Photo: © Starshot Design Agency

One Giant leap: Ben Atkins' Giant Tour 2004

From his desk job in Brighton to the Tour of Germany. It's quite a leap for Gran Fondo lover Ben Atkins, who is one of a very lucky group of journos riding the Giant Tour, a toned-down version of the pro event as a guest of Giant Bicycles. Over the course of the next seven days, Ben will live and breathe the life of a professional cyclist, so follow him (albeit with a touch of envy) as he embarks on the experience of a lifetime.

• Index to all entries

Giant Tour 2004

Day 5 - Stage 3 - June 2: Wangen im Allgäu - St. Anton am Arlberg, 170 km

A really bad one today!
Photo ©: Starshot Design

If I had a good day yesterday, I had a really bad one today! This was the queen stage of the Giant Tour, 130km from Germany, over the Alps to Austria, taking in a couple of mountain passes on the way.

The organisers managed to get the neutralisation organised and we spent the first 40km behind the lead car at a reasonable 35kmh. As the roads snaked through the beautiful Austrian countryside, we kept together as much as possible as a team and managed to avoid the numerous crashes that now seemed to inevitably pepper the first 30 or so kilometres.

This was always going to be a hard stage and the beginning of the climb of the first category Fashinajoch came all too soon. This was to be my first Alpine pass; having done numerous Dolomites, Pyrenees and other mountains, I've never had the opportunity to ride in this part of the world, so I was looking forward to it.

Everything I'd ever heard about the Alps being long but reasonably gentle was proved entirely wrong as soon as the road tilted upwards. The climb itself rises around 700m in 13km, which is an average gradient of just over five percent, which on paper doesn't seem too bad, but the first three kilometres or so rose at well over 10 percent. This proved to be my downfall; I can get up this sort of thing, but not at any speed that could be described as racing, so as I was by no means the slowest up this part, by the time I reached the more gentle gradients further up, the vast majority of the rest of the peloton had long gone.

I owe the fact that I got as far as I did to Jo Burt, who I've mentioned before is from Cycling Plus magazine. We'd arranged to be buddies today and look after each other, but all the looking after was being done by him! We crossed the top of the pass with relative ease and started the long, not too technical descent before the flat transition to the next big mountain.

Between the two mountains was where Jo really came into his own as my super-domestique. He was a real powerhouse and was clearly having a great day. It's pretty obvious that if he hadn't been helping me out he would have been a long way ahead, but that's the consequence of being a good team-mate and he was happy to do this for me.

Unfortunately, my previous slowness on the Fashinajoch was to cost us dear. The big limitation on the Giant Tour is that it's run on the same day as the professional Deutschland Tour. This has the obvious advantage of being able to use the same infrastructure, but sadly also means that your time on the road is strictly limited by the fact that Ullrich et al are breathing down your neck. As soon as it looks like there's even a chance that the amateurs might get in the way of the professionals you're pulled out by the broom wagon. This was our ignominious fate...

The broom wagon caught us at the bottom of the Arlberg Pass before we'd had a chance to get our teeth into it. We felt a bit cheated as we'd done all the hard work - the Arlberg being a lot less steep than the Fashinajoch - but I also felt a bit relieved because I'd had such a bad day. I also felt really bad for Jo because I know he'd have made it had he not been taking care of me.

Once we'd reached the finish, after picking up a few more unlucky ones who'd almost made it, we found our bikes and returned to the team bus to find that we weren't the only ones who hadn't made it, but everyone was in good spirits as we all had a story or two from the day.

[I should mention at this point that in the Giant Tour, if you fail to finish a stage you are still given a finishing time. They add 10 seconds per kilometre in the bus to the time of the last finisher. This is done so that everyone who has paid to race gets to start the next day.]

Once everyone was in the bus, we began the long transfer from St Anton to our hotel. As we are living like pros for the week, we also have to travel like them. The bus is really well equipped, with plenty of food and drink, in fact everything for our comfort, but at certain times we have to spend rather large amounts of time in it travelling on German autobahns. Our course follows the pro race, but because we start halfway along their course we have to travel even further than they do to get to our hotels and the next day's stage.

This particular transfer seemed even longer than usual after everyone had had such a hard day, and we were glad to arrive so we could eat our evening meal and get some proper rest.

We have with us the legendary soigneur Rudy Bergmans, who has worked with more champions than he can remember. Amongst others, he worked with Sean Kelly or four years, so he was interested that I'd worked in Dublin for the winter. Anyway, tonight was my turn for a massage, so I tuned up at Rudy's room ready for a good pummelling, and wasn't disappointed. I left there feeling like my legs had been hit with a bat a few times, but also with the feeling that it had done me some good. I suppose I'll find out tomorrow; I just hope it's better than today...

Photography

Images by Starshot Design Agency

• Getting oiled up before the start - if nothing else it makes the legs look good!
• The skilled hands of Physiologist Stefan de Beukelaar.
• The Giant Media Team rides out.
• Mechanic William gets a ride today.
• The bunch camps at the bit behind the lead car.
• Taufig Khalil demonstrates just how steep the Faschinajoch is!
• Jo paces me on the flat.
• Jo pulls us past a slower rider.
• Jo was like a train today.
• Sometimes he was just too strong for me...
• ... and sadly it was all to be in vain.
• Philippe lives in Bedoin, at the base of Mont Ventoux, so he flies up mountains like this with a smile.
• Tom Davies - Sports Marketing Manager, Giant Europe - the team captain eats mountains like this for breakfast.
• The road snakes up to the Arlber Pass, I did this road in a bus...