Price ₤10,000
Weight 7kg
Top speed 100km/h
Ever wondered how much better your game would be if you had access to the same kit as the champions? Would Sharapova's racket reduce your double faults? Would McIlroy's driver cure that sickening hook? Would Bradley Wiggins's bike make cycling easier?
I was about to find out – the hard way. I'd travelled to the infinite flatness of the Flemish countryside to meet Andy Verrall, a former competitive cyclist and world-class mechanic who now masterminds Team Sky's equipment logistics. I was to join him on a test ride of the latest version of the Pinarello Dogma 2 – the very bike on which Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish will launch Team Sky's assault on next week's Tour de France.
After an hour battling into a cold headwind, the icy rain suddenly turned to hail. Stranded in the hedgeless openness of the Flemish countryside, we dipped our heads and cycled into the wind as marble-sized ice balls peppered our shoulders, stinging the skin on my thighs so it looked as if I'd been thrashed with nettles. It was awful, but Andy just looked at me and laughed. "Typical weather for Flanders," he said. "They call it ice rain here."
We surged on, with me sheltering from the worst of the weather in the slipstream created by Andy's broad back. After another pelting, the hail finally blew over. But Andy hadn't finished with me yet. It was torture by cobbles next. The narrow roads which flow like dried riverbeds around the ancient fields of this part of Belgium are the same lanes the pros ride during the incomparable hellishness of the Tour of Flanders – a 260km one-day classic, and the cobbles are part of the ordeal. "Keep your speed up," Andy said as he powered across them. My bike felt possessed, bucking and shaking under me. My wrists and elbows juddered wildly. I felt like my eyeballs might pop out on springs. After 100 yards I was ready to throw in the towel. Andy made me feel even better by telling me some of the classics feature anything up to 50km of cobbles.
The Team Sky depot is housed in a tin-walled warehouseon the outskirts of Deinze, a sleepy town 50 minutes by train from Brussels. It's here that the 28 riders who make up Sky's pro cycling team have their bikes built and maintained. Each rider has four bikes, two road and two time trial, and each is tweaked to suit the rider's particular needs and dimensions. There can be up to 150 bikes in the warehouse at any one time, plus 250 pairs of wheels and 500 spare tyres, not to mention the crate loads of branded kit, energy drinks and enough tools to stock a decent-sized Halfords.
But no detail is too small to attract the eyes of Andy and his mechanics. "It all comes down to weight," he said. "When we build Wiggo's bike we weigh all the ball bearings and then choose the lightest ones." The differences are tiny, but it's the science of "marginal gains" that adds up.
The bikes themselves are beautiful works of aerodynamic art. Each carbon frame is handmade in Treviso, Italy, and though they are expensive they are not exclusive. Under championship rules all bikes have to be available to the public.
After the cobbles, we stopped for coffee and a pastry, and the sun came out for the return leg. As we warmed up, our legs spinning the revolutionary 22-speed Shimano gears, the Pinarellos came to life. Frictionless, perfectly balanced, light as air yet strong… But as I sat on this astonishing bicycle I couldn't help but think that it was still just a bike. And I was struck again with a new sense of wonder at the superhuman feats of the likes of Wiggo and Mark Cavendish. What makes them so different, I asked Andy. What makes them champions?
He tapped his temple. "Belief," he smiled. "They've got it up here."
The World's Most Dangerous Roads is back
Next time you think the A303 feels a bit hairy spare a thought for a few hapless celebs who are being unleashed on the roads from hell. Following the success of last year's series, Sue Perkins and Liza Tarbuck will be driving the legendary Ho Chi Minh trail (airing on Sunday 15 July, 9pm, BBC2), then comedy duo Hugh Dennis and David Baddiel will brave over 200km of Ethiopia's death-defying roads to ancient Aksum (22 July). But the series gets under way in Siberia on 8 July (BBC2, 9pm) with old friends Ed Byrne and Andy Parsons crossing over 2,000km of frozen wilderness as the two comedians attempt the epic drive from Yakutz, the coldest city in the world along the infamous "Road of Bones" to finish in the coastal city of Magadan, known as "The gateway to Hell". Brilliant TV – and you'll never complain about British roads again...
Email Martin at martin.love@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/martinlove for all his reviews in one place
