Jim Burns, Irish teacher in South Africa, circa 1976 (left) and today (right)

Jim Burns (pictured above in) is South African. Background: Very little is known about Jim Burns except that he is South African and had a very short professional career, in fact he did only one race and it was in 1976 – the Toer Rapport in South Africa. There were absolutely no foreign riders present, only South African ones. People from South Africa. People like Jim Burns. Who is definitely South African. In 1976 Apartheid was in full force and the international community (which included Pat McQuaid’s home country of Ireland) forbade their countrymen – as a form of protest – from attending South African sporting events.

This was no problem for Jim Burns, however, because he was South African. He wasn’t Irish at all so he could (and did) ride any race in South Africa that he wanted. Little is known about what happened to Jim Burns after the Toer Rapport (or before, for that matter). In fact, it is as if he never existed at all, until now that is. Had Jim Burns actually been Irish (and not South African) he would have been banned by the Irish Cycling Federation for life from attending the Olympics. Jim Burns is South African though, he isn’t Irish. He also isn’t Swiss, either.

A young Patrick McQuaid, circa 1976 (left) and today as President of the UCI (right)

Meanwhile Patrick McQuaid (pictured above), the current UCI president, is having troubles of his own. Despite being put forward for renomination by the Irish federation on April 12th, A few weeks later they decided to have an EGM (extraordinary general meeting) to re-discuss the decision, which hasn’t yet happened. In the meantime however McQuaid decided to take out a Swiss license and has now subsequently been nominated by that federation as well, which is a contravention of the UCI’s rules. The UCI however, insists that it isn’t. Cycling fans can now rest easy, knowing that if Pat McQuaid isn’t able to secure a nomination then Jim Burns will be there to replace him.

pVAM = 2912.14 + 426.293 ln(gradient) – 0.0711 Vclimb – 0.0836 Altitude

http://www.cyclismas.com/2013/05/what-to-expect-from-the-giro-favourites-predicting-climbing-performances/

we take a deeper look

to see just what the hell is goin on in this Giro

first up the climbs

whats immediately apparent is

the Lanza n the Montasio

aint the same animal

while finishing at a similar altitude uv 1550 meters

the true climb uv the Lanza climbs is steeper 9.5% gradient

vs

7.9% fer the Montasio

but

shorter at 581 m for the Lanza

vs

859 m for the Montasio

if ridden flat out

the pVAM for the shorter steeper Lanza works out to

1738 meters/hour

which is higher than predicted for

the longer less steep Montasio pVAM

1640 meters/hour

in their collective show uv force

Sky hit the front ticking off an actual VAM (aVAM) uv

1611 meters / hours

shedding everyone

except fer everyone who mattered

in contrast

on the Montasio

Uran went up the road at an actual VAM of 1615 meters/hour

with the remainder of the favorites littering the climb behind him

looking at the residuals

the difference between the pVAM and aVAM

it becomes clear that the race played to Nibali’s strengths

while Sky’s tactics start to look flat bewildering

what we see on the finishing climb residuals

is that only Uran even came close to hitting the predicted

despite his atttack that utltimately shattered the group

what this means is that the climb was not

started

ridden

and

finished

at threshold

in 2012 TDF le train brad fashion

but instead

ridden like a climber climb

with a slow start (holding the overal aVAM down)

followed by a hard acceleration

above threshold

letting the punchier Nibali

drop

Brad

and the other pure diesels

despite the total climb being ridden

below uh pace that an on form Brad

had been able to sustain in previous performances

http://www.cyclismas.com/2013/05/what-to-expect-from-the-giro-favourites-predicting-climbing-performances/recent-performances-of-giro-contenders/

,

and

the SKY effort on the Lanza

?

impressive to the camera

but at 8% off uv a pVAM pace

unlikley to have done much damage

to anyone able to ride within 5% uv pVAM

(which was everybody except hesjedal)

