Like millions of bike-racing fans around the world, I watch the big World Tour events, mostly the Giro D’Italia and the Tour de France, on TV. The cameras provide a panoramic view of the racecourse. I see the pain and sweat on the faces of the riders as they grind their way into the heavens. I listen to the commentary about the strategy, the breakaways, the errors.
What I cannot watch – or even begin to understand – is the pre and postrace routine of the teams who spend tens of millions of dollars a year to compete. That changed on the weekend, when I was embedded with the Q36.5 team at the end of 14th and start of 15th legs of the three-week Giro D’Italia race, which finishes Sunday in Rome.
I travelled on the team bus, ate dinner and breakfast with everyone, from the riders and mechanics to the race directors and nutritionists. I slept in the same hotel, attended the prerace strategy session and watched the chef prepare meals tailored to each rider. I was dazzled by the complexity, the efficiency and the skills of the small army of men and women dedicated to keeping the boys in top competitive form in a race where a few seconds can separate the winner from the pack.
Q36.5’s riders talk strategy on the bus with sports director Gabriele Missaglia, at left with his laptop. The team chooses riders carefully for each event, based on how individual strengths suit the terrain ahead.Eric Reguly/The Globe and Mail
The Q36.5 team is making its Giro debut this year. Launched in 2023, it is owned largely by Ivan Glasenberg, the Swiss-South African former CEO of Glencore, one of the world’s biggest mining companies. Glasenberg, a biking fanatic himself, owns the Italian racing-bike maker Pinarello and the Q36.5 cycling clothing brand (from which the racing team takes its name). The brand is one of the team sponsors, as is nutrition products maker Amacx, another company in his sports portfolio.
Late last year, the team recruited Britain’s Tom Pidcock, 25, the former Ineos Grenadiers hotshot who is ranked as one of the sport’s most formidable racers. His multimillion-euro contact is evidence that Glasenberg and team manager Doug Ryder, a South African former racer, want to make a splash on the World and Pro circuits and try to inflict some damage on the top-ranked, big-buck squads, among them UAE Team Emirates and Lidl-Trek.
While Q36.5 has 80 staffers, including 25 riders, the Giro head count was made up of 23 support employees, including a doctor, plus eight riders (the max for a Giro and Tour de France team). Since each of the dozens of races differs in length, elevation, technicality and intensity, the team roster is tailored to each event. For instance, a rider who specializes in sprinting or climbing in the one-day classics may not be best suited for grinding marathons like the Giro, where all-round skill is required.
Q36.5’s team bus and bike-carrying support cars muster at the hotel as they prepare for the next race.Eric Reguly/The Globe and Mail
At the Hotel Santin on the edge of Pordenone, about an hour northeast of Venice, I watch as the Q36.5 team bus rolls into the parking lot at about 6:30 p.m. The bus has travelled from Slovenia, where the 14th leg ended.
To my surprise, the riders do not look like war casualties. They are clean, wear fresh clothes and are all smiles – Pidcock had placed a virtuous 8th among the 170 riders who had completed the 195-km leg, moving him up to 11th in the overall ranking that day. But why do they look like they had emerged from a spa?
A tour of the dark-blue Mercedes bus gives me clues. The machine is a combo limo/ luxury motor home. The seven racers – the eighth, Canada’s Nickolas Zukowsky, had crashed out on the fourth leg – sit at the front of the bus in plush swivel chairs.
The bus has a kitchen, two espresso makers, a U-shaped meeting room at the back, video screens, a washing machine and two shower stalls. To save time, the racers shower on the rebound, change clothes and stuff their depleted stomachs with food. In spite of their crisp appearance, Pidcock pronounces the stage “a tough day” because of the high speeds – the race average was a formidable 47 kilometres an hour.
Fans cheer on the riders during Saturday’s leg from Treviso to Nova Gorica, Slovenia. This was a ‘tough day’ of competition at high speeds, Pidcock says.Luca Bettini/AFP via Getty Images
I hope to chat with the riders, but there is no time. They are programmed to the minute.
The five Q36.5 massage therapists swing into action after the riders reach the hotel. The racers eat a quick dinner about 9:15 p.m. and then, exhausted, hit the sack, two to a room.
