French Celebration
Yesterday’s race into Saint-Étienne has to rank among the most spectacular, exciting, edge-of-your-seat races in memory, right alongside Mathieu van der Poel’s breathtaking win at the Amstel Gold race, except that the Tour stage, rather than VdP’s hit record, was like a complicated symphony bringing all the varied musical themes together into to one great crescendo, an 1812 Overture of a race. Da, da, da, da, da, da, DA! BOOM! BOOM! Where to begin with this head-spinning day of racing?
Thomas De Gendt only gets better, more popular and ever-more deserving of deep respect from everyone – racers to fans and everyone in between. His endearing camping trip of a ride across Italy and France to Belgium from the Classic of the Falling Leaves in Lombardy, in company with his friend and first to his now second place in the Mountains competition in this Tour, Tim Wellens, opened a human, accessible side to the riders for the public. It was a massive PR coup, all the more so for seeming so unscripted, a buddy flick bike ride. The EF Education group certainly took notice and have mounted all sorts of similar episodes to achieve their new, outside-of-racing, marketing objectives. I prefer the original film.
It is, in fact, so very hard to escape the peloton to form a breakaway, especially if your name is De Gendt and every rider not tethered to a team leader knows that by going with him, they are insured a day of glory and television coverage. He picks the races where the terrain is too hard for the sprinters to follow, yet not decisive enough for the Yellow Jersey contenders to budge, then, carefully calculating – his nickname is “Math God” – launches at warp speed, so hard, that only the riders on great form can follow. Make no mistake, he gets away because of his great power, and stays away through intelligence, high pacing and deep strength. Not to mention courage which was abundantly on display yesterday, in a race that seemed destined to end badly for him, but instead, turned into a screaming at the television delight, complete with a happy ending.
The NBC commentators, from the booth to the motorcycle reporter, were united in their distain for the Trek-Segafredo tactics at the beginning of the race, when the team directors ordered their boys to hold De Gent and his breakaway companions, which included Virginia’s Ben King, a trying-to-save-his-season Nikki Terpstra, and the excellent Alessandro de Marchi, to a reasonable gap. I didn’t share in their outrage, thinking, in my old fashioned way, that one doesn’t simply give up the Yellow Jersey unless there’s an almost guaranteed Tour winner in the squad – which there is not - and the saving of that defending energy is best saved for further down the line. Trek-Segafredo, with their paltry results over the past years, needs every bit of success they can get for their long-suffering sponsors, and in not allowing the break to gain 10-minutes ensured a dramatic race and kept the deserving Guilio Ciccone in the running.
The sight of Peter Sagan, suffering and fighting with every single bit of available force in his body, all over his bicycle, holding on by a thread to the Astana-led peloton on the hard, category 2 climbs, every team seemingly united against him, made for astounding images. One saw the fabric of a true champion in those moments.
Then the entire Ineos team was taken out in the crucial part of the race, piled up on a left-hand bend, having chosen the wrong wheel to follow. It’s hard to explain how crazy a racecourse like yesterday’s is at WorldTour pace, with its constant ups and downs, high-speed descents screaming into tiny, remote villages with their equally tiny roads and sharp turns. I can’t even imagine that race in the rain or the extreme heat that’s plagued Europe, melting tarmac and all. EF Education’s Michael Woods is a fine racer, but still relatively new to the sport with suspect bike handling abilities, and one of the first things you learn in racing is to choose “safe wheels” to follow. Ineos, on a racecourse that required extreme skill, didn’t heed that lesson and paid the price as Woods crashed them all. Gianni Moscon’s F12 Pinarello, full screen on world-wide television, was broken completely in half, only held together by a rear brake cable. What a terrible publicity for the Treviso company, even though, as we saw with Kasper Asgreen’s similarly broken Specialized, carbon does indeed snap. Lots of people will be thinking about that image as they line up at their local shop with $12,000 in hand for the latest and greatest bicycle.
EF Education had their entire Tour compromised over the last two days. Tejay van Garderen went home yesterday with a broken hand, and now Woods is out of any GC contention. Their three-pronged attack is now in the dustbin, and Rigoberto Uran has all the pressure to perform on his shoulders. Their attacking strategy – and the team has been excellent and have been coming on – may now have to turn to something more passive and reactive. Tough for them.
Geraint Thomas, paced only by Wout Poels – maybe the Dutchman’s dropping off early on Thursday’s mountain stage was planned to save his legs for just this sort of effort – picked himself up and made his way back to the flat out field. The Welshman’s effort on the climb was spectacular and yet another sign that the defending Tour champion is in form and clearly the man to beat. What an effort that must have been!
Then of course the attack of Julian Alaphilippe, flying up the last climb as again, everyone knew he would yet were unable to contain, taking the second place bonus, setting up a most spectacular finale to the race. Thibault Pinot confirmed his stellar form by staying with Alaphilippe on the climb, and then displayed true courage by staying with him on the descent. Pinot is anything but a good descender and to follow a man chasing a Yellow Jersey, with his paltry skills, on that racecourse, must have been some of the most terrifying minutes of his life.
Alaphilippe, flying solo, had to retrieve his own water bottles from the team car earlier in the race, at least had Enric Mas controlling for him which helped his cause. The Spaniard, who is leaving Deceuninck-Quikstep for Movistar next year in the search for a team that can help his Grand Tour ambitions (see my piece from yesterday) was indeed strong, rarely leaving the top three of the chasing bunch.
It was a most satisfying finish. De Gendt held on to win, Alaphilippe wrenched back the Yellow to wear on Bastille Day to the delirium of the French public, Pino showed that he’s a true contender causing even more French delight, and young Guilio Ciccone, now in second place overall, put on the young rider White Jersey, paying back his team for their efforts.