Voeckler Comes of Age

Former French champion Voeckler is getting used to standing on the podium. Photo: Petit Brun

I mentioned in my preview to the Tour de France that the French had been searching for a real GC contender since Laurent Jalabert won the Vuelta a Espana back in 1995. Well it seems they had simply been looking in the wrong place for the last seven years since a 25yr old Thomas Voeckler surprised everyone by hanging on to the Maillot jaune for ten days in the 2004 Tour before relinquishing it to eventual winner Lance Armstrong.

Voeckler (or Voikla if your name’s Phil Liggett) has climbed with the best in the world to get through three gruelling Pyrenean mountain stages, not to mention safely negotiating three tricky flat stages to keep hold of the yellow jersey he took from Thor Hushovd going into the first rest day last week. Most ‘experts’ were predicting that ‘little Tommy’ would surrender the jersey on the first high mountain stage but that wasn’t to be and he further confounded those so called experts by holding on to the jersey with aggressive riding, not just sucking wheels to drag him up the mountains whilst limiting his losses.

Stage 10

Cav loses! Yes the Manx missile is human, former teammate Andre Greipel beat the diminutive HTC rider into second by the slimmest of margins. It took what Cavendish admitted to be a ‘perfect sprint’ to beat him, Cav was not happy at losing having been set up so perfectly once again by his reliable team but conceded that Greipel was the better man on the day. Greipel’s teammate and Cavendish’s main rival for the green jersey, Philippe Gilbert, knowing that he can’t beat Cavendish in a bunch sprint, attacked off the front of the peloton in the closing kilometres. It was a suicide mission though and the peloton swallowed him up leaving the Belgian to come in 15th and lose a large chunk of points to Cavendish.

Yellow – Voeckler, Green –  Gilbert, KoM – Hoogerland

Stage 11

Revenge didn’t take long to be served up by Cavendish and his bunch of merry men, the pouring rain ensured it was definitely served cold as well. The stage into Carmaux was drenched by a torrential downpour but the gun-barrel straight approach to the finish line left Cav’s rivals surfing his bow-wave as he rode away from the field to bag his 18th Tour de France victory and 3rd of this year’s edition. Greipel was a distant 2nd and Gilbert a lowly 66th, so 45 points for the win added to the 4 he’d taken from the Belgian in the intermediate sprint gave Cavendish the green jersey in le Tour for the 1st time since 2009. On the podium he kissed the jersey and was still grinning when he walked off the podium to speak to ITV’s Ned Boulting, telling the reporter ‘Green suits me doesn’t it?’.

Yellow – Voeckler, Green – Cavendish, KoM – Hoogerland

Greipel has been receiving more of the limelight since his move away from HTC. Photo: kei-ai

Stage 12

The first high mountains of the Tour were tackled here and there were two brutes to contend with, after dealing with the 1st category Hourquette d’Ancizan the riders were faced with the Col du Tourmalet and then a race to the summit at Luz Ardiden. Without Wiggins it was feared that British interest would fade as the roads turned upwards but Geraint Thomas had other ideas as he got himself into the day’s breakaway and summited the Tourmalet in second place before being swallowed up and spat out by the GC contenders on the day’s final climb. Olympic road race champion Samuel Sanchez took the stage win ahead of Belgian new boy Jelle Vanendert, Frank Schleck looked the stronger of the brothers as he rode away from a group containing his brother, Evans and Basso in the final kilometres. The story of the day though was defending champion Alberto Contador being dropped by the lead group and losing further time to his rivals. The yellow jersey rolled in shortly after and maintained his time gap over second place with a defiant display of climbing that few had predicted.

Yellow – Voeckler, Green – Cavendish, KoM – Sanchez

Stage 13

A slightly easier stage the next day; only three categorised climbs, although one of them was the giant Col d’Aubisque, and a flat finish meant that the big boys were less likely to come out and play and a breakaway had a good chance at success. The breakaway was a large one, ten riders got clear after the first climb including world champion Thor Hushovd and the two Frenchmen Jeremy Roy and David Moncoutie. Roy attacked with 50km to go and built up an advantage over the splintered chasing pack but Hushovd wasn’t going to let the Frenchman away that easily. The Norwegian descended the Col d’Aubisque like a madman, hitting a top speed of 112kph, he eventually caught up with Moncoutie but the Cofidis rider was reluctant to help him chase down Roy and deprive the French public of a stage win. It was left for Hushovd to do all the chasing and he eventually caught Roy with just 2km remaining and rode straight by him to claim his most famous Tour stage win yet.

