Cadel had been a talented rider since he was a kid. The frustration of his 2007 season shaped him into something more. Cadel burst into the 2008 season a more aggressive and attacking rider. His dream to win the Tour de France was stronger than ever. His near miss only made him more obsessed with achieving it.
For the first time, Cadel’s team shared this single-minded goal. Along with a new name, Silence–Lotto, the team had a new focus. Their team strategy was all about helping Cadel win the Tour. In previous years the team devoted lots of attention to making sure Robbie McEwen won the green jersey in the sprint stages. This year McEwen would look after himself in the sprints. It was Cadel’s year to win yellow.
To achieve this goal Silence–Lotto had to recruit stronger climbers to support Cadel. The last Tour had showed just how weak the team was in the mountains.
In reality, it wasn’t in Cadel’s nature to sit back and wait for things to happen. He was a doer, a hard worker, a guy who certainly wouldn’t shy away from a tough attack under the right circumstances. Cadel’s problem was the team just didn’t have enough strong riders to help him.
In 2008 Cadel lobbied team management to sign Ukrainian rider Yaroslav Popovych. Popovych had won the Tour’s ‘young rider’ classification when riding for the Discovery team and later he’d been a key domestique for Contador.
As well as recruiting strong riders, Silence–Lotto improved its line-up of support staff. Every mechanic, doctor and dietician had to be the best available. Even the role of team chef was considered. Like most teams, Silence–Lotto had a chef to prepare meals for the riders during stage races. The team chef worked out of a mobile kitchen, a special trailer with stoves and fridges. That way teams could control what their riders ate. Their diets were healthy, including plenty of meat, fish, vegetables and wholegrains. As with all aspects of his training and race preparation, Cadel was serious about food. Good food was critical for performance reasons and for morale.
Silence–Lotto hired another crucial staff member that season—a bodyguard named Serge Borlee. Borlee was a member of the Belgian Special Forces when he wasn’t guarding professional riders. He’d protected Lance Armstrong when he was riding in the Tour. Now it was Borlee’s job to protect Cadel from eager fans and journalists. Everywhere Cadel went, he was surrounded by a swarm of people. The plan was for Borlee to reduce this stress on Cadel.
With all this extra support and enthusiasm, Cadel’s season kicked off brilliantly. His first race was the Vuelta a Andalucía (Tour of Andalusia). Conditions for the race were cold and wet with blustering winds. Cadel battled through the rain and mud to snatch a win in Stage 2. Cadel felt this was an important win because it showed his team exactly what he could do with full support.
Silence–Lotto had a strategy for the months ahead. Like all pro teams, Silence–Lotto had many more riders than just the nine who raced the Tour. In fact, like all the other teams, Silence Lotto riders competed in events all over the world. That meant the Tour squad wouldn’t always get much time to train together. Leading up to the 2008 Tour, Silence–Lotto wanted to keep its Tour riders racing together as much as possible to avoid this problem.
Along with Popovych and the rest of the Tour team, Cadel’s next race was the Paris–Nice. Cadel liked the Paris–Nice. Three years earlier, he had come second in a stage and placed eighth overall. This year, he knew Paris–Nice would be important in the lead-up to the Tour. Like the upcoming Tour, the Paris–Nice race would feature a climb up the infamous French mountain Mt Ventoux.
Professional riders consider Mt Ventoux, nicknamed the ‘beast of Provence’, one of the hardest climbs in Europe. The landscape is dramatic, with pale, bare slopes against blue skies. Riding up the mountain though can be far from pretty. In the 1967 Tour, British cyclist Tom Simpson died on Mt Ventoux. The 1970s star Eddy Merckx needed oxygen to make it to the top. If Cadel and his team could tame Mt Ventoux during the Paris–Nice, it would be unbeatable preparation for the Tour.
The Paris–Nice race reached Mt Ventoux in Stage 4. It was a cold March day and there was still snow on the mountain. Cadel found himself battling strong wind as well as a new star from the Rabobank team called Robert Gesink. Cadel and teammate Popovych stuck close together, breaking away from the peloton at the foot of the mountain. But Gesink refused to be left behind. The riders slugged it out all the way to the finish line. In the last few metres, Cadel powered forward and took the stage.
