It was one of the most dramatic days of sport in recent memory: Chris Froome, after three weeks of injury, uncertain form and struggle, staged a spectacular 80km solo break on stage 19 of the Giro d’Italia to overturn a three-minute deficit and snatch an overall lead that he would never relinquish.
It astonished cycling. It drew in people who would otherwise never care about a bike race, had strangers gathered round each other’s phones to watch the drama unfold, triggered admiration in many and cynicism in others.
Much has been talked about it in the days since. Now, for the first time, the two men behind the audacious plan and its execution, Team Sky principal Sir Dave Brailsford and Froome’s coach Tim Kerrison, take us inside this great sporting escape.
It may change your mind about what happened. It may not. You are free to draw your own conclusions. But read what Brailsford and Kerrison have to say – about the plotting, the planning, the drama and those doubts, too.
In an extraordinary race, it is perhaps the most extraordinary story of all.
A seed is sown
With three stages of the Giro to go, Froome – who has battled crashes, a badly injured knee and saddle sores – is back in fourth place in the general classification, three minutes and 22 seconds down on leader and fellow Briton Simon Yates, who has ridden brilliantly for the first 18 stages, and 2.54 down on 2017 champion Tom Dumoulin.
Friday, 25 May would bring the toughest stage of the entire three weeks: 184km, four big climbs, including the fearsome Colle delle Finestre, the highest point of the race.
Dave Brailsford: “Thursday’s stage had a draggy finish. Dumoulin attacks. Yates is straight on his wheel like lightning. Dumoulin slows down. Chris comes back up to him. Dumoulin goes again, and Yates can’t respond.
“And that was the moment. The first indication that Simon was really struggling. Is this a blip, or is this a trend? Chris counter-attacked. And that was all it took. This is game on.”
Tim Kerrison: “We had reconnoitred the Finestre by mistake. We were in Sestriere in June last year to have a look at some of that year’s Tour de France stages, and we had an extra day. At that stage we didn’t know the Finestre was in this year’s Giro. We didn’t know Chris was going to do this year’s Giro. But we thought, while we’re here, let’s ‘recon’ for a future stage that Chris or another rider might do.
“We rode the climb of the Finestre, the descent, the valley, the climb up Sestriere, everything but the final climb of what would be the Giro stage.
“It was the worst day I have ever had on a bike. And I realised that if you have a bad day on that mountain you can lose a lot of time. And not just time on the climb but on the descent and the next climb too. We all knew there was an opportunity there.”
A plan comes together
On Thursday evening, on the Team Sky bus, Brailsford gathers together his lieutenants: performance manager Rod Ellingworth, in charge of the team’s logistics; James Morton, team nutritionist; Nico Portal, sport director. Kerrison joins on the phone from a training camp in Tenerife.
DB: “Tim coaches the riders and gets them ready to race. He looks at the power we will need to ride at to make things happen. He gives us the ‘intel’ and the data.
“Nico looks at the tactics. He drives the team car. Nico is emotional, romantic, has a very close relationship with the riders. He brings a very different slant to discussions than Tim and I. We are more clinical.
“We looked at the stage. Where Finestre, this brute of a climb, was positioned was strategically interesting. It was going to take about an hour and five minutes to ride it. You realised that if all of the top guys rode as hard as they could to the summit, they would be the only ones left. No team-mates, no domestiques.
“We thought Simon was tiring. And the start of the climb has 27 hairpins. For each hairpin you decelerate into each one and have to accelerate out of it. The first four or five guys in the line are OK. When you go to 11, 12, 13, you’re having to sprint out of every one. You get natural gaps. You know that if you take it on at the front, someone will pay the price at the back.
“Right. We will hit those hairpins as a team and hit them as hard as we can, within what Chris could maintain for an hour and a half. Simon will struggle then.
“The next part was, how do we get rid of Dumoulin? Chris was quite clear about it: ‘When we get to that 8km of gravel road at the top of the Finestre, I’m going. I’m going to open up the race. And I’m pretty sure I can drop him.’ That was phase two.
“I said to him, could you ride with Dumoulin? At the end of the day you might be first and second. Second is a lot better than where we are now. But it was only about the win. And you have to tip your hat to him, because we had been a long way off, and for most people, second would have been good. But he was, ‘no no no. I’m not riding with him’.
“So the whole idea was to get him over the top of that first climb on his own. Knowing that there would only be a small group of the very top riders close to him, and that none of them would have helpers. It was going to be man on man.
“At that stage the discussion started to get very animated. Let’s go all in. And the other riders in the team loved the idea. Quite often in sport it’s hard not to consider the consequences of something. I’m risking this for what reward? And nearly always you err on the side of caution.
“But Chris was fourth. He was more than three minutes down. It was one of those great scenarios where you could say, let’s throw the kitchen sink at it and see what happens. There was a real sense of, let’s nail this. And then, let’s get forensic on the planning. Let’s give him every chance.”
The numbers game
There were three big climbs in the last 100km of the stage. The Finestre – 18.5km long, 9.2% average gradient, topping out at 2,178m. A fast, technical descent, then the climb to Sestriere – 16km, but much easier, the first 7km almost flat, the remainder averaging only 5%.
Then the final climb, to the finish at Bardonecchia: 7.2km, an average of 9%, a climb where it could all be lost even if the first two parts of the plan had worked.
DB: “We recognised that to pull it off, you would have to fuel it. The body can only absorb 90 grams of carbs an hour. If you’re using more than that, you’re going to run out pretty fast.
“So it was mission critical that Chris had to get 90g of carbs every hour. But when you looked at where that would be in the race, you realised it wasn’t always going to be practical to eat three rice cakes in an hour, or three gels. If you are riding hard up a climb or going flat out on a descent, it’s not possible.
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