Arriving at the hotel, we were met by at least 20 TV vans, their aerials extended, ready to transmit our press conference to the world. The hotel was swarming with journalists and photographers, while technicians were busy laying out cables.
“This is going to be crazy,” someone said in the car I was sharing with team director Trey Greenwood, press officer Anders Damgaard, Alberto Contador’s assistant, Jacinto Vidarte, and Alberto’s brother and manager, Fran, who drove us safely down into the hotel’s underground car park.
The press descended upon us as we stepped out of the lift into the hotel reception. “No comment,” I told them, making it clear that this wasn’t the right time to be asking questions.
We made our way to the office where we had arranged to meet Alberto and his lawyers, followed all the way by the photographers, and it was a real relief to close the door behind us. The office was not much bigger than a shoebox – perhaps 10 square metres, furnished with a small round table and a single chair. But it would do for us.
While we waited for Alberto to arrive, we needed to come up with a plan. It was Thursday afternoon on 7 February 2012, and we were at the Hotel Las Artes in Pinto – a suburb of Madrid. Before the press conference, we needed to discuss the ban that had been given to my star rider little more than 24 hours previously. Alberto had been handed a two-year ban for having tested positive for clenbuterol, and now the press and the fans were waiting for Alberto’s reaction, and to hear whether I was going to fire him from the team.
Plenty of experts had already come out with their opinion and analysis of what they thought I should do. Some said that I should show Alberto the door as it wouldn’t be right to have a rider convicted of doping on the team, while others thought there was no problem with him remaining on our squad.
It had been pretty hectic since we’d been given the verdict on the Monday afternoon. We’d gone through what it all meant, and had spoken extensively to our sponsors. We’d actually been quite surprised by the verdict, in that it hadn’t really fitted into any of the scenarios we’d imagined. It was based on likelihood – a verdict handed out on the basis of probability. All along, Alberto maintained that the only way he could have tested positive was as a result of having unwittingly ingested clenbuterol from eating a contaminated steak during the 2010 Tour de France. It was an explanation that CAS – the Court of Arbitration for Sport – had conceded was indeed possible, albeit not that likely. They did believe, however, that the clenbuterol could have come from contaminated dietary supplements.
That meant that – according to the verdict – Alberto was acquitted of having intentionally doped, but was punished for the presence of a doping product in his body. And the reason we’d supported Alberto all along was that – as the CAS verdict confirmed – we, too, believed that he hadn’t intentionally doped. We maintained the view that, unless anything could be proved otherwise, Alberto had our full support in maintaining his innocence, and the court’s decision meant that we could happily continue working with Alberto without having to compromise on our principles or ethics, which was a view also happily shared by our sponsors.
Alberto himself was both upset and frustrated by the verdict.
“Although I have to accept it, I don’t understand it,” he told me on the phone immediately after his lawyer had received the court papers.
Having had 24 hours to sleep on it, I was keen to see how he would handle the questions that were soon to come his way. I knew myself how difficult it was to stand up in front of everyone with that feeling of having been unfairly treated whilst also being emotionally drained.
We had decided that he would write a statement that he would read out at the press conference. And, before the press conference got under way, we would go through it with him and try to prepare him for the kinds of questions that the press were likely to ask.
“I’m just going to go and check how things are looking out there,” said Anders and, as he opened the door to our little office, we could hear the noise of the journalists and photographers, all falling over each other to get in the best possible position for when Alberto arrived at the hotel.
In the meantime, I took out my own notes and went through what I was going to say.
It had only been a couple of months before that I’d been on my first tour of Denmark doing motivational speaking, talking about my life and my experiences as a businessman.
I was naturally very shy, and wasn’t exactly born to stand on a stage in front of a room of somewhere between 400 and 1,000 people and talk to them, but it was something I’d decided I was going to learn to do, so had said yes to doing the tour. The experience and techniques I’d learned from public speaking were things I’d used to help my development and build self-confidence.
“Here comes that tunnel vision of yours, then,” Anders smiled when he came back.
He meant that I had tunnel vision because my nerves were completely unaffected by all the chaos outside our little room as I sat with my notes and a highlighter pen practising what I was going to say.
Tunnel vision or just plain old concentration – call it what you will. I needed to go in there to deliver a speech that would be absolutely crucial for my team’s future.
“I’ve just spoken to some of the Spanish photographers,” said Anders. He explained that there were between 40 and 50 TV cameras, kilos of cables and a load of journalists all crammed into the meeting room next door.
“The photographers told me that there are more people here than there were at the press conference ahead of ‘El Classico’,” he said.
That really showed how big a deal this was: that we were on a par with arguably the biggest football derby in Europe.
