There is only one big cycling news story today.. Even if Tony Martin somehow manages to muck up the Men’s ITT over at the World’s in Ponferrada, the screaming headline of le jour is that Giant Shimano – home of one Marcel Kittel – is teaming up with a turbo-charged German shampoo company next year and will be known as Giant Alpecin. It truly is a match made in Hair Heaven.
Apologies for lack of pictures this week but I’m writing this on the road (rail actually). Will add some later.
For a week which included what is being widely touted at the “Most Boring Grand Tour Stage in the History of the World. Ever”, we’ve actually been treated to a hugely enjoyable set of races in the last seven days. We’ve had high’s, lows, slows and blows as the race has taken a more solid formation ahead of the final week.
First up was the ‘up and down’ Individual Time Trial that saw race leader Nairo Quintana crash in spectacular fashion. After cresting the mid-point climb he began adjusting his rather unique, shin height overshoes as he picked up speed on the downhill. Whether it was taking his eyes off the road for a moment is uncertain but he took the wrong line into a corner and a worse one out of it and met the roadside barrier with sickening force. The cameras initially picked him lying flat on his back and the thought was his race was over. He managed to get up and finish some three minutes down and, though I had said that the Vuelta would not end in smiles for one of Quintana and Valverde, this was not what I had envisaged. Worse was to come though for the Giro champion the following day when he would be involved in an early mid-peloton tumble and suffer a similar fate to Froome and Contador did in the Tour. He climbed into an ambulance and was spirited away for an operation on a broken shoulder.
The expected TT charge by Chris Froome failed to materialise, lending more weight to the theory that he is not riding at 100%, with the Team Sky leader coming home way down in 11th place, beaten by people including his team mate Vasily Kiryienka. Tony Martin (OPQS) won of course but a great ride by Alberto Contador put him into the race lead and a surprising second overall for Rigoberto Uran (OPQS) suggested that he would be a force to be reckoned with as the race headed towards the mountains of the North.
The Stage 11 summit finish was won by Italian youngster Fabian Aru (AST) but the real talking point was what had gone on behind the main bunch of GC contenders rather than off the front. TeamSky had approached the final climb with their standard operating procedure of high tempo, massed ranks pulling hard. Only difference today was that Froome was off the back and apparently falling away. As the gap increased it became apparent that, unable to follow the initial attacks, he was riding his own race and hoping that an even tempo would get him to the top in roughly the same time. Time and time again he slowly reeled the leaders in, only to be distanced again. With what looked like a race-defining effort he caught them once more and finished alongside them.
Then we had the aforementioned stage from hell. A purgatorius eight-lap circumnavigation of a town called Logorno. It wasn’t so much a case that John Degenkolb (GIA) won but that everyone else, including the viewers, lost..
The following day the Vuelta organisers took everyone to the zoo – presumably to make amends for the boring city tour of the day before. I’m surprised that the riders weren’t given an ice-cream each as well to appease them a little more. With a sharp climb right at the end of the stage, which finished in a nature reserve complete with elephants and (hopefully caged) lions and tigers and bears, it looked like the kind of profile that would suit Dan Martin or Alejandro Valverde. Valverde did manage fourth on the stage and Martin ninth with the same time but Spaniard Daniel Navarro, riding for the French Cofidis team took the win with a well timed attack. Most of the GC contenders had held station, knowing that there were tougher days coming ahead. Three massive mountain days beckoned and the stunning Asturian outcrops provided the rocky background against which the riders would have to smash themselves.
Stage 14 to Le Camperona saw a repeat of the Chris Froome tempo show. Again he was left, apparently for dead, on the lower reaches of the incredibly steep Vallee de Sabeo climb and again he arose, Lazarus-like, to come back to the fore in the latter stages. Indeed he broke away in the final metres to eek a few seconds over Contador, Valverde and Rodriguez, who were all consolidating their top four places. Froome had been moving up place by place and now lay third as Uran shipped time on the first of a number of bad days. Ryder Hesjedal (GRS) won the stage from the break, either heartbreakingly overtaking Oliver Zaugg (TKS) just 100m from the line, or expertly judging his effort depending on your point of view.
