PRO RACING: TEAM SUNWEB In The Pink
Cyclist joins Sunweb at this year’s Giro d’italia, to find a team nervously protecting the pink jersey of its lead rider, Tom Dumoulin
Cyclist goes behind the scenes with Team Sunweb on the Giro d’italia as star rider Tom Dumoulin battles to retain the maglia rosa
It’s Stage 12 of the 2017 Giro d’italia, a long, flat stage in the north of the country. Cyclist is squeezed into the passenger seat of a Mini Clubman alongside Aike Visbeek, directeur sportif of Team Sunweb. Just two days ago, Sunweb team leader Tom Dumoulin won the 39.8km individual time-trial to ride himself into the pink jersey for the first time, and into the frame as a potential winner of the entire race.
‘People are becoming a little too excited and we need to stay realistic,’ Visbeek says. ‘The two biggest favourites – Nairo Quintana and Vincenzo Nibali – are still in contention and two minutes is nothing in the high mountains. It will be very difficult for Tom to win. Very difficult.’
Visbeek hurls the Mini around a tight bend with the skill of a rally driver, while I grip the door handle a bit tighter. ‘The Stelvio awaits next Tuesday,’ he adds. ‘If we’re still in contention then, well, who knows…’
First night nerves
Of course, by the time you read this Dumoulin will indeed have gone on to win the Giro, riding intelligently to limit his losses in the mountains before snatching the pink jersey back from Quintana on the final day with another strong ride against the clock. But that’s all still to come.
Let’s go back to the night before Stage 12 and the Hotel Molino Rosso in Imola, where Cyclist is patiently awaiting Sunweb’s arrival. We kill time by perusing the portraits that line the corridors. They’re predominantly of Italian cyclists, with Fausto Coppi predictably dominating the wall space. Motor racing is also big in this part of the world, with the local circuit, the Autodromo Enzo e Dino
Ferrari having hosted the San Marino Grand Prix every year between 1981 and 2006. Michael Schumacher won here seven times but sadly the circuit is remembered more for Ayrton Senna’s death in 1994. It’s why the Brazilian’s visage stares down from nearly every stairwell.
Cyclist heads to the parking lot in search of the Sunweb team entourage, but it’s the green and black flotilla of Cannondale-drapac that appears first, followed soon after by Procontinental team Gazprom-rusvelo. With Katusha-alpecin having swapped registration to Switzerland, there’s a Russian-shaped hole in the Worldtour roster that Gazprom is understandably keen to fill, and if you base a team’s ambitions on the size of its kitchen truck, they’re certainly ready. It’s enormous, although we shouldn’t be surprised considering the team is bankrolled by a company that holds the world’s largest gas reserves.
Finally, Sunweb’s cars arrive. The team has been driving Mini Clubmans – complete with team stripes – since the start of last season, when they were known as Giant-alpecin. ‘The other teams mocked us to begin with,’ says Visbeek, ‘but these are the nimblest cars in pro cycling.’
Dumoulin and his team leave the bus for the daily ritual of massage and shower before heading to dinner. Unlike Gazprom, Sunweb don’t have their own kitchen truck. Instead, they cook things up old school, squeezing into
the corners of hotel kitchens and fighting for cooker space with the resident chefs.
Fortunately for Sunweb, the Ibis hotel’s kitchen is even more cavernous than the ‘Gazprominator’, which makes life slightly easier for team chef Tim Bolster.
‘So how long have you been with the team?’ I ask Bolster as he bustles around the kitchen.
‘This is my first Grand Tour,’ he replies. I’m slightly taken aback, as modern Worldtour teams are so particular about their nutrition that chefs are usually Michelin standard and well used to fuelling riders on multi-stage races.
‘I’m studying nutrition and have an internship with the team,’ Bolster adds. ‘I saw a job on Facebook and applied. One day later Titia [van der Stelt, Sunweb’s lead nutritionist] called me and asked if I was willing to go to the Grand Tours and other races. Of course I said yes.’
