A 70-kph Brawl

Again, I’m finding myself in the - probably - unpopular position of defending Jasper Philipsen, who became the 82nd winner of the prestigious stage into Bordeaux, the first finish there since 2010. As per tradition, a Sprint Royale was inevitable at the end of the flat transitional stage and with 20-km to go the sprinter trains were getting set up for war. Two brave French breakaway artists, Nan Pieters and Pierre Latour were putting a good fight in front, their full-on efforts making for excellent TV, but in the end there was no chance as the peloton raged at 60-kpn+ along the Garrone River past the beautiful châteaux surrounded by their coveted vineyards.

 The Alpecin-Deceunink team have been perfecting their lead-out train all year and the fruits of that labor have been on clear display this Tour. It is an incredible team, beginning with the powerful Dane, Soren Kragh Andersen - a double Tour stage winner in his own right - who keeps Philipsen protected until the train is ready to be launched. The team took full control with 2.5-km to go when Ramon Sinkeldam strung out the field into a single line, snaking through sweeping turns of the approach to the finish. Once spent, Jonas Rinckaert took over, there was a bit of a lull that allowed the other teams to come up before he re-accelerated to 1-km to go opening up the Mathieu van der Poel show. VdP started sprinting, completely asphyxiating his rival lead-out men, dropping Philipsen off on the left side at 300-meters to the line. Mark Cavendish, the last winner in Bordeaux in 2010, exploded down the right side of the road at 70-kph, the fastest recorded speed of the day.  Eritrea’s Biniam Girmay, in the chance of his career, was on Cav’s wheel. Philipsen dove right, aiming for the Manx Missile’s slipstream. Girmay, and here’s the rub, was letting a gap open between himself and Cav, he was being dropped in full sprint - which was all Philipsen needed. He forced himself into the gap, Girmay was a bit off balance and bounced a bit on the side boards, but it was already over for him, the Eritrean had lost his moment. Philipsen and his team had ridden the sprint from the front. The Belgian won because he has the best team and he is the fastest sprinter. There was no fault committed: this was professional road sprinting at its best.

Nicolas Roche, whom I find a superb analyst, put it well the other day when he pointed out, in his discreet Irish manner, that the nice-guy personalities and lovely, happy images one sees of the racers on their social media feeds are not quite accurate. These guys play for keeps. I find a good analogy for sprinting can be found in baseball. Pitchers will throw right at the head of a batter who they feel is ‘crowding the plate’: the batter trying to force the pitcher to throw outside rather than inside the plate which is better for the batter.  It becomes a battle of wills, and if the pitchers find that they can back the batter off once, if they can spook him, why then they’ll do it every time. It’s the same in sprinting, a matter of wills, of intimidation and the of willingness to fight back. There is no way to sugarcoat it. Think of the Netflix F1 series (and not that disaster they did on the Tour - sorry but I found it unwatchable) and how cutthroat Max Verstappen is. He would have made a fine sprinter. That’s who and how they are. And just like the F1 pilots, the great ones - and we can now put Philipsen in that category -know exactly how far to push it, right to the very limits. Which is why we watch them.

A note on Mark Cavendish: you could see something was wrong with his machine in the sprint. There was a hitch, he sat down at an odd moment, and he lost a sprint he might have won. If you don’t know, his gears started jumping back and forth between the 11 and 12 cogs at 70-kph.

The “Mozart of the 11-cog” as the French term him, didn’t repeat in Bordeaux, didn’t break Eddy Merckx’s record. However, he’s been 6th then 5th and now 2nd with a faulty bike. Remember, he won the final stage of the Giro after having been written off. There’s more to come from the all-time great.