…

therefore the prognostication

is unless SKY resurrects

le train Brad

and takes the intermediate climbs at 5% uv pVAM

and the finishing climbs within

2% uv pVAM

Brad will get attacked and dropped

in the final finishing climb kilometers

like he did in stage 10

Bellowing grey-hairs Scott Sunderland (in Hot Chillee kit) and the author (in Unity kit) getting the line working efficiently…

Hold it right there. So the whinging guy is doing what? He’s doing his turn, breathing just as hard as you AND making his life harder by trying to tell you what you’re doing wrong so YOU can suffer less. Suddenly telling him to #@*% off isn’t sounding like the best plan, is it? At least I hope not…

My local chain gang has been running all winter, riders have been smashing each other into the ground, and from what I’m told it was ‘as hard as nails’. So I went; I’m not fit, but I’m working on it, and although when you’re not fit a hard chain gang can be as much fun as sticking a needle in your eye, I am well aware that is it a really effective way to get fit.

As the club coach, I soon slipped back in to the role I’d had before I took a year’s sabbatical, and found myself telling guys not to “kick through” and to “shut the gaps” and other subtleties that make life in the line easier. Week one saw the kind of reaction I mentioned above from guys who didn’t know me.

The next week I arrived at the ride greeted by a ‘not him again’ attitude, so I offered the choice of learn to do it properly and go faster, or do as you please and I’ll join in making the ‘line’ choppier than the English Channel in a Force 9 gale. I’m pleased to say they were willing to give me another go at educating them into tempering their enthusiasm.

By week four, on the warm-down ride back into town one of the guys told me that he was going home fresher after the ride, his pulse was around 10bpm lower all ride, and the average speed was 2mph higher. I’d like to say my work here was done, but then I wouldn’t get fit, would I?! My pulse is lower now, though, as I’m hardly having to give out any instructions.

Something else I have experienced in my coaching is that while I raced and coached, people were all ears, the kids can see you ride a bike so listening is easy. I ran a winter cyclocross clinic for about 15 years, in the middle I had about five years off, and during that time as the new riders came in it gradually became harder to get guys to listen. It’s similar to the chain gang, you become a grey-haired guy who bellows instructions and nobody thinks “It’s great that this guy gives his time up to come and teach us things,” its more like “Who is this guy and what does he know anyway?”

For me the cure was simple, and pretty enjoyable as it got me back on a bike. I sorted out a cross bike, trained during the summer and rode CrossVegas and a few UK events, and even rode the World Masters Champs in Mol, Belgium. Funnily enough that winter, my advice (which hadn’t changed) was worth listening to.

The point of my rambling is simple, there are a lot of people passing on knowledge of skills like riding in echelons, riding a line, or cyclocross. They, too, were likely taught those skills by someone from the club. And more than likely, they’re giving up their time and passing it on to no benefit of themselves, and quite probably they’re making their life harder or are freezing their arses off for nothing…. so pause just one second and spare a thought before the testosterone takes over your reaction!

Rigoberto Uran climbs into contention at Montasio (photo courtesy SHIFT Active Media and the RCS Sport cycling press office)

At the beginning of the Giro it seemed as though Stage 10 would be the first day where a clear road order would emerge. The climb of Montasio was going to give us a chance to see which of the favourites were up to the task of challenging for overall honours.  However, an exciting first week provided us with a good indication of what would happen on the first mountaintop finish of the race.

Bradley Wiggins found himself in difficulty descending in the wet on several stages, and gained only a small amount of time on his rivals in the individual time trial. It is unclear if Wiggins’ difficulties were a sign of form, illness, or injuries due to crashing on Stage 7.

Defending champion Ryder Hesjedal began the race in impressive style, with an unexpected attack on just the third day of racing. Optimism turned to worry as he lost significant time to all major rivals during Saturday’s time trial, and was dropped from a group of thirty the following day.

