Читать книгу Etape. The untold stories of the Tour de France’s defining stages онлайн

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The GP Eddy Merckx really offered few clues to Boardman’s potential. Although he was surprised to win, he was operating safely in his comfort zone in a time trial. The real test came the following year, with his induction to the peloton. Not that there was any formal induction: he was expected to know how to ride in a bunch, where to position himself, and be familiar with the unwritten rules and etiquette. Most riders graduated from the European amateur peloton, which operated to similar rules – but of course Boardman was different. He might as well have come from Mars.

‘It was always about managing my nervousness,’ he says. ‘I really struggled at first. For three months I thought, I’m not going to cut it. I don’t like it. It’s scary. It’s painful. It’s highly stressful.

‘In the bunch I was at the pointy end or the blunt end’ – the front or the back. ‘The problem with this is that at both ends you end up fighting: at the front to stay there, at the back to move up. It was terrible. Greg helped a lot, he gave me tips. Things like, “All you can see is a mass of riders in front of you, but if you’re going round a right-hand bend there will always be a space that appears on the left; so you can accelerate into a space that isn’t there yet.” Or, “Overlap your bars with someone else’s in the middle of the bunch and they’ll automatically want to move away.” Greg gave me tonnes of little tips that really helped. But it was all cerebral consciousness stuff so it was hard, hard work.’