By Fujimoto Masaaki
It's not easy walking straight into one of the biggest teams on the pro circuit. No one expects to start at the top, or even fit right in.
It's been almost a month into my contract with the Ahploeg Cycling Team and I'm not even kidding myself anymore. The racing is tough, the training even more so. It's bad enough having to live in a foreign country where you miss the comforts of home, but when you undergo the kind of daily torture they seem to dish out on a regular basis here, old style ritual suicide seems appealing.
Let me do a little personal introduction before we go on any further. No, I'm not a homesick terrorist faced with the unpleasant effects of waterboarding. I'm Fujimoto Masaaki from Kyoto, and I ride for the Dutch outfit Ahploeg. I'll be the first to admit that I play but a bit part in the team, I'm nowhere near the top earners in this team but it's more than I'd earn working in my father's shop back in Japan and so this is where I've ended up.
I bunk with my fellow countryman Shusuke Sasaki near the training complex and he's taught me a little about the country and what to expect from team management. I can't afford my own place yet, and probably won't be able to for the | | next ten years anyway. As I mentioned before, the pay isn't all that fantastic.
Which is why, when my agent approached me a month ago with an offer to write a monthly column, I almost leapt at the chance. Almost, because I was still nursing a broken leg. Not a war wound from a race unfortunately, but thanks to the stairs at the training complex and an unfortunate case of shoes tying themselves together.
The lads do love to take the mickey out of each other. Just that day, Sasha (Saša Kolar that is, one of our premier sprinters) superglued Emrick Janse's bike pedals. My, Emrick sure was furious when he realised it too late. I swear his face turned a shade of purple but thankfully he was kinda stuck with something (couldn't resist the pun hehe) at that moment. I'm sure we'll see something unfortunate happen to Sasha in the coming weeks.
But anyway back to life at the Ahploeg training complex. We start every day with a run near the forest of course, it helps build up endurance or so they tell me. I was a little underdressed the first time I joined the lads, almost froze my balls clean off. The rest of them had a right go at me after that but I was too busy wincing in the infirmary to see the funny side of it. I heard even management were told of what had happened to their newest foreign import. Least to say I never went out
| | running in a pair of shorts in winter ever again.
Speaking of the gaffer though, he usually arrives at the grounds earlier than us, but we don't see him till mid-afternoon, after our gym session. He's been trying to grow a mustache for sometime now but it still looks like a half dead caterpillar. No one dares laugh at him in his face though, I'm sure you all know why after that incident at Nice made the international papers. Old man Syl's quite scary when he wants to be, he took me to one side just a week ago and told me that although I was exhibiting the talent of a monkey on paracetamol, he was counting on me to show some improvement or he'd rip up my contract and send me back to Nagasaki. I didn't have the heart to correct him.
So I've just got to keep my head down and work hard on my skills. It's a sad fact of life that Shusuke is younger than me and yet he's already an important part of the team. Not to mention his fat contract and blonde bombshell girlfriend.
One baby step at a time they say. A group of us are heading to Romania in the next few days to contest the Bucharest TT. I'll be happy just to avoid finishing dead last, but remind me to check my seat for superglue.
[Comments to Fujimoto are welcome here]
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