a weekly double-shot of road racing
Wednesday 10th July 2013
issue 15
rapha.cc
06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
SATURDAY — Tour de France S8
SUNDAY — Tour de France S9
MONDAY — Rest day
TUESDAY — Tour de France S10
WEDNESDAY — Tour de France S11
THURSDAY — Tour de France S12
FRIDAY — Tour de France S13
SATURDAY — Tour de France S14
SUNDAY — Tour de France S15
the view from st malo
press room chat
Dogged Froome Flies in Face of Adversity
e mastery of the DS According to David Millar and Jonathan Vaughters, Dan Martin’s fantastic stage win went exactly to mastermind Charly Wegelius’ plan. Meanwhile, Chris Froome thanked Nico Portal for helping him through a tough day surrounded by enemies. Will we see some more of the DS’s art on Ventoux or in the Alps?
Dotted around rural Brittany, with tranquil views over the Atlantic, Monday’s rest day was a good chance to take stock of a tumultuous nine days of racing. Chris Froome will doubtless be ecstatic to be in the yellow jersey, and to have weathered a terrible stage nine to Bigorre where, but for the grace of a long run-in from the top of the final Cat-1 climb he would have been attacked even harder. He will be less pleased with how clinically Movistar – with some help from Saxo-Tinkoff – destroyed Richie Porte’s chances of a podium place. “It’s always better to have two cards to play, and having Richie in second place was a huge boost for me, knowing that he was right there and he could at any point put any other riders under pressure,” Froome said. “It leaves me a little bit more exposed in that sense.” e Kenyan-born Brit, however, seems comfortable in his leadership role, and with the expectations and responsibilities that heaps upon him: “is is bike racing, there’s a lot more to it than going fast up mountains and time trialling,” he added. “ere is a lot more to gc riding than that. Tactically, this is quite a race.” After the two days’ madness in the Pyrenees, it is difficult to know what to expect from the middle week of this cycling odyssey around France. Stage 10 certainly went some way to making up for the first week we never had – that is to say, nervous flat stages where the gc contenders’ teams must stay ever alert for crashes. In St Malo, the coming together that sent Tom Veelers (Argos-Shimano) to the tarmac and Mark Cavendish off in a huff was more the sort of scene we’ve come to expect in week one. Cav will be hoping his Omega Pharma-QuickStep train makes a better fist of things as the green jersey race grows critical. One thing is for certain: even if the flat stages before the dreaded Mont Ventoux provide some respite, the race is still on. After the stage to Ax, and Team Sky’s dominance, many French papers were complaining the race had finished before it had really got going. Now, they are rubbing their hands in prospect at the fireworks the next twelve days hold.
“is is bike racing, there’s a lot more to it than going fast up mountains and time trialling.” chris froome
ryder he sjedal ’s sungl asse s are #p r ost y le
Quintana’s the real deal Described by those in the know as “terrifying”, Nairo Quintana has been the mountain joker in the pack this week, showing incredible climbing class even after falling three times. And are his team, Movistar, the real threat? While Alberto Contador is having what the French call ‘jours sans’, off days, Saxo-Tinkoff must bide their time Future looks green for Sagan e Slovakian stopped racing for intermediate sprint points on Sunday’s stage - partly because it was so difficult but also because he knows he is sitting pretty at the top of the points leaderboard. e three-way fight between Cav, Greipel and Kittel may well split the remaining points and leave him top. Bardet is the new French hero It’s cruel being a French cyclist. Home hopes are always so high and ibaut Pinot, the previous Next Big ing, is currently in a funk after a phobia of descending provoked by crashing as a junior put him out of contention in the Pyrenees. AG2R’s Romain Bardet is only 22 but he wears the adulation lightly, looking composed at the stage starts and finishes. ere has been no stage win for the French but there is Ventoux to look forward to.