Just a couple of weeks later, Cadel’s form was looking even stronger. In the five-day Italian road race Coppi e Bartali, Cadel won a stage and then went on to take the race overall. His confidence was growing. Critics may have said he couldn’t attack, but every new victory proved them wrong. Cadel and his domestiques were working well together. The team was starting to believe this would be its season.
Then, with all the hard training and racing, Cadel hurt his knee. The injury forced him off his bike for a couple of weeks. By June, he was fit enough to race. He entered the key Tour lead-up event, the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré.
Due to his knee injury, Cadel’s preparation for the Dauphiné wasn’t as thorough as he would have liked. Nevertheless, after his second place in the 2007 Tour, Cadel was a favourite to win the Dauphiné. His main rival was Spanish rider Alejandro Valverde, who’d just won Liège–Bastogne–Liège.
Despite being labelled the favourite, Cadel’s objective wasn’t to win the Dauphiné. Cadel was only thinking about the Tour. In 2008 the Dauphiné included Mt Ventoux again. It also featured exactly the same time trial course as the upcoming Tour. The chance to practise these stages in the Dauphiné would be invaluable to Cadel and Silence–Lotto.
Right from the start of the Dauphiné Valverde looked strong. He took the lead in the GC in Stage 3. Cadel attacked hard in Stage 5, duelling with Valverde all the way to the finish line. Cadel shot to second spot in the GC, which gave him extra motivation to really go for it in Stage 6.
With a burst of speed and aggression, Cadel attacked Valverde on the final climb. Cadel didn’t know if he could gain the time needed to take the top spot from Valverde. His original objective wasn’t even to win the Dauphiné, but now he was close. Cadel felt like he had nothing to lose. Attacking hard might snag him a win. If not, an attack would at least show everyone what he could do.
Although Cadel climbed brilliantly, it wasn’t enough for a stage or overall win. Valverde won. A fierce rivalry between the two riders in the upcoming Tour was certain.
As with the Dauphiné, Cadel was a favourite for the Tour. For a reserved, quiet person like Cadel, this was tough. He rode for the love of it, not for fame and attention. Being a Tour favourite brought lots of unwanted attention. His bodyguard Serge Borlee had to work hard to give Cadel some peace. But just having a bodyguard attracted even more attention.
The closer the race got, the more intense the attention became. It peaked when Alberto Contador announced he wasn’t able to defend his Tour crown. With a major rival gone, Cadel’s chances of winning seemed even greater.
Contador wasn’t happy to be out of the Tour. At the start of the 2008 season, he’d moved teams from Discovery to Astana. Then Astana wasn’t invited to ride in the Tour because of its links to doping, which also ruled out Levi Leipheimer who finished third the previous year. Clearly, Tour organisers wanted to send a strong message that drugs wouldn’t be tolerated.
Everyone involved in the sport knew that doping was damaging the Tour. Jean-François Pescheux was Competition Director at the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), which organised the Tour. He went as far as saying it would be the end of cycling if the 2008 Tour wasn’t drug-free. To make sure it was, the ASO introduced ‘biological passports’ for riders. These were digital records of an athlete’s drug test results over time. Anything suspicious could then be easily detected. No rider could compete in the Tour without a clear biological passport.
As well as a tougher anti-drug policy, this Tour was different in other ways. The course had fewer kilometres of time trials than usual. More climbs and sprints meant more opportunities for spectacular attacks that would please fans and the media.
This change worried Cadel. He had a stronger team behind him now than ever before. He had also attacked well in the Dauphiné. But attacking in the mountains was still Silence–Lotto’s weakest point. With Contador and Astana gone, Cadel’s strongest rival was the CSC–Saxo Bank team. Its leader was Carlos Sastre, supported by the hugely talented brothers Fränk and Andy Schleck. This team would be tough to beat on the climbs.