Of the three main favourites at the beginning of the race, it is the man in Pink, Vincenzo Nibali who has been most impressive. At no time has Nibali looked in difficulty, and his ITT performance makes him a clear favourite to win the general classification.

The first mountain challenge proved to be a continuation of the order which had established during the first week. Hesjedal had been dropped on Sunday, but no one could have predicted what happened on Stage 10. The Canadian lost contact with the main group on the penultimate climb of the day, and was not seen again until the finish. This is no minor struggle with form; Hesjedal is clearly not on the same level as he was in 2012. For the sake of our analysis, Hesjedal is out of the picture.

Early on the final climb, Rigoberto Uran attacked out of the main group. The initial reaction from the bunch was subdued and a genuine reaction would not come until the closing kilometres. Wiggins did not make the final selection which formed on the steepest part of the climb. Uran won the stage, with Nibali the strongest of the main favourites at 31 seconds. Wiggins finished more than one minute behind his teammate.

The climb began in earnest from the 10.61km to go mark, with 859m of vertical gain at a gradient of 8.09%[1]. From this point it took Uran 31 minutes and 15 seconds to reach the finish line.

Earlier in May I used a data set of Hesjedal, Nibali and Wiggins to predict the time it would take for the favourites to complete the Giro’s climbs:

Uran was only ten seconds slower than predicted, with Nibali and Wiggins slower by 41” and 1’18” respectively. In terms of the percentage deviation from predicted VAM, Nibali was -2.2% and Wiggins -4%.

The performance of Uran is more impressive than the results indicate, given that he spent more than three quarters of the climb alone at the front without the advantage of drafting. This is Wiggins’ worst climbing performance in the last 12 months (excluding his Trentino mechanical). In the 2012 Tour, the lowest residual was -0.9% for both Wiggins and Nibali. Nibali may have held something back, content to just mark his rivals. The leader of the race also had a minor mechanical issue in the final kilometre which may have cost him a few seconds. In any case, the two percent difference is well within the range we would expect. Wiggins’ on the other hand was clearly performing at his limit; his lacklustre showing can only be explained by illness or injury. If that is not the case, his form is simply not as good as it was last year.

One result is far from enough to make general conclusions about the condition of riders. All riders were marginally slower than expected and this may be more a reflection of the tactics on the Giro’s first MTF than a definitive example of the limits of the race’s overall contenders. We look forward to the weekend, where summit finishes at Jafferau and Telegraphe-Galibier should provide further evidence of how well the best riders are climbing.

Editor’s note:  We’re very pleased with the way the pVAM equation is performing so far in predicting climbing performances, and are hopeful it will give us the ability to do a much more insightful analysis when comparing riders’ efforts than anything previously seen. Look for a new analysis piece here on Cyclismas after each climbing stage. By the end of the Giro we hope that readers will have a better understanding of Scott’s pVAM method. By the time the TDF rolls around hopefully it becomes the go-to source for performance analysis. A huge thanks to Scott Richards and Mike Puchowicz, better known as Doc @Veloclinic, for all their work on this.

That was the email message from Zeitgeist’s Mark Fairhurst, the creative genius behind the witty and delightful cycling poster art for which he is so well-known. Here are two little QuickTime movies Mark made to promote his site re-launch:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mark Fairhurst is an illustrator of extraordinary talent. His work is in the genre of the art of the cycling poster, and is evocative of the best in travel poster art from the Art Deco era. The rich colors and bold geometric shapes of Mark’s art combine to create the perfect vehicle for transmitting the power and beauty of the peloton. When combined with 21st-Century cycling stories, the result is a stunning visual treat for cycling enthusiast. More of Mark’s work can be viewed and purchased directly from his site.

There is a vast array from which to choose.

