Adam Hansen interview- Bahamontes

disgruntledgoat

By not quite popular request, here's the long interview with Adam Hansen. As ever, the article originally appeared in Bahamontes magazine and was written by Jonas Heyerick who, I imagine, owns all copyright.

This is the story of an unusual rider, the story of an adventurer, the story of a world-citizen, the story of an entrepreneur, the story of a lover of the bike and of the grand tours. This is the story of Adam Hansen.

2011: Vuelta
2012: Giro. Broken Sternum. Tour. Vuelta
2013: Giro. Stage Win. Tour. Vuelta.
2014: Giro. Tour. Vuelta. Stage Win
2015: Giro. Tour. Dislocated Shoulder. Record
And now, again, Vuelta.

Cycling poetry, written by Adam Hansen, Australian rider, 34 years old and, just recently, record holder for number of Grand Tours finished in a row: Twelve. Soon, if he makes it through the Vuelta, thirteen.

disgruntledgoat

Gap, July 21st. 20 Avenue du Commandant Dumont. Hotel Le Clos, a dilapidated building where the faded and glamour peels along with the paint on the walls. In the uninviting hotel bar stand rickety barstools in front of a pathetic wooden bar, the toys in the garden are rusted. Here, in the shadow of the mythic alpine peaks, Lotto-Soudal get a rest from the Tour. It's stupidly warm, 37 degrees in the shade, and the bedrooms have no air con, but we see nothing but smiling scenes of riders and staff. Marc Sergeant, also grinning from ear to ear, says "Three stage wins. That's the difference. If we hadn't won anything yet you would see everybody all doom and gloom, complaining and walking around with their lip on the ground."

The reason for the collective good humour walks past us nonchalantly. Andre Greipal. German by birth. Winner by trade. In his slippers. His bronzed legs are like Doric columns protruding from his shorts and with his cap he looks more like a sun-seeking, coolbox-carrying tourist in Blankenberge than the top sprinter in the Tour after three trips to the party, and a couple of days later he'll stand on the podium on the Champs Elysees. Greipel has a busy rest day: German TV, Sporza, German, French and Belgian papers. Team mate Adam Hansen has it a lot easier. Eat, massage, lots of rest and an interview with Bahamontes. The lack of media attention is slightly surprising, because the Australian stands on the point of writing his name on a record. If he finishes this Tour, he has finished twelve grand tours in a row. Nobody ever did better. Or, maybe, nobody was ever crazier.

disgruntledgoat

Pain for Breakfast

That Hansen was still in the race in Gap was a wonder in itself. He was taken to the ground in the first week of the Tour and held there by a dislocated shoulder and saw his 12th grand tour turn into a calvary. A triumphal tour towards the Arc de Triomph marred by bad luck. "I lay on the ground and I thought it was Game Over. The pain wasn't fading." But Hansen did what cyclists always do after a crash. Stood up and tried to get going. "If I start something, I want to finish it. Even if it's not actually possible."

A Tweet from Hansen, the evening after the fall "I've been told it's going to be the most painful 3 weeks for me. I eat pain for breakfast. Bring it on!" Not just loose talk. Hansen sums his career up thus. "I've never finished outside the time limit. Never packed the race because I can't win. Only breaks, crashes and sickness have made me quit." He goes still further "I used to sometimes give up in my head, but I'd always ride to the finish just not trying to win. On auto pilot. I've unlearned that too. As a rider, you must always keep going, even if you're in last place. Once I found myself in a long breakaway and it seemed certain the peloton would catch us, I got angry at myself because not everyone was doing the same work I was, there's always some guys who stop working so they can try to stay at the front of the bunch to sprint for the win. When we get caught I always got so angry at my self. Then I decided 'never again!' Since then I hold to the principle always keep going!"

Such as in this Tour. Even though Hansen was only barely hanging on, he rode further.
"I couldn't sprint full out and if I rode at a hard tempo I can feel my bones rubbing together. But hey, I was good enough to go" He had to be with a record to equal.

smokey_bacon

Awesome. Hansen is a total hero!

disgruntledgoat

Sorry guys, my Japanese overlords have been thrashing me this week. I've got a little time to continue now!

Record Hunting

Hansen's love for the Grand Tours began in 2008 at HTC-Columbia. "I rode the Giro and the Tour and I still felt fresh enough to ride the Vuelta too. It's a shame that HTC just completely forgot to send in the entry (DG Is this real?!), and the team couldn't start. But I'd already realised: the Grand Tours suit me.It started me thinking about riding the triple, the three GTs in a season."

But that didn't happen the next years either. Until he transferred to Omega Pharma-Lotto in 2011 and rode the Vuelta at the end of that season: Grand Tour number 1 of the record hunt, although nobody could know that. Not even Hansen.