Yellow – Voeckler, Green – Cavendish, KoM – Roy

Stage 14

Voeckler had got this far in the yellow jersey but this really was the day he was expected to give it up to a real contender. A punishing day in the saddle saw the field climb over five mountain passes before facing the 15km long drag up to Plateau de Beille for a summit finish expected to provide some fireworks in the battle for yellow. The fireworks never really came though, the day’s breakaway was overtaken on the final climb and the main contenders seemed happy to mark each other as Sammy Sanchez and Jelle Vanendert rode away from them to the finish line again. It was Vanendert who emerged victorious this time but Sanchez pulled further time back on the rest of the field after his nightmare first week. The attacks in the yellow jersey group were all coming from Schleck the younger today with the odd spurt from Basso and Voeckler to test the legs of those surrounding them but no-one seemed to have the legs to put the hammer down and ride away from the group. The attacks were covered by Evans and eventually Contador but it was clear to see that Contador was simply trying to survive the Pyrenees in the hope that his ailments will have eased and he can attack hard in the Alps.

Yellow – Voeckler, Green – Cavendish, KoM – Vanendert

Stage 15

The final flat stage before Paris offered the sprinters one last shot at glory before facing up to the high Alps next week. It also presented the last real chance for Cavendish to build up a buffer of points over Gilbert and Rojas to take into the final sprint on the Champs-Elysees. Never one to miss an opportunity that’s exactly what Cav did, finishing ahead of both his rivals in the intermediate sprint and beating Farrar by a wheel on the finish line with Rojas back in 5th and Gilbert nowhere to be seen. The win boosted Cavendish’s advantage to 37 and 71 points over the Spaniard and Belgian respectively. Gilbert had once again attacked with 3km to go but with men from Sky, Garmin and HTC all working on the front of the peloton the attack was doomed and Mark Renshaw once again gave the perfect lead-out for Cavendish to do his thing and claim his 19th win in the Tour de France in 4 years.

Yellow – Voeckler, Green – Cavendish, KoM – Vanendert

Stars of the Week

Thor Hushovd is racing like a true champion in the Rainbow Jersey. Photo: richardmasoner

Thomas Voeckler – Held on to the yellow jersey against all odds, repeating his heroics of 2004 on the Plateau de Beille to finish the week with the same lead as he started it with. It’s not only the French who are now considering him to be a real contender, he leads both Schlecks and Evans by around two minutes, Basso by three and Contador by four. No his time-trialling isn’t brilliant but should he survive the Alps and still be in yellow then the chasing group aren’t necessarily the best time-triallers in the field either and the yellow jersey on a Frenchman’s back can make him do strange things.

Mark Cavendish – Won another two stages and should he make it over the Alps has more than a good chance of reaching Paris with his beloved green jersey on his back. A Brit has never won the points jersey in the Tour before so should he do it next weekend he would cement his place as a true great of British sport.

Thor Hushovd – Did the rainbow jersey of the world champion proud with a stunning stage victory, the former sprinter and two-time green jersey winner seems to have transformed himself into somewhat of a climber as he won in the Pyrenees.

Jeremy Roy – Present in most of the breakaways of the week, held the polka dot jersey for a day and was within touching distance of a stage win only for that big Norwegian to steal it at the last-minute.

Jelle Vanendert & Samuel Sanchez – When all around them seemed content with marking each others accelerations these two threw down the gauntlet and rode away from the pack to occupy the top two positions on both of the summit finishes in the Pyrenees.

Philippe Gilbert – May not have replicated the heroics of his early season and first week of the Tour but his aggressive riding style is entertaining to watch and it’s been a long time since a green jersey contender has flirted with the top 50 overall (he’s currently 28th).

Coming Up

The big boys can’t hide for much longer and if they want to take the yellow jersey off Voeckler’s shoulders then they’ll have to start riding like they mean business. Two more summit finishes are in store for the riders in the Alps as they climb above 2000m for the first time this year. The Galibier and Alpe d’Huez will give the opportunity for plenty of attacking riding and for those that have less confidence in their time-trialling ability will be the launch pad for their attack on the yellow jersey.

Cavendish seemingly just has to make it through the Alps (not an easy task by any means) to win Green, Gilbert will have to attack on both stages 16 and 17 if he is to stand any chance of clawing back those lost points and overtaking Cav before Paris.