Anders also said that he’d made a deal with the photographers. “None of them will be crawling around behind us trying to take pictures,” he explained. “They’re going to give us some space and won’t be trying to photograph our papers or the backs of our heads, or making us feel uncomfortable.”
Suddenly, there was a lot of noise from outside – of all the photographers and journalists all shouting at once. It was 6pm, with an hour and a half to go before the start of the press conference.
The door opened and, in a blaze of camera flashes and TV camera lighting, Alberto hurried inside.
“Hello Bjarne,” he said to me, and we gave each other a hug. While he said hello to the others, I tried to think what I could do to help support him.
“How are you feeling?” I asked him.
“I’m okay,” he told me.
Alberto was still upset, but at the same time he seemed quite relieved that a decision had been made when it came to planning ahead with his career. Since the end of August 2010, he’d been riding around not knowing whether he even still had a future in cycling.
We talked more about the situation, and took a look at the statement he’d prepared for the press conference. What he wanted to say was naturally tinged with his own pride and passion, so together with Trey, Anders and Alberto’s brother, Fran, we fine-tuned and polished what he’d written a little. Making a rash comment at a press conference like this could have terrible consequences.
At one point, Anders decided that he needed the bathroom, and the doorway was again lit up with camera flashes and lights when he left the room – quickly followed by the groans of the Spanish media that it was just a Danish press officer on the way to the toilet rather than their superstar rider.
But once Anders had returned, it was time to go through to the meeting room, and we had to make sure we stuck very close to Alberto so that the photographers weren’t able to surround him and separate him from the rest of us. And it nearly worked. I was right behind Alberto, but left too big a gap at one point, and so he was quickly swamped by photographers, all swinging their cameras, and I had to push them out of the way to stop myself being hit by their equipment. But I got hit anyway; they really couldn’t have cared less.
Once we made it to the stage, the camera flashes went crazy. A couple of photographers seemed to forget the deal we’d made about not getting behind us on the stage, and were shooed away, while we tried to adjust to the bright lights shining on us.
A number of Alberto’s fans had also turned up, and they stood at the back of the room clapping their hero. I looked around, readying myself for what was about to happen. There must have been between 200 and 250 people crammed into what wasn’t really that big a room. Anders welcomed everybody, and then I started things off with the statement I’d prepared.
“I think we’d all agree that this case has gone on for far too long. We’d hoped for a different outcome,” I said, working towards the conclusion that everyone was waiting to hear, “but we have to respect the verdict. We’ve supported Alberto 100 per cent up until now, and today I’d like to say that we as a team, supported by all our sponsors, will continue to fully support him, based on the ruling from CAS. The ruling states that it is very unlikely that this has anything to do with conscious cheating, so our trust in Alberto is still 100 per cent intact.”
Then it was Alberto’s turn – an emotional moment for him.
“To be honest, I feel very much under pressure right now,” he said. “It’s been very difficult, and there’s not been a single morning when I haven’t thought about how I’ve ended up in this situation. It’s been a painful process, but it’s been even more painful for my family who have suffered so much because of this.”
He looked out across the forest of microphones that had been set up on the table in front of us.
“I’ve tried to understand the verdict, but I can’t,” he continued. “I’ve tried everything to prove my innocence. I know myself that I haven’t doped. All my victories are not mine, but instead belong to the people, and they are the ones who need to decide what this verdict means.”
I felt extremely concentrated and focused. My experience from other press conferences, when we had had our backs against the wall, served me well: press conferences like Ivan Basso’s when he got thrown off the Tour before it had even started, and my own in 2007 when I admitted to having doped. On those occasions, there had been plenty of questions from the press, and this time we were fully prepared for that. Alberto dealt with the questions very well and, with the press conference winding up, Anders had planned what would happen next. It was all about getting Alberto away from the hotel as quickly as possible to take the intensity out of the situation.
We thanked everyone for coming and then, with the help of his assistant, Jacinto, we escorted Alberto down to his car in the underground car park and away from the hotel. Almost immediately, a calmness descended on the hotel.
I stayed behind to answer questions from journalists from the various TV stations and the newspapers, which were mostly about what I was going to do next. I had a plan, of course, as to what we’d do until Alberto was able to come back and hopefully ride the Tour of Spain. But what really occupied my thoughts was whether Alberto’s ban was going to become a collective punishment for the team.
If cycling’s governing body, the UCI, decided to ask for a re-evaluation of our ProTeam licence based on Alberto’s case, it could have serious repercussions for us, with the possibility that we could lose the licence. In the worst-case scenario, I might have to close the team, although I didn’t think, nor hope, that it would come to that.
