Well actually it’s the 2nd, but I thought up the concept for this post on the 1st. The first Sunday in February* is a special day in the world of cycling. It is the day that the World Cyclocross Championships are held and it is also the day of the Grand Prix Cycliste la Marseillaise (l’Ouverture), which for me marks the beginning of the Road Race season. I know there have been races going on in the Southern Hemisphere for weeks now, but in some things I am a traditionalist, and since at least 1980 this has been the first European race of the year, so for me it still marks the opening of the season and the promise that spring is on the way.
A distinctly un-spring like Tabor in The Czech Republic hosted this years Cyclocross championships. There were four races; Junior men, Under-23 men, Elite men and Elite women.
They were all pretty good races, but the Elite Women’s race was a classic. With half a lap to go any one of five riders could have won, in fact it was only right toward the end that the eventual winner Pauline Ferrand-Prevot and Sanne Cant pulled away to fight out the final sprint to the line. The video below shows the highlights;
After that the Elite Men’s race was, well not a let down, but didn’t quite equal the women’s race for excitement. The highlights are below;
Again if you want to watch the full race click here.
Mathieu van der Poel who won the race is the youngest ever winner. He is a few days past his twentieth birthday. He is also the first person to follow in his fathers tyre tracks. His father Adri van der Poel won the World championships in 1996. His cycling pedigree is impressive. His maternal grandfather is the great French cyclist of the 60’s and 70’s Raymond Poulidor.
The average age of the podium for the Elite men’s race was lower than that of the Under 23 race. The silver medal winner Wout Van Aert isn’t much older than the winner. The bronze medal winner Lars van der Haar at 23 was the old man of the set.
The World Cyclo-cross Championships have just finished in Hoogerheide in the Netherlands. For those of you unfamiliar with the sport it is probably best described as half way between Mountain Biking and Road Racing. It is held off-road and the races are about an hour-long for men and about 45 minutes for women.
This years men’s race was as exciting a bike race as I have seen in a long time. The women’s race was a master class in cyclo-cross by the finest bicycle racer on the planet today Marianne Vos
Take back what I said yesterday, perhaps the Tour isn’t all over bar the champagne drinking on the final stage. Today seemed prove that the Sky team of 2013 aren’t the race crushing robo-team of 2012.
It is probably Garmin-Sharp carrying out their preannounced plan to cause chaos that is at least partly to blame. On the attack from the gun with David Millar and Jack Bauer riding a two-up time trial into the first climb, and featuring in every move including the winning one. They broke the race apart.
Craziest thing about today? We planned it! My TdF flashed before my eyes halfway through the stage: 2-up TT into first climb = bad idea.
This left Chris Froome in the front group with most of the Movistar team for company, but a distinct lack of black and blue jerseys to help him. This happened with about 140 km and four cols left to race.
Richie Porte tried valiantly to get back on but Movistar kept the pace high on the Col de Peyresourde to make sure that he didn’t and he eventually sat up. Movistar had the advantage in numbers but didn’t seem to know what to do with them. Admittedly the stage with its 30km down-hill run to the finish was never going to be a one where a decisive gap could be forged, but I thought they could have done more than a couple of attacks from Niaro Quintana. Perhaps Valverde couldn’t attack. Froome covered all the attacks fairly easily and at one point decided to half-wheel Quintana just to make the point.
Round about the point where Movistar, or to be more precise Quintana gave up trying to drop Froome an Irish Brummie, Dan Martin, set off up the road, with about 4km left to the top of La Hourquette d’Anzican. Jacob Fuglsang(Astana) joined him. Working well together the pair quickly established a reasonable though never completely decisive lead. At about 5km to go the impetus went out of the chase and it became obvious that the stage would be won my one of them. Dan Martin, who is probably the better sprinter out of the two, judged it perfectly leading into the bend at 250m to go and taking it out from there.
What did I learn from today’s stage?
Garmin will mix it up and try things to win stages. This could cause problems for the teams whose focus is the GC.
I don’t think that Valverde has quite got what it takes to unseat Froome.
Like wise Contador.
Although the could both have just been keeping their powder dry.
Nairo Quintana might have, but is going to have to get a lot smarter.
Chris Froome might have to win this tour on his own.
Oh and some Scottish bloke who looks a bit like David Millar won Wimbledon
Well that’s it Le Tour is over for 2013. There is still a bit of riding round France and to be done, but after Chris Froome’s ride to Ax au 3 Domaines today I don’t see any one else even getting close. Oh and Peter Sagan seems to have the Green Jersey tied up as well. May as well go and watch the tennis.
Le Tour de France est ici mes amis. I shall try, and probably fail to give you my thoughts on it’s progress over the next three weeks. But to start with my predictions: Yellow – Chris Froome (Sky).