The KoM competition seems to be between Sanchez and Vanendert now and they are only separated by two points. Both will fancy their chances of taking the prize but maybe Vanendert is the slight favourite as he is further back in the GC standings so will be let go more readily by the field than Sanchez.

Finally it was nice to see a week pass with fewer major crashes and less abandonments, and Kolobnev’s positive test is still the only one so far so that bodes well for the future reputation of the race.

One last thing, the Tour always provides some of the most photogenic sporting action of the year and this gallery illustrates just that: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/07/2011_tour_de_france_part_1.html

Photos: Voeckler – Petit Brun, Greipel – Kei-ai, Hushovd – richardmasoner

The Long Road To Paris

Have you ever ridden a bike for 180 km in a single day? Ever woken up the next day and, with your legs screaming in agony thought ‘that was fun, let’s do it again’? Ever done this for three weeks straight over some of the toughest mountain passes in Europe? Didn’t think so, but this is the challenge facing the world’s elite road cyclists in the coming weeks.

The Champs Elysees shuts down every Summer for the climax of Le Tour. Photo: sacratomato_hr

Yes it’s Tour de France time, the biggest bike race in the world is commonly referred to as simply ‘The Tour’. There are numerous other stage races called a tour of somewhere; Tour de Suisse, Tour of Britain, Tour Down Under, Tour of California to name just a few, but there is only one Tour. It captures the attention of the world like no other cycling event, the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana may pose equally daunting physical challenges over their three-week durations but the intensity and desire to succeed of every rider taking part makes the Tour something special. For team sponsors it’s time to reap the rewards of the investment they make to fund their team all season long. The riders themselves are aware of this and have been known to launch solo attacks and get into breakaways purely to get their team sponsor some more airtime, such is the focus of attention on this race. It is easy to spot a first-time stage winner in a major race as, providing time permits, an experienced pro will do up their jersey after a long day in the saddle several hundred metres before the finish line just to make sure the sponsors logo is fully visible as they cross the line, arms aloft with a thousand camera lenses trained on them. Those first-time winners are often naive and so caught up in the momentous, life-changing occasion that they can forget their professional duties and cross the line with their jersey half unzipped and all the photographers capture is the rider’s sweat soaked vest clinging to their emaciated rib-cage.

It is a mark of how much the Tour means to every rider that just finishing the grueling ordeal is enough for many. Getting to the finish line on the Champs-Elysees is the personal goal for all but the chosen few at the start of the race. Some will target a stage win, some will have their eyes on taking home a jersey come Paris but most are there to work for their team leader, set a pace, fetch water and protect them from the inevitable bumps and scrapes of racing in such a large peloton. There will be the odd breakaway that will be successful though, and a formerly unheralded domestique can write their name into the record books. Mark Cavendish, the 15-time Tour stage winner, repeatedly states that he would be happy with one stage win every year as a single stage win in the Tour can make a cyclist’s career. Magnus Backstedt, the Swedish giant of a man tells a story of how, having just signed a single year contract with Chris Boardman’s Credit Agricole team he won the 19th stage of the 1998 Tour. That evening he was sitting down with the team’s sporting director who ripped up Backstedt’s current contract and handed him a new two-year deal with an improved salary – that is what the Tour means to teams and riders alike.

This year’s edition, the 98th running of the event, gets started on Saturday on France’s Atlantic coast in the Vendee region, so clear skies and energy sapping sun are almost guaranteed to wave the riders off as they embark on their 3000+ km anti-clockwise journey around the roads of France. The anti-clockwise nature sees the riders tackle the Pyrenees first and with two of the three high mountain stages ending with summit finishes they will give an early opportunity for the general classification (GC) contenders to separate themselves from the rest of the peloton. The Alps then follow in the final week and with the Col du Galibier being climbed twice in 24hrs to mark 100 yrs since it was first climbed in the Tour, it really is a climber’s route this year. Summit finishes on the top of the Galibier and the iconic Alpe-d’Huez will no doubt be fought out by race favourites Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck, but can anyone get near the top two from the past two Tours?

For many the attraction to the Tour de France is watching others suffer, Mark Renshaw knows all about suffering on a bike. Photo: GeS

My guess would be no, the battle for the final podium spot has been one of the most intriguing stories of the last two Tours though with Lance Armstrong edging out Britain’s own Bradley Wiggins in his breakout Tour of 2009 and Russian Denis Menchov managed to stay on his bike for long enough in 2010 to beat Sammy Sanchez on to the podium. Sanchez will be targeting the podium again along with a host of others, and with only 65.5 km of time-trialling to deal with this year and 23 of those being the team time-trial, it’s not unlikely that you’ll see a bunch of pure climbers fighting it out for that third step in Paris. That unfortunately would seem to eliminate Wiggins, who whilst appearing to be in spectacular form as his win in the Dauphine last month suggests, will always rely on his time-trialling prowess to build an advantage over the ‘mountain goats’ and then limit his losses when the roads start to point skywards.