The 2008 Tour began in the French city of Brest on 5 July. Cadel started in the number one bib. Contador should have worn number one since he was defending champion, but with him out of the race the honour fell to Cadel.
As usual, sprinters dominated the Tour’s early stages. It was only in Stage 9, when the peloton reached the Pyrenees, that Cadel’s Tour really began. Stage 9 was a massive 224 kilometres long. It included a long steep climb, a twisting road up the Col de Peyresourde.
The stage went smoothly for Cadel for the first hundred kilometres. Then the peloton approached a feed zone. In feed zones, staff from all the teams hand their riders bags containing food. Cadel accepted a bag but didn’t take any food out straight away. The peloton was heading into a small town. Cadel knew there would probably be winding, bumpy, narrow streets. He also expected hazards like pedestrians, parked cars and traffic islands. Cadel thought it too risky to ride on those kinds of streets and eat at the same time. A disastrous crash could easily happen, so Cadel concentrated on riding safely through the town at the front of the peloton.
The pace was particularly intense because the Euskaltel-Euskadi team was in the middle of an attack. Flying into a long, sweeping left turn at more than 50 kilometres an hour, Spaniard Gorka Verdugo dropped in right in front of Cadel. Riding at that speed, there was nothing Cadel could do. He crashed into Verdugo at full speed. He tumbled from his bike, crunching onto the cobblestones with his back, knee and left elbow.
The next thing Cadel remembered was sliding along the road. Then he slammed into the kerb, which stopped his slide. For a split second Cadel lay there, too scared to get up. When he was lying still, he was okay. Once he started to move he’d really know what kind of damage he’d done. In that horrendous moment, Cadel saw his entire Tour flash before his eyes. If he were seriously injured, his hard work that season would be completely for nothing. His Tour dreams would be crushed all over again.
The peloton sailed past Cadel. Silence–Lotto staff rushed to help him up. They found Cadel’s helmet broken into three pieces. The entire back of his jersey was shredded. Underneath there were painful, bloody cuts where the road had scraped away the skin. Cadel got back on his feet and did a quick body check. His collarbone was intact. His arms were bleeding but useable. His legs must be okay if he was standing. He was sore all over but that wasn’t going to stop him. Cadel just wanted to get going again.
Cadel’s bike was too mangled to ride, so staff changed it over for him. As he rode off, he set himself an ambitious goal. He wanted to finish the stage in the same group as the other GC contenders, just as he would have done if he hadn’t crashed. Incredibly, he did it. He was back in the top 20 riders by the time they crested the Peyresourde. At the end of Stage 9, Cadel was still in second spot overall.
When Cadel finished the stage, the media swamped him. His bodyguard helped Cadel through the crowd. Cadel tried to answer everyone’s questions politely, but inside his head it was turmoil. Finishing the stage injured had been tough. Cadel wouldn’t know his Tour future until doctors checked him out. His injuries looked like skin wounds, but there might be broken bones. Only an X-ray could tell. All Cadel wanted to do was get to hospital and learn his fate.
Fortunately it was good news. Cadel’s X-rays were clear, so he could continue the race tomorrow. On the drive back to the hotel, the team was in good spirits. No-one noticed the team car was speeding until French police pulled it over. Cadel offered the police officers his jersey and they were so happy they didn’t give them a speeding ticket. Perhaps in a French police station somewhere there is a shredded, bloodstained number one jersey hanging on the wall.
Cadel hoped the next day would be calmer and more positive. At only 156 kilometres, Stage 10 was fairly short. It was full of torturous climbs though, including 18 kilometres straight up the Col du Tourmalet and a final, brutal 17-kilometre climb to the finish at a ski station.
Cadel spent most of the stage in the peloton with the yellow-jersey wearer, Kim Kirchen of Team Columbia. Kirchen was only six seconds ahead of Cadel in the GC despite Cadel’s crash. In Stage 10 Cadel pushed hard to make sure he stayed ahead of Kirchen all day. His plan worked. Cadel’s time was fast enough to sweep him into first place on the GC. The day before, his Tour could have been over. Now Cadel had the yellow jersey for the first time in his career.