An intern? While the tabloid journalist in me wants to ask how a newbie copes with the stress of ensuring the continued health of expensive and fragile athletes (after all, you wouldn’t want an incident where, say, the race leader has to stop for a poorly timed evacuation at the side of the road) I decide that would be cruel, and instead inquire about his nutritional strategy.
‘We might have less fibre on mountain days,’ he says. ‘Fibre holds on to water. That means more weight, which stifles efforts on the climbs.’
Dumoulin gets the same meals as everyone else, except for one significant difference. ‘At this race, for Tom I measure the weight of each ingredient, whether it’s breakfast or dinner. Look, I’ll show you…’ Beneath a sliver of tinfoil sits Tom’s weight-watching delight. This eating by numbers is extreme even by professional standards, but Dumoulin certainly doesn’t give the impression that he’s missing out when we come across him in the lobby.
‘Yeah, I’m feeling good,’ he says while scrolling through his smartphone faster than a teen on Snapchat. ‘I’m feeling really good,’ he adds, indicating that this concludes the interview. And with that, it’s time for bed.
It’s strangely comforting that even Worldtour teams, who plan every last detail, make complete cock-ups
Case of the missing rider
It’s early on the Thursday morning and we’re driving to Stage 12’s start with mechanic Giancarlo Brand. Over the car radio there’s a mix of urgency and merriment.
‘Oh dear,’ Brand smirks. ‘One of the riders has been left at the hotel. Another mechanic is going to turn back and pick him up.’
I find it strangely comforting to know that even professional Worldtour teams, who plan every last detail, can make complete cockups at times. We check on Twitter, and there is a beaming, bearded Simon Geschke – who famously soloed to a stage win at the 2015 Tour – who has posted a selfie from outside the hotel, with a thumb up for a lift.
‘I was not late – I’d like to make that clear,’ Geschke will tell us later. ‘I was downstairs in the lobby one minute before departure time. Still, I was pretty sure they’d come back as we’ve lost a rider already.’
Geschke is indeed picked up swiftly. Team Sunweb can ill-afford to shrink to seven after
losing Wilco Kelderman following Stage 9’s infamous crash involving a police motorbike.
A half-hour drive – 50 minutes for the Geschke rescue party – and we’re at the start city of Forli, situated about 80km southeast of Bologna in Emilia-romagna.
For a small city, Forli has a rich cycling heritage. It hosted its first Giro stage way back in 1925. Ercole Baldini, the 1958 World Champion and Giro winner that same year, was born and raised here. More recently, in 2015 it was the finish town for a flat stage where the sprint teams miscalculated, resulting in Bardani-csf’s Nicola Boem beating the breakaway to the line.
‘Forli has good memories for me,’ says Luke Roberts, the Australian DS who joined the team at the start of 2016. ‘I won two world titles here back in 1995.’ Gold came in the individual and team pursuits on the outdoor Velodromo Glauco Servadei, then Roberts added team pursuit gold to his palmarès at the Athens Olympics in 2004 (aka The Last Olympics Team GB Didn’t Dominate On The Track).
Long day in the saddle
We’re back in the Mini Clubman at the start of the 234km stage to Reggio Emilia – the longest of this year’s Giro.
‘It’s 11.40am and Stage 12 has officially started,’ crackles the race radio. Crowds line the streets, flags are waved, and the air fills with shouts of encouragement for the riders… and then we’re out in the countryside and it’s silent.
‘Today’s stage will be much calmer than yesterday,’ says Visbeek in a strong Dutch accent. The day before – Dumoulin’s first in pink – the team had to protect their leader over several stiff climbs, but today’s stage is mostly flat.
‘There are a couple of minor hills so we need to ensure that we’re in a position at the base of those climbs. There will also
be a crosswind at the end, so it might be dangerous… but probably not.’
Visbeek is an experienced DS who’s been around long enough to know what he’s talking about. He knows that today should – should – be a largely uneventful journey for a team whose only concern is not to lose time on the GC.
‘It didn’t used to be like that – in the past we would have been super-charged for days like this,’ he says, referring to the team’s previous focus on sprinting. Over 2013 and 2014, Marcel Kittel powered to 10 stage wins at the Giro d’italia and Tour de France, while fellow German sprinter John Degenkolb won a further 10 stages at the Vuelta a España from 2012 to 2015. Both have since moved on, however, to Quick-step Floors and Trek-segafredo respectively, but there was never a sense of loss. While the Dutch team has retained sprint aspirations with the arrival of Michael Matthews from Orica, they’re now identified primarily as a GC team.
