Stage 11
Quite a good story about riding maybe
the hardest cyclo sportif in France.
A very well written, thoughtful story
about a nine day “serious” cycling trip in France. The
Ardechoise, a bit of riding in the Vercors, and doing the route of
the Marmotte, but not on Marmotte Day with several thousand riders.
Bot stories talk of the exact same Alps route.
To my mind, this is the highest level
of real cycling. The pros are great, but people riding like the two
articles above are way more important in creating and maintaining
cycling. Money, adverts, drugs, competition, killing yourself for
glory, all way too much in some ways. The cycling in these short
stories is serious, correct gear, training, heroic feats, but at a
level that is vaguely all right, human you might say. The Tour is
like The Financial Services Industry. Too much.
Hard to write about the stage today.
It was so jam packed with movement and unpredicted success and
failure that I just can't say it all in the a reasonably short blog.
Which does not mean I won't give it a go. You can be sure I will
miss something too. I watched the stage all the way through, all
afternoon after I had my lunch. Skipped the nap. I had the 15 year
old kid over too. He pays as much attention to the race as I do.
However he is not encumbered with correspondence in the two forums I
write in, during and outside races, so he sees thing I don't. I have
been watching loads of cycling over the years “with” some of
these forum guys. I only know one or two in each forum. I might
never meet the others. But we get on the machine, in front of the
tele or computer, and share our reflections. Quite fun actually. I
seldom have any kind of serious, sustained interaction, in English,
about cycling, the Tour and other races. I don't know anyone around
here who really cares that much, AND speaks English. I do the best I
can with a few French pals. Not the same. I watch only the French
coverage. Anyway, I have even persuaded my wife not to panic when I
sit in front of the TV, with a laptop. She now thinks it is quite
normal, as a “chat” with my unknown cycling buddies.
Semi-unsung heroes of the day were
Christopher Kern, who worked really hard to put Pierre Rolland into a
good position in the middle period of his stage victory. Also Tejay,
who could have gone much better today, but rather stuck with his
older leader for many kilometres. Tejay can climb and TT, each as
fast as the best. It is not his first Tour, one actual reader told
me. She's right. Second Tour. It strikes me that it is quite
obvious that he will be “a potential Tour winner” for ten more
years.
Quick summary. The yellow jersey
remains Wiggo's, although a very slight weakness was revealed at the
end of the stage, when Froome just took off, and Wiggo could not
follow. Froome got orders in the earphones and slowed down. I
reckon he might be able to attack Wiggo on the cols, but he won't.
Evans and Nibali tried some attacking, but basically failed. Evans
even got dropped. Essentially lost the Tour. Not so good. But not
the end of the Tour.
Another Europcar victory for the entire
French people, Pierre Roland has done the deed two years in a row.
Maybe he will be doing more. He did start out with 27 riders in the
break, many of whom wanted to win the stage, several of them with
better odds than Pierre. He can't time trial though. And only one
more uphill finish. Still, the attack, the escape, moved him into
the top ten. But two in a row for Europcar, and for France. And the
second victory for the young French guys. Voeckler is an old hand,
probably the best of the older French cycling. These young fellows
are meant, as is every generation of French riders, to win the Tour
“at last”. Its embarrassing. So we French are all happy because
we can believe the new generation is coming to rescue us. And
Thibaut managed to stay in the yellow jersey group all the way up the
last hill (after they caught him as he faded from the escape), as
well as out-sprinting Froome for second place. Second or third does
not really matter in some ways. This youngest guy in the peloton was
somehow riding well enough and was fit enough to out-sprint “the
Brit with the kick”. He is doing well, our Thibaut, and our Pierre
and our Thomas. It is quite stunning when you think about it. One
stage win in the Tour can make a career. Two makes you a national
hero in France, or anywhere really.
There is so little interest in the
spotted jersey that the guy who gave it up a few days ago, has got it
back. People are racing hard, but not giving a fig, for the most
part, about the mountains jersey. As a result, there are a lot of
people who might win it. Anyone who can climb a couple of hills,any
hills, faster than anyone else on a given say, has a chance to win
it. It is stunning how little interest there is. But now riders are
thinking abut it a bit. I hope someone tries to be serious about it.
