The loss is in the past, which cannot be changed. The win—it still lies up ahead, waiting for us, and it will stay there until we figure out how to take it.
GATHERING THE TEAM for our first big training camp of the year, in mid-January, is an occasion not of hope but, more accurately, of optimism: the entire season lies before us—ours for the taking if we are willing to work hard enough, and think enough, and sacrifice enough. (And also, I never forget, if we are helped along by a little luck, too: no crashes the week before a big Classic, no sore throats or head colds in the middle of an important stage race, no mad dogs dashing into the pack in front of our wheels, and on and on.)
In those first days of the year when we are all together, as the riders are stretching out their legs in the parking lot before the customary 10:00 A.M. group ride, we still might accomplish anything—or everything. The bikes are brand-new, the clothes are so fresh some of them have yet to be laundered the first time, still smell of the plastic package they just came out of. There is a unique kind of spring to the riders as they jump out of their saddles to climb a hill, or jostle with each other in make-believe sprints. Though we have won nothing yet, our potential to become winners is unlimited. I love the atmosphere of training camp, the emotion, the promise.
In 2007 we met for the fifth straight year in Solvang, California. I chose this odd little city for many reasons. It is a Scandinavian-themed tourist town, which made the European racers feel a little more at home. The surrounding Santa Ynez valley supplied us with leg-cracking hills and flat, easy roads to spin along. The restaurants served good food in a variety of cuisines without being so cutting edge or trendy that an unusual dish for dinner might induce stomachaches or indigestion that might cost us the next day's training. In fact, what I appreciated most was that as a team we had settled in at Solvang. We stayed at the Royal Scandinavian Inn each year, and each year we set up our trucks and work stands in the rear parking lot, where out in the sun (and often well into the dark) the mechanics would happily toil away—fine-tuning the thirty or so new road and time-trial bikes, and applying layer after layer of heady-smelling glue to fasten our new, lightweight tires to carbon wheels. Our soigneurs and assistants would set up crates filled with a week's worth of energy bars, gels, water bottles, energy drinks, sodas, and snacks—you'd think a grocery store had bought the lot and was moving in. We took our team photos on the reliably scenic Alisal River Golf Course, which meant we never had to forfeit any training time in a search for photogenic locations. We had twenty-mile loops, forty-mile loops, all-day epics already scouted out and mapped—or, in the case of some of our longtime riders who'd been coming for years, memorized. After five camps, the residents had grown used to us; though each morning we could count on greeting a crowd of fans armed with cameras for arm-around-the-shoulder shots, and pens for autographing posters and caps—and a few hardcore amateur cyclists who'd respectfully tag along just off the back of our pack during rides—we never felt mobbed.
With twenty-eight riders from fifteen countries on the team in 2007, I thought it was especially important that the training camp be as routine as possible. I wanted the veteran riders to feel as comfortable as if they were slipping into their favorite pair of jeans, and I hoped that the new riders would be put at ease seeing how relaxed the others were.
But one of our new riders was so full of ease—and confidence—that I almost didn't know what to make of him.
Another one of our training camp rituals was that the team directors—Dirk, Sean, Eki, and I—would gather in one of the secluded, quiet sitting areas of the hotel and call each rider in for a private meeting. Over the winter, I'd have made up a schedule of races that I thought each rider should do; the other directors critiqued it, we made changes, swapped races around, plugged different riders into different situations, and, after literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of scheduling, we came up with a master plan for the season—for each and every rider. The schedule didn't just list races either. We could tell a rider that we expected him to win a certain race, or to try for a podium spot, or that he would be expected to ride in support of a teammate who had a better chance to win, or that he might just do the race as part of the overall training plan—to work on time trialing, for example, or on thriving in back-to-back mountain stages.
