June 5, 2008 - I’ve been over in Paris for the past few weeks, working on the telecasts of the French Open for Tennis Channel. The hours have been long, the days have been stressful and the sleep has been hard to come by. I felt a bit sorry for myself until I put into perspective what Canada’s Ryder Hesjedal, his Slipstream-Chipotle teammates and indeed, all 141 of the riders who just finished the Giro d’Italia have gone through: 21 days of racing, 3,473 kilometres, some 40,000 metres of altitude gained - many stages in weather fit for neither man nor beast. I had an opportunity to talk to Ryder a few days after he had finished this epic challenge and as he was preparing for his next one, the Tour de France. His voice definitely had the sound of a weary man who had just undergone three weeks of hard racing and needed a little time off, but he had positive feelings about what he and team Slipstream-Chipotle had just accomplished.
Looking at your Giro d’Italia experience as a whole, how would you rate it for you personally and for Slipstream-Chipotle?
Ryder Hesjedal: Oh, I think success. You know, we finished with four guys (Ryder, Christian Vande Velde, Dave Millar and Danny Pate). It was part of our plans for a few guys not to make it to the end, and then we lost a couple guys due to illness Magnus Backstedt (fever), Patrick McCarty (bronchitis), and David Zabriskie to injuries (compression fracture of his L1 vertabrae), and Julian Dean (rib and shoulder) – which I is unfortunate but is realistic at a race like this. On that note overall it was pretty good, we had some great results in the last days by everybody (Vande Velde 5th, Pate 6th and Millar 13th in the Stage 21 TT into Milan, Ryder 17th on Saturday’s final mountain stage over the Gavia and Mortirolo), so I think that was one of the big goals, too in addition to the opening part.
Were you getting stronger as the days progressed?
RH: Oh I definitely think I felt good and how I was able to ride on Saturday was a big indicator for myself. That’s what I was hoping to see, being able to still perform and be at a high level at the end, I mean that was for me kind of the main goal.
That was the second to last day of the Giro, with 19 days of racing already in your legs, three mountain passes, including the legendary Passo Gavia and the super-steep Mortirolo. Lance Armstrong said the Mortirolo is the hardest climb he ever rode – do you agree?
RH: Yeah, I think it all depends on how you are when you’re riding it. For me I really just had a great day on that last day and was just having fun racing my bike on a big day like that with the Gavia and the Mortirolo. Another seven hour day and I’d just had a real bad day the day before and this was the exact opposite and was just all fun to me so I actually enjoyed the Gavia and the Mortirolo (laughs.)
What does it mean to you to have had that result in such a difficult stage in such a huge race after so many hard days of racing?
RH: I think for me personally that was what I was hoping to do. I know I can ride with the top guys and this was more of an unknown for me at this point - getting through it – this is actually the first Grand Tour I’ve finished. I mean, it wasn’t just the end of a three-week tour, it was one of the hardest in a long time, if not ever, with all the conditions and the way the race unfolded, and to still have the last two road stages being almost fifteen hours and almost 500km – they were definitely days that you could show your ability and I was pretty pleased to do that.
There was so much climbing - Alpe di Pampeago, the Marmolada the following day, then the Mountain Time Trial, then a few more mountain stages toward the end. Were those the toughest three weeks of your life?
RH: I would probably have to say yes. There were a lot of veterans and guys that have been racing their bikes a lot and have done everything just shaking their heads. It was definitely one of the harder events they’d ever done. I just really tried to not think of those components of it and just focus on myself and getting through that race. I mean, if I started realizing that it was the hardest ever, maybe it would be not an excuse, but you don’t want to be thinking about those things because that makes it easier to get overwhelmed and all those sort of things. I just stayed focused on what I set out to do personally and tried to be part of the team plan as best as possible and I think we did everything we wanted to do.
It has to be a great feeling of accomplishment finishing your first Grand Tour in such a difficult, epic Giro d’Italia, with 56 guys abandoning - it’s an impressive Giro to have finished.
