CLIMBER VS DESCENDER

Greg Henderson knows a thing or two about going downhill fast. A professional cyclist of 16 years until 2017 – 10 of those spent at the top WorldTour level – this Kiwi rode 10 Grand Tours as a sprinter and lead-out man. Six foot tall and 71 kilos, on the days in between leading out the likes of pro André Greipel for sprint victories, he was a paid-up member of the grupetto – the group of riders that forms at the rear end of Grand Tour stages such as the Tour de France, particularly during the mountain stages. Its composition is a mixture of riders who’ve done their work and dropped back, stage hunters taking a break for the day, general classification riders who’ve catastrophically blown up or those who’ve been dropped early on. As a lead-out man working for his team’s main sprinter, Henderson would often be in that final category finding himself at the back of the race and often chasing time cuts, which if missed would see him booted out of the race, so an ability to go downhill quickly was a prerequisite for the job.

Now a cycling coach ( Greg believes it’s a misconception that the guys at the front of the race are the best descenders. “On TV, you only see the leaders in the mountains. If you put a camera on the sprinters you’d