Out of the mountains and on to the long, flat approach to Brive-la-Gaillarde, but there was no chance of trying to save energy for the next time trial. ‘It was full gas and full on, one of the hardest days on the Tour for us,’ said Bernie Eisel. ‘The plan was to let a small group go and set up a sprint for Cav, but the yellow jersey was being attacked. Even teams who didn’t have sprinters decided to ride hard. It was impossible to control. We let a big group go with Eddy in there. We’d even had Bradley up there for us …’
Cavendish takes up the story: ‘Sean Yates said in the morning, “let’s take it easy”, but there were no more mountains to take a break for, so I said I wanted to go for it. And Brad backed me up. Froomey and Mick committed straight in too. So the team rode for me. I was so happy, those lads who I’ve been riding with these last three weeks helped me out. Brad did a monster pull, then Edvald. Normally I’d go for the sprint from 200 to 300 metres, but I had to go from 700 metres. I used slingshots to get past people, impressive movements. I just knew I’d get it. After that dry spell, I was really hungry for a sprint victory.’
It was the fourth triumph in the race for Team Sky, who now had more honours than any other team. It was also the 22nd Tour success in Cavendish’s career and prompted Wiggins, sportingly, to acknowledge some reciprocal help and pride in participation. ‘Mark proved today who the fastest man in the world is without any doubt. You saw how far he went, 600m from the finish, and left them for dead. It was fantastic to be part of. It’s been a great three weeks and I’ve always wanted to be able to do that for him. It’s the first time I’ve led him out for a Tour stage. It was great.’
But tough … ‘The hardest moment was coming back to the bus and some guy shoves some Lycra towards you to sign with the words “Easy day!”’ said Eisel with a wry smile. ‘What the fuck? I’m on my hands and knees.’
An important player in the riders’ 24-hour recovery cycle is Søren Kristiansen, chef for Team Sky throughout the Tour, who is motivated by his desire to show that food needs to be restorative psychologically as well as physically. On paper, his role is to restore and build the athletes in association with Team Sky’s nutritionist, Nigel Mitchell, but he uses food and its feel-good potential – both in taste, nutritional sustenance and presentation – to keep the riders smiling while they’re eating purely healthy food. Food is fuel, but it can also maintain morale.
‘Søren is fantastic,’ enthuses Christian Knees, whose Twitter feed is laden with pictures of appealing plates. ‘Good food is a detail that adds to your motivation and mood, because he gives you something different every night. You don’t know what to expect, you’ve never seen it before. I know from the past how bad food, or just plain pasta and chicken day after day, makes you feel tired just to look at. Søren looks at the demands of each stage and knows what kind of food we need, but he makes it more special than that.’
On rest days, Søren might put on a barbecue night. The night after the last time trial it was a (healthy) hamburger. Tour cyclists need at least 6,000 calories a day, three times as much as a normal person, and consuming the quantity of food that contains that amount of calorific energy can be difficult. After massive exertion, you don’t feel like eating much. Equally, munching your way through a huge pile on a plate gets boring. Søren knows the riders well, so he can modify each plate depending on their individual tastes and what they need at that point in the Tour. The team was the same all season; they would have eaten 100 dinners together cooked by Søren, but no two of them will have been the same.
Søren describes his style as ‘old-fashioned food made in a new way’. He is influenced by classic Nordic food and likes to work with vegetables that are not hard for the body to digest, but release energy slowly in the body. He is an advocate of a lot of raw food. Beetroots are a favourite, and they crop up in fresh beetroot, carrot and cucumber juice. Pumpkin risotto, barley and quinoa also feature frequently. Each meal is planned not only nutritionally, but to match each Tour stage. ‘On the mornings of hard mountain days we don’t make porridge because it’s too heavy on the stomach, but we’ll have some during the flat stages in the first week,’ he says. The mountains require extra nutritional input, but with more readily digestible protein. ‘In the first week, I have more opportunities to give the riders red meat. In the second and third weeks we go into the mountains and I’ll cook more chicken and turkey as it’s easier to digest. There is always a lot of fish on the menu.’
On the night after a Team Sky stage victory, it has become tradition to have a small toast. ‘Time goes so fast on the Tour. It is a really intense experience. At the end of one day, you have to think about the next day, you have to stay focused all the time. There is not time to celebrate a stage victory, but we will always have a glass of wine or champagne with dinner before we go back to our rooms,’ says Boasson Hagen.
‘Mark has waited a long time and been patient and he has got his reward. He has had to put away his goals and make sacrifices on the Tour so far, and that is hard for a world champion. We all wanted to repay him somehow.’
Bradley Wiggins