You can't drive a Formula 1 car with Max Verstappen, but you can cycle alongside your heroes. I signed up to ride at a LeBlanq event in Ibiza alongside Geraint Thomas, the double Olympic gold medallist, triple World Champion, winner of the 2018 Tour de France and still, at 37, a contender for the great 'palmares' of cycling. In thirty years as a magazine writer, this was the first time I’d trained for a story.
In a later interview with The Times of London, Geraint admitted to having been drunk for 12 out of 14 nights during his brief end-of-season break from riding and training, and we were responsible for two of those. He finally rolled back in from Pike's at 5am.
But even when you know he has slightly disabled himself, there is something eerie and disconcerting about standing in your kit astride your bike, ready to ride, when a world champion and Tour de France winner appears in the same Ineos team kit and hallmark white SunGod shades you've watched him in for years on television. Imagine standing on your neighbourhood court, hi-tops on and ball in hand and seeing King James appear at the other end.
Again, I needn't have worried. Usually a very funny, voluble, sometimes indiscreet character, Geraint was uncharacteristically quiet in the opening miles, hanging his head over his handlebars every time we stopped. "Oh Ben," he sighed at one point, "what I did last night... I just don't know if it was worth it."
Miles into the ride it was still surreal to look right and see those white shades alongside me. I admit that I asked for a selfie. I took some pride in the fact that he got out of the saddle when I did on climbs, and had also dropped down to his lowest gear. But then noticed that as we spoke I was struggling to get my words out between breaths while G, as he's universally known in cycling, might as well have been sitting in an armchair for all his apparent exertion. "You could have raced me if you'd wanted to," he told me later. "After that 5am finish, I'd have let you win."
