In the second of our series looking behind the scenes at big races, we get on board with EF Education-EasyPost’s bus driver, Richard Romero
Words James Witts Photography Harry Talbot
Team players
In all the excitement of a Tour de France stage, the spotlight rarely falls on the team bus driver. Except in 2013, when the driver for Orica-GreenEdge, Garikoitz Atxa, endured the infamy of getting the team bus wedged beneath the finish gantry of Stage 1, with the peloton just kilometres from the finish and getting closer by the second.
‘Have you ever had bad luck like that?’ Cyclist asks EF Education-EasyPost’s bus driver, Richard Romero. ‘Thankfully not,’ the Spaniard replies. ‘It looked very stressful. Mind you, so is driving a long and heavy vehicle up and down the mountains.’
Romero is a recent recruit to the cycling bus service but has been in the sport for 20 years. ‘I used to be a soigneur and my first professional race was the 2003 Giro d’Italia with the Kelme Costa Blanca team,’ he says. ‘I then worked with many teams, including national squads, before taking my bus driver’s test in 2019 with the Delko Pro team. I joined EF as a soigneur in 2021, and at the end of the season they offered me the driver role.’
EF has two official drivers, who are responsible for the buses that are used to transfer the riders from hotel to start line – ‘even if it’s only 500m, like we had once at the Tour du Suisse’ – and then from the race finish to the next hotel.
Romero accumulates up to 180 days of racing each year, equating to upwards of 60,000km. That’s Europe only, he says, as he doesn’t leave the northern hemisphere for work. Nor does the bus, meaning the team either hires an alternative for races such as the Tour Down Under or one is provided by the organiser.
‘The longest drive is probably to the Tour of Denmark. Our service course is in Girona, where we store the bus, and it’s more than 2,000km to somewhere like Copenhagen.’
The bus Romero drives is 40m long, 11 years old and has over 420,000km on the clock. ‘But it’s still reliable and drives well,’ he assures us, which is just as well for both him and the riders. Inside, the vehicle is designed to meet the very specific requirements of a WorldTour team.
‘Normally a team will buy a bus that has been stripped out,’ says
