Cummings The Break

FEATURED ON THE NETFLIX SERIES TOUR DE FRANCE: UNCHAINED
Main
ISBN: 978-1-83895-392-8
Verlag: Allen & Unwin
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 336 Seiten

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 SPORTS BOOK AWARDS CYCLING BOOK OF THE YEAR* The gripping and revealing autobiography of one of Britain's most successful international cyclists of the modern era 'Getting in a break was my one chance of winning. The hard part was working out, again and again, how to make that chance count' Sharp, resourceful and a permanent outsider; for nearly 20 years Steve Cummings determinedly blazed his own winning trail in international cycling. A maverick who defied the dominant teams, to record a sequence of gloriously improbable victories, he has lived and raced with legends of the sport - Cavendish, Wiggins, Froome, Thomas and others - about whom he has strong views and untold stories. This autobiography of one of Britain's most successful international riders of the modern era takes the reader from Steve's earliest days as a junior, pounding across the flatlands of the Wirral, through his love-hate relationships with the British Cycling track cycling squad, to his series of top-level breakaway victories in the Tour de France, Tour of Britain and Vuelta a España and - rather than standout physical talent - how developing his own strategies and training techniques enabled him to succeed against the odds. The Break will be the first full-length account of the life and times of, in the words of ProCycling magazine, a 'universally popular and respected rider in the cycling world'.

Born on the Wirral, Steve Cummings was a track rider for Team GB from 2001-2007 before racing for top pro teams including Team Sky, BMC and MTN-Qhubeka-Dimension Data. He completed two of the most spectacular stage race victories in recent Tour de France history: at the mountain-top finish in Mende in 2015 and through the Pyrenees in 2016, as well as a stage at the Tour of Spain. He was crowned both British Time Trial and Road-Race National Champion in 2017, the first rider to 'do the double' since Tour de France star David Millar ten years earlier. Recently retired, he is now development director at Ineos Grenadiers.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cummings, Steve

Leseproben

Chapter 1

Doughnuts

Maybe it was to do with growing up on the Wirral in a working-class family, or maybe it was my own personality, but one of the key lessons cycling has taught me is that if you look hard enough, the most unexpected raw materials can help you attain your objective. Like, for example, doughnuts.

This happened just before I won the Soens, when I was seventeen, and I had Mark Baker as my regular training partner. Mark was ideal in some ways as he was an extremely good racer in GB’s National Road squad. But on the downside, his dad bought him all the flash kit right down to the Oakley glasses and Carnac shoes, the works, and every time he said, ‘Steve, why don’t you get these new tyres?’ I had to admit I felt peer pressure. The thing was I was only earning £8 a week on a paper round, which really wasn’t the kind of money that would get me that kind of high-end equipment.

So I put my thinking cap on and hit on the scheme of selling doughnuts at school. And it worked out really well. I’d get a first paper round done super-early, then I’d do a second one, then just before school I’d go to Tesco, where at the time you could buy ten jam doughnuts for a pound. I’d buy fifty doughnuts, sometimes seventy, and by selling them for 20p each I’d make £7 a day. Put together with the money from my two paper rounds, it all went on getting better cycling equipment.

It was never quite enough. If Mark had Oakleys, I’d still have to settle for the Brikos, a cheaper kind. On top of which he’d started racing earlier than me and his bike was lighter than mine. But thanks to Tesco’s doughnuts, when we both got away in the Soens in the winning break that year, the playing field was a lot more level.

It was the same kind of DIY initiative that helped me to my breakthrough win at the ‘schoolboy’ category, aged fifteen, when I won one of that level’s biggest one-day races, the GHS 10 Mile individual time trial. I was riding on a bike that had been put together starting from, literally, nothing. Based entirely on parts begged, borrowed and not quite stolen from friends, the construction process consisted of, ‘Oh, we’ve got this bit, let’s put this bit on to this,’ and ‘Then we can add this,’ and ‘Then we can add this.’ The part of the process that nearly defeated us was trying to fit the crank on to the bottom bracket. So we went round to my trainer at the time, Keith Boardman – and that name should ring a bell with most readers, or at least his son Chris should do – and we cut up a Coke can and made a kind of shim around the bottom bracket axle. Then I put the crank on to make the axle wider, and we drove south to wherever the race was held, with me down to compete using a bike which actually moved thanks to a fixed wheel with an old tri spoke that had belonged to Chris at some stage and a rear disc wheel on loan from The Bike Factory. Somehow, utterly improbably, we had created the bike though, and I ended up winning the GHS Schoolboy 10 Mile Time Trial on it too.

Being resourceful with what you had at your disposal was one area I realized I had to get good in if I wanted to be a good cyclist. Another life lesson was learning about how to turn things you didn’t like into something beneficial. I hated school, for example, and wasn’t a good student, so I’d try to bunk off as many lessons as I could to ride my bike. Particularly religious education.

