Swiss Star
“J’ai mal à l’estomac”, moaned my Swiss friend and former teammate Gerald Oberson as we spoke on the phone while watching his fellow countryman Marc Hirschi descending off the final col de Marie Blanque, less than 18-kilometers from the finish in Lauruns. Gerald’s fluttering stomach was due to high-powered chase just 20” behind Hirschi, and the touch-and-go chances of the young Swiss’s high stakes gamble paying off.
The 153-kilometer (95.6-mile) final day in the Pyrenees exploded from the start with just about every team, including the Ineos in a dramatic change of eight-years tactical approach, being ordered to infiltrate a breakaway. The first, hilly ½ hour of the race was covered at over 50-kph as riders bounced off the front left and right, no one able to gain more than 8” on the single-line, strung out field. In a sign of things to come, Hirschi, who was clearly ready for some fast riding, outfitted in to-the-UCI-limit high aerodynamic socks, long shorts that he kept pulling down to his knees (fabric slips through the air faster than skin) and a one-piece “skin suit”, escaped alone on the first climb, treating us to his mad descending skills before being absorbed by the raging peloton.
A group finally emerged from the field on the Col de la Hourcère, 11.1-k long at an average of 8.8%. Hirschi bridged alone to the break, went right to the front, and simply rode them all right off his wheel. After another breath-taking descent – Hirschi is managed by Fabian Cancellara who knows a thing or two about going downhill – the Swiss had 4:15 on the peloton and treating us to 90-kilometers of the most engaging solo breakaways in memory.
Former World and European U-23 Road ChampionHirschi is most interesting to watch with his track racing honed style and focus on aerodynamics. His pedal cadence alternated on the climbs, seeming to use a high, 95 – 105 rpm to gain time, then going to a larger gear and slowing to 85 rpm or so for periods to maintain the speed. He puts his hands out in front of the handlebars to mimic a time trial position, whenever possible it seems, one hand on the bike computer and the other poised on top, his arms making a V-shape like a downhill skier. It all looks quite studied and with Cervèlo, inventers of the areo road bike concept and a brand always on the cutting edge of research, as his Team Sunweb’s partner, the intense focus on speed makes complete sense.
Hirschi would hold steady on the climbs and take chunks of time out on every downhill, but the Jumbo-Visma led field would only allow him so much daylight as the Yellow Jersey, Primož Roglič, has built his entire lead on the likes of Egan Bernal due to the time bonuses awarded at the tops of final climbs and finish lines. A war broke out between the favorites on that final col de Marie Blanque, where Tadej Pogacâr continued to make up for time lost in the cross winds by launching attack after attack, joined in the action by a revived Egan Bernal, their efforts pulling Roglič and another cross-wind victim, Mikel Landa, 11” away from Quintana – probably regretting his showy efforts of Saturday – and the rest of the contenders. After Roglič and Pogacâr almost knocked one another down sprinting for the mountain-top bonus, the quartet was only 20” behind Hirschi with 18-k to the finish. Hirschi again took time out on the infamous descent of that mountain, but with Quintana dropped, the group roared towards the finish. An incredible tension built as Hirschi, hands in the TT position and with the quartet closing in, had to make a decision: go with everything to the end and hope against hope to still win or change tactic? I’ve actually never seen this before but the Swiss sat up with a kilometer to go, allowed himself to be caught, went to the back of the group and tightened up his shoes ready to turn back into a track racer and play the sprint game. He almost pulled it off, going about 50-meters too early before his legs folded, Pogacâr whipped around to win, taking the 10” time bonus moving back up from 16th to 7th overall, exactly halving his time deficit to 44” in two, astounding days of mountain racing.
Today the Tour rests, they need it, because tomorrow’s race of the two lslands, Ile d’Oléron to Ile de Ré along the Atlantic coast, flat as a pancake, in fact the only stage of this Tour without a categorized climb, could turn echelon-deadly if the western wind blows. Forecasts are calling for a benign day of soft winds so perhaps a rare day for the pure sprinters and a chance for those really hurt after the brutal nine-days of racing so far, to get their legs back together again.