MUSINGS ON THE WORLD OF PRO CYCLING

A hardknock life

Ned wonders if it’s a blessing or a curse to be a pro cyclist

Working in cycling sometimes leaves me feeling a little complicit in cruelty. I occasionally agonise about my role in all of it, and wonder about the ethics of cheerleading for such a beautiful, brutal sport.

I remember the first Darts tournament I worked on, a long time ago. Moving around the players, backstage, I was agog at how punishing their lives were: it’s a hugely stressful environment, and their health, for the most part, was not the best. Getting up on stage in front of thousands of baying darts fans and having to perform under huge pressure in order to pay the bills for another month was (and still is) a gargantuan task. When it goes well, it goes well. But for the most part, it doesn’t. A normal TV darts tournament would see 64 players enter and only one winner. The quarter finalists might earn some decent money, but for most, their winnings would have evaporated long before the next chance came along.

After a couple of nights working at the Wolverhampton Civic Centre, a senior TV producer turned to me, as we both watched one particularly vulnerable man losing a match in cacophonous surroundings, and posed this question to me: “Are we exploiting these men for our entertainment?”. I was struck by that remark, and it has stayed with me throughout my working life.

I am writing this on the day of stage 3 of the Tour of Britain, and the same nagging doubts about the ethics of sport have resurfaced; not with the drawing of any hefty conclusions, but just as a moral footnote as I watch the race pass up and down over heavy British roads, passing through sudden downpours and wind-blown gullies on the way to lightning fast, potentially hazardous sprints.

It started on the first day, when the race started in horrendous, border-line typhoon conditions in Aberdeen. Within a few minutes, Marco Haller had crashed into a motorbike and broken his arm. Because this incident wasn’t caught on camera, I imagined it instead, which made it even worse. Haller, laid out on a wet Scottish pavement, nursing a badly wounded arm, his season over.

Later on that afternoon, the peloton approached the Glenshee Ski Centre. Ineos Grenadiers were charged with controlling the race. Two of their number drew my attention, for different reasons. Tom Pidcock, after another intense year of racing, had clearly arrived in a questionable frame of mind. Though we inevitably talked him up as being the big race favourite [Pidcock would climb to second in the standings before the race was cancelled], he seemed distracted by the attention, and unsettled. He also seemed tired; profoundly, achingly tired – not only by the prospect of the coming week of racing, but by the more generalised rigours of his chosen occupation. The other rider I was thinking about was Richie Porte, to whom I’ll return.

Building a career in road racing, if you’re sufficiently blessed (or cursed) to be good enough to take your place in the peloton, must be daunting. Race after race, week on week through years, across countries and continents, cold and intense, suffocating heat, clipping in, and pushing off in the firm understanding that suffering is the only foreseeable outcome. It’s like having to tidy your room, almost endlessly. It’s a decade-long visit to the dentist, a maths exam with no fixed duration, a muddy crosscountry run in your pants as punishment that has no end. It can’t be much fun. Of course there will be highs, and great rewards (for some). But the elation normally comes once the task has been fulfilled and the race is run. And Pidcock, for all his achievements, is still barely out of the starting blocks of a life in cycling that promises to be stellar. On that opening day of racing, I felt for him.

Contrast that with Richie Porte. He is racing for the last time, having been at it for fifteen years. On this race, whatever the weather throws at him, he cannot stop himself smiling. His shift is coming to an end, and the relief is palpable.

“Will you miss it?” I asked him the day before the race. Without the slightest hesitation, he laughed at my question. “No, mate. Not for a second.” I know they are not coerced into pursuing this path. But sometimes I can’t help but hope that what we ask of these athletes is not unreasonable.

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Photos: Getty