Later that evening, we met up with Alberto and his brother at a little local restaurant that had opened up especially for us. We talked in English, and a little in French, as Alberto’s brother spoke it very well, and acted as translator. We went through both the legal and more technical consequences of the verdict, which among other things meant that Alberto’s contract with us was officially terminated. All images of him in our team kit needed to be taken off our website, and he could no longer wear our kit in training or any public appearances. However, we very much intended to continue working together once his ban had come to an end.
We were all very tired after the press conference, but were at the same time relieved that it had actually gone pretty well. Alberto asked how the other riders on the team were, and we told him that everything was okay, which made him even more keen to come back again.
“I’m going to go out training tomorrow,” he said, with that same look in his eyes that we’d learned to recognise in the time he’d ridden for us. It was a look that said he wanted to show everyone what he was really made of.
While Alberto continued talking to Anders and Trey, I leaned back in my chair and thought back to the months I’d had the world’s best rider riding for my team. I remembered Alberto meeting the team for the first time at our training camp in December 2010. We knew we had a real star in our midst; there was a special aura surrounding Alberto.
I quickly realised then that the most important thing to do was to establish a trusting relationship between the two of us – to show him that we were on his side during what was a difficult time. His experiences with some of the teams he’d ridden for in the past had scarred him, but our team-building trip was a new beginning for everyone on the team. A number of our big-name riders had left to join the new Leopard-Trek team, and quite a few of the team staff had gone there, too.
We needed to rebuild the team’s culture, and people needed to rediscover where they stood in the hierarchy. At the same time, the riders who were new to the team needed to find their place and get used to our way of doing things.
One of the activities on the trip was a day of windsurfing and kite-surfing. We had some professional surfers – who looked like they’d stepped straight off the set a surf film – helping to show us what to do. There were big smiles all round, and it wasn’t long before the nervousness gave way to complete enjoyment of the challenge at hand. Professional sports people always approach other sports with the same level of seriousness and will to win as they do their “own” sports, and Alberto certainly didn’t hold back in the waves. I watched how all the new members of the team reacted to the challenge, and how the more established members of the team in turn reacted towards them. The outcome was important, as the way people react when they’re taken out of their comfort zone with new activities like this is often the same way that they react “when the shit hits the fan” during races. Who was still able to help the others, and who was still able to make quick decisions?
One of the riders who had unfortunately left the team was Jens Voigt. He was a good example of someone who had always been a real leader on these survival camps that we’d often done as a team. When the others got tired, Jens would often take their rucksacks, and was sometimes powering along with three or four rucksacks at once, still motivating and encouraging his team-mates as he went.
That’s exactly how Jens was at races, too. He was constantly on the radio to us, keeping us updated on what was happening in the race – who had got in a breakaway, and whether he thought it was an important one, always aware of what was best for the team. And one of the goals on this training camp was to get individuals to work together as a team to reach a common goal.
Since the Schleck brothers, Fabian Cancellara and the others had left the team, I’d gone through a period of introspection. I’d asked myself whether there was anything I could have done differently, and whether them leaving the team was in actual fact my fault. But I’d come to the conclusion that it’s often a case of the grass being greener on the other side, and that it wasn’t the first time that people had left a company to create their own new one. Perhaps my way of running things had been used by them as an excuse to try something different, but I decided that I was going to stick with my values and philosophies when it came to running my team.
As the owner of the team, I was known for being very involved with my riders’ careers, and forming strong bonds with them. It meant that it made things that much more difficult if and when they came to leave the team, and so I thought long and hard about whether I should continue to invest so much of myself in the riders.
Eventually I decided that it was worth it, else I wasn’t really being true to my own character. I just had to do what I thought was best for myself, the team and the riders – even if that meant risking disappointment if things didn’t go they way I wanted them to.
With Alberto, I initially spent time getting to know him as a person. Little by little, I began to discover the best way to support him and help him to continue to develop as a rider. Even the best rider in the world could improve.
He already had a lot of the attributes I always tried to instil in my riders: as top sportsmen they needed to be able to make the best decisions irrespective of how they felt, and to take responsibility for their own actions. Sports people in that mould know that there are consequences if they don’t take responsibility and are not capable of making the decisions that are best for their team. My relationship was different to the ones I’d had with, for example, the Schleck brothers, Basso or Carlos Sastre. Alberto had won a lot more races, and was a dedicated, top professional. I didn’t need to grab him by the collar in order to make him train in a particular way. Instead, my work required patience and persistence because confidence is built up over time with gentle, well-timed coaching. The very essence of coaching is being able to change people without any detrimental effects.
Even before I’d signed Alberto to the team, I’d already noted where there was room for improvement in him. As a rival to my team’s riders, I’d naturally studied his strengths and weaknesses. That knowledge stood me in good stead once we did sign a contract with him, and it became a case of then trying to push the right buttons to get him to see things my way. One of my goals, for example, was to tweak Alberto’s time-trial position on the bike, which I had analysed and identified ways it could be improved. And so it proved when, having worked on it with him, we were able to shave 30 seconds off his time over a 30km time trial.
