Pretoria – Gary Blem, personal mechanic and technician to Tour de France winner Chris Froome, is back home with his family in Centurion after keeping the tour’s winning squad, Team Sky, on track throughout the race.
Blem returned on Wednesday after being on tour for 37 days and just in time for his eldest daughter Havanna’s 12th birthday.
“I am contracted to work 200 days a year and I generally miss most family functions, so naturally I was very happy to be back on her birthday,” he said.
Blem will spend the next three weeks with his wife Lynley and daughters Havanna and Angelica, who is 15 months old, before leaving for Colorado until the end of September.
“I want to spend as much time with my family as possible, do a bit of cooking and a bit of babysitting,” he said.
Blem said he spent the entire year looking forward to September, when he will be home for three full months.
“I will be able to spend quality time with my family and during that time I get to be a full-time father, and I consider myself very fortunate to be in that position,” he said.
He said he used to be a keen cyclist, but due to time constraints he does not cycle any more. His career started about 12 years ago, when he bought a cycling shop and partnered with a friend.
“Things did not quite work out and I lost everything,” he said.
He then started working at Bruce Reyneke cycles, where Matthews Leganyane, a bicycle technician, taught him everything he knows.
Blem said Barloworld, a professional team, approached him in 2005, and “the rest is history”.
His career with Team Sky started after he became former world champion Mark Cavendish’s personal mechanic.
Cavendish was originally part of the HTC team which disbanded in 2012 due to a lack of sponsorship.
“I was part of his (Mark Cavendish) contract and we moved to team Sky together,” he said.
Pointing at the couch in his Celtisdal house, Blem explained that Froome sat “right there” last year when he asked him to be his personal mechanic.
“It was such and honour and we have since become good friends. Although I am the mechanic for the entire team consisting of 28 members, my main focus is on Chris (Froome) and I was responsible for all nine bikes he used throughout the tour,” he said.
Blem explains that what sounds like an easy task is in actual fact an extremely stressful job.
“My job description goes far, far beyond just repairing bikes,” he said.
“My responsibility to Froome and the team starts at 7am and I am often busy till the early hours of the next morning. A day’s work includes constant tyre pressure calculations for different surfaces and the maintenance of the bikes, as well as ensuring that the spare bike of every cyclist is ready to be used at all times.
Blem’s responsibility also includes “feeding” Froome.
“I follow in a car right behind him at all times and when the cyclists are ready to be fed, I will hand water and food, consisting of gels in bottles, to his eight support riders, who follow him at all times.
“He will then take the bottles and stuff as many of them as possible into his shirt and consume the contents,” he said.
Blem said about 14 bottles are used during each feed and the weight of the bottles carried by Froome for the feeding time is about 7kg.
“We use approximately 30 000 bottles in a season. Each bottle costs R80 and it is tossed on the side of the road after use, where they will be collected by spectators as souvenirs,” Blem said.
Blem explained that the support riders protect Froome from wind and possible obstacles in the road and should anything happen to him or his bike, one of the riders will taker over from him or hand him their bike.
Blem added that his day does not end after each race.
“After the race I have to ensure that everything is in order for the next day. Bikes have to be cleaned and checked, and then I often have to travel long distances to the next destination where the team will depart from the next day,” he said.
Blem travels in a specially designed truck worth about R15 million in which the bikes are repaired and transported.
The truck has glass doors that seal off the inside, creating the perfect atmosphere, regardless of the temperatures outside.
“The truck has an aircon, heater and a TV, so the temperature on the inside is ideal no matter where I work,” he said.
One of the team’s main sponsors is Jaguar, and the team has 14 Jaguars and a permanent Jaguar mechanic who travels with them at all times.
Blem added one of the tour’s highlights was when he was able to travel with Team Sky owner James Murdoch, the son of media mogul Rupert. – Pretoria News
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