‘Great Britain’s Charles Wegelius (De Nardi) has had a relatively uneventful career thus far, despite being groomed in the best possible manner in his early years at Mapei-Quick Step. In his five years as a professional, his best result is a third place on Stage Four of the 2002 Tour de Suisse, where he was involved in a breakaway with his then teammate Daniele Nardello and stage winner Leon van Bon. In the Giro, Wegelius will most likely be assigned the task of helping this year’s Veenendaal– Veenendaal winner Simone Cadamuro in the sprints, as well as being given the freedom to go for stage wins. The 25-year-old may have youth on his side, but this could well be a make or break year for him.’
CYCLINGNEWS.COM’S PREVIEW OF THE 2004 GIRO D’ITALIA
When I stumbled upon the preview to the 2004 Giro on the cyclingnews website, as I whiled away a few hours in a hotel room the day before the race, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed about what I read. It was my fourth year in Italy, and I was about to start my second Giro, but I felt that I had disappeared behind enemy lines in the eyes of the British press and public. Eclipsed by its megalomaniac brother – the Tour de France – the Giro suffered in the press outside of Italy, and similarly I found I had started to as well.
It was a curious thing but British riders had a way of ‘disappearing’ when they raced in Italy. Harry Lodge, for example, was a really good professional bike rider, who finished the Giro at a time when there were virtually no other British riders even close to achieving something like that, and yet the whole thing went almost unnoticed because it was in Italy. A lot of journalists didn’t really take the initiative to look for things outside of their comfort zone. There was plenty of information in the English-speaking press about the Tour de France, but there was very little about the Giro. Perhaps, as I had myself thought when I was young, it was just too foreign. I don’t think the race, or my achievements at the time, got the attention either of us deserved. A preview on cyclingnews describing me as the type of rider who was going to look after a sprinter or go for stage wins was so off the mark it was untrue. Never in my life had I looked after a sprinter, nor would I be doing so this time. I wasn’t going for stage wins; I was there to do a job for a rider in contention for a podium finish. But the journalist had done maybe a ten-second scan and seen the only rider from the team with results was a sprinter, so assumed my job was to help him. I was working as hard as I could to perform at a high level as a professional cyclist, and, despite living in Italy, I still considered myself British. Reading this kind of nonsense hurt, and it made me start to question why I wasn’t being recognised amongst the English-speaking cycling audience. It felt like ‘either/or’: the more recognition I got in Italy, the less I got in the UK.
The results did come for me, though, whether they were recognised in the media or not. In that second Giro in 2004 things changed for me. As a domestique, your on worth is gauged in a large part, not by your own performances, but by the performances of your team leader. I had been able to contribute to the team in 2003, but my leader Honchar had struggled in the mountains. In 2004 it was a different story. Honchar was riding the Giro of his life and I suddenly became vitally important. Honchar possessed an incredible natural strength. He had the ability to push an enormous gear for an impressive length of time, which made him a great time triallist, but also meant he wasn’t a natural climber. So the gains he could make against the clock we had to defend with everything we had in the mountains. With my climbing ability I became the ideal teammate for him. I was always there when he was in danger, and capable of making the difference when he couldn’t.
My biggest feat, and the ride that I would be remembered for (in Italy at least) throughout the rest of my career, came on the final mountain stage of the race in 2004. The Italian sense of drama meant that stage 19, the penultimate stage of the race, was perhaps the most brutal of the whole three weeks. The 121 km stage went over two massive mountains – Passo di Mortirolo and Passo del Vivione – before finishing at the summit of the Passo della Presolana. With only the processional final stage into Milan the following day, and things tight amongst the riders vying for podium spots, the stage became a showdown for the overall victory.
