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'My race is over. I was trying to do things I am physically incapable of'

  • The Guardian,
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I'll be on my way home from the Tour de France when you read this, but I didn't want to pull out of the race yesterday. I wanted to stay and help the team, because earlier this week in the sprints they were all been behind me and Linus Gerdemann, yesterday's race leader, has helped me a lot. I've been proud to be at the Tour and it hurts to leave.

Linus's win in Saturday's stage was amazing. Thanks to him we won the yellow jersey, the white jersey, the team prize, the combativity prize and moved to second in the mountains jersey. That's indicative of the way the team approaches its racing: Linus was in the break all day, nothing was held back.

For me Saturday was a baptism of fire, my first time racing with the professionals in the Alps. I knew I absolutely had to get to the bottom of the last climb, the Col de la Colombière, with the peloton, because everyone had said that the "gruppetto" of non-climbers would form there and would ride "easy" to the finish, although easy is a relative term.

Getting there was the problem. I was left behind with a few other sprinters on the first climb, we fought our way back on, and then in the middle of the stage the pace was crazy. We went flat-out up one climb, flat out up the next, and I knew I had to get to the top with the bunch, because then there was only a descent to the flat bit before the Colombière.

I've never, ever dug that deep in my life. My heart was beating, bump, bump, bump in the side of my head and it was hurting, really hurting. I was kind of blacking out, it wasn't exactly going dark but it was like I was seeing everything through blurred vision, like looking through dirty glass.

There is a bit of a joke among the team that whatever happens I always say "I (expletive deleted) love it" and what I said after the finish on Saturday was that I wasn't loving it any more, although I changed my tune when I realised what Linus had done. I had expected the Tour to be hard but I didn't pay much attention to the fact that even though I was in the form of my life I would be trying to do things I was physically unable to do.

Obviously, I was a bit knocked up by the crash last Monday. My knee got a bit infected but I was basically OK. A crash is a crash so you don't whinge about it. You just get on with it. I'm sure a pile-up like that does take something out of you, but it's been more a case of people talking about how it would affect me than me actually thinking that.

To be honest I feel the two top-10 placings I've managed here are nothing special. The other sprinters would all say I was capable of winning a stage, and I'm not happy going home without a top-five finish. But then the day I was 10th, Robbie McEwen, one of the best guys there, was 16th which shows how things can happen to you in the finale and affect your sprint. I can accept the results but I don't think they are good enough after the way the team worked for me.

I don't think I've learned anything in the sprints, except how much faster it is. In the final metres, the speed is the same as any other sprint, 70 to 80kmh. It's what comes before that is different, the last 25km, especially the last kilometre. In other races you can sit back until the final metres but at the Tour the sprint starts with a kilometre to go so you are at your limit for longer.

A non-cyclist will read the middle part of this column and wonder why we do it. I knew it would be the hardest thing in the world going over those mountains on Saturday, and yesterday brought that home as well. The Tour is about the hardest thing any human being can do by choice. It is completely on another level.

It was a kind of racing I had never experienced before. It's something very very special. I'm in the best team for it, given how we all get on, how we look after each other and what happened on Saturday makes it even more special. Even if I never come back to the Tour again, I will never, ever forget last week.

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