By now it was clear that Froome’s antics were a pre-defined tactic; designed to limit his underprepared body from debilitating effort and to allow him to race himself into fitness and form whilst maintaining a strong GC position. The tactic was again on show in the second of the three mountain stages of this middle week, though with slightly less success than the days before, Again he hung back as Contador, Valverde and Rodriguez forged ahead and again he came back to them in the final kilometre of the famed Covadonga climb. Contador had repeatedly looked back for him throughout the climb, using every switchback to measure the distance between himself and the dogged Team SKy rider, making it obvious he views Froome as his main rival and threat. But this time the three Spaniards had the measure of the Briton and a Valverde attack a couple of hundred metres from the line – after he had contributed his usual little to the pacemaking – won him 5 seconds over Contador and a second place bonus whilst it cost Froome 7 seconds over the race leader when he couldn’t match the finishing pace. Przemyslaw Niemiec (LAM) just held out for the win, giving Lampre a second stage win of the Vuelta.
And so dawned the Queen Stage. Contador leading Valverde by 31seconds, and both Froome and Rodriguez by 1:20. The race winner would certainly now come form these four men and probably the podium too. Aru lay a distant 5th at 2.22.. I had thought that this would be the day for Froome to attack the Possum/Phoenix tactics of the week were becoming played out and his strength and confidence were visibly growing. Pundits were noting that there seemed to be no love lost between the three Spaniards and that there was none of the collusion that the race has seen in the past. With four Cat 1 climbs (including the summit finish) and a Cat 2 in a short 150km stage it seemed certain that the pattern would have to change. Again Team Sky drilled to the front on the approach but this time Froome was firmly in position and attacked a good 5km out. Only Contador could go with him and the pair raced up the climb, quickly mopping up the breakaway riders and look to contest the stage win. Contador never looked in trouble but the question remained whether Froome would have a second kick. When Contador attacked in the final kilometre it was obvious that the answer was no but he stayed well clear of the chasers to end within three seconds of Valverde’s second place.
We’ve seen a different side of Chris Froome this week. We should know that he is a fighter, a sufferer, a grinder when it is needed. He has not really had the chance to show it to date. If he wins this Vuelta – and I’m afraid I don’t think he can overcome Contador from here – it could just stand the test of time to be his greatest of his career.
In other Vuelta news we had worrying reports and sights of riders plunging over the edges of steep descents. Whilst Quintana luckily managed to stay on the Tarmac side during his acrobatic brush with barrier, Garmin’s Dan Martin and Movistar’s Jose Herrada both had to extricate themselves from the trees during treacherous descents. Both were able to continue with Martin coming in not far off the leaders. Not so Uran, who completed a miserable post TT week with a 15minute plus deficit on Stage 16 alone.
Not able to complete Stage 16 were Tinkoff’s Ivan Rovny and OPQS’s Gianluca Brambilla who brushed with each other on stage 16. The pair exchanged blows during the latter stages and as Brambilla went ahead in the break he was summarily ejected from the race by the commissars who, in the certainty that they would have done so after the stage, were worried that he would have a major bearing on the days outcome. Rovny was then subjected to the same public ejection in order to balance the books.
Fighting in the peloton has a long and varied history – we saw some quality ‘handbags’ earlier in the year and there was a bit and to and fro between Niki Terpstra and Maarten Wynants in the Eneco Tour – but it is usually confined to a bit of elbowing/head butting/bottle throwing by the more het up of the sprinters. Hearing the following day Phillip Deignan accuse Joaquin Rodriguez of a similar full faced punch is worrying. As yet no action has been taken against the Spaniard who seems to have escaped by dint of being not caught on camera.
The final week lies now lies ahead of us with a massive pair of cycling shoes to fill. It’s not in Froome’s nature to settle for second – we know that all too well – but can he really take the fight to Contador and give us that dream showpiece – the final day Time Trial upset – that we foresaw before the race began??