In January 2007, for instance, George Hincapie knew that he would race the Tour of California in February as a support rider, and perhaps try to win a stage; then he would go to Paris-Nice in mid-March to ride support but mostly to tune his fitness for Milan–San Remo in late March, in which we thought he might be able to win or podium; in the beginning of April, he knew, he would be riding the Three Days of De Panne in Belgium, to acclimate for the rough, gritty conditions he was sure to face in what we considered the heart of his season—the three great Classics of the Tour of Flanders, which began just three days after De Panne ended, Ghent-Wevelgem on April 11, and Paris-Roubaix just four days later. After that beating, George would recover through May until the eight-day Dauphiné Libéré in France in June, which would be an ideal practice run for him for the Tour de France in July—for which he knew he was going to be counted on as our number one lieutenant. George also knew that in the Classics he could count on the support of the Aussie hard-man Matt White, a bulldoggish Lithuanian named Tomas Vaitkus, Stijn Devolder from Belgium, and Benjamin Noval, a Spaniard who seemed as unstoppable and steady as a locomotive in the toughest one-day races.
It's a level of detail that is unmatched in the sport. But it is worth every mind-numbing, second-guessing, finger-aching, eye-straining, computer-crashing second I put into it. From 1999 to 2005, it was one of the key reasons every rider arrived at the Tour ready to help Lance win seven in a row. In 2006, it helped us salvage what I knew would be a year without a Tour de France win—we won a stage in each of the Grand Tours, wore the yellow jersey, and would take more than twenty wins in all.
In 2007, I believed that we could once again win the Tour de France—once more stand atop the podium in July, where for so long it had felt like we belonged. But July was still half a year away, and I was about to run into a twenty-four-year-old kid who had his own ideas about what should happen in Paris.
Alberto Contador, a quiet, thin Spanish racer who had joined the team just before camp started, walked into the room for his meeting, sat down, and said, "I wish for my first race to be Paris-Nice."
"That's good, Alberto," I said. "We already have it scheduled for you."
Contador nodded and, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for us to hear from a near-rookie at his first training camp with the world's best team, said, "As well, I will win it."
The first time I saw Alberto Contador, he had been unceremoniously dropped from the lead group on a mountaintop finish at a race in the town of Burgos, Spain.
It was 2002, and I was there to scout out young riders, so I was intent on the lead group; as they flashed by, sweating and thrashing at each other like a pack of dogs, I tried to analyze who looked strong and, more important, who possessed an indefinable quality I could sometimes spot—like a farmer trying to judge ripeness, or a florist trying to time a plant's bloom, I was trying to forecast which of these kids might grow into greatness. I watched the leaders go by. They were fast, strong, impressive—good riders, many of them destined for many wins, I thought. I made a few mental notes.
Then I saw a whip-thin figure flashing up the road, swooping in and out of the caravan cars that were following the leaders. He must have gotten a flat or something earlier, or had some other trouble, and was now coming back, overtaking the cars, slicing around them into an open section of road, then riding up behind the next car as easily as if he were opening the throttle of a motorcycle rather than pedaling. And it was not just the speed that caught my eye: there was a fluidity that was as beautiful to me as any piece of art.
My first impression—whip-thin—has always stuck with me, because he is in many ways exactly like the image of a whip that came to my mind; he is that stringy, that quick, and, though it happens so fast the eye has trouble appreciating it, that graceful in his movement.
It was a kid who Dirk, in one of his many scouting reports, had told me to watch out for: Alberto Contador. He was only nineteen, but I instantly felt that his five-foot-nine, 130-pound frame wouldn't change much even as he aged. He would add muscle if he rode right, but never much fat; I could see that from the structure of his limbs, the narrow shelf of his shoulders, and the long, lean nature of the muscle he already had.
There were, of course, lots of kids like him. Europe was filled with teenagers who had the build—and explosive power—of a stick of dynamite, and who also had that almost supernatural ease on a bicycle that cyclists often call souplesse (a French term referring to smoothness of pedaling) or sprezzatura (an Italian term for making something extremely difficult appear easy). It was always exciting to discover one of these kids—but often ultimately disappointing, as well. They could turn out to be as fragile on a bike as they were beautiful, simply unable to withstand the mental and physical rigor of racing day after day at the top level. There was never any way to tell at this age which riders would end up translating their immense physical gifts into greatness.