At De Nardi we knew that this would be the final hurdle for Honchar. He had limited his losses brilliantly throughout the race and was hanging on to an incredible second place at the time. For a small team like De Nardi the lure of the final podium of the Giro in Milan was almost too good to dare to imagine. We knew that it would be a day of reckoning for our team, and I knew it could be the making or breaking of me as a domestique. Sure enough, sparks began to fly as soon as the race hit the first mountain of the day: Gilberto Simoni and Stefano Garzelli, my former teammate, attacked the maglia rosa Damiano Cunego on the Mortirolo. It was a dangerous move by Simoni, the previous winner, who was in third overall at the time. As a natural climber Simoni had a major advantage on the stage, and he knew he had to push Honchar as hard as he could from as far out as possible if he was to overtake him on the podium. If Honchar chased too hard too soon, or found himself isolated, he could not only have lost second, but everything that we had collectively been working for during the past three weeks.
Simoni and Garzelli started taking time quite quickly on the steep slopes of the Mortirolo, and I was still with the maglia rosa group when the order came crackling through my earpiece to ride. It was the moment I had been waiting for. As soon as I took up the riding on the front of the group I knew that day I could make the difference. I lifted the pace and the chase began, and with it came the onslaught of pain. Racing up a mountain is like putting your hand into a flame – it hurts and you want to do anything you can to make it stop, only in racing, if you stop you lose, and then the pain only lasts longer. You have to find whatever it is that switches off that reflex, and when you do, you can hold it. You learn to stay still in the pain. ‘Tieni duro, tieni duro.’ Those words in my mind again.
Now was the time to put my hand in the fire. I was on a mountain, in the Giro, with the race happening right before me. It was everything I needed. All the other shit that made cycling complicated or difficult was wiped away. I could take the hurt and give everything I had to give. I didn’t have to worry about who was sitting on the wheel, or who was going to beat me in a sprint. I just rode. That was the cyclist I had become, and that was the role I fulfilled. I could hurt myself as much as anyone, but trying to win races as a professional had opened the door to the things that I didn’t want to face: responsibility and pressure. On the Mortirolo, every metre I rode reduced that pressure. I pushed harder and harder and harder and with every pedal stroke I felt unburdened. The only pressure I had now was to do what I could; there was no failure because now it came from inside. It was welcome and it somehow drove me. Everything that I dealt with in all those other races disappeared and I was finally left with the chance to make a difference.
I buried myself on the front of the pink jersey group for almost the entire Mortirolo until, when there were just five riders left, I was distanced over the top as the group accelerated to the summit. I was exhausted but I knew I wasn’t finished. I descended back to the group in the next valley. Simoni and Garzelli were working hard together in the break but I marked a new finish line down in my head. There were 50 kilometres to go and I told myself, ‘There are twenty kilometres left in this race: after that nothing matters.’ I went to the front of the group and rode as if my life depended on it. I pulled the group along through the entire valley without looking behind for a turn, and still I kept on pushing. I towed the group half-way up the Passo del Vivione before finally I could give no more, and the last burst of electricity that had been firing through every circuit board in my brain to keep my muscles pumping seemed to flicker and die. I was finished. When I had taken up the chase behind Simoni and Garzelli, the duo had a lead of over two minutes; when I eventually cracked, their lead was down to 60 seconds.
As soon as I was dropped I was done. Rider after rider rode past me. The hard work wasn’t totally over; it never is for a domestique. Riding up a mountain on a bicycle is a hard thing, no matter how much time you have to do it in. There were no wheels for me to sit on, and there was no team car to help. That day I knew I had given everything; I lost 22 minutes as I rode exhausted to the finish. Amazingly, Honchar hung on to his second place overall by a slender three seconds. For De Nardi it was a huge result; for me, it was life changing.
The top of the Mortirolo that day was lined four-deep with fans, and it felt like the few Italians who weren’t there watching on the road were certainly watching on TV. The stage was broadcast live, and people had seen with their own eyes what went in to being a domestique. I had sacrificed everything, and had ridden myself into the ground for my leader, who had succeeded by the slimmest of margins. It was dramatic stuff. I hadn’t thought about it before, but riding at the front during a race like the Giro put me in the limelight all over the country. I was on television for long stretches of time and people really got to know my face. It might have hurt me that I was shunned in the English-speaking media, but the reception I got in Italy following that exploit was really special. It is a cliché to say it, but that ride is something that people I meet in Italy still remember to this day.