The 2014 Vuelta could have got off to a real ‘flying start’ if the organisers had had the sense to switch the Prologue Team Time Trial with the showpiece Stage 3 beginning – which took place on the deck of the Spanish aircraft carrier LHD ‘Juan Carlos I’. Despite this obviously missed opportunity the Grand Tour’s take-off salvo was reasonably impressive none-the-less as local lads Movistar jetted across the 12.6km course in the best time and Cannondale upset the expected order by coming in second ahead of more favoured teams such as Orica-Greenedge and Team Sky, who suffered yet another ignominous day in the saddle to only manage 11th.
Stage 3’s village départ was fairly spectacular.
There aren’t many pro-riders out there with a catchphrase. There are nicknames aplenty and a select few coureurs have a trademark winning celebration. There are also those whose on-the-record words have come back to haunt them in later years but if you are looking for a rider who can be totally summed up by something he once said, look no further than the man who has just retired after 16 years of no-holds-barred, never say die racing, whose inward rallying call became outward shorthand for his whole outlook on life. For most cycling fans you don’t need to say Jens Voigt. Like him you just say, “Shut Up Legs”.
The Vuelta a España starts this weekend. Normally relegated to a fairly distant gruppetto in terms of importance compared to the peloton of the Tour de France and the breakaway of the early season Giro d’Italia, events have conspired this year to elevate the last Grand Tour of the year to give it a much higher profile than normal.
It’s often said that one man’s loss is another man’s gain. That’s certainly been true for the Vuelta organisers and sponsors this year whose collective hands must have been worn smooth with all the gleeful rubbing that has been going on since late Spring. Nairo Quintana’s decision to target the Giro and Vuelta had already brought some joy to the race but a series of crashes and withdrawals across May and July has raised the stock enormously of the peloton who will set off on Saturday evening’s pan-flat Team Time Trial in Jerez.
Unexpected additions to the startlist include Chris Froome, Alberto Contador and Dan Martin; all of whom crashed out of Grand Tours earlier in the season. Expectation that Contador would not be able to recover from his Tour de France injury in time was high but the recent news is that he will take part, making a new Quintana-Froome-Contador face-off a reality. Add in Rigoberto Uran, Cadel Evans, Joaquin Rodriguez, Peter Sagan, Thibault Pinot and Quintana’s teammate Alejandro Valverde and the field is the strongest for many, many years.
Each new adjustment to the affected riders’ racing programme has added another unexpected element to the Vuelta roster, and raised the stock of the race over the past few weeks and months. It has been like enjoying a tapas-style meal where new delights are continually introduced as the meal goes on. Unlike the staid statement of á la carte dining, this quintessentially Spanish style of dining is continually surprising and exciting – just as we hope the racing will be.
Traversing Spain from South to North in a roughly counter-clockwise arc, the Vuelta routing looks remarkably similar to the Tour’s downward curve by omitting the entirety of the western part of the country. It’s an ‘easier’ Vuelta than the mountain-fests of recent years and the main Pyrenean stages come at the end of the second week with 3 stages over Saturday 6th, Sunday 7th and Monday 8th September. The 8th is a public holiday in the local Asturius region so the second rest day will be held on the Tuesday leaving just two further mountainous stages in the final week.
The biggest change though is that the final day is an Individual Time Trial. This is a major change for Grand Tour planning and harks back to the infamous finish in Paris in 1989 when Greg Lemond took over a minute out of of leader Laurent Fignon to win the Tour by just eight seconds, but also (less favourably) to the last Vuelta final day TT 10 years ago when Tyler Hamilton’s Phonak teammate Santiago Perez won two final week mountain stages and then the final Time Trial to get within 30seconds of overall winner Roberto Heras. Perez was later banned for testing positive for EPO in the race. The location for the final day has also been moved and the race will not finish in Madrid for the first time in many years, ending instead in Santiago de Compostela.
