Nobody prepares you for it, you can’t even try to be ready. But once it arrives, you realise that you’ve spent your whole life preparing. Not long ago I was re-reading Paul Auster’s book New York Trilogy: “I didn’t die there, but I wasn’t far off, and there was a …
It’s probably the most embarrassing moment of my career. It was during one of those hard mountain stages in the Tour of Italy when it was freezing cold and snowing really, really hard. The day before we’d been over the Marmolada and on this stage we went back up the …
One of the earliest memories I have of riding a bike is climbing the Stelvio with my Dad at the age of eight. There’s a great picture of me on the climb – it was a bright summer day, warm enough for a short-sleeved jersey, and I was riding my …