Hugh Carthy on his Giro bid
AFTER STEADY PROGRESS OVER THE LAST FIVE YEARS BRITISH CLIMBER HUGH CARTHY SCORED HIS FIRST GRAND TOUR PODIUM AT THE 2020 VUELTA A ESPANA. VERN PITT FINDS OUT HOW THE 26-YEAR-OLD GOT THERE, CONQUERED THE FEARSOME ALTO DE L’ANGLIRU AND WHY THIN BAR TAPE IS A MUST
Hugh Carthy is giving a sermon on pastry. “Sometimes people try and compensate for the filling of a pie by just putting more pastry in. It’s like a Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday dinner, they’re putting in pastry to make up for what they lack in everything else,” he tells CW. Having previously heard Carthy wax lyrical about butter pies, the potato and pastry delicacy of his home town Preston, we’ve idly asked him if he has a strong view on whether a pie needs to be contained within pastry or if a puff top on a hotpot-style filling will do? It is self-evidently a daft question but Carthy is giving it some serious thought. “Just a pie with the topping is good enough for me,” he says. Then a pause. “With a pork pie though, having the pastry underneath is helpful so you can pick it up with your hands. But I wouldn’t get my knickers in a twist about it.”
It’s highly entertaining watching the gears of his brain tick over this topic, as they will do on many other things in the course of our conversation, working out in real time where he stands on this crucial baked-good conundrum, tongue firmly in his cheek at all times.
Eventually CW interjects: “I do probably need to ask you some questions about cycling, Hugh.”
“I think I’d rather to talk about pies to be honest,” he deadpans.
We’d not quite been primed to expect this from the 26-year-old Vuelta podium finisher. Carthy has a reputation as a tough person to get talking. Witness one of his poststage TV interviews and you’ll see a young man who appears completely uninterested in the process. Carthy’s former team boss at Jlt-condor, John Herety, warmly describes his curt oncamera grunts as “like a teenager”.
But none of that is apparent on Zoom on a weekday afternoon in February as Carthy speaks from his Andorra apartment. Perhaps being away from the pressure cooker of the race makes the difference. Or perhaps it’s simply not being confronted with the necessary (for the press) but tedious (for the riders) requests to recount the events of the last 45 minutes to someone you know has just watched them on TV while you’re still catching your breath.
Instead he’s considered, insightful and grounded. But above all there’s an arid sense of humour never far away. It’s that which led teammate Tejay Van Garderen to tell CW last year: “I love hanging out with him. He definitely is a stereotypical Brit.
“It definitely boosts morale to have him around,” the American said of his snooker-loving room-mate.
Weighty issues
When we speak Carthy is back in training after the highs of 2020 that included victory on the fearsome Alto de l’angliru on his way to third at the Vuelt a Espana and we ask if he feels the weight of expectation heading into 2021. “I feel a bit more relaxed about things — you’ve had some good successes so you sort of know what to do,” he says.
To our surprise that includes the climber’s curse to lose a few off-season pounds from his skinny looking 6ft 3in frame. “The scales don’t lie,” he says. “I’m pretty tall so I hide it quite well. I’ve put more on this year than I have done before, about five kilos.”
An off-season at his parents in
Climbing to win stage nine in the 2019 Tour de Suisse
Preston seemingly hasn’t helped that cause. “My Mum’s my worst enemy with this stuff. She knows I’ve got a sweet tooth so she buys me stuff, she knows she shouldn’t, but she buys biscuits and chocolate. Then after my evening meal I’ll sit in front of the TV eating bags of chocolate buttons. I don’t think that does any harm [once in a while],” he says.
Chocolate button weight lost, Carthy would go on to claim a very solid top 10 in his first stage race of the year at Vuelta a Catalunya. That bodes well for his first big target of this year leading the Ef-nippo charge at the Giro d’italia.
He says he hasn’t spent a long time looking at the parcours or concerning himself with the intimate details of stages, preferring to leave that to the sports directors who he trusts. But his status as a clear leader is a welcome change. “For me now the pressure has gone. I felt the pressure to get to the level to get the break-out result that I knew I was capable of. At times it’s frustrating because you see riders your age doing stuff and you think I should be doing that, I used to beat you a few years ago. But now I’ve elevated myself to that level there’s less pressure. I’ve known I was capable of it but it’s different knowing it and doing it.”
“I’ll sit in front of the TV eating bags of chocolate buttons”
Mountainous destiny
Elevating is in Carthy’s blood. He always knew he would be a climber. When in 2007 journalist and CW contributor, Chris Sidwells ran into a 12-year-old Carthy arriving at the summit of Mont Ventoux, having ridden up in 1:20 he
understandably wondered what was motivating a skinny pre-teen to flog himself up one of cycling’s most iconic climbs. “It comes from Hugh, he wants to do it,” Hugh’s father Sean told Sidwells. “Our family holidays are always in France now because Hugh wants to do the famous climbs, and he gets me to record his times.”
From there Carthy progressed through the age categories, winning the junior Tour of Wales in 2012 and then joining Jlt-condor in 2013. It’s perhaps odd then that Herety says it was Carthy’s time trialling that drew his attention. “If someone of that build [tall and skinny] can put in a good time trial, then they’re worth taking a punt on,” he says.