Like Bradley Wiggins last year he has been the dominant stage racer this year. He has the same organisation behind him and the races best super-domestique / back-up plan in Richie Porte. In order to be a serious challenger Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Team Saxo-Tinkoff will have to up his game considerably from where he was at the Dauphiné three weeks ago. Ryder Hesjedal (Can) Garmin-Sharp and Cadel Evans (Aus) BMC Racing Team could be possible contenders but it is difficult to know exactly where they are at. Hesjedal abandoned the Giro with a chest infection then crashed out of the Tour de Suisse, Evans hasn’t raced since the Giro where he finished third.
Update 01/07/2013
I’m not doing particularly well am I? the race has been on for three days and I still haven’t finished my predictions.
OK let’s do it:
Green: Peter Sagan – Mark Cavendish might be faster in a sprint, but Sagan can pick up points on any stage bar the high mountains
Polka Dots (Mountains) Pierre Rolland – mainly because he seems to be hoovering up points where ever he can at the moment and can collect points on the 1st and HC climbs as well. I just hope that someone has a word with him about the polka-dot shorts, or better still the ASO bring in a rule banning matching shorts.
White: Andrew Talansky (USA) Garmin-Sharp– because I think that he is the best of the riders eligible. At the Criterium du Dauphine last month,, he got sick on the first stage, rode through it and recovered and matched Chris Froome on the final climb.
Something happened last July that I genuinely did not think I would ever see. A British cyclist, Bradley Wiggins, won the Tour de France, and I was there on the Champs-Elysées to see him do it.
Obviously I follow the Tour de France religiously, even of it does mean tolerating Phil Ligget’s increasingly inane commentary. (Next year I am going to learn Flemish and watch it on Sporza.) By the end of the second week it was obvious that, barring a jour sans in the Pyrenees, Bradley Wiggins was going to win. With that thought in mind my mate Lord Wallington called me on the Monday suggesting that we make a trip to Paris to witness history.
” Brilliant idea” said I. So at five thirty on a bright and clear Sunday morning at the end of July, six middle-aged blokes set off for Paris in a car designed to seat five.
It was a fairly uneventful journey, punctuated only by a bacon roll and a cup of coffee while waiting for the shuttle and an inconsequential wrong turn on the peripherique. Somehow, we assumed by luck rather than judgement, Lord Wallington found a parking space just of the Place Charles de Gaulle (L’Arc de Triompe). Despite having to negotiate three roads coming off the Arc de Triompe we all made it to the Champs-Elysées to join the hundred thousand other Brits also there to see history made.
We had a few hours to kill while the peleton drank champagne and generally faffed about on their way into Paris. Finding something for lunch was in order. I was very pleasantly surprised to find a place just round the corner from where we had set up camp offering a cheese and ham sandwich and a cold beer for 5€.
The publicity caravan arrived shortly after lunch, and while reasonably entertaining for a while, partially clothed young men and women dancing to French disco music on top of a truck does get boring after a while. What I wanted was some cycling.
What he is advertising I’m not sureI think they are advertising bread
Finally at around four in the afternoon the peleton arrived on the Champs-Elysées. George Hincape led them onto the finishing circuit because this was his last ever Tour de France and he had been a participant in every single tour ever ridden, or at least quite a lot of them. Shortly after that the attacks started, most of them were fairly short-lived, but one attack featuring everyone’s favourite baroudeurJens Voigt and about a dozen others finally got somewhere and dragged out a lead of about 30 seconds. Sky and Liquigas kept it under control and with about a couple of laps to go it looked as if it was all going to come together when The Jensie took of again with a couple of companions. The move was always doomed to fail because Sky had decided that Mark Cavendish deserved a reward for all his faithful bottle carrying duties and sure enough with about 3km to go everything was back together. The Yellow jersey set about leading out the Rainbow jersey and shortly afterwards ‘Cav’ crossed the finishing line with his hands in the air.
Not that we saw any of that. Having positioned ourselves near the top end of the Champs, we caught a quick flash of the peleton every lap as it raced past our position at 55 kph. This video gives a rough idea of what we saw.
Neither did we see Wiggins presented with his trophy and final yellow jersey, but we did hear him announce the drawing of the raffle.
We hung around to watch the parade lap. After the race all the riders, and often the managers, do a lap of the circuit and in Sky’s case they included by Bradley Wiggins’ son. I did actually manage to get a photo of Wiggo in his yellow jersey, while he was doing the parade lap.
Maillot Jaune 2012
Maillot Jaune 2032? Peter Sagan showing off
After that it was time to head home. We stopped for dinner in a place called L’Isle Adam, just outside of Paris. A good steak-frites and a beer later and we were on our way back up the Autoroute to Calais and the last shuttle of the day.