Bold geometrics:

Retro cycling art:

Commentary:

And humor (this is my personal favorite):

Mark also recently introduced two limited-edition sets of fridge magnets at £5.95 per set, so you can have a mini-gallery of his art right in the kitchen. I’m quite coveting the Pantani one:

You also can find Mr. Mark Fairhurst on Twitter, where he faithfully tweets new images as he creates them.

image courtesy @BillyElNino‘s TwitPIcs

So, who is it?

Alberto Contador, Andy Schleck, Cadel Evans, Bradley Wiggins, Damiano Cunego, Ivan Basso, Danilo Di Luca, Denis Menchov, Michele Scarponi, Ryder Hesjedal, Alejandro Valverde, Vincenzo Nibali, Juan Jose Cobo, Stefano Garzelli.

One of these Grand Tour winners stands accused by the “anonymous insider” that is The Secret Pro of being imminently outed as a doper.

“There’s talk going around the peloton that a former Grand Tour winner [is] about to be taken down for a [sic] biological passport irregularities,” TSP writes from behind his cape of anonymity in his sporadic column for the Australian website Cyclingtips.

“I can’t say who it is but when the news breaks you’ll know who I’m talking about. If it’s true, it’s a good thing that’s [sic] he’s been found out; it shows that the biological passport is doing its job.”

It’s funny to think that just weeks before, the question on everyone’s lips was the same: who is it?

But we weren’t seeking the identity of a Grand-Tour-winning doper as much as musing over which rider in the peloton was the inspiration behind TSP.

Although not many of us were – because not many of us were actually reading the column, which hadn’t proved to be anywhere near as explosive or interesting as the concept first promised.

All of a sudden – everyone’s going on about TSP. Funny that. Shows just how a bit of sensationalism can get open flood gates.

Just who is the Secret Pro anyway?

The opening introductory column back in December promised readers that the man behind the ghost-written articles had “raced multiple Grand Tours, Classics and World Championships, and finished highly in some.”

TSP’s opening offerings explained how he and his team-mates referred to the riders of Androni Giocattoli as “dicks and vaginas” because of the overload of personal and team sponsors on their shirts.

We were told that Katusha deserved their WorldTour slap-down because “where there’s smoke there’s fire” and that doping “just does not happen on my team.” (Of course not – not the mighty GreenEdge!)

We learnt that Michele Scarponi irritates TSP more than Lance Armstrong because “he’s been done twice now and still he’s rolling around winning races.” An odd comment, given Scarponi’s last win came back in 2011 (although given his current form on the Giro, the Italian is certainly still “rolling around”).

In short – the titbits we were being fed were rather paltry.

And then… boom! The shit suddenly hit the fan.

In his latest column TSP held nothing back, first lambasting the Eurosport TV coverage for the “opinionated” commentary of David Harmon and Magnus Backstedt, then laying into his sponsors’ new equipment (“some… is absolute crap”).

This was a mere amuse bouche for his big revelation: that a current Grand Tour winner was about to be taken down by the UCI for irregularities in his blood passport – and that most of the peloton knew about this.

Well, it’s nice to see the omertà is still going strong if 207 professionals doing their thing in Italy won’t out the fiend amongst them; that the only guy who has the gumption to say something is a chap hiding behind a mask and writing for an Australian cycling website.

Of course, the statement sparked a frenzy of finger-pointing on Twitter.

Keen to stir the pot, yours truly partook in some of the speculation by commenting that this has not been a good week for Bradley Wiggins – deprived of Tour de France leadership, subject to a Colombian conspiracy, and then discovering that he may not have been the first Briton to win a Grand Tour anyway, that his nemesis Chris Froome may have beaten him to it.

Most ignoramuses thought this was tantamount to Saddles suggesting that Wiggo was the man with “no admission” stamped in his passport. They clearly missed the point that it was a reference to the 2011 Vuelta a España, in which Froome finished second to a rider who hasn’t exactly set the world on fire since his first and only Grand Tour victory.

Look at it another way – it doesn’t take a blood passport to make one entry in this sequence look rather suspicious: DNF, DNF, 20th, DNF, 10th, 1st, 30th, 67th.