"The next year at Lotto-Belisol I rode the Giro and the Tour and the management knew I wanted the Vuelta too. But when the selection was sent out, I wasn't on it. I called the management and they said 'We thought you were joking! (DG: Awesome!) You've already ridden 2 Grand Tours, don't you want a rest?' Hell no I didn't want to rest! So they let me start. The Triple was on!"

A year later, the same story. "In the Grand Tours, I knew what was coming, at least. It's not hard racing every day, and after the first couple of days you get in a sort of 'cruiser-mode'. It's good to know you can ride like that for 3 weeks." Only after Hansen had ridden like that for seven more Grand Tours did anyone mention the R word. "Really, I didn't know what the record was. Then people started talking about me. They had Marino Lejaretta from the 80s and 90s as the record holder, he rode ten in a row- I just shrugged at that. I didn't think it could be done. Sickness, crashes, injuries... How high is the chance that non of that happens to you ten times in a row?"

Bigger than he thought, becuase Hansen has now ridden 12 in a row and, by the time you read this, maybe 13. But still, before the Vuelta started he was only the joint record holder. "Because I found out Lejaretta wasn't the holder, it was one Bernardo Ruiz a Spaniard who rode 12 GTs between '54 adn '58, but the Vuelta was only 2 weeks then."

disgruntledgoat

Aussie Without a Home

Whilst photographer Jelle and I order a cold beer, Hansen sips at a steaming coffee. For Hansen, heat isn't a problem. "In Australia, where my mother lives. it's even hotter than this. I don't find it so bad that there's no aircon in the room here. I'm used to these temperatures." Hansen was born in Australi, lived there for a couple of years, but moved around constantly after that, along with his parents jobs- she helped Chinese emigrating to Australia. As a child he lived for a year each in Hong Kong and Taiwan. "It was like living in the future. If I was going to school, I took the metro from underneath our apartment block. I left school in the evening and it was the same ritual but in teh other direction. I lived only underground and didn't know there was anything going on above my head. Sport? THe bike? That had no impact on my life."

As a teenager, he moved back to Australia and started cycling. "I was good, but not with the best. I was never Australian champion in the youth categories, didn't win any big races. If you looked at my results, you would never know I was going to be a pro. So I went and studied and rode for pleasure and did triathlons. I never gave up and improved step by step."

With results: Hansen turned pro at 26. A late bloomer. He started with a small Austrian team. An adventure. "I've never had a home, a place where, whatever happens, I can always go back to. But I don't think that's so bad. Because I have no home, I dare to take risks." A lot of people advised me against taking a tiny contract with that Austrian team. But what was I risking? It could have been a sh!t year, yeah. But what's a year in a person's life?"

Meanwhile, Adam has a house. Not in Australia, not in Austria, nor in Taiwan or Hong Kong. "I live in the Czech Republic all year round. I've stayed there longer than anywhere else. I moved there for love, what else? SInce then, she's become my ex, but I stayed in her country. As a cyclist I had a couple of conditions for a house and Czech met them: an airport nearby, hills I can train on and a good climate. For me that means either summer all year round or the four seasons in their purest form." A rider that loves the extreme winter? Hansen nods. "If it's really wintery, not just raining, you don't get wet. SO you don't get cold. So you don't get sick. SO you can keep training. Although not on the bike, but in other ways. cross country skiing, crosstraining, skiing... I love all of those. Another advantage of the Czech winters is that the snowfall stays for weeks. I can use virgin snow that nobody has stepped on." Hansen sighs. "You know, I really look forward to the first snow of the year. Skiing weather"

disgruntledgoat

Hole in the Butter (no i don't know either)

All cycling teams forbid their riders from taking part in winter sports. Too much chance of broken bones or other injuries. But is this OK with Lotto? Hansen: "They haven't made an issue of it. Because they know that I need it and that it makes me happy. And happy riders perform better. With a lot teams that apparently hasn't sunk in yet."

The Aussie has put this relaxation on skis to good use. Not many pros race as many days as him. "The last 3 seasons I've averaged over a hundred racedays each year. In our team, nobody comes close to that, the second guy has more than twenty fewer days. In the whole peloton in the last 3 years only one person has done more. Therefore, and I know this sounds strange from the mouth of a cyclist, I don't ride much for the rest of the year. I don't touch the bike for 2 months. I need the bikeless winters. They make sure I return to the racing with enthusiasm, when I have to ride every day again. I turn up to the Tour Down Under with no mileage in my legs and I talk to my teammates who have 2 months hard training already, I count myself lucky. Two months training without a single race to ride makes you mentally tired of it."

Hansen grins. He realises he's lucky that the team give him carte blanche. "That I must emphasise. I've proved that it works for me this way. That I stand up in the moments I have to stand up. But i've also fallen on my feet at Lotto Soudal. The atmosphere is great."