We arrived back in Wallington about 2:30 in the morning. To quote Wallace and Grommit “It had been a grand day out.”
With all the current admissions and accusations of doping during the 1990’s and early years of this century, I am slightly saddened that one of my favourite riders, and one of the few universally acknowledged to have ridden clean during those years, has decided to retire. After fifteen years in the pro peleton (all spent with the Cofidis team) David Moncoutié will retire on Sunday at the end of this years Vuelta.
In his early years many pundits thought that he was a potential Tour de France winner and although he won a couple of stages that potential was never fulfilled, largely, in my opinion, because he was a clean rider in the Lance Armstrong/Jan Ulrich era. The latter part of his career in many ways has been more succesful than the early part. He has won the climbers jersey and stages in The Vuelta for the past four years as well as other smaller races. This could be seen as a sign that cycling is actually getting cleaner. I hoped that he could take the Polka-dot jersey in this years Tour de France, but a crash on Stage 12 forced him out of the race.
He says that he has no ambition to stay in cycling, but will carry on riding his bike. That was the thing I liked most about him, he always seemed to enjoy the riding as much if not more than the winning.
I said in my last post that I would take a look at the potential winners of the Maillot Vert (Points) and the Maillot a Pois (King of the Mountains) competitions in this post. In these competitions, especially the King of the Mountains competition, it is a bit harder to pick out the potential winners.
Normally in the Green Jersey competition it is fairly easy to find the riders who could win it. You start the list with Mark Cavendish, then add a few others. This year predicting a winner is complicated by the Olympic Road Race taking place six days after the Tour de France finishes. The Olympic course suits the type of rider who would normally be targeting the Green Jersey, so there is a question mark over whether some or indeed any of the contenders will make it to Paris. Some, like previous Green Jersey winners Thor Hushovd and Tom Boonen, have decided to opt out of the Tour completely, in order to concentrate on the Olympics. Other contenders may be tempted to drop out before the Pyrénées in order to fully rested on the start line in London. All of this makes predicting a winner difficult. In addition, this this years route appears to feature fewer stages that are suited to out and out sprinters.
The short answer is I haven’t got a clue. Alexander Vinokurov has said that he would like to at least try to win the thing. Every French breakaway artist would like to spend a day or two in the jersey. A climber like Dan Martin or Samuel Sanchez, who is unlikely to feature as a G.C. contender could take it, but for sentimental reasons I think it would be nice if David Moncoutie won the Polka Dots in what will be his final Tour de France.
It is time to fire up the blog again. Le Tour de France est presque sur nous mes enfants. Next Saturday on the 30th of June one hundred and ninety-eight riders set off from Liège in Belgium in the hopes that one of them will pull on that final maillot jaune on the Champs-Élysées three weeks later. It is starting a week earlier than it normally would because of some silly multi-sport event that London is staging the following week.
(More London-based whines about the Olympics will follow over the next month or two.)
One hundred and ninety-eight riders start but only one can win, so who is it likely to be? I can tell you who it wont be. It won’t be Andy Schleck, he is out with a fractured pelvis sustained in a fall in the Criterium du Dauphine. It won’t be Alberto Contador, he is banned until August because of doping violations or eating a dodgy steak, depending on whose story you believe. It won’t be Mark Cavendish, he will lose twenty minutes the first time the road tilts seriously upwards and at least another twenty on every subsequent occasion.
Click on the map for full details of the route
This years route goes clockwise round the country, with the Alps coming before the Pyrénées.This is normally reckoned to favour the all-round riders like Cadel Evans against the pure climbers like Frank Schleck. This year’s course also features two long individual time-trials for the first time in a few years. All in all including the prologue there is about 100km of racing against the clock. Again this doesn’t help the climbers. The climbers will have to think about how they are going to win this years tour. I don’t think the will be able to wait to the final climb of the day before they attack, because they won’t gain enough time that way. They will need at least three minutes over the likes of Cadel Evans or Bradley Wiggins going into the final time trial to have a hope of winning. The moyen montange stages could prove to be crucial. The other stage that I think will be important is Stage 16. This the classic Pyrénéan stage from Pau to Bagnères-de-Luchon as won by Robert Millar back in 1983.
The contenders
So who is going to win? For the first time, probably ever, we have a British rider, Bradley Wiggins, with a realistic chance of overall victory. Some bookmakers have him odds-on to win, which is ridiculous. There are far to many variables in a three-week stage for any rider to be odds-on to win it. Wiggins isn’t Frankel, streets ahead of the opposition, he is one of about five or six riders with a realistic chance of winning the race. They are in my opinion, and in no particular order; Cadel Evans (last years winner), Frank Schleck, Bradley Wiggins, Vincenzo Nibali, Robert Gesink and Ryder Hesjedal.