A yellow podium was waiting for Cadel. He walked onto it to the sounds of a cheering crowd and triumphant music. He kissed his hands and raised both arms to the sky, trying to hold back tears. He took the yellow jersey and put it on. Accepting a huge bunch of yellow flowers and the Credit Lyonnais lion soft toy, emotion surged through him. Somehow he managed to hold himself together for the entire presentation. At one point, Cadel let out a deep breath and raised his eyebrows slightly. He couldn’t quite believe what he’d just done.
After the presentation, the media scrambled for an interview with the new yellow-jersey winner. The reporters all wanted to know how he felt about victory on the back of yesterday’s crash. Cadel told the throng around him he was amazed how much things had changed in just twenty-four hours.
As Cadel spoke, a reporter behind him continued waving a microphone at him. Cadel’s injuries were still raw and the journalist kept banging his sore shoulder. Cadel flicked away the microphone, slapped at the reporter and snapped, ‘Don’t touch me.’ Most people would find that situation stressful. On top of the injury, Cadel had just finished riding 156 kilometres. He’d won the yellow jersey, something he’d been working towards since he was a kid. He was exhausted and understandably emotional.
Cadel’s bodyguard whisked him away at once. Later on, the journalist and Cadel apologised to each other. The incident really didn’t mean anything. Still, that didn’t stop the footage immediately being posted on YouTube. People who see it accuse Cadel of being bad-tempered or arrogant. They don’t seem to understand that, even though Cadel’s an elite athlete, he’s still only human. Unlike some riders, Cadel isn’t slick or clever with the media. He doesn’t want to be a star. Occasionally the pressure of having to act like one gets too much.
That night, Cadel celebrated his yellow-jersey win at a dinner with the whole Silence–Lotto team. He sipped champagne and toasted ‘To Paris’ as everyone clapped and cheered. Although it was Cadel in yellow, the team was a huge part of getting him to the podium. Everyone celebrated.
The following day was a rest day, but not for the new yellow-jersey winner. Cadel had a full schedule of interviews and a press conference to attend. He got a rock-star reception everywhere he went.
At the press conference, there was a huge pack of media waiting for him. The organisers announced his arrival by playing a song by Australian band Midnight Oil. For a softly spoken guy like Cadel, the whole experience was pretty out there. A French journalist asked Cadel to describe in French how it felt to win yellow after so much time and heartache. Cadel’s answer was a single word that summed things up perfectly. ‘Incroyable,’ he told the journalist, which simply means ‘incredible’ in French.
Cadel’s hold on the yellow jersey was also incredible. Having won it, he was desperate to keep it and ended up in yellow until Stage 14. Then Stage 15 arrived.
L’Alpe d’Huez, a symbol of the Tour
The mountain L’Alpe d’Huez is a legend of the Tour de France. It is, perhaps, the most famous climb in professional road racing. The mountain first appeared in the race in 1952, which was also the first year the Tour was covered live on television. Instantly, L’Alpe d’Huez became a symbol of the Tour itself. The mountain’s features only add to its iconic status. L’Alpe d’Huez is famous for its steep gradient and 21 hairpin turns, each one named after a former stage winner. Any Tour stage that includes L’Alpe d’Huez always attracts a huge crowd of spectators.
Conditions were terrible for Stage 15. It rained, which as usual made the roads treacherously slippery. On top of that, there was a risk of rockfalls. Tour organisers were so worried, they changed the route just to be sure no-one was hurt.
When the peloton set off, attacks on Cadel were constant. In particular, the CSC–Saxo Bank team devoted its domestiques to pinning Cadel back. Saxo Bank’s Fränk Schleck was only one second behind Cadel on the GC. Schleck was desperate to gain time, but Cadel was fighting off all his attacks. Then in the closing hundred metres of the stage, Schleck overtook Cadel and grabbed the yellow jersey. Cadel slipped to third position. At the end of Stage 16, he was still there.