Does Hansen count his team mates as friends? "Sure! If I'm in Czech, I text them every day. If you're not close, you don't do that. WE're good together. It's a big difference to the atmosphere at HTC, my last team. HTC was a strong team, completely professional too, kind of the forerunner of Team Sky. But it was more distant, less commitment. There were always knives in backs, or throats being cut so to speak. At Lotto-Soudal it's completely different. Andre Greipel has, in all the non-sprint stages in this Tour, collected bottles for his teammates. Everyone says "He can't do that! He must spare himself for the sprints!" Hansen smiles "we tell him that too! But in vain, he doesn't listen. He feels in debt to his teammates who so often ride the snot out of themselves to get him in the ideal position at the final. He wants to give something back."

disgruntledgoat

Whiz Kid
It's time for a massage. The table stands in a modest room where there's barely room for the soigneur. The window is open and the muggy heat is blowing in. Hansen takes off his trousers and T Shirt and lays down. The smell of massage oil and men's sweat fills the room. While his calves get a skilled kneading, he talks about his craft. "I truly love cycling" he says. A requirement for a cyclist, you'd think but it's not so. "I know riders who don't like cycling, they just do it for money. These are the riders who never win anything. They hardly ever attack. Those riders, thats... Peloton-filling" He shakes his head "The problem with that sort of guy is that they've never had a real job so they don't know how lucky they are with their cycling career."

Adam Hansen had a real job himself, for a couple of years. "I worked in IT as a programmer. I sat for hours every day in front of a computer screen fighting against a deadline. Managers who can't write a letter of code gave us impossible tasks. Once we had to make a program that would calculate the worth of real-estate based on more than a hundred parameters. 'It must be ready in 3 months' they said, whilst we actually needed half a year.The whole team ended up working 14 hour days for 3 months we stayed at the office, slept and drank thousands of litres of coffee. But the project was ready on time." Hansen looks me straight in the eyes "You can imagine how happy I was when was able to get paid to go cycling."

And still programming remains a passion for Hansen. "Programming and solving puzzles: I can spend hours on those. I take a couple of Rubik cubes with me everywhere, my weapon of choice to clear my head. I have a sleeping problem, because i think too much. I can't switch my brain off. But give me a Rubik cube and I stop thinking. That little toy brings my brain total rest."

The Australian has also brought his programming knowledge to the service of his team. He wrote a program to make the logistics within the team easier. "In that program sits all the info for riders and staff: contact details, data, race programmes, transport, flight details... There's also a messenger system where we can communicate internally with each other." Hansen wrote the programme for free "I wanted to give something back to the team. PLus I also saw an opportunity. IAM and MTN are starting to use the program now and there's another couple of teams interested. They have to pay, of course. The investment has paid off."

the article don

First off, great translation. And secondly, proof if any were needed that Hansen is a total geezer

bluemoon17

Thanks for this, really enjoyable.

coopster_the_1st

Many thanks for this. A great read

chrisday

DG - great job (once again) - keep 'em coming
Then again, are you going to have that much spare time now the 'cross season's kicking in?

disgruntledgoat

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19716907#p19716907]chrisday[/url] wrote:

DG - great job (once again) - keep 'em coming
Then again, are you going to have that much spare time now the 'cross season's kicking in?

Since my cross bike got nicked, yes.

chrisday

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19716911#p19716911]disgruntledgoat[/url] wrote:

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19716907#p19716907]chrisday[/url] wrote:

DG - great job (once again) - keep 'em coming
Then again, are you going to have that much spare time now the 'cross season's kicking in?

Since my cross bike got nicked, yes.

Ouch. Get the feeling I shouldn't have brought that up...

pinno

Excellent reading. Cheers DG.

FocusZing

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19716393#p19716393]disgruntledgoat[/url] wrote:

Hole in the Butter (no i don't know either)

Does Hansen count his team mates as friends? "Sure! If I'm in Czech, I text them every day. If you're not close, you don't do that. WE're good together. It's a big difference to the atmosphere at HTC, my last team. HTC was a strong team, completely professional too, kind of the forerunner of Team Sky. But it was more distant, less commitment. There were always knives in backs, or throats being cut so to speak. At Lotto-Soudal it's completely different. Andre Greipel has, in all the non-sprint stages in this Tour, collected bottles for his teammates. Everyone says "He can't do that! He must spare himself for the sprints!" Hansen smiles "we tell him that too! But in vain, he doesn't listen. He feels in debt to his teammates who so often ride the snot out of themselves to get him in the ideal position at the final. He wants to give something back."

Cheers for the translation. It's Interesting what he's says about HTC and Greipel. It seems like a good team to allow a rider to know what works for them and what makes the individual happy to fight for the team.

Great record.

dish_dash

Ace! Many thanks for this... legend!

Sorry about the bike...