The following afternoon the race reached Milan, and Honchar climbed on to the podium. We toasted our success that evening with a team dinner, in which Honchar made a big effort to thank everyone. I felt the warm satisfaction of a job well done, but the real feeling of success didn’t come until after we had finished our private celebrations and I saw for the first time just how success at the Giro could change things. The Giro is to Italy what Wimbledon is to England: everyone is a fan, and for the month after the race the Giro is all everybody wants to talk about. From the first day back home people started to recognise me in the street. A lot of things in my daily life started to change: I didn’t have to wait in queues in the supermarket, I didn’t have to pay for a haircut or a coffee. Pretty much anything that anyone could do to show their appreciation – anything they thought would help me – they did. It was crazy and, like any young man, I enjoyed the privileges while I could. These little things made a difference. I was already leading a privileged lifestyle, just by being a professional cyclist in Italy; now all of a sudden everything was upgraded, and for a while it felt great.
There was one area in particular where I would have been a fool not to profit from my fifteen minutes of fame.
‘Hey, Charly, get over here!’
My mate Massimo, a local bike rider who rode with our group on occasion, who had some time previously abandoned me to go and get some aperitivo for us both, shouted at me across the busy bar. As I looked up I saw him stood at the far end of the bar grinning ear to ear with a glass of spumante in each hand, and two rather attractive young girls stood either side of him, as if he was in the middle of a podium ceremony. As I walked over, I heard Massimo’s mischievous introduction.
‘Girls, here he is: Charly Wegelius, Giro d’Italia finisher!’
Massimo had been around bike riders a long time and clearly knew the game. June was hunting season for anyone who could claim to have had anything to do with the Giro – especially a rider.
Taking my cue, I joined in. ‘Yep, that’s me.’
‘Really? Oh, wow: a real-life Giro rider. Have we seen you on TV?’
‘Uh, yeah.’
The girl stood closest to the bar looked up at me through beautiful dark eyes, and giggled before she cooed at me, ‘That’s so amazing. You must be so tired …’
Her look was so intent and I was so unused to that level of attention from a stranger in a bar that I brushed the side of my face expecting there to be a lump of food stuck to my cheek. I looked over at Massimo and he raised his eyebrows in delight, before intently engaging the other girl in a conversation. The two of us had been coming to this same bar on and off all year, and while Massimo was always keen to have a crack at any ladies he had his eye on we never usually got any further than a polite brush-off. Now suddenly, almost unbelievably, I realised that it was me who held all the power in the situation; girls who I wouldn’t have dreamed of chancing my hand at talking to were suddenly hitting on me. I (like everybody, I believe) knew my natural level with girls. I knew who I could expect to be able to chat up in a bar, but this was ridiculous. It was like shooting fish in a bucket. I looked back at the girl by the bar, now ready to hang from every word that I said, and thought to myself, with a chuckle, ‘Charles, you are batting way above your average.’ I wasn’t foolish enough to think that I was about to fall in love, or believe I was about to get myself into a relationship with the girl. The whole thing was ludicrously superficial, but it was a thrill, and a self-confidence appeared over that period that made the experience so much sweeter. But that confidence wasn’t really from all the attention that I was getting. What gave me the real thrill was knowing that in the race I had done my job, and I had done it well.
• • •
My love of the Giro was enhanced because I felt it allowed me to tap into my talent. The Giro became ‘my race’, and over the years more and more success came from it. What I learnt there was that I could create the niche for myself as a cyclist that would keep me in a job, and also perhaps help me find the satisfaction in other areas of my life that I craved. I could never win the Giro, nor even ride towards a general classification there, but I could have an influence on the race, and make myself a part of it.