Читать книгу My World онлайн

3 страница из 72

This is the long sweeping left-hand bend that separates the waterfront from the colorful townhouses that characterize this beautiful old port. The first time we came along here, it was at quite a gentle pace, with barely 40 kilometers ridden. That must have been shortly after 11:00 a.m. this morning. The next half a dozen or so times we came past those rocking masts and chattering rigging, the intensity had risen enough to mean there were fewer cyclists hanging on each time. There were nearly 200 of us this morning; now, after the last two or three hard laps of this hilly little circuit in Bergen, there look to be around 60 of us left. A Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) official starts clanging furiously at a big old brass bell to tell us that there is one lap to go. I’m suddenly acutely aware of the No. 1 on my back. It’s now four in the afternoon, and I’ve probably got about half an hour left as UCI World Champion.

The race was really confusing.

It had started slow, which suited me. I hadn’t eaten or drunk properly for a couple of days since having a ridiculously badly timed upset stomach at home in Monaco on Friday. And that had followed a week off the bike due to a flu virus. I don’t want to moan about being sick because it doesn’t happen that often, but suffice it to say the last month was not the preparation I’d had in mind going into one of the highlight events of the racing calendar. I’d been world champion for the past two years, and there was every chance that I was going to lose the UCI rainbow jersey today even if I’d been in splendid health. Most people were predicting that the circuit would be too difficult for a rider they considered to be a “sprinter who could get over a hill” rather than a true puncheur like Julian Alaphilippe, Philippe Gilbert, or my predecessor as world champion, Michal Kwiatkowski (or Kwiato, as we call him). They also thought that I would be too well marked to succeed a third time, with the bigger teams whistling “Won’t Get Fooled Again” to themselves. In addition, the smart money believed that those same teams would swamp our little Slovakian band of brothers when we needed to control the race.