A wild day out at the Tour Down Under

Alvaro and Jose - Team Fuji-Servetto

One week ago I was sitting in the Fuji-Servetto Cycles team car at the 2009 Tour Down Under hurtling at over 100 km/h down a steep, narrow and windy road through the Adelaide Hills. Around all is chaos. In front is a car with half-a-man’s body poking through the sun-roof – his arms are waving wildly and he is yelling into a hand-radio.

Behind, beside and in front of us all is madness and movement. A pack of other team cars – all at once looking to get closer to the car with the half-a-man waving through the sun-roof, watching for other cars, staying on the road and  checking the group of cyclists racing a few metres ahead of this frantic pack.

And all the while the race radio at my feet chatters and squawks in a babel of Spanish, French, English and Italian – barked messages from the race director at the head of the race, stern directives – “All team cars remain behind me until I give the signal!!” – from the half-a-man race commissaire, blurred and windblown bursts from the team riders ahead of and behind us and messages (”24 seconds”, “2 minutes 5 seconds”) from the motorbikes that fly back and forth through the field relaying various gaps and time differences between the lead group of riders – the tete de course – and the scattered elements of the peleton – the rest of the race group.

Javier Megias

Alvaro Crespi, the Director of the Fuji-Servetto team, picks up the radio hand-piece and, in machine-gun Spanish urges pace on the the team’s lead rider Javier Megias, who is in a small group of breakaway riders. Javier’s windblown response is a mere grunt.

Ahead of us a pack of ten or so riders sway across the road like some glittering rainbowed windblown creature. Shards of white-bright light shatter and spangle from whirred wheels, helmets and sweat. As the riders settle on the left hand side of the road the half-man in the car urgently waves the team cars through – three cars skate and slither half on and off the road past the whirring pack. The riders, blind to all but riding, riding, riding – driven by unseen forces of wind or road, drift back in front of us as we brake sharply and fall back. One team car, stranded halfway across the gap between the clear road in front and the cars behind and is forced off the road as the riders drift back across the road and swallow it for a moment into the pack.

Sticks, dust and stones fly until the pack again crosses the road and at the half-man’s urgent bidding we all scuttle through the gap and then – still bouncing and weaving our way down the hill – hit 140 km/h in pursuit of Javier and the group a kilometre or so ahead – all the while the radio chatters incessantly at my feet and the hot wind roars through the open windows.

We plunge down the hill apace and I attend to my cameras in my lap – preparing for the next lap – as I look up I see a rider, arm and hand rigid and fixed on the grasp of the team soignier through the car window – supposedly transferring water or food but for every second given a break and a discrete tow – all this downhill, surrounded by cars and bikes hurtling across and along the road at 100 km/h and plus.

Ivan Dominguez

Five minutes earlier we had been crawling up the other side of the hill, Alvaro picking his way between the mess of cars, bikes and screaming crowd that scattered across the road in front of us.

Sprint riders, the most fragile of professional riders, are daunted by this merest of hills so early in the season and fall back from the protection of the domestiques, the hurt of bursting muscles and lungs writ large on their faces.

Every now and then we come across one of our team and we slow while bottles and food are transferred, messages passed and a short tow given.

Then plunging again into the crowds of cars and people, trying to work out from the numbers called over the radio (”20 second break with riders 13, 24, 67, 88, 99 and 152″ – none of our riders) who is where, who has the best prospects for success, who needs support, who has burnt out.

Then over the top of the hill and falling down again among the chaos of speed, steel, sweat, flesh and rubber that is a professional cycle race.