for a throng of fans that had lined up for this chance. The soigneurs had given each rider a Sharpie permanent marker for the task, and they dutifully signed every shirt, cap, program, or body part presented to them. Shamus knew there wasn’t a person on the TC squad who minded doing so, even if they protested to the contrary.
Tomorrow they would start with each TC rider having an eleven second advantage over the CSC team, and up to a minute of advantage on the rest. For Shamus, he’d likely hold that lead, as the entire team would be doing the work around him to ensure none of the top contenders from other teams would be allowed retake time against him.
Tactically, though, it was quite possible he’d give up the leader’s jersey in coming days, and do so willingly. When a team possessed the race leader, it placed itself under considerable added burden because that virtually forced it to sit continuously at the front of the pack so they could account for all the other riders and ensure that no other contender succeeded in sneaking off the front of the main group. Riding up front like that meant using energy that the other teams weren’t forced to. It also meant that when breakaways occurred, and they did frequently, your team was left to chase them down because everybody knew you had the most to lose. Therefore, other teams would send aggressive riders to attack off the front with a slim chance of winning, but with a certainty of putting the leader’s team under duress.
An alternative approach was for the leading team to identify a breakaway group that contained no real contenders for the overall race, and allow them to gain enough time over the main group so that a member of the breakaway group would become, for the time being, the overall race leader. Once he put on that yellow jersey, it would be incumbent on his team and in great interest of their sponsors, to try to keep it for as many days as possible — so they’d naturally take up the hard work at the front of the main group. Shamus would be under constant radio communication with Olivier in coming days to keep track of which riders were attacking off the front, how the main group was reacting to that attack, and whether or not to work to pull it back in.
Leaving the podium area, they’d ride their bikes to the parking lot where the team supply trucks were encamped and the mechanics had set up shop. Once they’d dropped off the bikes for overnight cleaning, servicing, and safekeeping, they’d head back to the hotel to get massages, relax, possibly nap, and wait for dinner. The goal was to do as little as possible. Shamus, as team leader, had first dibs on the masseuse. Getting the muscles rubbed out as soon as possible allowed the most time for muscle replenishment and recovery to occur.
On the way, the team rolled by the VIP tent leaving the podium area. It was filled with sponsors, friends of sponsors, city officials, and other hangers-on who managed to come across a coveted ticket that provided access to an open bar, a buffet meal, and closed circuit TVs from which to watch the progress of the race. With the day’s stage and the award ceremonies concluded, it would empty out swiftly.
Shamus spotted team management doing what they got paid to do – or at least doing what had to be done to get everybody paid. Team manager Trusseau was sitting at a large round table sharing wine and finger foods the riders weren’t allowed to get within a hundred yards of, with the team doctor Angelo Gabelli and sports director Philip Olivier. A half dozen others sat with them; Shamus recognized none of them, but that wasn’t a surprise. The talent was mostly kept away from back-office matters in this sport. At least three of the guests seemed to be wearing matching polo shirts with the race sponsor’s logo, so Shamus guessed they were muckity mucks from Amgen. Toss in ten million dollars a year to sponsor a major race, and you deserved all the free beer and weenies you wanted, Shamus thought, especially since he hoped to take a big sack of their prize money home with him.
When Shamus got back to the Marriott, he went to the room of the team masseur, Rene Laffitte. Shamus doffed his kit, grabbed a handtowl to cover himself and got comfortable on the massage table. He’d get a good half hour leg rub, with Rene’s strong hands kneading deep into his muscles, and then Rene would give Shamus’s shoulders and neck a quick once over, including a pop of the neck joints if desired. Rene was the team’s virtual bartender also – not in relation to serving drinks, but in listening and consoling without judging or lecturing. It wasn’t his job. He listened dutifully and grunted oui when he concurred, and hmm when he wasn’t sure. He seemed to lack any expression for no. Perhaps since a big part of his job was to relax the athletes, he simply avoided contradicting them.
“So, a great day for the team and for you my friend,” Rene said, digging his fingers into Shamus’s calf muscles in a way that came close to bringing Shamus to tears. Not tears of joy.
Shamus stifled a grunt and responded, best day ever, for me. The guys rode beautifully and hard, so give them each a good rub or they’ll be stiff tomorrow.
“Oui,” Rene said absently. He didn’t need to be told to do his job, the Frenchman thought to himself.
“Trusseau was so excited when I saw him. You’ve made the boss a happy man. I think you should know that in case he doesn’t say so himself.”
“Thanks for that, he’s hard to read sometimes. When I see him I’ll ask him to say some nice words to the boys over dinner. It’ll go a long way. Maybe he can pass along some thoughts from the sponsors – it looked like there were a few of them watching the race with him in the VIP tent.”
“Entertaining the team sponsors is very important, no doubt,” Rene mused.
“Actually, I recognized race sponsors with those black Amgen polos with their little logo on them,” Shamus responded.
“Uh hmm,” Rene added, having little more to say on the topic.
“So you know who else I almost ran into?” Shamus asked, carrying the conversation mostly to fill the half hour session.
“Who was that?”