After I’d won the Schoolboy 10 I think the teachers realized I was doing something relatively productive compared to the rest of the kids playing truant. So I realized that was the perfect moment to have some off-the-record discussions with them, and rather than getting myself thrown out of RE class by making trouble, from then on I knew some teachers would turn a blind eye if I disappeared early on Tuesday afternoons to go ride my bike before it got too dark.

But there’s only so much you can do for yourself at that age, of course. I wouldn’t have won that Schoolboy 10, for example, if it hadn’t been for a kind-hearted big guy we knew locally as Stevie Light. Stevie wasn’t a bike rider, but he just liked cycling and he was good enough to drive me and Mark to races. Others I’d like to thank here and now include Alison France, Jack McAllister (more on those two later), Stan Moly, Danny MacD, Tempo, Big Kev, Chubbie, Woodsie, Bobby Mac, Keith and Carol, Mike and Pat… it’s a long list! Key to my progress in cycling, though, were my mum and dad, who although there wasn’t any history of major sport in the family, both always thought lots of cycling as a hobby.

My dad, Dave, who was a policeman in Liverpool, where they’re both from, was a bit nuts about sport himself. He’d run to work and then ride home. My mum, our Les, was really into running too. She did a marathon when she was forty in under four hours and she was holding down a full-time job as an NHS receptionist as well. For me as a kid, football and cycling were the two things I liked the most. But my individualism started coming out pretty early on, and I left off football even though I loved it – and still do – because I sort of felt I was overly reliant on the team and couldn’t control the way things played out if it was you and ten other guys on the pitch. For me, that was frustrating. Plus I wasn’t good enough.

At the same time, when I was a little kid I was always riding my bike, round and round the block on the housing estate where we lived in Pensby on the Wirral. I must admit, though, that the 1992 Olympics, when Chris Boardman had his breakthrough by winning gold, it went completely over my head. But I liked the freedom cycling gave you regardless, and when I got older, the way it got me to places I’d never been to before like Delamere Forest, the Cheshire Plain, sometimes a bit of North Wales. Then there was the bit of banter with the other guys on the training rides too.

At first, when I was eleven, they wouldn’t let me sign up for Birkenhead North End cycling club because they weren’t insured for kids. But we got round it through my dad joining. Even before that I’d go out with my dad and my elder brother and his mates out from home in Pensby along the Chester High Road – which you wouldn’t dream of doing now as it’s way too dangerous – to the Eureka cafe. I remember the first time I did that I probably only rode eight miles in total and I fell off on the way home and cut my knee because I was so fucked, but I didn’t care. I loved what I was doing.

There was a bit of racing right from the start in my club, when we’d meet up on a Thursday at the community centre, have a cup of tea then go on a club run which normally involved either racing for town signs or riding to a climb, which most or all of us would race up as well. But what really got me into competitive cycling were our camping holidays in France when I was a teenager. I remember how everyone on the campsite would be sitting round drinking beers in their tank tops in some dodgy bar and watching the Tour de France. At that age it felt like not only the whole of France was watching, but all the Dutch and Belgian tourists were too – everybody in the rest of Europe in fact. I didn’t understand the race, but I wanted to understand why all these people were drawn to it, and that way the Tour and road racing got under my skin.

My dad was really encouraging about it all, given I was so committed. He even helped me avoid certain classes at school to go riding, so if I said to him, ‘Dad, I’ve got Spanish today,’ and in fact I’d go out on my bike, he’d turn a blind eye. My mum kind of knew that I was not a good pupil, but as she was always at work throughout the day, it wasn’t such a big deal. My dad, though, worked shifts, and sometimes I’d get his shift wrong, come home from school early and he’d be sitting there on the sofa, asking me what I was doing. But it was fine. I’d say I was going out on my bike and he’d say, ‘Don’t tell your mother,’ and we’d leave it at that.

Dad used to take me down to the cycling club as well in the community centre, which was where all my mates and a few other people I’d know would go and drink and smoke weed outside. Being very glad it was usually dark when club night got under way, I’d try to avoid being seen by my mates going in. But I couldn’t dodge a few embarrassing moments when the old guys in the club would be slagging off ‘those bloody scallies’ who had lit fires outside the fire escape door, and I knew exactly who the bloody scallies were.

There weren’t many young people at the time doing cycling. Sometimes you’d go down to Pensby Park on a Thursday evening and there’d maybe be only five or six riders actually there for racing. But I had the backing of my parents, there was the crowd at the club and the Eureka cafe that I’d go racing and riding with as well, and people from other clubs like Port Sunlight Wheelers were very supportive too.

Up until I was thirteen or fourteen, I’d been on a mountain bike, working my way through the sizes. One high point of that time was getting a really good one, a Diamondback, which I managed to blag my father into buying for me and I cannot for the life of me remember how I convinced him. But there was one guy, Jack McAllister, who’d only met me once at the club but straight away he lent me his wife’s bike to be my...