Cadel Evans (BMC) (Aus) has been there done that and last year finally got the tee-shirt. There will be no doubt about who is the BMC team leader and what the teams object is. He is strong, determined, more than a good enough climber to stay with the best in the mountains, and even if he can’t always match the sudden accelerations of the pure climbers, has repeatedly shown the ability to drag himself back up to them and limit his losses. He is also one of the peleton’s better time-trialists, especially at the business end of a three-week tour. This years course probably suits him even better than last years. However last year he was one of the oldest riders ever to win the Tour de France and this year he is one year older. At the Critérium du Dauphiné he did not seem to be at full form, but neither was he at his best last year, besides there is a saying in the peleton “Good Dauphiné, bad Tour, bad Dauphiné, good Tour”, meaning that it is possible to peak too soon.
Bradley Wiggins(Sky) (Gbr) had a good Dauphiné, he won it. He has also won Paris-Nice and the Tour de Romandie this year. He is undoubtedly the man in form. He is a similar rider to Evans, in that he is a good climber albeit one who generally prefers to climb at a steady pace and he is probably the best time-trialist in the world at the moment. If he is within three minutes of anyone bar Cadel Evans at the start of the final time-trial I will expect him to in Yellow by the end of it. I think that he can even give Evans a minute. In the three races that he has won this year he and his team have made controlling the race look easy. However in the races up to now the team has been wholly dedicated to making sure that Wiggins is on the top step of the podium. In the Tour Mark Cavendish will be looking for stage wins and probably trying to keep the Green (Points) Jersey that he won last year. The riders required to take care of “Cav” and lead him out in the sprints are not the same type of rider that Wiggins needs in the mountains. Possible conflict there.
Frank Schleck (RadioShack-Nissan-Trek) (Lux) is one of the climbers in the race who could win it. Normally he is slightly in his younger brother Andy’s shadow. Andy being out injured perversely could actually help Frank. Last year they had a tendency to try to make sure that one brother’s attack wasn’t putting the other brother into difficulties, so when they did attack in the mountains, they didn’t persist, allowing the other riders to come back to them. This year when he goes, he wont have to worry about his little brother being left. Having said that, he is generally not as strong a climber as is brother and in last years final time trial he lost 2:34 to Cadel Evans over a course that was 11 km shorter than this years. In addition, rumour has it that he (and Andy) are not happy with their current team and the Team Manager (Johan Bruyneel) in particular. So while I think that Frank Schleck might influence who wins I don’t think that it will actually be him who stands on the top step in Paris.
Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas) (Ita) is another rider whose main strength is his climbing, but he also rides a reasonable time-trial, if not in the same league as Wiggins and Evans. He has won a Grand Tour before, the 2010 Vuelta d’Espana (Tour of Spain) so he knows how to defend a lead if necessary. Liquigas’ normal tactics in the mountains seem to be set a high but steady pace to make sure that there are no surprise attacks and then for the leader to try to nip off at the end. This plays right in to the hands of the likes of Wiggins and Evans, both of whom are quite happy to sit behind anyone who is setting a steady pace, almost no matter how high. What they find more difficult is a pace that is constantly changing, having to constantly put in an extra effort to drag themselves back up to an attacker. In this years Giro d’Italia those tactics didn’t do the eventual winner any harm.
Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin) (Can) won this years Giro d’Italia in the final time-trial. A similar rider in many ways to Evans and Wiggins, this years course should suit him. He rides for a team that works as a team, and regards a victory for anyone on the team as a victory for the team. He will have some of the most experienced riders in the peleton working for him, but the Tour de France is a step up from the Giro, and we will also need to find out if he has fully recovered from the Giro, something that might not become apparent until the third week.
Robert Gesink (Rabobank) (Ned) is a tall skinny Dutch climber with a reasonable time-trial. He won this years Tour of California with a superb attack on the principle mountain stage, so his form is there. The Tour of California, however doesn’t attract a very strong field because it takes place at the same time as the Giro. A fourth place at the recent Tour de Suisse show that he is still up there. His main problem, however is a tendency to fall off.
My predictions
Because the course suits all-rounders rather than climbers, and because the two climbers (Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador) who are able to disrupt the equilibrium of the all rounders in the mountains are both out of the race, this is how I think the final podium will be. It’s an all Commonwealth affair;
First Bradley Wiggins
Second Cadel Evans
Third Ryder Hesjedal
Of course a rider could appear, if not exactly from nowhere, but from below the radar, and surprise us all. Last year’s White Jersey winner Pierre Rolland is one who springs to mind.
I shall have a look at the Green (points) Jersey and the Polka-dot (King-of-the-Mountains) Jersey competitions in my next post.
A Scotsman in Suburbia 