When she put it like that, it wasn’t a very good joke. Swiping the mug to tamp down my panic, I pointed to the text. ‘“Don’t go bacon my heart” – see there? And it’s a different song to get in your head.’
‘I get it, Colin,’ she said. But she smiled indulgently and pressed another little kiss to my mouth and that was my day saved.
I thought maybe she was starting to get what I was doing. Spite had got me a long way. Stubbornness would win today – whatever place I managed. And at the end of the Tour, I would gather my pride to lay everything on the line for her – for us.
Leesa
We all had the sense that this was the day that things would change.
All the riders lined up at the start, the GC leader in the yellow jersey right at the front in the middle, flanked by the leaders of the mountain and sprint classifications in the polka-dot jersey and the green jersey, as well as the holder of the white jersey, the fastest rider under 26. Behind them was the usual chaos of 200-odd bicycles, minus the 30 who’d already pulled out.
But I only saw one.
I wasn’t ready for this – these feelings. He surely wasn’t either. But whatever he’d done to me couldn’t easily be undone. Most likely we were headed for heartbreak whenever this thing fell apart. Right now, though, we were both on the same piece of the earth and I wanted to remember this for the rest of my life.
He leaned casually on his bike frame, one powerful leg propped on the pedal. The Southern Cross tattoo with the Olympic rings was visible on his forearm next to a raised, speckled scab from the crash. I felt as though his face had changed over the past two weeks.
But the same cheeky smile formed on his lips when he caught sight of me. He gestured to his thigh and then mimed a beating heart – as though he knew that tattoo would always remind me of this time. Then he blew me a kiss and nothing could have stopped me blowing one back.
‘It’s all right!’ he called over the top of the clank of bicycles and the excited murmurs of the crowd. ‘You’ll be there at the end regardless of what happens, right?’
You bet I would. I gave him a soft nod, but then stretched onto my toes, holding a hand near my mouth to amplify my words. ‘But it would be better if you won!’
His grin was wide and infectious and so damn charming I should have used it for marketing and not kept it to myself, but that one was not going on the grid. With one more wave, he turned for the start line, head down, eyes up.
He was heading into this moment with everything he had, forging his own path.
The first half of the race was wild, with a gruelling climb almost as soon as they headed out. At over 6,000 feet of altitude, there was snow in places in a bizarre juxtaposition with the weathered and sunburned cyclists. A group of riders attacked early, but when the fourth-place rider joined them, the peloton reeled the group back in.
Watching the footage of the epic descent on the other side as the team bus lumbered in the direction of the finish line, I held my breath. I wouldn’t put it past Colin to attack. It took a certain daredevil spirit to attack on such a steep descent, where every curve was technical – and dangerous. Colin had the head – and the heart – for it. But the restless peloton thundered down together, not letting anyone break free.
In the jagged hills that followed, the fog descended, as though an overenthusiastic TV exec had thought smoke machines would heighten the drama of the event, when in reality it meant that the viewers didn’t have much chance of understanding what was going on. Trying to keep track of all the riders was a nightmare that caused Tony another square inch of baldness.
The lights of the neutral support motorbikes blinded the cameras, turning the riders into blurred chunks of colour. The mountains were interminable, even if we couldn’t see them from where the bus was now parked at La Toussuire, a ski area nestled in an alpine meadow that was usually neon-green but today was green-grey.
The peloton curled its way towards us, passing the Col du Lautaret, the infamous Col du Galibier, Col du Télégraphe, long and arduous ascents followed by an epic descent that grew more dangerous with the reduced visibility, until the riders burst out of the fog in the next valley.
‘There’s a break! Someone’s gone! Who is it?’ Tony was shaking a finger at the screen. ‘Did he make it?’
Three riders had made it clear of the peloton on the descent and were accelerating away, throwing their energy into an attack to see if it would last as far as the finish line. Colin would be with them, surely.
‘Gerritsen, Mackelden and Den Otter,’ the commentator managed eventually and Tony collapsed back into his seat. Colin was still in the peloton as they swept down, down, 6,000 feet down. Next came the ascent to the Col de la Croix-de-Fer, 30 km of relentless climbing – and waiting to see if Colin would give chase.
The peloton pushed the speed at the beginning of the climb, dropping rider after rider and slowly closing the gap on the breakaway. Then they were sucked up into the veil of fog, the coverage eerily quiet as even the spectators struggled to see what was going on a few feet from their faces. The bunch looked ghostly, all shadow and movement.
‘Nellie’s cooked and Derek got dropped,’ we heard Alan report over the radio. That meant fewer riders to support an attack, when Colin chose his moment.
Through some miracle, I found him on the screen, out to one side, his orange helmet showing up against the dim background – and he was up out of the saddle.
I stood out of my seat. ‘There! This is it! He’s going! Oh, my God, he’s going. He’s going to attack!’
His movements, up and down, a little side to side as he used all of his weight to propel his bike forward, were almost hypnotic on the screen, his body elegant and powerful, but I could see his chest heaving, his cheeks blooming red with exhaustion.
Now we waited to see if he could create a gap away from the peloton – and then if he could catch the breakaway.
No one went with him, which was the worst. Taking turns to shield each other from the air resistance always felt a little better than struggling up alone. But Colin didn’t hesitate or stop. He didn’t even bother to look behind him. He was all in – the way he was with everything that truly meant something to him.
The camera followed him as he battled the climb and the fog, pushing 10 m of distance between himself and the peloton, then 20. His stats would be going haywire: power and heartrate shooting high. But he kept it up, push after push, using his weight on the pedals.
