VINTAGE PORTE

RICHIE IN FORM

THE wake-up call Richie Porte needed was delivered swiftly by one of Team Sky’s doctors while on a trip to Manchester last year.

It was August and although Porte had finished the Tour de France, he did so with pneumonia in the latest chapter of a season ruined by repeat illness.

As much as that wasn’t his fault, Porte also realised after meeting with the team doctor that in some ways it could have been.

It dawned on him that as he was about to turn 30, if he were to fulfil his enormous potential – and give himself a real chance of winning the top road races – he needed to change.

“I had to go to Manchester and get tests to see what was wrong with my body, and one of the team doctors said to me ‘you’ve been unwell but the thing is, Richie, you’re a professional bike rider but you’re not acting like it and you don’t look like one’,” Porte said.

“That was a bit of a kicking that I guess I needed.”

It led to a new approach that set him up for his biggest assignment yet – as head of Team Sky in this month’s Giro d’Italia.

“Last year wasn’t exactly all my fault, but there are certain things I could have done much better,” he said.

“In 2013 when I had a good year, it all came a bit easy and I wasn’t exactly professional in the run-up, and last year I tried the same sort of thing.

“At the end of the day, gone are the times when bike riders used to stay out all night – that was the legend, wasn’t it, at the Tour Down Under when they’d be out until 4am? That just doesn’t happen now.”

Not that Porte was a big drinker. He liked a stubbie as much as the next Tasmanian, but still decided to give it up. Cold turkey. He didn’t even have a beer with his old man at Christmas.

When he got home to Launceston, he went for his regular catch-up with close friend Andrew Christie-Johnston – the man who gave him his start in road cycling in 2007 after he switched from triathlons.

“We usually catch up whenever he comes home and we went out for a meal and the first thing he said to me was ‘we’re not drinking tonight’,” Christie-Johnston said.

“And we’d go to a coffee shop after a ride and where he’d normally have a treat he wasn’t doing that any more. The whole time he was here with (British champion) Chris (Froome) I could tell the level of professionalism had gone up a notch.”

It wasn’t just the beer Porte gave up – he overhauled his whole diet.

“I used to stop in training every day, do a few hours and have a focaccia with mozzarella,” he said. “Now I go out and do my five hours and get home and rest as soon as I’m home.

“Our team put on a new nutritionist who comes from Premier League football, and things like that bring a different perspective, which all helps.”

In the off-season alone, Porte shed 6kg and arrived in Ballarat for the national championships in the first week of January noticeably skinny – and after winning the time trial showed he’d lost none of his power.

“I’ve worked it out that just because it’s an off-season, it’s not time to go and put on six or seven kilos, which I’d normally do,” Porte said.

Christie-Johnston said the summer of 2015 was the leanest he’d ever seen Porte, who was a lifeguard at the local pool before becoming one of the world’s best cyclists.

“To see someone like that in January you know they’ve got the off-the-bike side of it right,” Christie-Johnston said.

In just four months this year, Porte has gone from the worst season of his career to the best. He has ridden five stage races and finished second, fourth, first, first and first, and thanks to coach Tim Kerrison, is primed for the threeweek Giro d’Italia.

Yesterday Porte was in 10th position, only 37 seconds behind the leader Simon Clarke, going into the fifth stage of the Giro last night. The stage was set to be decisive for General Classification riders such as Porte, with the race’s first summit finish.

“It’s good to have guys like Tim Kerrison in your corner – this is a guy who coached Brad Wiggins and Chris Froome to Grand Tour wins,” Porte said.

“He’s the numbers man who tells you what you’re doing is possible (to get) a podium in the Giro, but it’s not easy, it’s three weeks and a lot of things can go right and wrong.”

The other person Porte credits for his early-season success, by way of helping him become a more balanced individual on and off the bike, is fiancee Gemma Barrett.

As driven as Porte is to achieve, he knows the importance of finding the “off” switch to escape the bubble of professional cycling.

“A change in lifestyle, getting engaged, not overtraining, watching my diet and I’m actually really enjoying that which makes it much easier to do and I don’t think it’s a sacrifice. The only sacrifice for me is being away from Gemma for two weeks while I’m up at altitude.”

As good as Porte has been this season, he knows the biggest test is as team leader in a Grand Tour event such as the Giro.

Despite proving Sky’s most valuable lieutenant for Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome when they won the Tour de France in 2012 and 2013, some still question whether Porte can perform consistently over three weeks to finish on the podium of the Giro, or become the first Australian to win it.

The criticism is somewhat unfair given that in the past three Tours, Porte has either been sick or burying himself on the front for days, a factor not lost on Froome.

“He was the last guy in the mountains with me, always prepared to do the hard work and set it up for me, so he is not only a friend off the bike but on the bike he’s been extremely helpful to my career,” Froome said in December.

Porte said he saw the Giro as an opportunity and knew he had left no stone unturned.

“It’s a privilege to be living in Europe and being paid to ride a pushbike,” he said.

“It sort of dawned on me that I’ve got another 10 years to make a good career so that’s my aim now, to knuckle down these next few years. I think the next few years will be the peak of my strengths.”