Where else to look for action this year:

Team Time-Trial – many a team will be eyeing up the 23 km second stage as a chance to get themselves some glory, and a good shot at the yellow jersey to boot. Team Sky have made no secret of their desire to attack every stage this year and will see it as an ideal opportunity for their first yellow jersey in their sophomore year. They’ll face stiff competition though from HTC-High Road, Garmin-Cervelo, the Schleck’s newly formed Leopard-Trek outfit and the Contador-led Saxo Bank. The Schleck’s and Contador will be less worried about being in yellow during the first week as they’ll see it as more of a burden on the team than anything, but they won’t want the likes of Wiggins or HTC’s Tony Martin gaining too much of an advantage too early.

Green Jersey – Last year’s winner Alessandro Petacchi is present again, as are controversial Belgian Tom Boonen, 2005 and 2009 winner Thor Hushovd and Manxman Mark Cavendish. The four of them will all slug it out for the points jersey. Adjustments have been made to the intermediate sprints this year with only one per stage, but with more points on offer Cavendish has already said he will have to divert from his previously unsuccessful game-plan of focussing solely on stage victories to win green. Cavendish has had another slow start to the season but two stage victories in May’s Giro gave him a boost and plenty of training miles were got into the legs during the Tour de Suisse so he should be able to pick up more than his prerequisite one victory again this year. There aren’t many flat sprints this year though so it does seem tailor-made for a big man such as Hushovd to emerge victorious again, but with four sprinters of such pedigree in the field it won’t be a walk in the park for any of them.

Individual Time Trial – It’s hard to look past the usual suspects of Fabian Cancellara, Bradley Wiggins, Alberto Contador, Tony Martin and David Millar for the penultimate stage. Millar and Wiggins have both got the better of four-time World time trial champion Cancellara this year but the man they call Spartacus always seems to perform on the big occasion so shouldn’t be written off.

King of the Mountains (KoM) – With two of the last three winners having had their title stripped due to doping irregularities it seems rather difficult to predict a winner this year, and for how long they will manage to keep hold of their title. Anthony Charteau was wearing the polka dot jersey in Paris last year after fighting all the way with compatriot Jerome Pineau, but it seems unlikely he’ll be able to repeat the trick for a second successive year. Gone are the days it seems of a KoM winner placing high in the GC as well, the tactics nowadays seem to be to breakaway early on in a stage, hoover up the points on the early climbs and then let the big boys pass you by on the final slope. With this in mind I wouldn’t like to put too much money on anyone this year but the French seem to have been targeting this jersey somewhat in the past couple of years as they try to bring back some pride to French cycling in the lack of a real GC contender.

Philippe Gilbert – Swept up in the Spring classics and with a tough first week not looking tailor-made for the usual sprint-fest then the Omega Pharma-Lotto rider could well be in with a chance of a stage to add to his three other Grand Tour victories in Italy and Spain.

My predictions:

Yellow Jersey – Contador to take it by around a minute from Schleck the younger, only to have this year’s and last year’s victories taken away from him when the Court of Arbitration for Sport hear the appeal for his drugs ban in August.

Mark Cavendish is fond of the colour green but has yet to make it to Paris with anything other than green sunglasses. Photo: RoxanneMK

Green Jersey – Yes I said it wasn’t built for Cavendish this year but I’m still going to go for him anyway, he’s acknowledged that he’ll have to change his approach this year and seems more determined than ever finally grab the green jersey to match his green sunglasses.

KoM Jersey – Not much more than a guess for this one but I’ll go for a Spaniard and David Arroyo in particular, not sure why just had to pick someone.

3rd Spot – With Andy Schleck pencilled in for second I’ll go for the returning Vinokourov to steal third, he finished 16th in support of Contador last year so with the full backing of his Kazakh team behind him he’ll be going all out this year.

Aside from all the inevitable talk around Contador’s ongoing doping saga I also think this will be a very clean Tour, and hopefully accident free given the couple of horrible incidents cycling has had to bear recently. Whatever happens though it is sure to be three weeks of pure theatre, set against the stunning backdrop of France’s imposing mountains and numerous châteaux.