Unfortunately, Alberto’s doping case from when he was with the Astana team loomed large over everything we did, and that brought with it a kind of uncertainty. A long ban would have serious consequences for Alberto’s career, our team and my business.
No sooner had we signed Alberto’s formal contract, tying him to our team from 1 January 2011, than the media was quoting UCI president Pat McQuaid saying that it was unlikely that Alberto would be riding that year’s Tour de France. We knew that there was a risk that that could be the case, but it still surprised us that the head of the International Cycling Union was so busy speculating on the outcome of the case that the Spanish cycling federation hadn’t even made a decision on yet.
But not long afterwards, while we were on a training camp in Mallorca, news came through about Alberto’s case. The Spanish media wrote that the Spanish cycling federation had suggested a one-year suspension – although that really was just a suggestion rather than a ruling. The chaos that followed – not least various misunderstandings – meant that we were obliged to call a press conference at our hotel to clear things up, even though a definitive decision still hadn’t been made.
A few weeks later, the actual verdict came in. The Spanish federation acquitted Alberto, which meant he wouldn’t be suspended. As a team, it was back to plan A.
But that wasn’t the end of it by a long shot. In March 2011, the UCI announced that they were appealing the decision and taking the case to the international sports arbitration body, CAS. The court told us that it hoped to reach a verdict ahead of the Tour de France, but that until then Alberto was free to race. Really, we needed to know as soon as possible whether we’d be able to race at the Tour with Alberto, both from a sporting point of view and in terms of our sponsors, who in turn needed to know what kind of exposure they were likely to get during the three weeks in France in July.
Despite Alberto’s professionalism, and his continued willingness to train, he risked it all being for nothing if he was going to be prevented from riding the Tour. I tried to support him as best I could, and tried to show him that I was there for him no matter what.
But while he continued to train under a cloud of uncertainty, I turned some of my attention to the spring Classics, where I had another ace up my sleeve. Belgian Nick Nuyens was another new signing, coming to us from the Dutch Rabobank squad. Having in the past won Het Volk, Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne and Paris-Brussels, he was our man for the Classics. A number of people had written him off as being past his best, but I could still see a lot of potential in him. At the prestigious cobbled “semi-Classic” on 23 March, Dwars door Vlaanderen, Nick won the race and proved the so-called experts wrong.
A week later, on 3 April, it was the Tour of Flanders. It was arguably the most important one-day Classic, and a race that Fabian Cancellera had won for us in imperious fashion the year before. And he was the big favourite again.
But in my eyes, Nick was a serious outside contender, if he could do everything just right. Changing teams was like a breath of fresh air for him. He had a new training plan and we had helped him to make some adjustments to his riding position. Before the start of the season, I’d looked at his riding style, and we’d decided to try him with some shorter crank arms, which gave him a lighter pedal stroke.
The Tour of Flanders played out almost exactly as had been expected. It was a real demonstration of power from Fabian, while Nick played the waiting game. If he could ride smartly, and patiently, and if he could hang on until the closing stages of the race, then anything could happen.
With 40km to go, Fabian burst off the front with one of his trademark attacks. But on one of the following cobbled sections he seemed to lose some of his power, and the chasing group was able to get back up to him. Heading towards the finish, the pace was high, but Fabian again had the strength to attack with 5km to go, except that this time Sylvain Chavanel and Nick were able to go with him.
Nick had ridden a clever race, and was full of confidence having saved his energy as best he could. And in the final sprint to the line, he proved to be the strongest and beat Chavanel and Fabian. In the team car behind, we exploded in celebration. Winning the Tour of Flanders was not only a win in itself, but it was also a win for the team, for the team’s philosophy and values and for our new beginning after everything that had happened in 2010.
There was a TV camera installed in our car, and the pictures of our celebrations would prove to those watching that there was little doubt just how much the victory meant to us and our sponsors.
Winning Flanders proved that we could still mix it with the sport’s absolute best, despite having lost the riders who had moved on. It proved that our team structure, our values and our philosophy really worked, even after the huge turnover of riders and staff.
But we were no nearer to a resolution in Alberto’s case, and no one knew when CAS might call the hearing and therefore give a verdict. It meant that in May Alberto was able to take part in the Tour of Italy.
Unfortunately, the Giro was hit by tragedy on stage three. On the descent of the Passo del Bocco, Leopard-Trek’s Belgian rider Wouter Weylandt crashed heavily. Just a few minutes after the accident, we drove past where he was lying on the asphalt. “That doesn’t look good,” I remember saying. Doctors were fighting to save Wouter’s life while he lay lifeless in a pool of blood. He was airlifted to hospital, but when we arrived at the stage finish we were given the sad news that he had died as a result of his injuries. He left behind his pregnant wife. It couldn’t have been any more tragic. At that moment, everything else didn’t seem to matter.