Besides the balding enigma that is Juanjo, many people flagged up Ivan Basso’s name – given that the Italian had withdrawn from the Giro just days before the start with a mysterious cyst on his bottom. (In hindsight, this was suspicious – just like Alessandro mysteriously hanging up his Sidi cycling shoes on the eve of his home Tour…).

After all, you’d think that in the wake of any passport irregularities, the UCI would have pulled the rider in question from racing the Giro – which discounts Evans, Wiggo, Cunego, Di Luca, Scarponi, Hesjedal, Nibali, Cobo and Garzelli. Of those riders, Di Luca and Scarponi aren’t exactly angels – and if it emerges that it’s one of these two riders whom TSP is referring to, we really should track the covert cyclist down and give him a real beating.

Besides Basso, that leaves Contador and Valverde, who have been snared in the past, Schleck, who is the past, and Menchov, whose name was recently mentioned by Michael Rasmussen as one of Rabobank’s long list of blood dopers from back in the day. His name makes sense – and he has been rather quiet in recent months.

Obviously feeling the heat, Menchov (via his spoof Twitter account @DeniMenchoff) put a word of warning out, saying:

This bloody @iamthesecretpro should be careful if ever he walk on streets of Moscow without kneecap protection…

— DeniMenchoff (@DeniMenchoff) May 7, 2013

Anyway, there’s no point in speculating because, as TSP assures us, we’ll soon find out when the news breaks. So that leads us back to the second facet of the original question: who is it?

Well, many people seem to think the secret pro is Argos-Shimano’s Koen de Kort – primarily because he ticks the boxes in terms of his race time table, plus there was once mention of a present given out by John Degenkolb to his Argos team-mates following his five Vuelta stage wins.

But has Koen really “finished highly” in multiple Grand Tours, Classics and World Championships? A criterion which would discount Tyler Farrar too.

Besides, in the latest column, TSP lays into @UCI_Overlord following the much-publicised issues with the Paul Kimmage fund – and Koen has been a good friend to Not Pat McQuaid. The Dutchman already has a column with Cyclingtips too, which would make him being TSP a bit obvious (not to mention barrel-scraping).

Personally, Saddles initially felt there was no way TSP could be anyone but an Australian. I mean, who from outside Australia would wax lyrical about a city as sterile as Adelaide? And who, apart from an Australian, would extol the “brilliance” of Matt Keenan’s TV commentary (you may have had the misfortune to hear this chap on global highlights packages – he’s the Australian chap with a high-pitched voice who makes Phil and Paul seem like the Penn & Teller of cycling).

What’s more – which other English speaking nation shows such disregard to spelling and grammar? (It’s “let’s” not “lets’” – unless someone is doing the letting, in which case its “lets”.)

Of course, such trifles with spelling and syntax are more of an issue with whoemver is ghost-writing and editing the thing – presumably after an explosive reveal-all phone chat or Skype session with TSP (at least, that’s what we’re meant to think).

But this got Saddles thinking. There are some things in the columns that just don’t read like anything a professional cyclist would say.

Granted, occasionally you get Mark Cavendish going all poetic by describing himself as “the exhaust – you know, the bit that makes all the noise” to the “kit car” that is his Omega Pharma-Quick Step team. But on the whole, riders aren’t so colourful with their words.

So an eyebrow of suspicion rises when reading TSP’s assertion that Cadel Evans has “always had a chip on his shoulder, but this time it’s much more than a chip, it’s a whole bag of Doritos!”

If the ghost-writer’s poetic licence can shine through so blatantly with the words – then what of the facts?

Which leads Saddles to the conclusion that perhaps we’re all being led on by TSP. Perhaps he’s not a pro at all – but merely a figment of one journo’s imagination. And what better way of getting people to listen than firing off some fabricated doping torpedoes safely behind a veil of anonymity (and reader, before you pull out hair in exasperation, I do realise the irony of that previous statement).