“You remember Eddy Pagnoli, used to ride with Pantani?”
“Oui.”
“He was down in the lobby the other night.”
“Pagnoli, here?”
“I’m positive of it. Dressed in motorcycle gear. Took off his helmet as he walked by and I knew the face rang a bell. Came to me the next morning. Can you imagine, ten years he’s nowhere to be seen then he’s down in the lobby in the team hotel, in California of all places?”
“You’re too busy, my friend, seeing all these people. You know you should be resting up and not running around so much.”
“Believe me, I’m not trying to see anyone. It’s not like I bothered to stop by the VIP tent for a cigar. I’ll pass on that any time, unless the boss says I need to come shake some hands.”
“Oui.”
The conversation, such as it was, drifted onto other topics.
Back in his room, Shamus pulled out his Apple laptop, plugged it into the Internet connection the hotel supplied, and surfed. He couldn’t help check cyclingnews.com, velonews.com and a few others to see what they’d written about the team’s performance in the first stage of the race. He figured he was entitled and not too egocentric, since he did the same thing when his performance was abysmal.
Finally, Shamus got up off the bed and threw on his sweats, ready for dinner. Sometimes he felt he lived the dream life of a perpetual teenager – a little bit of sports around mid-day, then the rest of the time sleeping, eating, or relaxing. To get paid for this lifestyle was good fortune, he reminded himself.
After a couple moments waiting, an elevator car arrived to take him down to the hotel conference level where the team had a room reserved during its stay to serve as its private dining room, with a buffet set up that was continually refreshed for the riders and staff to eat whenever they had the opportunity. When the doors opened, Trusseau was standing there, obviously headed down as well. Shamus stepped inside and before words could be exchanged Trusseau wrapped his arms around Shamus and gave him a Frenchman’s salute with air kisses on both cheeks.
“So, a splendid start to the tour, eh!” Trusseau asked or stated. Shamus wasn’t sure which; it was a nuance of the French language Shamus had yet to master.
“I couldn’t be happier with the team. I hope you’ll say a few words to the guys over dinner.”
“Absolutely. They have much to be proud about. The eyes of the world are upon all of you now, and so early in the season. Our sponsors are delighted, and of course they will be looking for even more good performances. You know how success raises the expectations!”
“I understand.”
“Before we get to the dining room,” Trusseau said, placing his hand on Shamus’s shoulder to emphasize his point, and to make it personal, and because the French had a very twisted understanding of the concept of personal space, Shamus thought to himself, “I want to say that I am particularly appreciative of your efforts to step up to the greater demands that a team leader must face. There has been noticeable improvement since Sydney, it’s plain to everybody, and your teammates respect that. I have to tell you that I was worried about how you would handle yourself following last year’s unfortunate events at the Tour, but it is clear to see that you have only become stronger, physically and in your mind as well. Philip has told me that the unusual arrangement of riders in the time trial was your idea.”
“Philip is prone to exaggerate, but I appreciate your kind words, as well as his. Most important was the effort each of the guys put in. I don’t think the actual arrangement of the riders was as important in making us go fast today, as was the fact it made them believe we had brought something special today that could put us over the top.” Shamus thought they were all probably under the impression he was bringing something special to the races these days.
“Perhaps so, but keep in mind that they rode hard for their leader, Shamus. They showed you today they put their trust in you. A lot of people are doing that now, so you must stay focused on doing what is needed to meet these great expectations.”
“Certainly,” Shamus responded with mouth full of cotton.
As they wandered from the elevator to the dining room, Trusseau added, “I must get you out to meet the sponsors in coming days. I understand you saw us in the tent. As you say, it was a perfect day to be with the people who fund our sport. You know,” he chuckled, “it’s an irony lost on nobody that a pharmaceutical company pays ten million dollars a year to have its name on the Tour of California. Not Nike. Not Adidas. Not Trek or Cannondale, or any of the other companies who live from money produced by our sport. No, a drug company. I bring Doc with me when we meet with them. At least he knows what in the world they make and what it does. For me, it’s all Greek – or Latin, I suppose.” He laughed a bit at his own comment, and then he entered the dining room and began making his backslapping, hand shaking, cheek-kissing tour of the room, while Shamus went for the buffet.
Later that evening, back in his room, Shamus pondered the conversation, especially the last part. It wasn’t lost on him that a) it hadn’t taken long for his conversation with Rene about seeing the VIPs to get back to Trusseau, and b) Trusseau wasted no time in teeing up, and then trying to dispel the odd situation that arises when managers of professional sporting teams, and their medical officers, meeting with the people who fund their sport from money made selling drugs. Shamus was almost surprised that his comments to Rene about Eddie Pagnoli’s presence at the race hadn’t also been addressed by Trusseau. That it went unspoken did not give him any sense of relief.
As another matter, Shamus felt the weight of Trusseau’s words about his responsibilities as a leader, and as he did so he sensed the weight of that burden settle on his shoulders, but found that it felt not uncomfortable at all, but rather like the well-worn shoulder pads of a seasoned footballer. Yes, it suited him, he thought.
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