Category Archives: Le Tour de France

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Yorkshire’s Grand Depart – Countdown commencement

A year from today, July 5th 2014, the Tour de France will roll out from Leeds – it’s most Northerly, and perhaps least likely starting point ever. Last December Yorkshire won the bid to host the 2014 Grand Depart, beating competition from much more apparently obvious choices such as Florence, Berlin and Barcelona (as well as the less immediately obvious choice of Venice…. Hello? Canals?). Succesfully riding the tide of the success of Cav & Brad, and by skilfully tapping the burgeoning public enthusiasm for road cycling that bloomed during the London Grand Depart in 2007 and then again for the 2012 Olympics, Yorkshire played their bid to their particular strengths and are now beginning the execution of a critical 12 months worth of awareness and opportunity building in order to make the very most of the Tour’s short time in their hands. 

YORKSHIRE TOUR

The Route

Yorkshire’s initial bid had suggested that the Tour would spend three full days in England’s largest county. However, once the route (decided by the Tours French owners ASO) was confirmed a couple of months after the bid win, Yorkshire was left with Stages 1 and 2, with Stage 3 located in the South, running from Cambridge to a central London finish. I was personally disappointed that the mooted third day was dropped in favour of London. There were suggestions that the route would include my home town of Hull and would cross the Humber Bridge – which I think would have been a great Tour image – but the two Stages they do have look to be absolute crackers.

Stage 1. Leeds to Harrogate. 

Leeds – Harewood – Otley – Ilkley – Skipton – Kettlewell – Aysgarth – Hawes – Reeth – Leyburn – Ripon – Harrogate

No prologue again next year and the first stage looks to be similar to this years in trying to set up a sprinter for the first Maillot Jaune. It’s a 190km looping course, initially striking out North-West from Leeds, taking in the open country of the Yorkshire Dales National Park before heading back close to the starting point in Harrogate. Cav’s mum lives around the corner to finish and he will be especially fired up after missing out on his chance to wear yellow this year.

Stage 2. York to Sheffield.

York – Knaresborough – Silsden – Keighley – Haworth – Hebden Bridge – Elland – Huddersfield – Holmfirth – Sheffield

The second stage has been described by Christian Prudhomme as being more like a Spring Classic and whilst a pure sprinter may be in yellow as they roll out of York to start the 200km anti-clockwise loop it’s unlikely he would be atop the podium come the days end. If Cav did grab the leader’s jersey on Day 1 there will be some memorable scenes as the route returns through Harrogate. Lingering shots of Cav’s mum waving out of her window as her yellow-clad son is allowed to lead the peloton through town perhaps.. The route then winds down through West Yorkshire across a sawtooth profile (including the brilliantly named Blubberhouses where my mother’s family trace their roots back to, and then Hebden Bridge where I lived out a memorably up-and-down year after university) before finishing in Sheffield on a small repeating circuit. Prudhomme has made comparisons between the Stage 2 route and Liege-Bastogne-Liege and he obviously feels that the puncheurs will be at the head of affairs through the last few kilometres.

The direction is clear. ASO want more, and more different, yellow jersey wearers in the first days of the race. They want to open out the leader’s spot to all rider styles and create greater spectacle from the off. In choosing challenging routes over more glamorous backdrops they seem keen to put the cycling, and not the spectacle, first. They believe, as should we all, that, given the right terrain and passionate hosts, that the spectacle will come naturally.

You can see maps and more info on the routes at Yorkshire’s website here.

I’ll be returning to the Grand Depart regularly over the next year and looking a number of different aspects. Suggestions welcome.

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Tour de France – Day 4 roundup – Full Banana and Peas

So Corsica is done and La Grande Boucle is back on the mainland. Not that anyone should have cause to regret the three days offshore. We have been treated to sumptuous scenery, occaisonal high farce, and none too shabby racing.. Plus all the press pundits’ expectations and predictions have had to be tossed overboard on the ferry journey to Nice.. Nice. 

No wins for CVNDSH or Sagan. Kittel comes through the confusion and carnage to claim Stage 1. The breakaway’s breakaway  Bakelants holds off the raging horde for Stage 2. Orica Greenedge, having got all the headlines for all the wrong reasons on the opening day, come out of the shadows to sneak Stage 3 by the narrowest of margins. And then come out of even greater shadows to take the Stage 4 TTT and the Maillot Jaune. I’m not sure what the Aussie for ‘Chapeau’ is but they deserve it. With corks on. Meanwhile, Geraint Thomas, Tony Martin and Ted King keep the ‘Toughest Sport on the Planet’ flame alive whilst the whole peloton dodges loose dogs, dropped caps and very flimsy-looking final kilometres barriers. Even Chris Froome chucks out the pre-programming and has a quick pop off the front to show that improvisation is alive and well at Team Sky. Heady Days, my friends, Heady Days.