This is the first Vuelta run since ASO – the owners of the Tour de France – took over completely earlier year and one senses that they will use the Vuelta in future as a test bed for ideas as well as looking at ways of just re-invigorating the race. Time bonuses for the top three finishes in each stage (except time trials) are again a feature which adds extra spice to the denouement of each day’s riding. Chris Froome lost to Juan Cobo on time bonuses in 2011. He will not want to finish second in this way again and despite his time trialling proficiency will, I think, wish to stamp an authority on the race in order to regain some wavering respect.
Team Sky will be desperate to save a desperately poor season and have a very strong line-up in support of Froome. The Spanish contenders always go well in their home race and Dan Martin will be looking to rebuild the form he was showing earlier in the year. He will just be hoping that, unlike Dublin where he came a cropper in the Giro, it’s dry for this opening day Team Time Trial. Meanwhile Contador is currently playing down his chances, saying he will just be looking for a stage win in the last week if possible but we know that Tinkoff-Saxo can think on the fly and he will exploit any tactical weakness from the other main players.
We’ve already talked about one man’s loss being another man’s gain and the extra unexpected riders taking part in the race.. So who are the loser’s to our gain? Oddly enough Nairo Quintana heads this list by dint of being a red hot favourite who had suddenly had a host of fired-up, high-quality rivals suddenly parachuted down on top of him. One gets the feeling that this will not unduly bother the Colombian too much but until Froome and Contador started getting acquainted with the tarmac of Northern France he must have felt exceptionally confident about doing the Giro-Tour double. Whether he can achieve a double spike in form is yet to be seen (Nibali came up short on a similar race programme last year) but it’s certain that he will have to find that great form to win now whereas the feeling might have been that he could beat the opposition as less than full strength before. In his favour are two things – he has no need to prove anything else this season and he can shadow the leaders ‘in service of Valverde’ if he wishes to for the first couple of weeks.
Cycle style watcher alert! Dave Millar has been confirmed by the Garmin-Sharp team and will be riding his last Grand Tour. This will be only a small consolation to the Scot, who really wanted to take his curtain call on his beloved Champs Elysees. Fizik – his shoe sponsors – have had enough time since his TdF ommission to knock up something new for the Vuelta for his ongoing charity auction that has been running all year. These ones will benefit the World Wildlife Fund (a close affiliate of Garmin-Sharp ever since Dan Martin was chased by a panda costume wearing fan back in Liege-Bastogne-Liege in 2013) rather than his usual Small Steps Project, which aims to rescue children who have to survive by trawling rubbish dumps but Fizik suggest that David will be wearing a range of shoes throughout the Vuelta. Keep your eyes peeled.
Another notable shoe-wearer will also be lining up but his involvement was as about as sure a bet as one could hope for in sport. Adam Hansen of Lotto-Bellisol will be hoping to complete his own 3,181.5km pilgrimage to the sacred city of Santiago del Compostela to complete his 10th consecutive Grand Tour. Chapeau as always to the Aussie.
Chris Horner also deserves a mention. He is the reigning champion and was to wear the number 1 dossard but his last minute omission from the squad due to an illness causing his cortisol levels to fall below those required by a the Movement for Credible Cycling (MPCC), of which his Lampre-Merida team are a member, as yet another blow for the ill-fated veteran who missed the Giro due a training accident with a car.
Despite showing live coverage for the past couple of years ITV4 are only showing an evening highlights package this year, which, given the turn of events with the startlist, is a real shame. Perhaps it’s time to invest in the Eurosport Player app if you haven’t done so already to get the full experience. If you are not able to watch live, Blazin’ Saddles will be doing live daily updates on the Eurosport website and blogging about the race throughout. Always worth a few minutes of your day.
Prediction: Froome, Quintana, Uran.
One to watch: Fabio Aru shot into the limelight with his stage win and podium finish at the Giro. He comes to the Vuelta as Astana team leader and will want to grasp the chance with both hands.