a weekly double-shot of road racing
Wednesday 10th July 2013
anatomy of a stage
Stage 15, 242.5km Givors – Mont Ventoux is week’s key stage finishes atop the mighty Giant of Provence on Bastille Day. Will it be the French tricolore flying from the ramparts? is year’s longest day, with the longest climb up the most feared mountain, stage 15 from Givors to Mont Ventoux will loom large all week. e peak that dominates the Provençal landscape was first climbed in France’s greatest race in 1951, though the stage finished in Avignon. Crowds had to wait until 1958 for a summit finish on the Giant of Provence, when Charly Gaul won in 1hr 2mins 9secs. Even now the record is only seven minutes quicker: Iban Mayo rode it in 55mins 55secs during the 2004 Dauphiné. Of three routes to the summit the one the race takes this year, from Bédoin, is the steepest and hardest: 21.7km long with 1,617m of ascent. From Bédoin it starts gently but then tilts upward, varying in gradient constantly. With around 6km to go the road passes the Chalet Reynard and enters the rocky landscape that gives Ventoux its unique appearance - this mont chauve (bald mountain) was systematically deforested over centuries for shipbuilding. Although the gradient eases here, this is where the infamous wind and heat take their toll. And it’s where Tom Simpson, the British star, died in 1967, from a combination of heatstroke, dehydration and amphetamines. Eddy Merckx won on Ventoux en route to the yellow jersey in 1970 but needed an oxygen mask at the top. Aside from a few bumps at the start, Sunday’s 242.5km route sticks to the Rhône valley, travelling south through the Drôme and Vaucluse départements. Any breakaway on Sunday may stay away while the favourites mark each other; a French rider such as Pierre Rolland (Europcar) or ibaut Pinot (fdj) might fancy a break for glory - it is Bastille day after all. However, the long stage and potentially searing heat mean a bad day could cost a rider 15 minutes. Making it safely over Ventoux will be a significant moment for Froome in his quest for the yellow jersey in Paris.
GIVORS 163m
team sky mobile supporters club
KM DRIVEN ON TOUR
MINOR BREAKDOWNS
COKES TO THE GRUPETTO
COFFEES DRUNK BY DRIVER
MONT VENTOUX 1912m
Côte d'Eyzin-Pinet 436m
Côtes de Bordeaux 651m
Côte de Primarette 459m
NIGHTS ON A MOUNTAIN
locations
Côtes de Lens-Lestang 424m
44.5km
143km
236.5km
Stage 11, Time Trial 10km to go Stage 15, Mont Ventoux Near the treeline Stage 19, Alpe d'Huez Just beneath turn 6 Stage 21, Paris Location TBC
motoman
Going Elton for Leathers In his latest dispatch from the road, our man in the press pack hustles into Lidl, sees Richie dig deep, and doffs his cap to all the President’s motomen. After Corsica I took the overnight ferry to Savona, since there were no spaces to Nice, and just as I was taking my chances with the lowlifes sleeping on deck one of the tv companies offered me a bunk in their cabin. en it was time for some Riviera hustle: it turns out that Lidls on the Côte d’Azur are really rather reasonable. I stayed in Cagnes-sur-Mer for a couple of nights, in homage to the original Motoman, the guy who allegedly carried the us Postal team’s epo, and who lives there. at stage to Marseille I followed a tv anchor and shot him as he did his thing. It’s a different world over there in moving pictures, so much space and time in which to operate, and elbowing for position really doesn’t go down very well. e next day took me to the feed zone and I shot the yellow jersey’s soigneur, a rather lovely lady from Orica-Greenedge. Did I mention it was hot this week? In motorbike leathers it was way too much, even at altitude where there were big pockets of snow still on the ground. Still, the riders had it worse. At Ax-3 Domaines they rolled over the line ashen and grey like corpses under the sweat and suntan. Afterwards, I tucked in behind the police motos as they sped down the trafficcrowded descent, sirens blazing, on the wrong side of the line at 130kph. Who’d mess with a police moto though? ey’re the Garde Républicaine, the President’s men; I’ve a lot of respect for them. I could tell Richie Porte had gone deep at Ax, wasn’t surprised that he struggled the day after, but everybody looked beat when they came in to Bigorre after the Pyrenean quintuple-header mountain free-forall. Especially those in the ‘bus - Cav, Greipel and the rest who’d had a real fight against the cut-off. en they all jetted off straight away to Brittany, which must have been hard. Still, it’s better than driving a bike up there: that’s how I’m spending my rest day, 2,100 miles on the clock and counting. To paraphrase Elton John: “I think it’s gonna be a long, long time / ‘til touchdown brings me round again to find, / I’m not the man they think I am at home – oh no, no, no, I’m a motoman…”
ryde r he sje dal ’s sungl asse s are #pr ost y le