Chapter 38
Colin
A steep drop-off on one side of the road tumbled into a rocky gorge and, above us, the endless grey peaks took shape more clearly with each metre of gruelling altitude gain, patches of snow like polka-dots on the vast landscape.
I was all alone. Derek had held on until the first two hairpins, but then it had been adios.
A guy from another team had stuck with me for another three, but he was gone now too.
Up ahead, I caught the occasional flashes of Gaetano Maggioli’s arse and if that wasn’t a powerful motivator to overtake him, I didn’t know what would be.
‘De Jong’s taken the stage, C,’ I heard Alan’s voice in my ear.
Even though I’d known I had no chance to catch him, the cold dip of disappointment in my gut made me wobbly for a few metres before I swallowed it down.
The news hurt, but it wouldn’t stop me. The win wasn’t the only thing I was racing for.
‘How much… time… have I made up?’ I managed to ask. It was tempting to ease off the effort, click down a few gears and cruise up more comfortably but, if I was gaining time, then I’d push it.
‘Listen to your body,’ Alan warned me, but then he answered my question. ‘Gretsch has lost time in the minutes. If you can keep it up, you’ll jump a few places.’
I could definitely hang on for that. Thinking of Leesa’s sweet little kiss last night, I set to it.
I rolled over the line fifth, but the surge of lactate and adrenaline and endorphins, particularly the endorphins from seeing Leesa whistling with her fingers in her mouth, felt entirely life-giving.
The jump from 13th place overall up to 10th didn’t hurt either.
Spite, I thought, glancing at Leesa again as I wobbled towards a warm-down bike.
Today was for spite. Tomorrow could be for stubbornness.
I already knew I was going to go again, maybe even earlier than I had today.
There were only two mountain stages left and I was going to attack one of them, then hold on for Paris.
At the evening strategy briefing, I lounged in a chair with a kind of artificial calm that wouldn’t have fooled Leesa. But when Dad opened the briefing, his words seemed to electrify all of my nerve endings with anticipation – of chaos, of a well-fought battle, of excitement.
‘Well, boys, there’s a big change forecast in the weather overnight. We’ve got ourselves some fog rolling in.’
Bring on tomorrow.
I’d been saving this particular merchandise for a special occasion, but stubbornness had decided that today was special, so I made sure I was downstairs early again and kept watch for her.
My phone buzzed with a message and I pulled it out of my pocket to give the screen a cursory glance before returning to my vigil, except my gaze snagged on the device when I saw who the message was from: Fergie, the chief mechanic.
I’ve found it. You’re lucky it was still with us, as it’s retired from service. The wheels are a lost cause, but I’ve found the rest of it and we’re putting it together, like you asked me to. Let me know if we should proceed.
Of course we would proceed. This was my big chance, my ‘actions-speak-louder-than-words’, because it was clear from that doomed conversation in Gap that I was shit with words.
I was typing an enthusiastic reply to Fergie and nearly missed her appearing on the stairs.
Giving up on the message for now, I hot-footed it to the breakfast room and hovered by the buffet, waiting for her to approach.
Just as I’d hoped, she made a beeline for the coffee machine, so I enacted my plan and then sidled away, feeling her sharp look between my shoulder blades and turning back to watch the results when I thought it was safe.
Her hair was mussed this morning, which only made me think about all the ways I’d dishevelled her over the past few weeks.
Her cheeks were ruddy and I guessed even the support team got a bit strung out during the Tour.
She grabbed the nearest coffee cup and I closed my fist in glee to see this playing out exactly as I’d planned.
She shoved it beneath the coffee machine, but then stilled, drew back, then ducked to peer at the mug. She turned to eyeball me as though in slow motion.
‘What’s this?’
‘Your new favourite mug.’
‘Please tell me it’s not Rick Astley this time,’ she said, waiting for the heat-sensitive picture to appear and failing to disguise the amusement in her tone.
‘You liked the Rick Astley mug,’ I accused tentatively.
‘It’s a nasty song to have in your head,’ she insisted. ‘But I still have it.’ Her admission was enough to power me for several kilometres – uphill – today.
‘This one’s better. It’s got a pun on it. You like puns, right?’
‘Who doesn’t like puns?’
She pretended she wasn’t holding her breath, but she totally was. When the picture came up, she didn’t quite grant me the chuckle I’d been after.
‘Erm, that is a very weird picture of your face stuck onto a piece of bacon.’
When she put it like that, it wasn’t a very good joke. Swiping the mug to tamp down my panic, I pointed to the text. ‘“Don’t go bacon my heart” – see there? And it’s a different song to get in your head.’
‘I get it, Colin,’ she said. But she smiled indulgently and pressed another little kiss to my mouth and that was my day saved.
I thought maybe she was starting to get what I was doing. Spite had got me a long way. Stubbornness would win today – whatever place I managed. And at the end of the Tour, I would gather my pride to lay everything on the line for her – for us.
Leesa
We all had the sense that this was the day that things would change.
All the riders lined up at the start, the GC leader in the yellow jersey right at the front in the middle, flanked by the leaders of the mountain and sprint classifications in the polka-dot jersey and the green jersey, as well as the holder of the white jersey, the fastest rider under 26.
Behind them was the usual chaos of 200-odd bicycles, minus the 30 who’d already pulled out.
But I only saw one.