Not like the green jersey where only
two guys can win it, and the odds are with Sagan. Goss is continuing
to try hard to catch Sagan. Goss won an intermediate sprint point or
two today.
Young rider contender Rein Taaramae
lost a huge chunk of time today. I never thought that would happen.
Unless Tejay has a really bad day, he wins. He can time trial at the
highest level, taking minutes out of Thibaut. In fact four minutes
on the last time trial. No way Thibaut can take four minutes out of
him in the mountains. Race over. Unless something happens. I just
can't see way to see any other victor. I picked Rein, so I am sad
about whatever happened to him today. But Tejay IS actually the best
young GC rider. Sagan might be more impressive, but maybe not.
The Shack still have a cluster of
riders in the top twenty. I think they should take it on and
actually do something. Anything really. A stage, I guess. They
should figure out which is their best guy and ride him up to the top
of a hill. I think they really have to make some move for the sake
of pride. Load of good riders, “the best team”, and they really
don't add much to the spectacle.
Not only was it a pretty good
scenery-day, it was pretty good racing. I rather like the kind of
race situation where you don't quite know where everyone is. In
spite of GPS and chips and motos and helicopters, my commentators
often just don't know. So we don't know. Riders strewn across the
landscape, struggling either go fast or medium, but never doddling.
They start just about when it is really hot, and then ride through
when it is the hottest. At least down here. I felt inclined to look
up the fastest cyclosportif rider that did the “Etape du Tour,” a
duplicate of the stage today? They do two stages every year. They
make loads of tourist money from keen, fit, cyclosportf cyclists from
all over. They “ride The Tour”. With closed roads. They win,
for example, “gold standard- over 40 years of age” certificates.
They have a whale of a time. Slowest Tour rider five hours and
twenty minutes. Only nine Etape Riders did the route in less than
six hours, the fastest was five hours and 37 minutes. But believe
me, doing it fast is just totally impossible for a guy like me.
Finishing it would be a realistic goal for which I would have to
train for many months, if I were lucky.
In any case there were loads of attacks
and a huge escape. Cadel tried once, Nibali tried more than once,
VDB tried and sort of succeeded, they all had a go. But the most
worrying (for Sky and all of Britain) was the attack that Froome made
at the end. Wiggo couldn’t follow. Shouts in the earphone.
Froome slows and rides another few hundred metres with Bradley before
at the very end, trying to win second place. Pinot out sprinted him.
Fraid so. Pinot is good. In the end none of the attacks worked and
other than Rolland, the Sky led final half dozen or so riders
overtook everyone else by the end. That final group picked up
Thibaut from the escape and he just rode with them all the rest of
the way. It was not caught.
All that forced me to pay more
attention than usual. If there is one small escape, and the rest of
the peloton stays calm and together, all you need to do is glance at
the time gap and the form of the peloton to know if something was
happening. This stage, the first proper high mountain stage, was
ready for the actors to fill in the details. And the riders did just
that. Neither the kid nor I sometimes knew who was where exactly.
The fragmentation up the last climb was quite brutal. For quite a
while in the last stages of the climb, “the groupe maillot jaune”
was five riders. Everyone else was dropped. Especially the last
climb needed very careful attention to know what was going on. Good
viewing for sure.
Nibali has said Wiggo doesn't scare him
and besides he has really bad manners. I read about it in l'Equipe
and elsewhere. Vicenzo does not like Bradley. Today as they rode
across the line, Bradley initiated a good buddy, all is forgiven
arm-holding posture. No idea what that means, but it is one of the
great sub stories that thicken the Tour de France, and make it way
more than a bike race.
Pettachi is out. Crashed.
Tomorrow, the stage has two first
category climbs, hard but not incredible, at the very beginning.
Then not much happens, flat, until a wee bump at the end. This stage
is made for another escape to make it to the end. I haven no idea
who will be in it. So no idea who will win. I picked Christopher
Horner because Someone in Radio Shack should do something, and Chris
is pissed off that he was not originally picked for the team, wants
to show them. Not a great reason. I do hope he is at least in the
escape.
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