At the finish, I introduced myself to Alberto—just a few words of congratulations, nothing remarkable, and I don't think either of us remembers exactly what we said. I recall thinking, as his eyes widened, that he was impressed at meeting me—Lance and I had already won three Tours de France—and that he was trying both not to show it yet also act respectful at the same time. The motion of his gloved hand as he wiped sweat from his brow, the way he unclipped his foot from his bike—there was something almost gentle about him.
And, as I was to learn as I kept in touch with him, stopping to chat or shake his hand whenever I saw him at a race through the seasons, there was an authentically gentle quality to his life. Little details would pop up that might embarrass some riders, but which Alberto told without shame: in the city of Pinto, where he lived with his parents, he told me how he used to run out onto his family's balcony after school and whistle; flocks of doves would fly onto the rails, sometimes onto his hands, cooing to be fed.
He had all the talent he'd need to become a future Tour de France champion—perhaps even to become the heir to Lance's leadership once our star left the sport—but none of us, not even he, knew whether this quiet, respectful, shockingly lean, dove-feeding physical marvel had the toughness.
All questions about that were answered on May 12, 2004. Just eighteen miles into the cold, rainy first stage of a Spanish race called the Vuelta a Asturias, Alberto was chatting with a teammate near the front of the pack when his pupils suddenly rolled up under his eyelids. His arms and legs began to convulse—yet somehow he kept pedaling on instinct—then his head snapped from side to side and both man and bicycle crashed to the pavement.
Rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, Alberto suffered a grim diagnosis: a congenital blood clot had migrated to his brain and caused a stroke. During a risky, hours-long emergency surgery, the clot was removed and the pathways to his brain were restored. Alberto says that throughout his surgery he dreamed he was riding the Tour de France. When he awoke to discover he was in a hospital recovery room, he says, he immediately wanted to explain to his parents the feeling he'd had during his dream—the depth and breadth of his love for cycling. But, of course, his brain was weakened and so it was only much later that he could even begin to speak coherently, and even then he couldn't summon the words to equal the grand visions he'd had. He could form only the simplest phrase, a cliché that instead of feeling worn resounded for him with all he'd felt while his life was being saved; his first words, then, were to his mother: "Where there's a will there's a way."
His mother knew instantly that he was talking about returning to cycling, and began crying.
Our team had never won Paris-Nice. It's a seven-stage, 780-mile-long race that more or less vertically bisects France from its capital city all the way down to the southern coastal town of Nice. It's one of those races most Americans and very few casual cycling fans have ever heard of, but which holds immense prestige for those in the know.
The honor arises both from Paris-Nice's longevity—it's been run since 1933—and its legendary list of winners. The great champion Jacques Anquetil, a five-time Tour de France winner, won Paris-Nice five times. Eddy Merckx, the five-time Tour de France winner, who is generally considered the greatest all-around cyclist ever, had three victories at Paris-Nice. The great Classics rider Sean Kelly, who among his 198 wins could count two each at Paris-Roubaix, Milan–San Remo, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, ruled Paris-Nice for seven consecutive years from 1982 to 1988—an astounding record likely to be forever unmatched. Just before beginning his then-unprecedented five-year domination of the Tour de France, Miguel Indurain towered over the Paris-Nice podium twice in a row.
I'd competed in Paris-Nice a lot when I was still racing. Even though I'd never done well there—I needed more miles in my legs to flourish and was never a great early-season performer—I liked the race. It's nicknamed the Race to the Sun because the first few stages, so far north in France, are often bedeviled by cold rain, wind, or even snow. As the pack plunges south, the weather improves, until finally the champion is crowned in the final stage right on the sunny Mediterranean waterfront in Nice. The journey from a cold, harsh start to the bright, warm finish always felt like the essence of victory itself to me.
