Alex back in the Frame
Not even a head-on collision with a car, which left him with broken vertebrae and ribs, a torn spleen and saw him lose 40 per cent of his blood, could keep Alex Frame away from the ‘‘s.... fight’’.
A ‘‘s... fight’’ is how Frame, who has signed a two-year contract with gun UCI World Tour outfit TrekSegafredo, the former team of Fabian Cancellara and Alberto Contador, describes the bunch sprint in a bike race.
The 24-year-old, a former world champion on the track, revealed that he used to ‘‘drop my nuts’’ and ease off when the kick started. ‘‘I was a bit scared of it,’’ he said.
Now he is barging through even the slightest of openings, going shoulder to shoulder with others riders at 70km/h in search of a stage victory.
‘‘Leaning on people at 70km/h, it’s a crazy part of the sport but it’s what I’m good at so I just have to put my head down and get it done,’’ Frame said.
‘‘Last year I realised that you just have to get involved and you have to take the risks and be methodical about what gaps you can make it through and what you can’t. Everyone else is getting involved and the guys getting stuck in are the guys getting the results, so you just have to turn your brain off and do what you have to do.’’
That fearless attitude is how Frame caught the attention of TrekSegafredo, after winning stages at the New Zealand Cycle Classic, Tour du Loir-et-Cher and Istrian Spring Trophy while riding for continental team JLT-Condor in 2017.
‘‘I got numbers on the board and got a contract,’’ he said, comparing his role to that of a striker in a football team where his job, if successful, will be rewarded with individual success.’’
He knows, though, the World Tour is a different beast and it will take time to earn the respect, not only of his new team-mates but other riders in the peloton.
‘‘I might get the opportunity to sprint at some of these races but I’m only going to get respected if I’m doing well. It’s hard when you have a team of World Tour guys riding for you, just to sprint for a result, and it’s going to be my first race with the team.There’s just a bit more pressure but you can get your name on the board, so it’s a bit of give and take.’’
Frame’s journey from the track to road cycling’s World Tour has not been without its setbacks, most notably when he crashed head on with a vehicle at the start of 2014.
He blacked out during the accident so does not recall what happened. The police report suggested he was either looking down at his power metre and drifted across the road around or skidded in a ‘‘half crash’’ and crossed the centre line.
The crash, and the resulting injuries, were not the end of his problems. Frame said he trained himself into the ground in the six months that followed the accident, too eager to get himself back into shape as quickly as possible. He became so tired that he would sleep for 18 hours a day. He thought it was the end of his cycling career.
‘‘I physically and mentally just cracked. People say they overtrain, well this was like the medical version of that where the body was just depleted. I was just a wreck. I shut it down pretty quick and I wasn’t keen to do anything in the sport again.’’
Areturn to track cycling reignited his passion for riding. There was less pressure. It was fun. The enjoyment returned and so to the results, going on to win the world championship in the team pursuit.
That led to a decision to throw everything back at the road, where an opportunity JLT-Condor put him back in the shop window.
‘‘Every year I felt that I was getting a better and I thought maybe if I gave it a crack then maybe it could happen?’’
Frame said it was inspiring to see other New Zealand riders excel on the World Tour, with George Bennett winning the Tour of California and breaking into the top- 10 at the Tour de France before withdrawing due to illness.
‘‘I’ve known George for a while and he’s just been low-key grinding in France and getting his head kicked in but just getting better every year. Now he’s winning these World Tour races and looking like he belongs in the top-10, top-five in the Tour. He’s progressed honestly and just worked super hard. For guys like me, he’s a massive inspiration for guys who just want to do well in a sport that is massively foreign to us.
‘‘I think if I didn’t have that accident I might have been in this position a couple of years earlier but I definitely wouldn’t be as mature or as up for it now. So in that way it’s all good. It’s weird to think about how much things change and how impossible it seems at some point and then it happens a couple of years later.’’
Frame recently returned from a 10-day training camp in Sicily, where he met his new colleagues for the first time. He said his mates back in Christchurch struggle to fathom his new job.
‘‘I never thought I’d be travelling all over Europe. It’s just dead random. When I talk about it now with my mates they don’t really know what I’m up to.’’
After unpacking 50kg worth of kit and gear - a task he said took hours not minutes - Frame will wear his new Trek-Segafredo uniform at next week’s elite road national championships in Napier.
With more important races on the horizon, likely to begin the World Tour season at the Tour
Down Under in South Australia later in the month, Frame said he does not want to be the guy that is flying at nationals but creaks for the rest of the year. So he was tempering expectation.
‘‘I’m going in there pretty open. If I get 15th but I felt all right I’ll be happy,’’ he said.
‘‘If I get 30th and felt all right I’ll be happy. If I get on the podium it would be awesome but I won’t be gutted if I don’t get in the top-10. I’ll just do my best and enjoy hanging out in Napier.’’