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Paul O’Connell joined Christine and I in the car for day 4 – this is how the day panned out in his words: paul.w.oconnell@gmail.com

Team BP in the 2010 Tour of Wellington

Paul O’Connell

– Invictus –

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

– William Ernest H`enley

When I woke up this morning my neck hurt. I was supposed to be riding but my neck hurt, and I used to live by the old adage of “never train while sick or injured”. Then it started to rain, and I also live by the rule of thumb of “I don’t like getting wet” (a little less meaningful and serious I know).

But unlike days past, those things weren’t foremost in my thoughts.

When I saw the rain this morning I was worried about the boys. Today was the last day of the Tour of Wellington, and the weather had closed in.

How is Mike going to cope in this rain? He’s already had one lie down . . . really . . . . pissing rain on the last day for the criterium race? 60km/h through city streets in weather like this?

My perspective had shifted. If it hadn’t been for yesterday, I wouldn’t have seen today in the same light. The grey mist that is coming around Point Jerningham now signifies more than my inability to ride, now it’s about misery and danger for the boys on their last day.

Was that too abrupt?

How about some context?
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Team Sky – the newest addition to the Pro Cycling Peloton have team issue Apple Iphones and Macbooks. They’ve got massage chairs with calf supports. They’ve got a state of the art team bus with washing machines that work while the bus is on the road. The bus has a full height shower and mood lighting designed by sports psychologists.

They’ve got team cars by Jaguar. They ride Pinarello Dogmas. And for those of you who don’t know cycling – Pinarello is to cycling as Ferrari is to driving – overblown, Italian, pornographic, and astonishingly beautiful.

The team is staffed by the best sports scientists the British Olympic programme has produced, and the riders are world champions and Olympic champions.

Veritable rock stars of cycling – Juan Antonio Flecha, Bradley Wiggins, Geraint Thomas, Ben Swift, Matt Hayman, Chris Sutton – even New Zealand’s own Greg Henderson.

But I don’t care one iota about those boys riding in the rain. It doesn’t bother me one little bit if they’re putting themselves in danger – those guys are paid handsomely for it, they’re appropriately cared for and they love getting out amongst it.

This morning I’m concerned for Team BP in the 2010 Tour of Wellington.

The Tour of Wellington is a UCI ranked event that attracts lower level pro teams and has been won by such cycling luminaries as Robbie McEwen (3 time Green Jersey winner in the Tour de France – 12 stage wins) and Travis Meyer (current Australian Road Race Champion and rising star).

Sure, it is a local race and not on a European scale by any definition, but the racing is hard, the organisation is professional and the teams come from all over and mean business.

At the same time, it’s the heartland of New Zealand elite cycling. This is where the guys you ride with on a Sunday go to lay it on the line.

And yesterday I rode with Team BP.

No magnificent team bus, no soigneurs, no psychologists, no team website . . . no financial support at all. These are guys with full time jobs who train and race in their spare time.

Team BP is all about the love of the sport, the camaraderie, and – though they wouldn’t tell you – a glowing testament to man’s indomitable spirit.

Team BP don’t have a bus, they’ve got an EA Falcon station wagon with a $400 car alarm.

“A $400 car alarm?” I say, looking around the car wondering why in the hell you’d bother to put a $400 alarm in such a car.

“Yeah,” says Tristan, “the car only cost $400 . . . ain’t no one going to bother stealing it.”

They don’t have individual rooms at the Copthorne Hotel, they’re sharing two rooms at the Acorn Motel just down the road.

No one goes out to buy coffee, they’ve got a plunger that someone brought from home. Making coffee? . . . that’s Tristan’s job, or Jonno’s job, or Andy’s job. There are no real roles – whoever needs the next cup of coffee puts the plunger on.

The staffing is similarly democratic. Tristan is sporting director, technical director, team mechanic, driver, communications liaison, public relations executive, and team manager.

Christine (Jonno’s girlfriend) is assistant sporting director (because she happens to be there), the interloper writer (me) is in charge of water bottles in the back seat, Kirsten (Andy’s girlfriend) is in charge of sports psychology (also known as leaning out the window at 60 k an hour cheering on the boys), and Jim and Annette are the catering division (Andy’s parents who graciously put on a magnificent picnic at the end of stage 4. I was half expecting to see them with oranges at the top of the climb, but it wasn’t to be).
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When I arrived at the motel on Saturday morning Andy and Mike were up and reading the paper. Tristan had just finished a cup of coffee (and was later to drink mine), and everyone was sitting watching Country Calendar. I was told I’d just missed the dog trials.

The atmosphere was calm and relaxed, very much laid back New Zealand with a hint of weariness. I ride with Andy most weeks, and this morning I could see the miles he’d done in the past few days written on his face.

It had been a hard week. Mike had gone down hard on the first day and broke his bike, he was now sitting reading the newspaper and bleeding through his dressings.

Andy had performed beautifully the day before – beating NZ road champion Jack Bauer home by more than 5 minutes.