As I'd made up the 2007 race schedules before training camp, I'd calculated that Contador had a good chance to win Paris-Nice. It was only a week long, which suited young riders like him, who were more likely to wilt during the last couple weeks of the longer stage races. There were two significant mountain stages out of the seven days of racing (plus one short, three-mile time-trial prologue, as well), which created a high ratio of climbing that also suited him. And, perhaps most important, as I'd created the year's program for Levi Leipheimer, I'd concluded that it made sense for him to ride Paris-Nice in a support role.
I expected Levi to contend for the Tour de France win in 2007. Publicly, I was admitting only that I thought he had a good chance to make the podium in July. And, even to Levi himself, I stressed that we should expect to stand on the Tour's podium, but I didn't specify where; I didn't want to put too much pressure on him. But my gut feeling was that he had as good a chance as any of the top contenders to win the whole thing—if we managed his season right. In the four years between his departure from our team in 2002 and when I recruited him back at the end of 2006, I'd closely studied his performance under other directors. I thought he'd been making the mistake of getting too fit too early in the season—working very hard to be fast in late spring and early summer, which then left him unable to achieve peak conditioning for the Tour in July. My plan was to have Levi peak almost immediately for a win at the Tour of California in February (which he would end up doing), then begin to taper off. Through March, April, and May he would concentrate on accumulating base fitness—a solid foundation of relatively steady-state, low-impact miles that would prove unbreakable as later in the season we added more and more intensity on top of it through June. Finally, we'd arrive at a training peak during the Tour de France itself. He was going to be slower than he'd ever been in May, but faster than he'd ever been in July.
This was essentially the same idea that had worked seven years in a row with Lance, modified to include more racing for Levi, as well as the rest of the team. The difference with Lance was that I always knew that something would have to go horribly wrong for him not to stand atop the podium in July; in contrast, for us to get up there now, everything would have to go right. Because of that gap in certainty, I could no longer gamble our entire season on one race. (The strategy paid off, too: the team would go on to win more than forty races in 2007, our best season ever.)
But Alberto was not concerned with my big-picture ideals. He wanted to win Paris-Nice. If my planning meant that in mid-March, Levi would be ideally situated to ride in support of the young Spaniard, that was all he needed to hear. He would have a genuine, world-class star working for him. He smiled, and his brown eyes flickered. There is a serenity in his eyes that is very different from Lance's nakedly burning intensity, but you also have the unmistakable impression that something is raging behind those walls of nondescript brown.
"Okay," I said to Alberto that January day in the directors' conference, hiding my surprise at his ambition and forwardness—and confidence. "Sure. Why not all for Paris-Nice? If you're going to ride it, we might as well win, right?"
We lost Paris-Nice in stage 2.
Going into the undulating, 110-mile stage that was expected to be nothing more than a showcase for the sprinters, Alberto, Levi, and the rest of the top ten in the general classification had been separated by less than five seconds. This tight competition was what we'd expected. In a short race like Paris-Nice, the final victory is almost always decided by a few seconds rather than a few minutes as in the Tour de France.
In the last six miles, the sprinters' teams went to the front and sent the pace sky-high to chase down the remnants of a daylong breakaway. The pack slammed through the city of Limoges, careering through tight corners and stuffing itself into narrow streets, a hundred near-misses happening every second, and throughout the peloton sliced high-pitched beeps—the sound of limit alarms being set off as the cyclists' heart rates exceeded the ranges programmed into their handlebar-mounted computers. It was high-risk, high-speed utter chaos full of failing bodies, missed signals, botched communications, and split-second reactions that could lead equally to victory or loss—pretty much business as usual for a sprint finish. And just as it all broke loose, one of our lieutenants, Yaroslav Popovych—Popo—flatted.
Two of our riders made an instant decision to drop back and wait for Popo—which was the wrong decision. In a second, our team was no longer together. Alberto and Levi found themselves in the middle of the peloton and, just ahead of them, someone wobbled, or hesitated, or braked too hard going into a turn, and the pack cracked in half.