By then, the race was drawing to a close and Cadel still needed to gain back the time needed for an overall win. He knew Stage 17 would be a big opportunity. That day the racing included a climb up the famous mountain L’Alpe d’Huez.
Cadel was nervous before the stage. He’d never had a good day on L’Alpe d’Huez. Right now, a bad day was something he couldn’t afford. Cadel was motivated to win. His opponents were just as motivated to smash him. Throughout the stage Saxo Bank attacked repeatedly, showing over and over again the benefit of a strong team in the mountains.
Cadel’s support was meant to be Popovych, but the Ukrainian wasn’t riding as well as hoped. Cadel was alone in the mountains. Without domestiques to support him, Cadel couldn’t mount an attack. No rider would have the energy to do that, especially not one recovering from a heavy crash just days earlier. All Cadel could do was ride to limit his losses against Saxo Bank leader, Carlos Sastre.
In the end, Sastre rode solo all the way to the finish line to take the stage. Sastre’s stunning ride also pushed him to the top of the GC, dropping teammate Schleck back to second and Cadel back to a worrying fourth.
Cadel was criticised for not attacking, but people who hadn’t ridden L’Alpe d’Huez simply didn’t understand. The mountain seriously punished the body. Cadel thought the day was the most exhausting he’d experienced in a Grand Tour so far.
At the end of Stage 17, Cadel was one minute 34 seconds down on Sastre. After Stage 19, the time gap was exactly the same. The second-last stage, Stage 20, was an individual time trial. It would be Cadel’s absolute last chance to make up the time he needed. Cadel’s team may have let him down again, but in the time trial team support wouldn’t be the deciding factor. The time trial is a pure and simple battle of an individual rider against the clock.
Cadel is a strong time trial rider. Unfortunately for him, that day Sastre turned on one of the best time trial rides of his career. It wasn’t Cadel’s worst time trial, but his ride wasn’t quick enough to overtake Sastre. Cadel did manage to claw back enough time to rise from fourth to second spot on the GC though.
For the second year running, Cadel would ride into Paris the following day knowing he was number two. The previous year’s effort had seen him 23 seconds behind the winner. This time the difference between first and second place was 58 seconds.
Cadel was gutted. Yet, by the time he arrived in Paris, he’d accepted the result. When asked how he felt at the end of the race, his one-word summary was ‘relief’. Cadel realised he had a year of being known as the Nearly Man ahead of him. But being a closed and reserved person, he never let on how torn up he was.
On the night the Tour finished, Cadel and the Silence–Lotto team celebrated at a Paris nightclub. The party soured when Cadel slipped on the wet dance floor and hurt his knee. He didn’t think the injury was serious. By the next day though, his knee was filled with fluid.
The 2008 Beijing Olympics was less than two weeks away. After his success at Good Luck Beijing in 2007, Cadel would almost certainly be selected for the Olympic road race event and maybe the Olympic time trial too.
With a swollen knee though, Cadel’s Olympic campaign was in serious doubt.
Cadel’s Road Bike Race Highlights, 2008
1st Stage 2, Vuelta a Andalucía (Ruta del Sol), La Zubia, Spain
3rd General Classification, Vuelta a Andalucía (Ruta del Sol), Spain
1st Stage 4, Paris–Nice, Station du Mont Serein–Mont Ventoux, France
1st Stage 3, Settimana Ciclistica Internazionale Coppi e Bartali, Pavullo, Italy
1st General Classification, Settimana Ciclistica Internazionale Coppi e Bartali, Italy
2nd Stage 6, Vuelta Ciclista al País Vasco, Orio, Spain
2nd General Classification, Vuelta Ciclista al País Vasco, Spain
2nd Waalse Pijl, Huy, Belgium
3rd Stage 3, Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, Saint-Paul-en-Jarez, France
2nd Stage 5, Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, Morzine, France
2nd General Classification, Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, France
3rd Points Classification, Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, France
4th Stage 4, Tour de France, Cholet, France
3rd Stage 6, Tour de France, Super Besse, France
2nd General Classification, Tour de France, France
2nd Bavikhove, Belgium