RH: Yeah, that was one of the main goals and now just really using that as a springboard… I don’t know if the Tour is gonna be easier, but you know (laughs) it’s hard to imagine it being much harder than what we just did, so mentally and condition-wise that’s a huge thing to get through. It was just kind of everything I always expected events like that to be or hope they’ll be. It’s just a big race. As hard as it was, the conditions and the courses, and everything that had to be done, you could see, the guys came out day in and day out and raced hard and accomplished all this stuff - I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, if they’ll just keep making it harder or what but… At the end of the day we still persevered and it’s pretty amazing what the human body can do, you know?
There’s so much history at the Giro d’Italia – it’s been 20 years since the famous stage where Andy Hampsten took the Maglia Rosa in the snowstorm over the Gavia. Do you ever think of the history of the race, the battles between Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali and things like that?
RH: Yeah, definitely, I think you can feel the passion and the history. The courses and climbs, they’ve been done many, many times and if you can get to touch that history and become part of that it’s pretty special. I mean when you’re doing it there’s no time to look at what’s going on around you, you’re so focused on the race and everything but after you’re done and you can kind of pull back and then go through and think, “oh, that was that climb” or “those guys did that there in that year” and little things like that. It just takes time to learn so much about the history, I mean what was it, the 91st Giro we just did?
Now that you’ve finished the race, reflect on what it means for Slipstream-Chipotle to have won the Team Time Trial and for Christian Vande Velde to have worn the Maglia Rosa in the team’s first Grand Tour ever.
RH: Yeah, I actually just brought that up the other night, I think that’s a pretty neat thing to have shared. I mean, a new organization in the sense that this was their first Grand Tour and first year at this level and the first stage at their first Grand Tour - especially in that discipline, the Team Time Trial, to win the race and open the race in Pink that’s a pretty nice stat to have. I don’t really know if that’s happened before or how that ranks but it’s pretty good for an organization to have that under their belt already. It seems like a long time ago now for us (laughs) but that’s something we have and we can always call the Giro a success.
The last time we spoke you told me, “there’s no better way to get ready for a 3-week race than to do a 3-week race,” meaning that racing the Giro was the best preparation for racing the Tour de France, which is coming up in July. Do you still believe that?
RH: I just hope that is the best way for me personally and that’s the big approach for the team with Christian and Dave (Millar) and the guys that finished here – myself and Danny (Pate) and we have a few other guys who are veterans for that race so I think we’ll have a strong team. I mean, the final, final selections are still a couple weeks off but it definitely looks good to have made it through this event and I think we’re all really motivated to have made it through a tough race like this and know that we have that in our legs now and go into July, after this block of rest.
So what does the next month have in store for you in preparation for the Tour?
RH: We’re actually up in St. Moritz (Switzerland) here already for some recovery and a little bit of altitude adaptation, just to change it up. It’s a pretty nice area up here so we’ll just do some easy riding and everything for about ten days. Then we’ll be back in Spain and do some other training camp type stuff at altitude also, I think in the Pyrenees and then from there guys can decide if a little bit of racing makes sense and that sort of thing, whatever the best approach is for the start of July.
Who else is there with you?
RH: All the guys that finished, we just came directly here, so me, David, Christian and Danny. We just finished there (in Milan) on Sunday and worked our way up here Monday and this is the first day we’re actually somewhere, and not racing or moving. (Big laugh) It’s been pretty long!
You’ve talked about the blog that you’re writing. I imagine it got harder to be creative as you got more exhausted every day. Are you going to have a chance to catch up a bit now?
RH: Yeah, I tried to write something at least every other day when there was something, kind of lump a couple days into one but again, there was just so little time, we were just always full gas doing something - either traveling or massage, eating, racing - yeah so I did the best I could I think, but I’ll definitely try now.
So now’s the time to check out Ryder Hesjedal’s blog – before he gets involved in his next epic challenge, the Tour de France.
|
Photo: Cor Vos
Ryder Hesjedal (Can) Slipstream-Chipotle
Photo: Cor Vos
|