Thirty-eight riders—the lucky, persistent, strong head of the pack—finished within two seconds of the winner. Alberto, Levi, Tommy Danielson, and around seventy other riders finished in a second group that was as much as nineteen seconds back. In Paris-Nice, that time gap might as well have been an eternity.
"I can't believe it!" Dirk shouted into my phone. He and Eki were our team directors for the race. I was shuttling between Paris-Nice and another race going on in Italy at the same time, Tirreno-Adriatico, which Yatesy was directing for us, so I hadn't been there for the stage. Dirk was livid. "Seventeen seconds!" he shouted. "Seventeen seconds behind the pack!"
"Dirk," I said.
"If you lose time because you get dropped or you're not good enough that's one thing," he said, a little quieter but in a tone that would still easily be described by anyone as loud. "But for a bad decision—for something that can be avoided—for confusion— for—for—"
I waited to hear for what.
He thundered, "You cannot have that!"
"Dirk," I said. "I'm pissed off, too. It's a stupid way to lose time. It's really disappointing."
There was silence.
"So," I said, "The loss is in the past, which cannot be changed. The win—it still lies up ahead, waiting for us, and it will stay there until we figure out how to take it. It's not going anywhere. We have to find our way to it. So how do we get that time back?"
Dirk laughed—more of a grunt, really. "Listen to this: Alberto came to me after the stage, and he said, 'It's a shame.'"
"Yes," I said. "It is."
"Then he said, 'I can still win it.'"
"Yes?"
"Yes. Johan, when are you coming?"
"Stage 4," I said. "I'll be in the car for stage 4."
"Good," he said.
"Hey, Dirk."
"Yes?"
"You know, that split would have happened even for me, even if I'd been directing. You know in that chaos it's up to the riders to come through. All we can do is prepare them for that moment and talk to them right up to that moment."
There was a silence again, much longer than the first, but somehow it felt more amiable, less heavy. Then, over my phone, Dirk's voice: "Thanks."
I'd meant what I said. After all these years, Dirk had become an exceptional team director, and it gave me great satisfaction to think that all of the things Lance and I had learned together about winning and losing would not just vanish once both of us had retired—a subject I'd been thinking more and more about since 2006. It was my job to win the Tour de France. But it was my dream to win one more without Lance—to prove to myself that I could. Once I did that, I found myself wondering, would it still feel the same—winning? Would I still feel like there was anything left to win, or would the situation be like another version of what Lance and I had felt after his record-breaking sixth win: Now what? And why? And, in truth, I wasn't so sure that after I secured victory in one Tour without Lance I'd want to keep trying to win more even if I could. I knew, by now, what it took to win: the year-round, day-long, every-minute focus on cycling. I wasn't sure I was willing to make that sacrifice anymore. I missed my family.
I was haunted by something I'd been told by a friend of mine who was as deeply involved in Formula 1 car racing as I was in cycling. He told me a story about coming home from another season and seeing a picture his young daughter had drawn of their family. There was his daughter, her little brother, their mom, and even the nanny all happy together. And far over on the other side of the piece of paper, alone, stood a cartoon version of my friend, talking on a cell phone.
I didn't want to end up on the other side of the paper in my family's life. My wife, Eva Maria, supported and encouraged me from the start to the end of every season—and that's part of what made leaving her at home so hard. I knew she believed in me, and wanted me to fulfill my dreams, even though it meant we spent more days apart than together. Once I achieved that next victory, I thought, I would reward her dedication. I wanted to make up for everything that we'd missed.
And my daughter, Victoria, who was three, deserved a father, too. I wanted to get my win and get back to my girls. More and more, when I was away from them, I found my focus interrupted at odd times by a memory of one perfect day we'd had together.