While the bus is luxurious, their hotels tend not to be (the Santin is a three-star). The teams that compete in the Giro and Tour do not own the TV rights – the race organizers do. To save money, the organizers place the teams in cheap hotels. The only way for the teams to boost their own income is to recruit bigger sponsors.
I talk to the nutritionist and the cook, who are essential members of the team. Sports nutritionist Mateusz Gawelczyk, who is from Poland, plans the meals that are made by Belgium’s Peter Neirinckx.
Gawelczyk insists on high-quality ingredients for meals tailored to each of the riders’ data on body mass, metabolism and power output, measured in watts. “Today’s leg was really fast, so there will be more carbs tonight because they burned a lot of energy,” he says. “And since there is so much climbing tomorrow” – almost 4,000 metres of elevation – “we need to increase the glycogen levels.”
The result is a menu of couscous, feta cheese, salmon with risotto, pumpkin seeds, beans, carrots, and a rice dessert infused with lemon and almond milk. The riders weigh their portions on electronic scales to ensure they do not go over their assigned limits. They cannot risk gaining even a few grams of weight before the savage mountain climbs; more weight requires more power output, which means more fatigue.
Peter Neirinckx, the Belgian who prepares the team’s food, must account meticulously for the energy needs of the riders.Eric Reguly/The Globe and Mail
Weighing the food on a scale helps the riders eat no more than they are told to.Eric Reguly/The Globe and Mail
Neirinckx is a one-man show. He works alone in the hulking Q36.5 kitchen truck, which he drives himself. He phones ahead to the 21 hotels on the Giro circuit to order the ingredients for the day; sometimes he scrambles to supermarkets for the items the hotels cannot provide. “Organization is the key ingredient to cycle racing,” he says. “You cannot transmit any chaos to the riders.”
He gets up at 5:30 a.m. to prepare breakfast, usually pancakes or waffles, and likes to liven up meals with seasonal fruit. “The riders get happy seeing the beautiful colours from nature,” he says.
The menu is not always devoted to endurance. On the three Giro rest days, Neirinckx might make burgers or pizzas as a treat and anyone who has a birthday during the event gets a cake. The one he makes on Saturday for a Q36.5 staff member is a work of art.
While the riders and their support staff eat dinner, the four team mechanics tweak the incredibly light – seven kilos or less – Scott carbon bikes. Each rider has three bikes, the one he starts on and two spares.
They are thoroughly checked to ensure the tires, brakes and electronic shifting work perfectly and the batteries are charged. The tires and the rear gear cluster can be changed to suit the road conditions, weather and steepness of the climbs. Slightly wider tires are used for the cobblestone sections of the race. On wet days, the tire pressure is reduced somewhat to provide better grip.
They place map stickers on the handlebars to remind them where to gulp liquids or power gels along the route. I counted 14 spots on the Sunday stage where they had to be consumed.
Pidcock, in the white shirt, has breakfast with his teammates before the next leg begins.Eric Reguly/The Globe and Mail
The riders generally eat breakfast about 8 a.m. (pasta, rice and omelette on Sunday), then pile into the bus to reach the start of the next race leg. They are followed by a convoy of support vehicles, including cars loaded with bikes on the roof.
What strikes me on Sunday morning as we travel to Fiume Veneto is the utter silence on the bus as it rolls to the start line. The riders are clearly nervous about competing in one of Giro’s toughest climbing stages. They look intense and do not speak as they contemplate the road war ahead. I dare not even say “buon giorno” to them.
When the bus parks among the 22 other team buses, Italy’s Gabriele Missaglia, Q36.5’s sports director, pulls down a screen and goes over every detail of the race leg using maps, graphics and photos – the climbs, their elevation and steepness, the turns, and expected winds and temperatures. “Maybe it’s not best to attack on the second climb because there are still 34 kilometres left to reach the finish,” he says.
The riders mount their steeds to pedal to the start line. All but one, that is. Emils Liepins, the sprinter who is the Latvian national road race champ, crosses the street to talk to the fans. A young boy asks for an autograph. He tugs off his pink Giro T-shirt and hands it to Liepins, who disappears into the bus to find a magic marker to sign it. The boy is thrilled. “I just want to ride smart today,” Liepins tells me as he waves goodbye to the boy and cruises off to the start, showing no fear.