We informed our riders about what had happened, and many of them took it very badly – especially Matteo Tosatto, who had been team-mates with Weylandt at the Quick Step team. The Leopard-Trek squad were staying at a hotel not far from where our team bus was parked, and we could see the media descending on the hotel. I could only imagine what my former press officer, Brian Nygaard, who had become the manager of Leopard-Trek, was feeling. He now had the unenviable task of informing the rider’s family that Wouter was dead.
“Do you want to take a walk?” I asked Anders, my new press officer. We walked and talked about the terrible tragedy, and found somewhere to have a glass of wine.
My relationship with Brian Nygaard hadn’t been the same since he’d left our team, but I wanted to show my support during what was a terrible time. I wrote him a text message, saying, “I want you to know that we’re thinking of you at this time when you need to try to be strong.”
Shortly afterwards, my phone beeped with his reply: “Thank you, Bjarne.”
The next day’s stage was neutralised out of respect for Wouter, as anything else would have just been meaningless.
Prior to the race, we’d already decided that we didn’t want Alberto to try to take the pink leader’s jersey too early on, as it would take up too much energy trying to defend it. The race’s ninth stage, on Sunday 15 May, was a mountainous 169km to the finish at Mount Etna – the famous volcano on the island of Sicily. It was a stage we’d already identified as being crucial to the race’s final classification.
Our tactic was to let the other teams do all the work until we got to Mount Etna, and that just before the start of the final climb Alberto would change bikes. I ran over to him with the new bike, which had special tyres with a particularly high tyre pressure, which would give Alberto the feeling that he was riding a lighter bike. It was to give him a psychological boost just before the climb started.
Alberto and I were very similar in that we were always looking for the latest piece of equipment to give us an advantage. Sure enough, he flew up the climb with the lead group of favourites, which included Vincenzo Nibali and Michele Scarponi. Then, Alberto put in one of his explosive accelerations, and went up the road alone. He soon caught Jose Rujano, who had attacked earlier, and together the two of them built up a solid advantage over the others, although I wanted Alberto to rid himself of Rujano before the finish.
During the stage, Alberto and I worked perfectly together. It felt almost as though I was sitting on the bike myself. Rujano had been able to follow Alberto’s wheel because there had been a headwind on part of the climb. But with a kilometre and a half to go, I asked Alberto to take his foot off the accelerator in order to save energy and prepare himself for the crucial blow around the next hairpin bend when the wind would be behind them. “As soon as you come out of the corner, attack,” I told him over the radio. It’s much easier for another rider to sit on your wheel when you’re going into a headwind than it is to follow when you’ve got a tailwind.
Alberto did as he was asked, attacking like only he can, dropping Rujano. He rode across the finish line alone as the winner of the stage, and took over the leader’s jersey with a hefty advantage over his competitors. From that point on, he dominated the Giro, taking another stage win along the way before standing atop the podium at the end of the race having beaten Scarponi by nearly six minutes.
A few days before we celebrated Alberto’s win at the Giro, CAS informed us that Alberto’s case wouldn’t be heard in the first week of June, as planned, and would instead take place after the Tour de France. It meant that Alberto could now prepare properly for the Tour. A week before it started, I got a call from him. “I feel ready,” he told me. “And if I win the Tour, I want to ride the Vuelta, too.”
“Of course,” I said. All along it had remained unsaid between us that if he won the Giro, and was able to go to the Tour, then he’d try to win all three grand tours.
At the end of June, we arrived at the Tour de France to be met by a media ready for confrontation.
Before that, though, there was a close encounter with Leopard-Trek. There was a real rivalry between Andy Schleck, Brian Nygaard and Kim Andersen, one of my former directeurs sportifs, on one side, and Alberto and me on the other. But the enmity between us was nothing like as bad as some in the press had made it out to be. Our relationship was professional, and at the end of the day they were our rivals like everyone else.
It turned out that we were staying at the same hotel as them for the first few days of the race. One evening, Brian Nygaard turned up in the dining room and went round shaking hands with all my riders and team staff, as did Jens Voigt, smiling at everyone and hugging his former team-mates. We respected each other, and that’s how we conducted ourselves at the hotel. The moment we stepped outside the hotel, however, it was like walking into another dimension. Suddenly the people around us were trying to make trouble and really stir up the rivalry between us.
On Thursday 30 June, two days before the start of the Tour, we held our pre-race press conference, where we knew we were going to get bombarded with questions from the press about the doping case. Anders was clear about what we should do: face it head on and talk about it now in an effort to stop it becoming a theme that would be revisited each day after every stage of the race. And sure enough, the journalists didn’t hold back during the press conference, firing critical and aggressive questions at us.
