Daniel Friebe is a well-travelled man. A cycling journalist who has authored several books on the subject, Daniel also works in television and radio. Yes, he knows the sport of professional cycling inside and out. Along with fellow cycling scribes Richard Moore and Lionel Birnie, he co-hosts the excellent Cycling Podcast. But there is more to Daniel than Tweeting, talking and writing all things pro cycling. His love of nature and ability to unplug from the daily grind of a Grand Tour are telling attributes of this self-described "Man of the Natural World."
Athlete Natural: Where are you right now and talk about your current projects and activities?
Daniel Friebe: Physically I'm in Berlin, mentally I'm in that phase of my year when I'm looking forward to the summer with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. I try to travel as little as possible in the first couple of months of the racing season simply because I barely stop between the Tour of Yorkshire at the end of April and the last day of the Vuelta. Last year I think I slept in 90 different beds in about 120 nights between May and September - and not, alas, because I'm an itinerant Lothario! So the next few weeks are the calm before the storm, the last chance to work on projects that require me to sit still at a desk for any period of time. My main focus among these is a Jan Ullrich biography that I've been working on for a long time, and which has unfortunately progressed much more slowly than I'd hoped and expected for assorted reasons. On a week-to-week basis, I'm also always fairly busy with prep for the Cycling Podcast and other, smaller writing assignments.
AN: As a self-described "Man of the Natural World," explain exactly what you mean by this and how you adapt your life to this mantra in the often artificial world/settings of pro cycling?
DF: Ha - it's amazing that people pick up on some of the nonsense I say in the Podcast! Basically, all this means is that I love the outdoors and nature and try to make them a big part of my life. It partly explains why I was initially attracted to cycling, and it also accounts for how I spend a lot of my spare time these days - basically trying to get into the forests around Berlin to run on the trails, or to the many lakes that surround the city. At races, it means that I'll always wake up an hour or so early to go running or even, on my "rest-days", just to go for a stroll. I need this to feel good physically and mentally, but it's also about taking time to absorb and appreciate the incredible locations that we're privileged to visit with our work. People talk about the bike-race "bubble", and it's easy to lose perspective and forget the world's still turning away from the race. For the Podcast, in particular, I want to immerse myself into the context and landscapes in which the race is playing out; this is an aspect of cycle racing - the geography, the backdrops - that I think is undervalued and overlooked nowadays, as the audience has become more educated and more focused on the minutiae of the actual sport. A Grand Tour is still the only major sporting event that can provide a pixelated, textured snapshot of a country and its culture, from top to bottom, over three weeks, with something and somewhere different every day. I don't think we should ever forget that.
AN: Speaking of which, talk about your impressions and encounters with the one-and-only Svein Tuft. What can we learn from people like Svein, and is he the only "Pro Cyclist of the Natural World?"
DF: I love Svein's outlook. I had a great conversation with him last year about mobile phones and their effects on our lives, and how he tries to escape. I know it takes all sorts, but I suppose my prototype of the perfect cyclist would be a guy like him, whose focus is turned inward, who seems to have and nurture this sort of symbiotic or spiritual relationship between his body, his mind and the terrain he's tackling. I love the image of the rider who jumps aboard his bike and goes off like an adventurer every day, with no one watching. The guy who doesn't care about social media or looking cool. Speaking of other men of natural world, I love the stories I've heard about Thibaut Pinot going off training and not even taking a spare inner tube, energy bars or a drink. You used to hear similar things about Pantani - that his only "fuel" on rides would be a slice of watermelon that he'd buy from a roadside fruit stall. That he refused to wear a heart-rate monitor. I adore stories like that, even if some of them are embellished.
AN: You call Berlin home. Why the German capital and how is life treating you there?
DF: I originally came here for a couple of months to do some research for my Jan Ullrich book - and ended up liking it so much that I decided to move permanently from London. I'd done my degree in London, stayed for just over a decade after that, and hadn't realised how much the city had changed and that I was perhaps slightly bored with it. Berlin has a rich history of attracting people in "creative" industries more readily than it has bankers and big businesses, for obvious historical reasons, and that's really strongly still reflected in the lifestyle here, although it's changing. The pace of things is certainly so much slower than London, which has suited me. More generally, I also find living in different countries hugely stimulating, and I'd already ticked off Italy, France and Switzerland. Germany was next on some kind of list, I suppose.
AN: How has cycling journalism evolved over the years? Any thoughts about where this written discipline is heading in the future?
