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THE GROM REPORT 3 - THE AUTUMN CLASSICS... |
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 Words: Kris Withington...
Kris - aka Grom - is from Rotorua and is a mechanic with Garmin-Transitions, the cycling team that features another local Julian Dean. Kris is reporting every month or so from inside the world of the European pro cycling tour.
• Tales from Pro Tour No.2...Have you got a cap for me?
• Tales from Pro Tour No.1....It's February. It's cold
More on Kris • BIKE WIZARD...
Thanks to Rotorua Daily Post
In the game of professional bike racing, you lose far more than you win.
Unless you are Eddy Merckx, the greatest bike racer ever and with the coolest sideburns. His career strike rate was 35% and in his best year, 1971, he won 45% of all races he started. But if you’re not Big Ted, you can expect a flogging most times you swing a leg over your trusty steed.
Winning or not winning are considered team efforts and I have experienced both in the past few weeks.
In April, Belgium hosts the first important one-day races of the season.
These ‘Classics’ mean a busy few weeks for the teams and especially for the mechanics.
The weather in Belgium in April doesn’t help – it is remarkably similar to Bluff in July…rubbish. We toil away preparing and then washing the ‘material’ (the cool, Euro way of saying push bikes). It can be a monotonous routine - standing out in the freezing rain, often after dark, and, more often than not, for nothing.
No result.
Life goes on. We move to the next race and try again.
Then one day, one of our riders wins. Early in April, Tyler Farrar became the first American to win the mid-week Classic Scheldeprijs.
It’s a weird feeling. It’s not like the team did anything different or the mechanics anything special to the material.
It just happens. Getting a win isn’t easy, so everyone on the team is happy.
We are allowed a dash of champagne at dinner at the team hotel in Gent - but only a dash.
Then there is the “non-victory”.
Perhaps the biggest one-day Classic of the year is a bizarre race called Paris-Roubaix, in northern France. It was first run in 1896 and is 260 kilometres, with a twist – around fifty kilometres of ‘pave’ or cobblestones.
It’s my favourite race of the year, even more than the Tour de France. The cobblestones are not like the ones found in the Rotorua City Focus. They were laid by Napoleon to march his battalions of soldiers over and aren’t really fit for a bicycle race.
But, to the delight of bike fans, everywhere, and the dismay of the professional teams, they run one, anyway.
The cobblestones tend to puncture tires, destroy equipment and cause massive crashes in the peloton, so a huge amount of mechanical preparation is involved for this one race.
We equip our eight riders with brand-new, specially designed bikes.
Our two top riders get four spare bikes, each, to hopefully cover any circumstances.
Ten bikes for two riders and the six other riders have, at least, one spare each.
It took six full days of work to get all the ‘material’ in tip-top condition to propel our men to glory.
On the day, everything was going well.
Then, within metres of each other, our two top men crashed – effectively, day over for the team. Three months of planning and preparation and six days of work, ‘a bloc’ - all for nothing and all within 2 metres. It’s an odd feeling for the mechanics - a bit like the Egyptians getting the last great pyramid finished, then some bloke comes along in a bulldozer and tips it over.
We will wait for next April for another crack.
Life goes on.
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