Now TSP is holding our attention, who’s to stop his ghost writer / creator coming out with some other brilliant nuggets next time round?

Maybe he can talk about a team-mate who shat his pants while riding the Stelvio.

Or he can tell us the story of the day he once walked in on Lance Armstrong picking up a pizza delivery with Johan – “with extra cheese.”

Or perhaps he can regale us of the one time at band camp when he and his team-mates attached a naked Simon Gerrans to a tree with cling film before combining the soigneurs’ massage oils and the mechanics’ spanners to devastating effect…

In fact, he can tell us anything – firstly, because he’s not accountable; and secondly, because he probably doesn’t exist.

As TSP said in the very same column: “Cycling has become a parody of itself.” It indeed has – and we’re all at it.

There can be only one. (original image courtesy The Daily Mail)

While time trialling will shape the outcome of this Giro, it is the climbs where the riders will battle shoulder to shoulder for the right to don pink in Brescia. Of the contenders, it is the trio above who have performed at a Grand Tour winning level in the past 12 months. As such they provide the best benchmark of what to expect from the top climbers in the Giro.

In total, 15 observations from the 12 months since the beginning of the Giro last year were suitable for analysis. This includes Hesjedal’s five performances in the 2012 Giro, eight for Wiggins (Dauphine 2012, Tour 2012, Catalunya 2013 and Trentino 2013) and seven for Nibali (Tour 2012, Tirreno-Adriatico 2013 and Trentino 2013). Wiggins and Nibali climbed together six times: four times they finished with the same time, once they were separated by five seconds (I have used the average) and for the most recent observation in Trentino I have used Nibali’s time only due to the mechanical problems suffered by Wiggins.

The OLS estimation of these performances is surprisingly consistent. ¹

This suggests already that the differences between the three are not great. That is obvious in the case of Wiggins and Nibali, given their head-to-head results, but it shows that Hesjedal’s performances on a completely different race schedule are comparable as well. For a more detailed comparison the percentage residual from each observation are plotted below.

Based on these results, the data suggests that on average, Hesjedal’s performances in the Giro last year were not as strong those from Wiggins and Nibali since then. Taking the differences at face value, it would not seem possible for Hesjedal to succeed against the others on the climbs of this year’s race. However, there are factors from the 2012 Giro which may explain the margin.

Firstly, in most cases a large proportion of the climb was ridden at a reserved tempo. With the race not being “on” from the bottom, it is less likely that the overall climb time will represent the best performance they were capable of on that day. In contrast, most days of climbing for Wiggins/Nibali have seen Sky set a strong tempo from the beginning.

Secondly, there are factors unique to each day which may be the reason for difference. On the Cervinia and Pian dei Resinelli climbs there was some rain about, and the climbs to Pampeago and the top of Stelvio were at the end of brutal stages. Pampeago, where Hesjedal stamped his authority on the race, is the only performance of Ryder’s which compares favourably to Wiggins and Nibali. There were reports of a tailwind on that day but this may only be a counterweight against the 3500m-plus of categorised climbing before the final climb. Focusing only on this result we would expect Hesjedal to put up a strong fight this month.

Going a step further,  the pVAM method can be used to make  general predictions of the time it will take to complete the climbs in this year’s race. By applying the model of the three riders to the characteristics of the mountains in the 2013 Giro we can calculate a pVAM, and subsequently, predicted time (pTime).

The 90% confidence intervals are included in order to provide a range which the actual time should fall into. The range may seem very large, but this ensures that any observation outside the confidence interval is only likely to occur under extraordinary circumstances such as unexpected tactics or extreme weather.  As Telegraphe-Galibier and Tre Croci-Tre Cime are closely connected climbs on the same stages, it is like that there will be a trade-off with a higher performance on the first mountain resulting in a lower performance on the second. For the remaining three climbs, under normal conditions the expected actual observations to fall within a few percent either side of the prediction.

