Richie Porte: Not all sacrifices are equal

Tasmanian-born Richie Porte has experienced a lifetime of sacrifice from the age of 21, when he decided to leave his hometown and move to Italy. But that was just the start of becoming familiar with having to make those difficult choices. Chasing his dream of riding the world’s biggest bike race, the Tour de France, means continually making sacrifices day-in-day-out.   

For many professional cyclists, sacrifice comes in many guises – whether it’s leaving their family home behind and moving across the other side of the world, missing the birth of a child, or giving up their own chances of winning a race, and turning themselves inside out so their teammate has the privilege of standing on the podium instead. Porte can testify to experiencing them all.   

What was your first memory of the Tour de France?

My first memory of the Tour is from the late 90s. I remember when the Australian guys came on the scene, and looked up to guys like O’Grady, McEwan, Cooke. Them going for the green jersey and ripping the race up. That’s when we started taking more interest in the Tour, because when those guys started doing so well you wanted to tune in to see it, even though cycling isn’t a mainstream sport in Australia. There would be this 30 minutes highlight package that you’d watch and it was quite a spectacle to see, so I kinda got hooked. I wasn’t riding my bike though then, I was just watching the highlights and realised that I enjoyed it. 

It’s a huge sacrifice, when you look at European cyclists, like in France or Italy or Spain, they can live at home, but for us, Australians, Kiwis or Americans, it’s takes a lot to uproot your life where you are happy, I mean how can you not be happy living in Australia and you’re surrounded by your family? To make that move was huge. 

I remember saying to my Mum and Dad at the time that I wanted to move to Italy to ride my bike, I was working as a pool lifeguard so I didn’t have much money. Luckily Mum and Dad were in a position to make it happen. But when I got there it was a massive culture shock. It was my first time in Europe, there was the language barrier, and I had to adapt to a totally different lifestyle to what I was used to in Australia. It was one of the hardest things that I’ve had to do. I loved the challenge, and it was a huge challenge, especially racing against the guys in Italy. A lot of the guys were turning professional, and at the time, the Italian cycling scene was one of the toughest going, but it put me in a good place.