As a climber, however, opportunities
“In other bigger teams, you get put in a helper role quite early”
to excel in British races were limited so when the chance to sign for Pro Continental Caja Rural came up Herety encouraged Carthy to take it. He’d spend two years living in Pamplona — not a regular haunt of Englishspeaking pro riders on the continent — perfecting his Spanish and enjoying it’s more low-key sensibility. He’d remain based there for his first years in the Worldtour with Cannondale-drapac, now Ef-nippo, before moving to his current Andorra base.
Carthy is in his fifth year with the squad and his no-nonsense attitude would seem to fit in perfectly with the team’s laid-back ethos that’s a contrast to the sport’s more clinical juggernauts. Sports director Charly Wegelius, who helped bring Carthy to the team, says the relationship has been mutually beneficial. “It was a shrewd move of his to choose us,” he says. “I think in other bigger teams, you get put in a helpers’ role quite early. And the queue to get out of that role can be quite long.
He’s been free to race at the front, rather than just pulling. You can learn a lot by doing that but there comes a point when you’re just learning how to pull better rather than to win races.”
He adds that Hugh has, like the rest of the team, been able to be himself and find his place, even though that doesn’t always make the DS’S job easier. “He’s definitely not a push-over,” says Charly. “He’s got a lot of respect for us [EF staff] but if you come with an idea and he thinks it’s a sh*t idea, you’re going to have to work pretty hard to explain to him why he should do something.”
We can see some hint of this when we ask Carthy about how specific he is about his bike and gear. Initially he shrugs it off as something he’s not that bothered about — he’s not had many bike fittings over the years. Then the cogs start turning and it becomes clear he knows what he likes. For instance he’s pleased he’s back on the Prologo saddle he used at Caja Rural.
He is “quite fussy” about insoles and he has some specific bar tape requirements: “I like the handlebar tape thin, it annoys the mechanics because they can tear it because they have to pull it so tight. I hate spongy bar tape. If I could ride without it I would. I like to feel the road.”
It strikes us that Carthy likes to pick up things that work for him bit by bit and if he finds it works he’ll stick with it for ever. That mirrors his progress since joining the Worldtour which has been a steady metronomic march to the front of the peloton, culminating in 2020’s breakout performances.
He had already won a stage in the Tour de Suisse in 2019 but his ride in support of Dani Martinez at the Tour de France last August was a cut above. On stage 13 to Le Puy Mary he towed the Colombian back up to the front group and still finished ninth.
He’d take that form into the Vuelta. When on the hilly stage one Carthy came in with the front group, far and away the best of EF’S squad, minutes ahead of Martinez and fellow climber Michael Woods, it was clear to anyone who’d dared to question it that he was the team’s GC leader. It was what he’d been steadily building towards since he joined the sport’s top flight in 2014. It would prove to be the right opportunity at the right time.
“In 2019, I was ready to get a top 10 Grand Tour,” he says. “Not easy, but I could have done it. But it was just sort of circumstance. It doesn’t matter whether it came, in my opinion a year later or not.” He points to the Giro d’italia in 2019 when he finished 11th saying that placing outside the top 10 actually helped him focus on improving his weaknesses and getting onto the Vuelta podium in 2020. “It left a carrot in front of me, I had unfinished business,” he says.
As the race went on Carthy seemed to get stronger. Stamping his claim to be the strongest climber in the race he became the first Brit to win on the Alto de l’angliru with it’s 20 per cent ramps.
With legs that could drop bonafide super-climbers like Richard Carapaz and Primoz Roglic it was a hugely impressive feat as he wrestled his bike, equipped with a 34x32 bottom gear, tongue out, grinding up the final slopes.
Not that Carthy holds it in any particular reverence: “It does mean slightly more in a sort of historical sense, maybe in 20 years time, they’ll paint your name on a stone plinth at the top or something. It was actually extra details. But I think as a bike rider, a win’s a win,” he says.
Less remarked upon but perhaps more telling of Carthy’s confidence and winning attitude on the final ascent of the three-week race, a few days later he was the first to attack the group of favourites. Many racers in the final podium spot for the first time in their career might have been tempted to play it safe and not risk losing anything. Carthy calculated otherwise. “I didn’t feel like I could lose at that point. I knew I was feeling good enough,” he says. “With respect, the couple of riders behind me Dan Martin and Enric Mas didn’t concern me.
“I like the handlebar tape thin, if I could ride without it I would”
I had a nice margin on them and I’d been climbing consistently better than them throughout the race.”
He adds: “It’s not my style to ride for third or ride for fifth, I’m not going to take a silly risk but I’d rather finish fourth and have a good crack than ride third and hide.
“At the end of the day it’s entertainment it’s not all about Worldtour points and rankings. I think for our team, and a few others, it’s more about the entertainment and winning fans and being the people’s team. That doesn’t mean doing stupid stuff but it does mean not being a passenger in the race but to the race.”
“Being” the race is where he seems most comfortable. On a mountainside making his rivals hurt seems like his natural habitat. But winning the fans also involves telling the story of those characters behind the feats — Carthy has personality in spades and appears to be increasingly comfortable with that side of his role.
At 26-years-old his story is just getting going and there’ll doubtless be plenty more thrilling chapters, like that win on the Angliru, to come. Some might even involve pies.