Dan was quietly confident, quiet being the operative word. Jonno was smiling and ready. And Chris was, as we were about to find out, nearing the limit of his not inconsiderable power.

After rising and slowly coming back to life, the first thing on the agenda was the team manager’s briefing. As water bottle guy and general interloper I was invited along. Tristan and I rolled off in the second team car (which was my Toyota) to the Copthorne to be read chapter and verse on the feeding protocols and what to do with biddins (I’m pretty sure he meant bidon, but he said biddin and who was I to correct him?)

This inspirational speech, followed by the didactic speech from the Police escort, provided heady material for the Team Manager’s motivational speech when we got back to the motel.

I can’t remember the precise details of the tirade, but I’m pretty sure it was something along the lines of “this is the bit where I make a motivational speech” and then someone laughed. It was beautifully missing all necessary elements to make it a tirade.

It was okay though, the strategy had been formed while we were at the managers’ briefing – Tristan hadn’t been brought into the fold but the boys already had a plan.

“We’ve got a strategy for today,” Mike grinned at me. “Get into a break. Any break. We want to see if Tristan’s car can actually get past the peloton.”

Once a break forms and is established in a cycle race (which usually means a gap of about a minute between it and the main field), the race directors bring the team cars of those riders in the break past the peloton and up behind the break.

Team BP hadn’t been in a break so far, and the aim of the game today was to try and get into one. Not for TV coverage, not for prize money, just to see if the EA Falcon could actually get past the peloton. Not that it was short of horses (in fact it had so many horses it almost ran out of gas on one stage), but that it was a rather wide car. Would there be room on narrow NZ roads for almost100 cyclists and the mighty EA station wagon?

That was it. The plan for the day. “How well can Tristan drive the beast?” I thought it was a great plan. And with that we headed for the start line.

Piling into the EA Falcon we quickly took our pre-assigned roles. Christine was in the front seat with Tristan and was in charge of the Mallowpuffs. Tristan was both team manager and driver, and had race radio expertly duct taped to the dashboard.

I was in the back with Kirsten. We had 5 spare wheels in the back behind us and I had instructions on what to do in case of a puncture (grab a wheel, give it to Tristan, get the hell out of the way. . . good instructions).

I was also in charge of water bottles on the right side of the car, while Kirsten was in charge of water bottles on the left and all motivational cheering.

The race today was three laps of a 33k circuit about 20km outside of Masterton. We were number 17 in the caravan, meaning there were five team cars behind us as well as the ambulances that follow the race, the broom wagon, and the Police car that marks the tail of the caravan.

The back seat was carefully organised with bottles, bananas, muesli bars, coke, and my bag and laptop and camera rudely intruding.

As we headed out of town I found a strange sense of calm descended upon us . . . there were moments of panic in the next three hours, but they were only passing, and what was happening in the race was largely unknown to us.

Race radio updates would let us know what was happening in the breaks as they went, and we could see the gaps from our place in the caravan as the field rounded corners ahead of us. But we weren’t concerned about the leaders and the attacks as they came, we spent most of our time looking at the peloton trying to figure out if that rider that was falling back to the cars was a BP rider. Most of the time it wasn’t, but on three occasions it was.

My abiding memories of race radio are from the more absurd moments in the race.

The indisputable evidence that we were racing in New Zealand:

“Attention Tour Radio, there is a tractor on the road ahead.”

And the technological failure:

“<unintelligible>

“I can’t understand a word you’re saying, use the official radio”

The first time we saw one of our guys it was the tragedy of the day. Chris had been suffering after three days of hard racing, and when the field attacked on the second time up the climb he started to drift off the back.

As he fell back all of our thoughts and concerns went with him. We couldn’t do anything, but he was suffering and that’s who we were worried about.

Chris being Chris, he never gave up all day. Fifteen minutes later he was sitting behind the mighty EA Falcon, still there at the edge of endurance, grinding trying to get back through the caravan of team cars to the main field.

Our sports psychologist was leaning out of one window shouting words of encouragement, and I was leaning out the other taking photos.

It was so tantalisingly close. Just as we thought he was about to make it back on, the field attacked for an intermediate sprint prize and the elastic broke.

As he fell back beyond the Police car marking the end of the caravan, our hearts fell.

Chris was now out there alone with a 60 km time trial ahead of him to get home and make the time cut – a not inconsiderable task considering he had a full lap of the circuit to get through and then a slog into the rising headwind to deal with.

We didn’t know it at the time, but the rest of the boys were feeling pretty good. At the end of the second time up the climb Dan and Mike were sitting on the front of the peloton lapping it out.

Mike was bleeding down his left leg onto his socks, his road rash from day one sunburnt from the day’s previous stage (the perils of transparent wound dressings).

As the marketing schtick goes: Pain is temporary, glory is forever.

These are guys with full time jobs, one of them cut up pretty bad, and here they were sitting on the front of a semi-professional peloton driving it into a crosswind.

They were working for no particular reason as far as I could tell – it’s just what cyclists do. You want to live with the big boys, then take a turn at the front.