On the downside, we have been subjected to some of the most horrendous full kit abominations seen since Cipollini last hung up his zebra-hide skinsuit. I’m not just talking about the ongoing, season long horror shows that are the AG2R and Lampre kits – we have almost become inured to their awfulness – no, I’m talking about the modern penchant for leader’s jerseys to spread beyond the confines of the jersey itself onto the shorts, onto the helmet, onto the gloves, glasses, socks and even onto the fricking bikes themselves. The sight of Pierre Rolland yesterday, turning what was undeniably (according to me and my brother in the late 80’s anyway) the coolest looking jersey of all into what one enlightened viewer termed ‘an anorexic Mr Blobby’ definately took some stomaching. He did tone it down a little today but probably more through a lack of the requisite patterned aerosuit than through overnight aesthetic enlightenment. No so Jan Bakelants, who unashamedly went Full Banana today.

Jan Bakelants - Full Banana

Last year I was initially quite supportive of Wiggins’ relatively restrained co-opting of yellowness ‘beyond the jersey’ (for a long while just the glasses, then glimpses on the saddle, the internals of the forks and the belly of the downtube) but felt that even he was overdoing it come the final time trial at Chartres with the full fruity skinsuit. But no! Bakelants and Radioshack Trek have shown us that you can go one better than Wiggo, that you can go much deeper into the yellow – even if its only Day 4, you’ve never won a senior Pro race before and you are 98.54% certain not to be holding the jersey after the 26 minutes racing you will do today. Yes, go on Trek, crack out those yellow overshoes and really go to town. 

Maillot Jaune. Maillot Pois. Maillot Vert. 

The clue is in the title, lads. Calm down, eh?  

 

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It Begins.. Tour de France 2013 Preview

They say that “Good things come to those who wait.” 

And we have waited. Oh yes, we’ve waited. We’ve waited through the Olympics, through the Vuelta, through the off season and then we’ve waited some more through the Tours of Down Under, Qatar and Oman. We’ve waited through the Classics and the Giro – though they were much more diverting than the previous waiting – and through the build-up skirmishes of Trentino, Romandie and the Dauphine.. And now it’s here. The Tour de France starts this weekend.

If you are going to have to ‘wait’ for a major sporting event, then the Tour is actually pretty accommodating. Unlike the aforementioned Olympics or most of the sporting World Cups it’s annual instead of being as regular as a Leap Year or a Presidential Election. Add to this the fact that, with its three week duration, it’s really only 49 weeks since we last stood shouting ourselves hoarse on the Champs Élysées, and that from now we will be fully occupied with it for the better part of a month, and suddenly it becomes a very generous sport for its followers. It’s free to watch from the roadside if you are in the vicinity of the parcours, or there is extensive live and recorded coverage for those who are not. The individual daily dramas for sprint and stage played out in balance against the long term struggles for overall victory. The never-ending sideshow politics of ethical, technical and moral debate raging in the vast press rooms set up just yards from the finish line. To call it a sport worthy of Shakespeare would not be too far out of line.

—–Act I.

Our scene opens in a Corsican port. The young prince Froome watches as the fleet of the old King, Sir Lord Wiggins of Kilburn, Lancashire & Tenerife, is lost in a series of Italian storms, and he laments to his trusted lieutenants the burden which now falls to him.

“By all that we hold good and true, – yes, Lord Porte, by my very power-meter – I shall don the yellow cloth come three weeks hence. Come now though, let us adjourn and keep our purpose hid until the road doth ascend to the very Gods.” He and his lieutenants form a long single-file line and they exit stage right (at race tempo).

The Counts of Sagan and CVNDSH enter. Sagan is flanked by the Merry Podium Girls and wheelie’ing. CVNDSH is alone, though he carries engravings of Lord Eisel and Lord Renshaw. They spend the next 5 scenes squabbling over who should be wearing yellow and green. Sagan flees to France winning both but lets CVNDSH wear green so that he looks even more jealous. They fight until they reach the mountains at which point Sagan exits, stage left, wheelie’ing, pursued by a bear. And the Podium girls. CVNDSH remains, wearing his reading glasses, giving gravely serious interviews to the Gentlemen of the Press, who risk his ire by only asking him questions about what has he done with his vowels.

Act II & Act III to follow as the Tour progresses.—–

Yes, we have waited. And yes, it will be good. It’s a shame that Wiggins won’t be there. I think the Century edition of the Tour will be poorer for not having the defending champion on the start line, and that Sky and Froome will be worse off for not having his engine in the team. I’m not surprised though – the tension between the pair looked to have become unmanageable and was clearly in danger of splitting the team cohesion that Sky are so reliant on. It will be very interesting to read David Walsh’s take on all this in due course. He has been embedded with the team for a couple of months and must be best placed to tell the real story.

I’m really looking forward to the Ventoux stage on Bastille Day and also the double ascent of Alpe d’Huez four days later. I think we will see a lot more chaotic race for GC this year than the semi-processional run of last year and I don’t quite see Froome as the clear favourite that the bookies make him. It’s not that I doubt his ability to win it, I just think that there will be more twists and turns this year and that it will be a titanic to and fro struggle between him and whoever emerges as his his closest rival. Which, in spite of Wiggins’ absence, could conceivably still be his own teammate. I definitely think we are in for a classic… Something much more than worthy of the wait.