For a rider outside of these three favourites to win the race overall, they would have to climb (on average), faster than the predicted times. Over the course of the three weeks, the analysis will be updated  with actual observations for a real time look at how the race is unfolding.

Who will it be? (photo courtesy Giro D’Italia via SHIFT Active Media)

Thanks to Veloclinic for help with this piece.

The gang. (photo by Anton Vos)

We’ve just passed the second climb in the local lap. About 30 riders; that’s what is left of the buch. At top speed we ride towards the village of Dahlem. With only 30 kilometers to go, girls attack continuously. One after the other. I’m very active too, because this is the most thrilling game there is. For a moment, things seem to quiet down, just in front of me. My speed is still high, so why not, and I go – assuming some girls will catch my wheel.

After a couple of seconds I glance back. Gap. I look once more. A pretty big gap, even. I’m all alone. What to do? Race on, I guess. The road drags slightly uphill, I try not to slow down. I look back again. The gap is bigger. Then I see someone coming. Alone. Blue, white and black. It looks like someone of Sengers. It is Anna van der Breggen. Moments later a Rabobank-rider crosses. Lucinda Brand joins us. Anna and I work hard. Lucinda just sits in the wheel. Her teammate, Marianne Vos, is in the group behind, so she’s not allowed to work.

We race towards the first climb. It’s gambling, but I feel Anna wants to try to do the same as I do: stay away. Try to make it to the finish. Of course I’ve been calculating already: Anna was 10th in the prologue, I was 11th and Lucinda 15th. If we make it, we’ll be 1, 2 and 3 in the general classification. If we’ll be caught back, my teammates Carlee and Ashleigh didn’t spend any unnecesary energy and will hopefully be able to finish it off.

Anna rides uphill in a blistering pace. I almost drop, Lucinda passes me, I can just hold her wheel. People are yelling, I hear my name, cheers from the crowd in the climb. At the top I swallow the pain and ride to the front again. We soar downhill, to that awkward u-turn where it smells of brown coal. The second climb starts there. This one is longer. Anna leads the pace again, I am in her wheel and Lucinda is behind me. It doesn’t take long before I feel I won’t be able to keep up. Please ride a little slower, I beg Anna in silence, so I won’t have to drop. I’ll help you again once we’re at the top. Anna rides on, stoically. I drop.

The frustration – to see Anna and Lucinda ride away from me meter by meter, while we’re almost at the top. I clench my teeth, gasp the air into my lungs, stand on the pedals, sit down again and try to push even harder. I can’t. Anna clearly had a motobike for breakfast and I only ate a moped. Finally at the top, I shift to the big ring immediately. In Dahlem I’m back in the wheel of Anna and Lucinda again, but we can feel the hot breath of the group behind us already. Just before we pass the finish line for the last time, I give a big pull to show Anna I want to work on the flat, hoping she won’t drop me in the climb in return.

We hit the climb. My legs explode. Anna and Lucinda ride away from me, the group catches me and them and I drop definitely. I’m alone. Even the crowd is gone, off to the finish line. Finally time to feel the pain. To feel sorry for myself. I shrug these thoughts off angrily. I push through the pain in frustration, still hoping I can come back in the downhill.

Headwind. I make myself as small as possible, a ball on the bike. The cars are not far ahead of me. A cow stares at me in silence. The smell of brown coal, which I also smelled three years ago when I did this race too, exactly in this awkward corner. A smell I noticed for the first time in 1990, when we were on holiday in Dresden, Germany. How is it possible these memories come back at a moment like this?

At the top of the long climb I see the group in front of me is racing at top speed now. It’s only four kilometers to the finishline. Coming back? Forget about it. I ride to the finish alone, while Ashleigh sprints to an awesome second place, just behind multiple-world-champion Georgia Bronzini. I click out of my pedals, coughing like hell. Died on the battlefield. Racing my bike, I love it.