David Higgs

Higgs' job was about nourishment-not only in terms of food, but emotional nourishment too...

In 2015, David Higgs – at the time, executive chef at the world-class Sandton restaurant The Saxon – was chatting to someone who was about to have a meeting with Doug Ryder, team principal of what was then Team MTN-Qhubeka (now Dimension Data). The someone asked Higgs, a cyclist himself, if he wanted to meet Ryder; and Higgs – just back from riding the Absa Cape Epic – said, “Sure.”

“I met Doug, and 15 minutes later I was going to the Tour – simple as that!”

For Higgs, who had been hooked on the magic of the Tour since the glory days of Jan Ullrich, it was a dream come true.

His role, essentially, was to keep the team fed, to pour back into them the gazillions of kilojoules they burned on the bike every day. But he had to take into account their various dietary requirements: high-fibre, low-fibre, low-GI, pork-free… “It actually wasn’t that complicated, and it was easy to keep them happy,” he says.

Higgs says it was pretty special for him to be part of the Tour, and especially to be with MTN-Qhubeka – the ‘little team that could’, and the first genuinely African team at the Tour de France.