The foundations for that transformation were laid with Dumoulin’s performance at the 2015 Vuelta, where he led until the penultimate stage, losing four minutes to eventual winner Fabio Aru on a mountainous day that saw him slip to sixth overall. That capitulation at the last minute is why Visbeek is wary of predicting a win for Dumoulin at this year’s Giro.
‘Two riders are away, two riders are away,’ the Antipodean voice of Roberts cuts through the peace. ‘One is from Gazprom [Sergey Firsanov], the other is from the Emirates [Marco Marcato]. At this rate, they’ll finish an hour and eight minutes ahead of GC. This could be a long day if no one follows them…’
One man does follow – Bardiani-csf’s Mirco Maestri, who hails from the finish town of Reggio Emilia – and the trio set about enjoying their moment in the sponsorship sun. The rest of the peloton settles into an easy pace, happy to let the break hang off the front until it’s time to reel them in for the final sprint.
As they roll along, Geschke signals to the team car for further assistance.
‘Aike, do you have my suncream – factor 30?’ Roberts says over the radio.
‘I’ll drive it up to you,’ Visbeek replies. ‘But who’s it for?’
‘Simon,’ Roberts says. ‘Someone didn’t have time to put it on this morning. He was too busy tweeting!’
Today’s stage will tip over five hours, with very little to do except follow the pack as it glides across northern Italy. It means that supplying and applying suncream to an absent-minded rider is elevated in importance to one of the most significant moments of the day – not that Visbeek is complaining.
As we trundle along, he spots TrekSegafredo’s Bauke Mollema at the side of the road, awaiting a replacement wheel. ‘He’s our worst enemy,’ Visbeek says. I ask why, given that Mollema is known as one of the most mild-mannered gentlemen on the circuit.
‘It’s nothing personal,’ Visbeek adds. ‘It’s just he’s from Feyenoord and I’m an Ajax Amsterdam fan. They’re our biggest rivals.’
This leads us neatly on to a discussion of football, and Visbeek recalls a tale of when former United and Ajax manager Louis Van Gaal was in charge at Barcelona.
‘Rivaldo was named FIFA World Player of the Year in 1999. In the first training session after the announcement, he asked if he could have a word with the team. Van Gaal thinks, “OK, he’s going to thank the players.” Instead Rivaldo goes, “We all knew I was the world’s best but now it’s official. Well, I no longer want to play on the left wing but as a playmaker.” He thanked no one. Needless to say, Van Gaal sent him home.’
Visbeek plainly has no time for prima donnas or athletes who think they’re bigger than their
Dumoulin will lose time to his rivals – most notably when they attack while he is having a ‘natural break’
team. I recall just how profusely Dumoulin thanked his teammates in interviews at the end of the previous stage, so it’s obvious that Vibeek’s attitude is one shared by the whole Sunweb team.
Strong to the end
The stage ends, as predicted, in a bunch sprint, with Quick-step Floors’ Colombian sensation Fernando Gaviria taking his third win of the tour (he’ll go on to win one more). Sunweb’s young sprinter Phil Bauhaus comes in a strong fourth, just off the podium, but most importantly race leader Tom Dumoulin finishes the stage in the main pack to retain the pink jersey.
In the days to come, Dumoulin will lose time to his rivals – most notably when they attack while he is having a ‘natural break’ – and lose the pink jersey to Quintana, but he will refuse to be broken. A dominant performance in the final day’s time-trial will see him stand atop the podium in Milan, the fatigue from 3,609km of racing swept away by the cheers of the tifosi.
On Dumoulin’s returns to Maastricht soon after the end of the race, tens of thousands of spectators pay homage to the Netherlands’ first ever winner of the Giro d’italia. But as Dumoulin says at the finish line, this wasn’t a win for him: ‘This victory was for the team.’ James Witts is a freelance journalist who is leader of his own team of one