It hadn't been much of a special day at all, which made it all the more unusual for us. We didn't do anything but hang around our house: No guests, no hours-long phone call for me, no planning the next trip ... It had come after a race season, and we'd all slept late. We had paella for lunch and, because it was hot out, we just hung around in the house, talking, telling jokes, looking at drawings Victoria had made. Around three, we started watching cartoons on TV, and all of us fell asleep.
Victoria woke me up, pulling on my arm. She was in her little kid's bikini, smiling, impatient. I put on my swimsuit and the three of us jumped in the pool out in our garden, and then we spent the rest of the day floating on air mattresses.
And that was it. We did nothing, and we did it together. And I wanted, more than anything, to do more of that.
I used to worry, now that Lance had retired, that when I quit, everything we'd worked so hard to build might just vanish—we'd be nothing but marks in a record book. It wasn't like he and I created grand buildings or majestic bridges. What would be left, I used to wonder? Now, though, I knew: Dirk was part of the answer. And Yatesy and Eki, and maybe whatever Levi might be able to pass on someday to some other fresh, smart, inquisitive racer, the same way Lance had passed his ideals to Levi.
But first we had to un-lose Paris-Nice.
When Contador attacked on the very last climb of stage 4, we could not see him from the car but one of the many radio commentators shouted, "He's having fun!"
Dirk and I looked quickly at each other and smiled, then he jerked the steering wheel hard to just narrowly miss clipping a motorcycle. I think after all these years he also drives as wildly as me.
The stage had steadily traversed uphill for the last fifty miles or so, but Dirk and I had correctly anticipated that all of the time that would be gained or lost would come in the final two miles—a withering 10-percent-grade climb to the airport in the town of Mende. In that small stretch of road, Contador's time gains on his way to winning the stage were eye-popping: thirteen seconds over world-class climber Cadel Evans; twenty-eight seconds over Frank Schleck, who won atop the legendary Alpe d'Huez in the 2006 Tour de France; nearly a minute over the wiry French racer Sandy Casar—who'd been twenty-five seconds ahead of Alberto at the base of the climb.
But a wily thirty-five-year-old Italian named Davide Rebellin took the overall lead by riding smart. "Contador was very strong," he told the press afterward. "I wasn't able to go with him, so I kept him fifty meters away." Rebellin was a formidable opponent because he could both ride and think. He'd been at the front of that split in stage 2, on the good side of that big gap. When Alberto attacked at the end of stage 4, Rebellin instantly realized that he didn't have to risk burning himself up trying to stay with the explosive climber—all he had to do was preserve as much time as he could; he'd ridden conservatively and finished just two seconds behind Alberto. At the end of the day, he held a six-second lead over Alberto. In third place, twenty-three seconds back, was a rider named Tadej Valjavec. It was a two-man race now.
But I wasn't sure we could make up those six seconds. Rebellin would not be easy to crack. In one week back in 2004, he'd won the Amstel Gold Race, Flèche Wallonne, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège—an astounding three Classics in seven days. (And a month after this Paris-Nice, he would go on to win the 2007 Flèche Wallonne.)
We went after Rebellin the next day and ended up blowing the race apart. With little fanfare, and almost incognito, Popo insinuated himself into the middle of a thirteen-man breakaway that escaped within the first five miles. Stage 5 was 110 miles with five ranked climbs, none of them higher than category 2 or steeper than 6 percent; on paper, it didn't look like an especially tough day, which might be why Rebellin's team, Gerolsteiner, let Popo join that break without chasing it down. But I thought the stage was one of those that could be made just as hard as you wanted to make it—there was just enough climbing that the stage would become exceedingly difficult if Popo dropped the hammer and forced everyone to ride near their limits.
So, as the break reached the base of the very first climb of the day, from the passenger seat in Dirk's car, I said into the radio, "Popo: full gas, full day." As hard as he could go, as long as he could go.
Popo accelerated up the hill, instantly shedding six riders and quickly increasing the breakaway's lead over the peloton to four minutes. He drove on and on across the choppy roads, head down amid the gorgeous silhouettes of almond trees. With twenty miles to go he rode away even from the break itself on the second-to-last climb.