In my opening statement, I had tried my best to call for fairness when dealing with Alberto, as the decision that he could take part in the race was down to the UCI and Tour organisers ASO.
“I beg you all to understand, but if you don’t agree with the decision then you need to question the system, and not us. We are just going by the rules,” I said.
One of the journalists asking a question was former pro rider Paul Kimmage, who had written a number of articles and books on doping in the sport. His question was more of a comment, as it seemed to me that he was determined to attack me.
Kimmage couldn’t understand how I could talk about fairness “without blinking”. He then went after Alberto, accusing him of never having spoken out against doping, to which Alberto calmly replied that that was nonsense.
For us, it was a case of not letting our feelings bubble over and turning the press conference into something bigger than it was. Even though we sat there and took the confrontational questions, it didn’t mean that we should have to take it when they became aggressive and intimidating.
The tense and negative treatment Alberto had received was even more apparent later in the day when we attended the teams presentation at the Puy du Fou theme park. The arena it took place in was full with people cheering and applauding as the teams were presented, with Thor Hushovd, for example, appearing holding a “god of thunder’s” hammer.
But when it was our turn, the mood in the arena changed. Most people clapped, but some whistled and others booed as the riders appeared. When Alberto was presented over the loudspeakers, he was greeted with a number of boos from the crowd. Things got worse after the presentation when he was trying to find his way back to the team bus. In all the chaos, he was left on his bike circling the arena among the hostile crowds looking for the bus, while we ran around looking for him. When he finally made it back to the safety of the bus, he was truly pumped up.
“If I wasn’t feeling entirely motivated before, I certainly am now!” he said.
On the first stage of the race, which started in the Vendée, the crowd’s behaviour continued out on the roads. I was in the team car, and in the last few kilometres of the stage there was a loud slap on the windscreen. It was the sound of a raw steak that someone had thrown at us. Even though I’d registered what had happened, I was busy concentrating as Alberto had been involved in a crash, and I was more worried about him getting to the finish than I was about reacting to immature grown men. The spectator had thrown the steak to demonstrate his disgust at Alberto taking part in the race. A number of journalists had heard about what had happened, but we tried to play down its importance.
That evening, Anders asked how I felt about what had happened.
“I did at least manage to see that it wasn’t a very good cut of beef,” I told him. We couldn’t let such disappointing actions from the spectators bother us.
“You’ll just have to drive with the window wound up,” someone suggested, and after that we talked no more about it. In fact, once we left the Vendée, it was as though everyone’s mood suddenly changed.
But it never became the Tour de France that we’d dreamed of. Alberto was unlucky, and was involved in a number of crashes in the first few days. Four crashes in the first nine days of the race took their toll, as well as losing him time to his rivals. In one of the crashes he injured his knee, and the pain was such that he considered pulling out of the race. The Giro had taken more out of him than we had at first thought. We knew all along that it was going to be extremely challenging to attempt victory at both the Giro and the Tour, but we’d agreed that it was worth a go.
It was as though Alberto never really got going at the Tour, and had begun to doubt whether his form was good enough. The doping case also affected him more than he was prepared to let on, and it would be tough to see him or anyone else perform at their best with the kind of pressure he had on his shoulders.
But Alberto wasn’t prepared to leave the race without a fight. Stage 16 was a day when it was expected that the favourites would save their energy for the stages still to come. Alberto, though, attacked on the last climb of the day, dropping the Schleck brothers, and only Cadel Evans and Samuel Sanchez could follow him. The brothers lost even more time on the wet and technical descent before the finish. Alberto is an extremely good descender, and really pushed the pace. By the finish he’d taken a minute back on Andy Schleck in the general classification, and gave us new hope that he might be able to be in the mix for a podium finish after all.
But on the road to the Galibier was where I believe Alberto lost the Tour. He didn’t eat enough, which meant that later on in the stage he had problems and lost time to his rivals. That evening after the stage, I went to see him in his room. I’d decided that I was going to tell him that we could attack on the Alpe d’Huez stage the next day instead, but as I came into the room Alberto beat me to it: “I’m going to attack tomorrow.”
We both agreed that we had nothing to lose so we planned for, and put everything into, a big attack from Alberto the next day.
