Yates - Sean Yates: its all about the bike: my autobiography

Contents

For more than three decades, Sean Yates has been a monumental figure in cycling. A fanatical trainer with incredible raw speed and power, he won the first road race he ever entered and was a national champion and Olympian just three years after he got his first proper bike. In fifteen years as a professional rider, he won stages of the Tour de France (Britains first winner for thirteen years) and the Vuelta a Espaa, and was renowned for his unstinting work ethic in the peloton and phenomenal descending.

Yet few people know the real Sean Yates. The boy who emerged from the most unusual of families to live the wildest of childhoods in the Sussex countryside, bashing around ridiculous distances on an old battered bike. The loyal teammate, domestique and rouleur, but a fierce individualist who insisted on doing things his way. And then, as a directeur sportif, the man who engineered some of the greatest victories in cycling history, culminating in Bradley Wigginss Tour de France and Olympic gold-medal triumphs in the glorious summer of 2012.

Sean Yates is now finally ready to tell all those stories, but this is more than just a memoir of legendary cycling times. It is a love letter to the sport, an unparalleled account of the pure pleasure, the pain and the essential thrill of the ride.

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First published in Great Britain
in 2013 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright Sean Yates 2013

Sean Yates has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781448167418
ISBNs 9780593071939 (cased)
9780593071946 (tpb)

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For Mum and Dad

In memory of Brian Phillips 19602011

Its 7 July 2012, and this is my twentieth time at the Tour de France. I was a competitor a dozen times, and this is my eighth as a directeur sportif. The automatic Jaguar gearbox is revving high in a low gear to keep us in position behind the bunch. Every time it changes up, it changes back down again as were constantly adjusting our speed while the line of cyclists and cars concertinas on the climb. I glance down at the little TV screen set into the dash to get a better idea of whats going on up in front. With 20 kilometres remaining to the finish at La Planche des Belles Filles, there are seven labouring riders clear of the rest of the Tour. The main pack is closing in on them fast. This is the seventh stage, and our plan to take control of the race is about to take wings.

Weve been sitting on our hands for a week waiting for this moment. Every time there has been a yell or the sound of bikes hitting the tarmac in the last seven days, my heart has been in my mouth: please, not us. Dont let anything happen to the plan. Just let us get through to stage seven unscathed. All year, whenever weve tried something, its come off. Weve been charmed. How long can it last? But the tension of the last few days has been almost unbearable, like sitting in a dentists reception waiting to have a tooth out.

I glance in the mirror and catch the eye of Diego in the back seat, my only companion in the car. Most days I have my boss, the team principal Dave Brailsford, in the passenger seat, but today Im alone in the front. Dave gets frustrated by not being able to see whats happening, so hes opted for the comfort of the Sky bus and the TV.

As mechanic in Skys first team car, Diegos fingers are flexing and unflexing around a rear wheel, ready to leap out of the car at a moments notice if one of our riders suffers a flat. Next to him on the seat is a front wheel, the second most likely mechanical necessity, then there is a tool box open with the various implements he might need, stored in order of what might be required first.

Twenty klicks left, stay calm. Eight until our marker, I say into the team radio. There is no reply from any of the eight men who can hear it. This is the business end of the day and they are all concentrating on the job in hand. The second radio in the car, the race radio linking us to the chief commissaires car, crackles into life, reminding us that the Garmin team are leading the bunch at present, giving the numbers of David Millar and David Zabriskie. Im not really sure why theyre working so hard: Garmin have suffered more than anyone in the string of crashes that have littered the first week of this race. Their leader, Ryder Hesjedal, was unable to start today after a smash yesterday, the biggest casualty of this race so far, as he won the Giro dItalia in May. Two other Garmin riders have also gone home, leaving them with just six men. Sky have lost one ourselves, Kanstantsin Sivtsov, or Kosta as we call him, to a broken leg in a massive pileup the other day. Its meant a little bit more work and a little bit more pressure for the eight guys weve still got, but you wouldnt notice from the way theyve been working. And if Garmin want to ride on the front, then thats all the better for us.

Fabian Cancellara has been leading the Tour since he won the prologue last weekend, and so NissanRadioShack have been controlling the race to protect his yellow jersey. Hes not expected to keep it through the mountains, though, and the other teams know that Sky, with our leader Bradley Wiggins poised to take the race lead if Cancellara falters, have the most to lose.

Some teams wouldnt bother protecting what theyre unlikely to keep, but there are a few factors affecting NissanRadioShacks tactics. Firstly, their season hasnt brought them much so far, with Cancellara falling and breaking his collarbone in the Tour of Flanders to keep him out of his favourite spring Classics, then their Tour leader Andy Schleck battling the poor form and injury that have left him at home in Luxembourg for this race. Thats one big name that Bradley wont have to see off if hes to become the first British Tour de France winner. A week, or even longer, with the yellow jersey in their ranks is a massive fillip in a difficult year, and is worth fighting for.

Then there is the protocol of yellow. Yellow rules. All bow to the yellow. It is an unwritten rule in cycling that the yellow jersey is the ace of trumps in the whole of our sport. Olympic golds, World Championship rainbow stripes, a trophy cabinet full of cups, trophies, shields and cobblestones are all wonderful things, but the maillot jaune flies proudly above them all on the highest flagpole on the tallest tower of the castle. Protocol demands that all other considerations take second place to the golden fleece.

Finally, my NissanRadioShack counterpart, Alain Gallopin, is a traditionalist, and a French traditionalist at that. He understands the meaning of the jersey and is going to treat it properly. I know Alain well, he and his brother Guy were both professional riders and contemporaries of mine, and our management careers have covered similar timeframes. I know what hes likely to do, and he knows what Im likely to do too. He could call Skys bluff and tell his team to stop working to protect the lead, but I dont think he will. If they have a great day, Cancellara could still be in yellow tomorrow, and if he wears it tomorrow, then the day after and so on and so on until well, until Paris in theory.