Jai Hindley’s long ride from anonymity to a place beside Cadel Evans

Jai Hindley became Australian sport’s yarn of the week when he won the Giro d’Italia. Until then, the name didn’t exactly ring a bell.

Jai Hindley celebrates victory. Picture: Getty Images.

Two questions for the bloke in the maglia rosa. Who are you? And where are you?

“I booked a bit of a holiday around Italy,” says Jai Hindley. “I wanted to keep the party going. I had all this planned before the race. I’m just in Italy with my girlfriend, enjoying the time. It’s a beautiful country. I really love it and it’s nice to still be here.”

Hindley was unknown to virtually everyone outside the macchiato-sipping, traffic-halting, Lycra-wearing cycling cognoscenti before becoming the yarn of the week in Australian sport by winning something called the Giro d’Italia.

Name didn’t exactly ding a bell. There’s only three Grand Tours — the one in France, the one in Spain and the one in Italy. And Hindley’s joined the legendary Cadel Evans — ding, ding, ding — as the only Australians to have won one of the big three.

Evans has claimed the 2011 Tour of France — sorry, Tour de France — and Hindley has leapt from anonymity to being front and back page in Australia’s newspapers. To headlining every TV sporting bulletin. To dominating the radio news cycle while everyone applauds warmly and thinks, who? He spends 48 hours in the spotlight, an ice bath and party mode before he joins a video call.

Location? He’s in … cognito. Doesn’t want to say exactly where, lest some pesky journo goes riding up to his door and bombards him with more questions like, who are you again? We’ll stick to the basics. Sorry, les bases. I have more questions than expert analysis, believe me. Like, in one of the million quirks of this sport to the untrained eye —mine! — why does nobody translate the titles? Tennis’ Les Internationaux de France gets called the French Open but road cycling has the Tour de France, Vuelta a Espana and Giro d’Italia. Call them the Tour of Italy, Back To Spain or Tour of France at your peril. You’ll be punted from the conversational peloton. I digress. Back to les bases.

How’s it felt when you won it?

“The moment I crossed the line, I didn‘t really have time to do anything,” Hindley says. ”I didn’t really have time to think or breathe or do anything. It was just like full-gas interviews and then the presentation and then we had a big party afterwards, which was super nice. The highlight for me — OK, obviously winning the race was huge — but the highlight was to have my parents and my girlfriend there. My parents, especially, because I hadn’t seen them for such a long time. That was really special. It hasn’t really sunk in yet, but I think it will in the next few weeks or so. It still feels like a dream.”

Hindley has finished second in the 2020 Tour of Italy — bugger, the Giro d’Italia — but you don’t hold the back page for second. Last year was a disaster for him. He failed to finish something called the Volta a Catalunya, the Tour of the Alps and the Giro while battling the enemy of every kid who has an especially long and gruelling ride to school: saddle soreness. That’s enough to make me feel sick in the guts and never hop on a bike again but Hindley’s Bora-Hansgrohe team — aren’t they in the Bundisligia? — has stuck by him. They’ve arranged for his folks to travel from Perth for the finish before it was even apparent he was going to be wearing the pink sweater — sorry, the maglia rosa. Why is le Tour’s maillot jaune called the yellow jersey but the Giro’s maglia rosa stays the maglia rosa? Worthy of further investigation.

“It was the icing on the cake,” Hindley says of his parents watching his victory lap through the streets of Verona. “It was quite last-minute. They were going to come on a bit of a holiday in the middle of June. When the team asked me if I wanted them to come out for the final, I couldn’t say no. That was an incredible gesture of the team and the sponsors. Imagine not seeing your parents for two and a half years. It’s ridiculous. Especially last year, with such a rollercoaster of a season, it was so fraught. When you’re going through the shit and you can’t physically see your parents, it’s really brutal. To have them at the finish was truly what dreams are made of. They’re on their way back to Oz now because my mum has to go back to work — but it was one of the best days ever.”

Hindley isn’t quite in the same sentence as Evans because the Giro isn’t quite in the same realm as le Tour to Australians. But he’s worthy of the same paragraph. “Phenomenal,” Hindley says. “When you put it like that, Cadel is probably a household name in Australia. If you ask just the average person if they know Cadel, they’d probably say yeah. He’s probably one of the most important and most influential Australian cyclists ever. It’s huge and very, very special.”

Evans has driven the two hours from his Swiss base of Stabio to watch Hindley’s finish at Verona.

“Certainly the way he and his team rode the race was exceptional, ” he says. “I have to say I’m happy an Australian won the Giro, but I’m happier to see an Australian winning who has consistently been working away for a long time and found himself a good team that backed him impeccably.”

Hindley’s win has led to a third question from cycling knuckleheads like me. Can he do an Evans and win the French Open? Sorry, the Tour of France? Double-sorry, le Tour? He won’t be winning it this year because he’s not in it. Le Tour starts on July 1 and there’s too little rest and recuperation between the 25-day, 3410.3km ride around Italy and the 25-day, 3328km ride around France. Any old cycling knucklehead knows that.

Don’t ask me for a detailed analysis of his win. But some of it rings a bell like a teenage girl is trying to weave her bike past you on a footpath. Like, getting a flat in stage 18 from somewhere called Bargo Valsugana to Trevsio. “The stage where I punctured in the last kilometres, that was very stressful,” Hindley says. “From that point on the whole race became stressful for me. In the last kilometres of that stage, I had a feeling like I could lose the whole race because of the puncture. Then when I started to realise how close I was to the lead, then the stress levels started to rise. That was the only real crazy day. Other than that we had everything under control.’’

Hindley has beaten Ecuador’s Richard Carapaz by 1min 8sec. The Tokyo Olympics gold medallist in the road race has worn the pink sweater until Hindley has ridden the wheels off him, to use a bit of cycling lingo, in the penultimate 168km stage from somewhere called Belluno to somewhere called Marmolada.

“I trust in my legs,” Carapaz said when he led by three seconds at the start of the day. Hindley was 1min 25sec in front at the end of the 4500m ascent, guaranteeing he would have the pink sweater, or the maglia rosa, or whatever it’s called, after the victory lap of the 17.4km race against the clock on the final day.

“It’s a funny one, Grand Tour racing. You can feel really good one day and then really bad the next,” Hindley says. “Especially in the third week, because it’s such a strain on the body. In my previous experiences, I feel I come into my own and feel my best in the third week. It feels nice that that’s my strength. It gives me a lot of confidence that I can ride consistently in the third week. I was feeling pretty nervous when I was going into that (penultimate) stage because you either had it or you didn’t. Everyone is on their limit.

“When it gets to that point of the race … mentally, I was ready to fight and it paid off. I knew the last 5km was going to be brutal so I really just held back and held back and then … made the move.”

There’s likely to be three Australians in next month’s Le Tour: WA’s 26-year-old Ben O’Connor (AG2R Citroën), who had a dream debut last year when he won stage nine in the Alps; 28-year-old Queenslander Jack Haig (Bahrain-Victorious) and 25-year-old New South Welshman Michael Storer (Groupama FDJ).

They are where Hindley was a week ago. Invisible to most of us, working their backsides off in Europe and just one prestigious win from getting into the same sentence and/or paragraph as Evans.

“I’ve received quite a lot of messages and support and it’s been pretty overwhelming,” Hindley says. “Everyone is super happy and super positive. It feels like I have the full support of the nation and it’s a really incredible feeling. To all the young kids, especially at Midland Cycle Club (in Perth), I started there and had big dreams and it’s possible. If you do all the hard work and you know you want it, it is possible. To all the kids out there … dream big.’’