As early as the first climb, he went on the offensive, with only very few riders being able to follow him, including Andy Schleck. They were caught at the bottom of Alpe d’Huez, but Alberto then attacked again. Later, he was caught again, too, but he’d finished the race with a real flourish. Even though the race didn’t go the way he or we wanted, Alberto always maintained his position as team leader. Whenever he got back to the bus after a stage that hadn’t gone well for him, he would be angry with himself and at what had happened. But whenever he met the press or public, he was always super-professional and calm and collected. He never lost his temper, even when the media or fans surrounded him and everyone wanted a piece of him. He also always had time for his team-mates, trying to ensure that they were happy. But whereas Andy Schleck had been very open and easy-going in his role as my team’s leader, Alberto was a lot more serious and composed, even when things had gone badly.
A huge star like Alberto is used to being the centre of attention, but it also means that he is wary of people and their intentions before he can trust them. I like to think that I have made it through that filter – and not everyone does, which is only natural. There has to be a degree of distance with some people and, having been in a similar position to his before, I know that you can’t possibly be best pals with everyone.
Alberto finished the 2011 Tour de France in fifth place overall, almost four minutes behind winner Cadel Evans. But the farce that was Alberto’s doping case continued in the same vein two days after the Tour, when CAS once again announced that the hearing was to be delayed. Our patience was beginning to run out, and we were fed up with not being able to do anything about it. We felt that the way we were being treated was unreasonable, with the hearing being put back indefinitely. It had gone on for almost a year, which was no way to treat anybody, letting them dangle in uncertainty for so long.
Alberto didn’t ride the world championship road race, which took place in Denmark at the end of September, as the course was too flat for him, and more suited to the big sprinters. The race was the perfect opportunity to showcase the best of what Denmark has to offer to the world’s cycling fans watching at home. Pictures of the peloton leaving central Copenhagen bathed in sunshine for a 260km route lined with a quarter of a million people made us Danes proud. Favourites for the race included defending champion Thor Hushovd, Philippe Gilbert and Mark Cavendish.
Cavendish, in particular, was unlikely to get a better opportunity any time soon to win the Worlds than on the roads of Denmark. It was a flat route with a 14km finishing circuit and the finish on the climb of Geels Bakke. Cavendish had won 20 stages of the Tour de France in four years, as well as winning the green points jersey at the 2011 Tour, which gave him a lot of confidence going into the Worlds in Denmark.
“I’m in the best form I’ve ever been in, plus I’ve got the strongest team there’s ever been,” he told the British media ahead of the race.
Also on the British squad were Bradley Wiggins, who’d won silver in the time trial a few days before, and the experienced David Millar.
Cavendish is cool because he’s very much his own man, and isn’t scared to tell his team-mates, “I’m going to win today”, which makes them want to work even harder for him. He possesses an extraordinary winner’s instinct – an instinct that my friend, Brian Holm, who was Cavendish’s directeur sportif on the HTC team, says he’s only seen before in our former Telekom team-mate Erik Zabel.
Brian told me a story about when Cavendish was only 19 or 20 and was on his first training camp with the team. The team had hired Bayern Munich football club’s psychologist, and each rider was due to have a half-hour session with him. It had cost a small fortune to hire the psychologist, but when it was Cavendish’s turn, there was no sign of him. Brian went to the British rider’s room for an explanation, and Cavendish simply told him that he didn’t need a psychologist, adding: “Don’t worry – I’ll win races anyway.”
Brian says that he told him: “Either you’ll become the world’s best rider or you’re going to have a very short career.”
Cavendish’s strong points have become his acceleration, his ability to maintain a high top speed on flat roads and his aerodynamic position when sprinting, and he was able to put these skills to good use at the Worlds.
The men’s road race climaxed with a bunch sprint, where Cavendish’s strong GB team delivered him perfectly to the final rush to the line, and he gave it absolutely everything on the uphill finish to narrowly beat Australian Matt Goss by half a wheel length. German rider Andre Greipel was third, while Fabian was fourth. It was the first British gold medal since 1965 when Tom Simpson won the Worlds. Our Saxo Bank rider, Michael Mørkøv, was the best-placed Dane, in 18th place.
With the world champion’s rainbow jersey comes great responsibility, but no doubt that will help Cavendish mature as a rider. On the occasions I’ve spoken to him, he’s always been grateful for the way Saxo Bank treated his friend, Jonathan Bellis, who in 2009 had an accident on his scooter in Italy and was left in a coma for five weeks. Bellis had been one of our big talents, having won a bronze medal at the under-23 world championships in 2007. When he was transferred to London after what had been a very long stay in hospital in Italy, Trey and I visited him – not to talk about cycling, but to see how he was and to show our support for him. Bellis told us that he wanted to try to make a comeback to the sport, despite his terrible injuries as a result of the accident. Even though Bellis’s contract ran out at the end of 2010, we extended it by another year, despite the fact that it was uncertain whether he’d be able to make a comeback at all. It was that helping hand that had pleased Cavendish. Both he and Bellis had at one time been on British Cycling’s Academy programme together, directed by former pro Max Sciandri.
