When you have to leave you just want to go back, to be part of the boy’s journeys through and over continents in extreme weather in sickness and in health. I feel I can call them boys - even Fabian - as I’m old enough to have fathered them; although if they were my offspring I doubt they would have become twenty seven of the world’s very best cyclists, maybe my namesake could have been, but there’s no way my genes would have produced such plump and full-fruited mahogany coloured Vastus Medialis. I’m not alone in how I feel at Cyclefit we all care about the riders, Uncle Phil and Morgan (who’s only twenty six) worry about their welfare, seeing or hearing about a crash is like seeing your own child fall in the playground; Matthew’s repeated crashes in the Tour de France hurt us too, we wanted to be there for him, to nurse him and put him back on his bike and make sure he was OK before he went to bed, answer his questions before he turned out his light. We gather around the TV at HQ and watch the younger riders make their suicidal attacks on the decisive climb sent out as bait but deep down they hope they can stay away and so do we, we cheer them on as the gap to the peloton inevitably closes before the big boys ride past without a sideways look of recognition.
