We Begin Our Ascent. Joe Reed Mungo

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СКАЧАТЬ in the race, building what Rafael calls a foundation. Today the television people get none of the sunniness, the sly pleasure and jokes that they have become inclined to expect from him.

      People push food into my hands: protein bars, rice cakes, recovery shakes. Our bus is parked on the backstreets of the alpine town. Here the barriers and cordons which separate us from the crowds are largely absent. We are protected by the banality of our routines. We take off cycling clothes. We flannel our faces. Mechanics spin the cranks of our bicycles, spraying oil and adjusting bolts. We wait for the bus to move. An elderly couple watch us from a balcony coolly, the man smoking, the woman holding a small, yapping dog as if it were a child.

      I eat a protein bar. The next day begins the moment we finish the last, we are told. So much of our success is built not on what happens on the race course, but on what happens before we start. “There is no fuel,” Rafael says, “like the thought that you have done something in preparation that the other guy has not.” He has never needed to sell any of us on this notion. We came into this team having marked ourselves out from so many other aspirants. We each knew what separated us from all those riders who fell away into amateurism. In our early careers, we all outpaced our competitors with the confidence that we had woken earlier than they had, that we had tuned our bikes more comprehensively, that we had trained whatever the weather, that we had been out riding on Christmas morning. Rafael’s dictum has two aspects: positive and negative. We seek to do what other racers do not, and we do not neglect to copy gains our competitors make.

      As I walk to the steps of the bus, I see Shinichi. He moves around the tour with some efficiency. Presence at both the start and finish is impressive. He sits on the pavement of the small street, his own bicycle resting beside him. He still wears his team kit and nods at me as I go over.

      “A bad race,” he says, shaking his head.

      “I suppose,” I say, “a little disappointing.”

      “Tsutomo was very tired,” he says.

      “We’re all very tired,” I say.

      “Yes,” he says, “everyone is very tired. Very tired is no excuse.”

      I shrug in reply.

      On the bus, we pass around a little bottle with an eyedropper lid. Two drops on your tongue: that is the formula. It’s a tiny dose of testosterone, enough to aid one’s recovery, so small as to be undetectable by the drug testers. It is very important to feel that there is something within oneself doing good, fighting the insurgency that one’s muscles and joints mount in the evening. “The ancient Greeks used to use testosterone,” Rafael said to me once. “They used to eat ram’s testicles before a race.” He was overjoyed by this tidbit, wherever he had heard it. There is clearly some great justification in finding the roots of an action, any action, in antiquity. Perhaps I could have told him that the ancient Greeks used to own slaves and bugger children; maybe that would have been the smart reply. However, on tour we have no need for smart replies. I took Rafael’s comment on board, and now when I use the dropper I think about the lineage of the act.

      We pass the bottle covertly. Though it is our own team bus, there is a need to contain these activities. A couple of the new riders on the team are, as I was until nine months ago, yet to be ushered into the program. Though they might have made certain assumptions in light of their teammates’ abilities, there is no need to offer them such evidence without good reason. The bus driver, for all we know, thinks us the most principled athletes to have walked the earth. Rafael has even taken care to keep our team doctor in the dark. Marc is only recently graduated from medical school. He has taken a pay cut to do what he says is a unique and fascinating job. He is a lanky, awkward guy in a perpetual quandary, it seems, about how to hold his body. He is balding in way that is painful to witness. His role is confined to the treatment of grazes and saddle rash. More illicit activities are performed by other members of the team staff and by doctors hired from outside the team. The era in which teams doped and were found out en masse has passed. Rafael has taken care to hire a doctor who can be shut out: “a useful buffer of ignorance.”

      The bus moves into the center of town. The vehicle swims in the glass front of an office block.

      When I turn on my phone, I have a text message from my wife. “We watched the finish,” it says. “We saw you. Good. Black socks and white shoes though?”

      At first Liz’s friends called me “The Cyclist.” “What kind of adult,” she reported one of them saying, “worries about how fast he can ride his bike?” Liz found this funny, and it was, though perhaps a little close to my own anxieties. She has always been an advocate of my career among her friends, however. She has learned to talk about the tactics, communicate the nuances of the sport. “You’re missing out,” she tells friends who watch football or tennis or nothing at all. I am grateful for the advocacy, though also aware that, among her friends, it has caused me to be solely defined by my profession. I have read that when Minoans first encountered mounted horsemen, they came up with the myth of centaurs to explain what they had seen. To Liz’s friends, I think, I am at least half bicycle.

      I sit next to Fabrice. He huddles against the window, the corner of his forehead resting on the glass. He watches the town stutter past us. “No one is getting a wing today,” he says.

      “No,” I say. Wings are an invention of Rafael’s. Performances in which members of our team do their jobs beyond all possible reproach are awarded little stickers of wings. We attach them to our bicycle frames, like kills marked on fighter planes. There is debate about the symbolism. Some on the team suggest that a wing means we ascend like birds; others argue that it is to do with our sponsor, a manufacturer of poultry products. We covet them, anyway. Rafael, more than anyone, knows what we should be doing. A reward from him is never given without good reason. No one, so far, on this tour, has acquired a wing. We are all eager to be the first to do so. Fabrice has four for the season, Tsutomo two. I, so far, have none.

      Fabrice closes his eyes. He lets his head roll against the window with the movement of the coach. He is not sleeping. “Tomorrow,” he says. “Tomorrow will be as smooth as cream.”

       Chapter 2

      At the hotel I move slowly, conscious of my need to recover, cued by the rush of racing to enjoy the stillness of the dim hallways. I make my way to the small room I share with Tsutomo. A dirty kit lies on the floor, two energy bars beside it, as if remnants of a very exclusive rapture. He has been and departed already. He is having his massage elsewhere in the hotel. The room is quiet. The curtains are closed already. I sit on the bed. My phone connects. “Hello,” says Liz. We talk for a while, go over the same things said earlier. I hear B in the background. His voice rises and falls in response to the activity of someone else, of his grandma.

      * *

      I met Liz by chance. I do not like to think about that, because to do so invites the consideration of alternatives, draws me into visualizations of different lives. My training and inclination make me a believer in necessity and causation. I need to be convinced of the efficacy of preparation, of the sure reward of my conditioning. If I were to truly attend to luck—to how easily a puncture or the crash of a rider in front might ruin a race, or how much my successes rely on the misfortunes of others—then I would struggle to prepare, to get myself out on the bike on winter mornings.

      We were both flying back to London, making connections in Barcelona. It was a Sunday evening flight, and it was delayed at the last minute because there was a problem with the fluid that they were using to clean the plane. In compensation, the airline issued passengers meal tickets to be redeemed in any of the airport food outlets. СКАЧАТЬ