All day, thanks to the three- and four-minute leads he'd built, he'd been the virtual leader of the race, but now with so little road left he had a real shot at taking the jersey from Rebellin; Gerolsteiner launched a blistering chase, the speed so high it lined the entire peloton out in single file. As their riders wilted, other teams came forward to help—Lotto, Lampre, Caisse d'Épargne. The speed was melting the peloton—and Popo's lead. He held on to win by fourteen seconds—our second victory in two days. The effort it had taken to chase him had whittled the main pack down to fifty riders. Stragglers were scattered all across the roads for miles behind. Gerolsteiner had been put into a state of distress; at the end of the stage, one of their riders, a kid named Heinrich Haussler who was wearing the race's polka dot jersey for best climber, told the press in exhaustion: "This was the worst day of my life."
But Rebellin had hung on, shadowing Alberto in the pack. He still had his six seconds.
"So," I said to Dirk before I left for Tirreno-Adriatico. "Again."
And again the team attacked, on stage 6, which was 124 miles with nine categorized climbs (though only one of them a category 1). Levi went with a break then, by pushing the pace in a stretch of about thirty miles that included six of the day's climbs, he absolutely decimated the race. The day was so hard that no less than eleven riders would abandon the race on the road—including four of Rebellin's Gerolsteiner teammates (one of them being Haussler).
Yet once again, the dogged Rebellin hung on. Watching the finish on live TV that day in Italy, I had to admire his determination and bravery.
There was one stage left. One chance. I played the whole race over and over in my head. I thought about the last, eighty-mile stage—a traditional loop that had barely changed since I'd ridden it back in the 1990s. It had four good climbs, three of them category 1, including the cruelly steep final ascent, the Col d'Eze.
I called Dirk. "Listen," I said. "We have to ride tomorrow as if we were already winning."
"At the front," Dirk said, already following me. "Full team."
"Exactly. Instead of attacking attacking attacking, we ride as if Alberto is wearing the leader's jersey and we are defending it. The pace is so high so long no one escapes, right? We get to Col d'Eze as a bunch and let it be Alberto versus Rebellin."
"I'll take that matchup," said Dirk.
"Yes. I'll bet Alberto will, too. And if Alberto drops him there, finally no one will help Rebellin—he has no team anymore, and it's the last climb of the race. Instead of trying to chase down Alberto to preserve their positions, the other riders will attack Rebellin to try to take over his."
"It's good," said Dirk.
Next I called Alberto. I explained the strategy, then said, "You're tired, no?"
"Little," Alberto admitted.
"Rebellin is a lot tired."
I let that sink in. I said, "I know that last climb tomorrow well. It is cruel and it is steep and it is tiring—much more so than Mende." That was the mountain on which Alberto had ridden away from the pack to his stage 4 victory. "You flew away from Rebellin in Mende. Tomorrow, there's no way he can stay with you. You will fly to victory."
Alberto laughed. "Fly," he repeated. "We will be flying."
And that is how Alberto Contador looked when he won Paris-Nice, as if he were flying up the Col d'Eze into the bright sky of the Race to the Sun, leaving the pack behind perhaps like one of his doves soaring high off while the human who dreams of flight stands grounded on the balcony.
I watched it on the small satellite TV screen mounted to the wall of our team bus in Tirreno-Adriatico: a tiny figure in blue swooping along a road. Sean was there with me, watching, and Janez Brajkovic, who'd just finished his time trial and hadn't yet showered, and the bus driver.
Dirk had done everything right. "A murderous pace!" the TV had shouted when our team was a solid wall of blue at the front, dragging the pack behind. And when Alberto had attacked: "Rebellin can't follow ... the other riders attack him now!"
Alberto raised his hands to the sky as he crossed the line. Standing in a bus in another country, dancing, raising my arms myself, I screamed, and turned and hugged Sean and Janez and the bus driver. It felt not like the finish of something, but a start.