Don’t miss: The final day time trial. History has shown us that anything could happen.
Hair got me into cycling. I know it sounds ridiculous – the leap from barnet(1) to bicycle is not an easy one to imagine – but it’s true. The ponytails of firstly Robert Millar and then, and more importantly, Laurent Fignon bewitched me more than any lofty mountain pass or low-profile time trial machine. Who were these sportsmen who exhibited such flair with their hair? It is said that the aero disadvantage of Fignon’s follicle affectation cost him the 1989 Tour, which he lost to the tousled golden locks of the American Greg Lemond by just eight seconds, but (and I realise that it would have been scant consolation to the distraught Frenchman) it won my undying admiration.
Fignon and on and on.
It’s the night before the Grand Départ and things are not looking too rosy in ‘God’s Own Country’. To use the local phrase, it is ‘siling down’ and the floodlights outside the Rapha HQ tent at Broughton Hall in Yorkshire are in danger of being extinguished by a deluge of fierce intensity. The rain is beating heavily on the plasticised canvas marquee, providing additional percussion to the Friday night beats being played by Rapha DJ’s Joey Hall and Festus. The throng of people inside are having a good time enjoying the tunes, the beer and the company but eyes keep flicking outside and you can feel minds wondering whether the name of the Tempest Festival will prove prophetic. I’m inside too, chatting to a couple of guys sitting at one of the long tables in the bar end of the tent. One notices my concern and leans in conspiratorially. “Don’t worry.” he says over the noise of the music. “I work as a trader in Amsterdam. I have to study the weather to make my bets. The sun will come out at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. I promise you.”
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When we look back at the 2014 Tour de France and debate the outcome a couple of things should be kept well to the front of the mind: Astana’s Vincenzo Nibali extended his lead over his rivals on every single significant stage. On the cobbles, in the Vosges on Bastille Day, in the Alps & Pyrenees and in the time trial. That fact alone should mark him out as a champion of some distinction. His win also completes his set of all three Grand Tours and allows him to join a select group of some of the greatest names in cycling. He won more road stages than any champion since Eddy Merckx, elevating the achievement further. The side-note that he did it in his national champions jersey will have pleased his home fans and cycling history aficionados in equal measure. He focused his season entirely on these two weeks and utterly dominated the race – appearing serene even when coolly dispatching the podium pretenders with stage winning attacks. The words ‘worthy champion’ should not even be being debated.
When I was a kid watching the Tour de France in the late Eighties, my rider allegiances often switched with whichever was my favourite jersey design. I would find myself supporting Renault one year, PDM the next, Z-Peugeot the year after that. As with football a few years earlier (and in the very same way as my young children today) I was something of a itinerant fan. I would pick a jersey, a haircut or a battle between two big stars and plump for one of them. The following year I could very well pick the other guy and have him as my favourite. This certainly happened in 1990 when my support switched from Laurent Fignon the year before to Lemond. Even though my football allegiance had very quickly solidified into one team over the others (mainly due to the fact I that I outgrew the Tottenham shirt – and the associated desire to be Steve Archibald – that I had been given and which caused much confusion in my Manchester-leaning mind) cycling remained ever thus. Unbiased. Unencumbered. Un-tribalised.
With so much focus in this country on the Grand Départ it has been hard at times to remember that there will be a further 18 days of racing after the world’s biggest cycling cavalcade leaves our shores. I have been as guilty of this as anyone by focussing my thoughts almost entirely on the opening two stages in Yorkshire and the Stage 3 run from Cambridge to London. Everyone is talking about the ‘destiny ‘of Mark Cavendish to win the Maillot Jeune in his mum’s home town of Harrogate and wondering how much damage the fearsome Côte de Jenkins Road will do in the final few kilometres into Sheffield the following day. I think we are suffering from a touch of yellow fever that is clouding our ability to see beyond this weekend. It’s fantastic that we have so much to discuss about the short time the Grand Boucle is with us. But what of the rest of Le Tour?
The Massif Studio Blog 