I wasn’t ready for this – these feelings.
He surely wasn’t either. But whatever he’d done to me couldn’t easily be undone.
Most likely we were headed for heartbreak whenever this thing fell apart.
Right now, though, we were both on the same piece of the earth and I wanted to remember this for the rest of my life.
He leaned casually on his bike frame, one powerful leg propped on the pedal. The Southern Cross tattoo with the Olympic rings was visible on his forearm next to a raised, speckled scab from the crash. I felt as though his face had changed over the past two weeks.
But the same cheeky smile formed on his lips when he caught sight of me. He gestured to his thigh and then mimed a beating heart – as though he knew that tattoo would always remind me of this time. Then he blew me a kiss and nothing could have stopped me blowing one back.
‘It’s all right!’ he called over the top of the clank of bicycles and the excited murmurs of the crowd. ‘You’ll be there at the end regardless of what happens, right?’
You bet I would. I gave him a soft nod, but then stretched onto my toes, holding a hand near my mouth to amplify my words. ‘But it would be better if you won!’
His grin was wide and infectious and so damn charming I should have used it for marketing and not kept it to myself, but that one was not going on the grid. With one more wave, he turned for the start line, head down, eyes up.
He was heading into this moment with everything he had, forging his own path.
The first half of the race was wild, with a gruelling climb almost as soon as they headed out.
At over 6,000 feet of altitude, there was snow in places in a bizarre juxtaposition with the weathered and sunburned cyclists.
A group of riders attacked early, but when the fourth-place rider joined them, the peloton reeled the group back in.
Watching the footage of the epic descent on the other side as the team bus lumbered in the direction of the finish line, I held my breath.
I wouldn’t put it past Colin to attack. It took a certain daredevil spirit to attack on such a steep descent, where every curve was technical – and dangerous.
Colin had the head – and the heart – for it.
But the restless peloton thundered down together, not letting anyone break free.
In the jagged hills that followed, the fog descended, as though an overenthusiastic TV exec had thought smoke machines would heighten the drama of the event, when in reality it meant that the viewers didn’t have much chance of understanding what was going on.
Trying to keep track of all the riders was a nightmare that caused Tony another square inch of baldness.
The lights of the neutral support motorbikes blinded the cameras, turning the riders into blurred chunks of colour.
The mountains were interminable, even if we couldn’t see them from where the bus was now parked at La Toussuire, a ski area nestled in an alpine meadow that was usually neon-green but today was green-grey.
The peloton curled its way towards us, passing the Col du Lautaret, the infamous Col du Galibier, Col du Télégraphe, long and arduous ascents followed by an epic descent that grew more dangerous with the reduced visibility, until the riders burst out of the fog in the next valley.
‘There’s a break! Someone’s gone! Who is it?’ Tony was shaking a finger at the screen. ‘Did he make it?’
Three riders had made it clear of the peloton on the descent and were accelerating away, throwing their energy into an attack to see if it would last as far as the finish line. Colin would be with them, surely.
‘Gerritsen, Mackelden and Den Otter,’ the commentator managed eventually and Tony collapsed back into his seat.
Colin was still in the peloton as they swept down, down, 6,000 feet down.
Next came the ascent to the Col de la Croix-de-Fer, 30 km of relentless climbing – and waiting to see if Colin would give chase.
The peloton pushed the speed at the beginning of the climb, dropping rider after rider and slowly closing the gap on the breakaway.
Then they were sucked up into the veil of fog, the coverage eerily quiet as even the spectators struggled to see what was going on a few feet from their faces.
The bunch looked ghostly, all shadow and movement.
‘Nellie’s cooked and Derek got dropped,’ we heard Alan report over the radio. That meant fewer riders to support an attack, when Colin chose his moment.
Through some miracle, I found him on the screen, out to one side, his orange helmet showing up against the dim background – and he was up out of the saddle.
I stood out of my seat. ‘There! This is it! He’s going! Oh, my God, he’s going. He’s going to attack!’
His movements, up and down, a little side to side as he used all of his weight to propel his bike forward, were almost hypnotic on the screen, his body elegant and powerful, but I could see his chest heaving, his cheeks blooming red with exhaustion.
Now we waited to see if he could create a gap away from the peloton – and then if he could catch the breakaway.
No one went with him, which was the worst. Taking turns to shield each other from the air resistance always felt a little better than struggling up alone.
But Colin didn’t hesitate or stop. He didn’t even bother to look behind him.
He was all in – the way he was with everything that truly meant something to him.
The camera followed him as he battled the climb and the fog, pushing 10 m of distance between himself and the peloton, then 20. His stats would be going haywire: power and heartrate shooting high. But he kept it up, push after push, using his weight on the pedals.
‘It’s a stunning attack from Gallagher, all on his own – the sort of thing we see from him on his brilliant days.
No one else dared. If he pulls this off, it would be legendary, but surely the peloton won’t let him get away, not when he’s still within striking distance of the young rider classification.
It’s clear now what he wants and after that crash in the Pyrenees, he’s got some guts to still be going for it. ’
I couldn’t have written better marketing copy myself.
‘But surely he won’t make it all the way, not from here.’
The commentator was probably right. Colin could be proud of an attack like that regardless of the outcome, especially since he caught the breakaway just before the top of the pass. There were 50 km to go and two more climbs. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to survive it.