Dan was rather sheepish about it afterwards . . . those turns on the front were followed three quarters of a lap later with him falling back off the field as it attacked up the climb the last time around. But he’d done his work and was heading home with a few other guys who’d also been dropped as the peloton turned things up to bring the break in.

Just before Dan drifted off the back, Jonno came back for bottles. Given what he was going through, and how ham fisted I was with the first bottle hand off, he was incredibly gracious.

I couldn’t believe it – we were driving at about 50 km/h, I was a rank amateur using my memory of having seen team directors do this on TV, he had to be working pretty hard . . . and he was still smiling.

He loaded up with about 6 bottles and then he was off back to the race.

And that was effectively the end of the race for the Team BP support crew. We had been there just in case, we’d done what little we could for Chris when he was ‘in the box’, we’d gotten bottles when needed, and we hadn’t rear ended anyone.

(Another team behind us couldn’t say the same – we heard the crunch as one car rear ended another early on in the race but never followed up to find out what actually happened. I’m pretty sure it was a Mercedes. Thankfully they didn’t hit the EA – it was freshly washed and polished after all).

The false war was over, save any possible punctures we were done and heading for home. We’d even eaten all the Mallowpuffs. (we made a pact not to tell the boys, a pact which I broke within about half an hour).

At this stage the break was at 30 seconds and with 20km to go it really had no hope at all of surviving. The commentators at the finish line were saying otherwise to gee up the crowd, but we could see the peloton sitting up and watching it. And if the peloton can sit up and the break doesn’t move further out, then it’s in trouble when the work starts.

We were more concerned about being at the finish line with food and coke for the guys than we were with the outcome of the race. Our guys were there in the mix, we had to be there to feed them afterwards.

By the time we got to the right side of the community hall at the finish line Mike, Andy and Jonno were already there.

Not only there, but to my utter shock and amazement they were in good spirits. Smiling and laughing and telling stories. Mike was bleeding down his left leg onto his shoes, trying to decide what flavour ice cream to get today.

“Maybe goody goody gum drops. Or boysenberry even. There’s this real fruit ice cream place on the way back to Wellington, they make this great boysenberry ice cream where they actually mash up boysenberries . . .”

“You have an ice cream after every stage?” I asked, absolutely delighted at the beauty of it all.

“Yeah, I figure it’s got the right balance of carbs, fat and protein,” he said, grinning.

“What did you have on Monday?” Christine asked.

“Hokey Pokey – It’s New Zealand’s favourite flavour of ice cream don’t you know?”

We all laughed. It was perfect, Mike was still smiling and telling stories of his favourite ice cream flavours while his wounds were dripping onto his cycle kit.

Good spirits. Immense fitness. All in the love of the sport.

It’s hard to explain why we ride to those who don’t ride.

Mike and Jono and Dan standing around chewing the fat and signing autographs for a local cycling fan (aged six). Sure – he got the autograph of the yellow jersey holder, but not before he’d come to have his programme signed by the boys from Team BP.

Back at the Acorn motel the catering division – Andy’s parents – had put on what could only be described as a magnificent spread.

On the wonderful sunny summer’s afternoon we all sat around, listened to the boys’ stories and squinted through sunstruck eyes trying to see photos on my laptop.

There was still one day’s racing ahead, but right then it was all about the ham and egg sandwiches and the shared stories.

Stories that you have to share over a beer while sitting in the pool at the Acorn motel.

I’ve always thought that Becks was an isotonic sports recovery drink, and it’s often my beverage of choice after the Sunday morning gladiatorial outing on the bike. Little did I know that Jonno shared my theory.

With all the boiled eggs gone, and the beer consumed, it was time to load up and head back to Wellington in preparation for Stage 5.

Team BP wasn’t staying the night at the Copthorne and getting a bus transfer over the next morning with all the other teams. Family cars were filled to overflowing, and the mighty Falcon even managed to make room for a race official’s bike. I offered to carry gear back, but it was all sorted.

The boys would spend the night in their own beds, and Tristan would even manage to get out the next morning for the Sunday bunch ride. (I didn’t, I was sitting writing this and worrying about the rain).

And while it wasn’t all about competition, the boys did well in stage 4. They moved up another place on the overall Team Classification which took them up ahead of teams with far more support and fanfare.

Team BP. The men in the arena. Their faces marred with sweat, and one of them bleeding from his arm and leg. Smiling through it all, and then back to work on Monday morning.

Postscript: Stage 5 of the Tour – a criterium race in central Wellington – was cancelled for safety reasons.

An exhibition race of half length was held in its place, with prize money still on offer and participation optional.

The race was won by New Zealand National Road Champion Jack Bauer. Team BP was represented by Chris.

Results on following page.

2010 Trust House Tour of Wellington: Team BP

Riders:
Andy: Currency Trader
Chris: Architect
Dan: Student
Mike: Political Staffer
Jonno: Research Scientist

Management:
Tristan: Wheelbuilder

Results:
Stage 1 Results (105 finishers of 108 starters):