Cavendish now rides for Team Sky, together with Wiggins, Chris Froome and Edvald Boasson Hagen, and it seems to be a very strong team. It’s going to be exciting to see how they deal with having so many stars and leaders on the squad, though – especially at the Tour de France.
But Team Sky’s Tour plans were the least of my worries on that February evening in Pinto, sitting with Alberto and the others going over what had happened during the press conference a few hours before.
I was thinking more about how we were now going to rearrange our race programme until Alberto’s likely return to the team in August. Just days later, the UCI added to our situation by bringing our ProTeam licence into question.
We’d started 2012 riding into a metaphorical headwind, and although it was said that I was at my best when up against it, it had all become a bit much. In the days and weeks following the press conference in Pinto, I wasn’t in the greatest of moods, angry as I was at receiving what I perceived to be pretty shoddy treatment and being left in a very difficult position. I tried to counteract it by going out on more bike rides, during which I could both let off a bit of steam and try to give myself a new energy boost.
At the end of February, we had a training camp in Spain. The new season, however, wasn’t the only thing on our mind; there was also the whole situation regarding our WorldTour licence to think about, too. The team’s whole existence was on the line.
The UCI licence committee had told us to attend a hearing, as the UCI themselves were calling for us to have our licence taken away. Alberto’s UCI points accounted for a huge percentage of our team’s points for 2012, having won them during the previous season. With those 2011 points having been docked, and Alberto banned until August, the UCI was of the opinion that we no longer deserved to ride at WorldTour level.
Losing the licence could mean losing our invitations to all the big races, such as the Classics, the Tour, the Giro and the Vuelta.
On the first evening of the training camp in Spain, I took the opportunity to inform the riders and staff about the forthcoming hearing and the seriousness of the situation. During the whole process, I’d tried to keep them as updated as I could over email, but now that we were all together in one place, it was good to be able to talk to them face-to-face and be in a position to answer their questions.
Unsurprisingly, everyone was worried about what it could mean for them if we had our licence taken away, so I’d decided to be completely open about it and not to try to paint things in a positive light when it came to the possible consequences.
“The worst-case scenario is that the team could have to close down,” I told them, but underlined that that really was the absolute worst-case scenario.
On Sunday 26th February, I travelled with our press officer, Anders, to Geneva for the hearing that was to take place the next day. On the Monday morning, we met with our director, Trey Greenwood, our lawyer, Henrik Schlüter, and Lars Seier from our main sponsor, Saxo Bank.
I felt that we were well prepared, and that we had a good case due to the extraordinary circumstances that had led to the unfortunate situation we found ourselves in after a year and a half of waiting.
The hearing took place at the Crowne Plaza in Geneva at 2pm. The licence committee was made up of three people, plus a secretary, the UCI had two representatives, while there were five of us – and we were all crammed into a small, overheated room, where the hearing took place over a number of hours.
It was a closed hearing, so unfortunately I’m not able to divulge exactly what was said, but we left afterwards safe in the knowledge that the committee now knew our side of the story.
However, we were soon plunged back into uncertainty again, left waiting for a decision and completely powerless to do anything about it. It had been bad enough having had to have waited for a decision about a single rider, but this time it was about the whole team. It was like having been put on ‘pause’; the handbrake was on, and there was very little we could say when approached by the media.
“How are you going to approach the Tour of Flanders?” we’d be asked, yet we didn’t even know if we were going to get to take part. We didn’t know whether we’d be riding the Tour de France, or even the Giro, which was starting in Denmark in the town I was born in, Herning.
Then, on top of everything else, our Classics captain and 2011 Tour of Flanders winner Nick Nuyens crashed at Paris-Nice, breaking his hip, and was going to be unable to defend his Flanders title, whether we were invited or not.
It was a lot to take in, and playing the waiting game again affected me and the whole of the team. I felt as though I was being watched for signs as to my mood and humour. Was I happy? Or was I resigned to our fate? I tried to give the impression that I was feeling optimistic, and that everything would be okay, but inside the doubt had started to creep in.
I found it hard to understand why the UCI were so set on fighting against my team and me. Or that’s what it felt like anyway.
Having contributed so much to the sport over the years, I was hoping that we’d be on the receiving end of some goodwill due to the circumstances.
The decision finally came after more than a month of waiting – on the evening of 2nd April, to be precise. Anders explained to me over the phone that the committee had rejected the UCI’s reasons to take away our licence, and it felt as though time stood still for a few seconds. I immediately felt a wave of happiness and relief. For the first time in almost a year and a half, it felt as though we were finally back in business, and no longer in anyone else’s thrall. Now we could look forward and concentrate on what it was all about: bike racing. I couldn’t help breaking out into a huge roar: “Yes!”