DF: The main difference in the content, rather than the media themselves, is the increasing influence of English-speaking teams, riders and administrators. When I started in 2000, barely anyone at races spoke English - which I loved, as a languages student. Nowadays a young reporter just starting out can easily get by if they don't speak any other languages, The other big change has come about because of smartphones, I would say - not the internet per sé but smartphones. Yes, when I did my first Tours, you would have to use a dial-up connection in the press-room to send your stuff, but, whether you were writing for a website or a newspaper, or reading in a paper or on the internet, the content was pretty similar or the same; the news cycle just started moving a little more quickly. What changed everything was the advent of Twitter and other social platforms that relied heavily on smartphones and people's attention spans becoming shorter and shorter. I can remember this really hitting home on a day at the Tour de France in 2015. Tinkoff had called a press-conference on a rest-day - it seemed pretty routine - but then Ivan Basso walked into the room, sat down, and told us that he had testicular cancer. I literally sent out three tweets within 50 seconds that contained all of the information that anyone needed. The press conference ended after ten minutes or so, and I can remember seeing colleagues who worked on newspapers and websites still sitting in the lobby punching out their stories two hours later - stories that contained no more information than what had been tweeted within seconds of him making the announcement. That's not to say those colleagues weren't doing a good job - it's just that, to me, it summed up why that type of story where you would have a quote, then a paragraph of fluff, then another quote, all to convey some basic information, was now redundant. The other thing that smartphones have done is elevate podcasts to a really prominent role. I could talk for ages about what a great medium they are, but, suffice to say, they've also boomed because of those shortening attention spans I talked about - because people want to be doing two things at the same time. You can listen to Lionel, Richard and me talking nonsense and still, I don't know, feed your hamster at the same time.
AN: As well as magazine and TV journalism, you've published a few books. Talk about the challenges of writing a book, the lifestyle one leads and the challenges along the way.
DF: I think the experience of writing a book varies hugely from person to person, or should I say victim to victim. I'm extremely critical of my own work and that often causes a paralysis which makes an already onerous process even longer and even more difficult. Again, though, like covering the grand tours, it's also a privilege that you have to appreciate. For my books on great mountain climbs, I travelled all over Europe, saw wonders of the natural world, and found myself reading books that maybe not a single soul had picked up for a hundred years. That's the really fun part. If you're writing a biography, you're doing literally dozens of interviews with people where you're not just looking for a soundbite but really listening to their stories over four or five hours sometimes. I've done one interview for my Jan Ullrich book that lasted two days. I personally love that aspect of journalism.
AN: As far as podcasts go, The Cycling Podcast stands out in an authentic sense. What was the idea behind getting this show going in the first place?
I would love to give you an entertaining and coherent explanation for how and why it started, but I'm not sure that one exists. It all seemed very whimsical and I think it was. All three of us had dabbled in podcasts in various forms, for various outlets, in the years between about 2007 and 2012. Then, in 2013, an agency working on behalf of Sharp, who were a sub-sponsor of the Slipstream team at the time, asked whether we would make a podcast for them at the Tour. Richard was, as usual, very bullish - Buffalo-ish, in fact - whereas I didn't worry because I didn't think anyone would listen, and Lionel was positively anxious that we were committing professional suicide. It probably would have ended after that Tour de France but the listener figures were actually quite decent, and the "client" seemed very satisfied, despite us not really knowing what we were doing. From there it's grown and become more polished, I hope, every year. We certainly now have a better idea of where it fits into the cycling media landscape and what we're trying to achieve.
AN: While a Grand Tour is no doubt an extremely demanding period on the riders, what about the demands placed on media people like yourself? Discuss how you keep balanced during this three week bubble.
DF: I think maybe too much is made of how tough it is for journalists - naturally by journalists! Our various obligations and schedules also vary hugely, though, and let's say that I've always been pretty good at setting boundaries. For example, some colleagues aren't at all fazed if they miss France's (apparently Constitutional) restaurant curfew of 10pm and end up eating in McDonalds, whereas I absolutely won't countenance that if at all possible; you have to maintain vestiges of civility, and one of those is sitting down to a proper meal in the evening. Another for me, again where possible, is having times where looking at your phone is banned - when you're driving, of course, but also for most of mealtimes. I was pretty intransigent with Lionel and Richard on that last year. I've already mentioned my morning runs - that's another one for me. Punctuality and having the logistics well organised, at the start and end of every day, is also really important just to ensure that you avoid unnecessary stress, because it's challenging enough already. Mastering logistics on a Grand Tour is also a skill you hone over the years. My Achilles heel is still losing and breaking stuff, which I'm not sure I'll ever cure. The other thing I'd throw in is that I spend a lot of time on Booking.com, studying hotels, my theory being that we are much more likely to work better and also appreciate our surroundings if we're in a pleasant environment, which ends up being important for the Podcast(!) That doesn't mean we're staying in the lap of luxury - just that we're not spending every night in a cockroach-infested dump that we're then moaning about in our episodes. On the Grand Tours I see us as a travel programme as much as a cycling show, and we hope listeners want to come on the journey with us in their minds.
*Header Image courtesy of Daniel Friebe.
