He who dares…

So Super Besse was a little disappointing for me. I just couldn’t stay with the front. I didn’t feel myself and was shocked to feel so bad. Fortunately, my poor performance was over shadowed by Christian’s gutsy move. When he went it was very impressive. The group was already moving at a good pace and yet he shot out of it with an air of complete contempt. The fact Leo went with him goes to show the quality of the move. Leo is an ex-team mate of mine. He is not only one of the strongest climbers in the world, but incredibly astute tactically. Two things compromised the move: a strong headwind and a super well-drilled Caisse d’Epargne team chasing. But as they say, ‘he who dares wins’, and it was with this attitude in mind that Christian and I started hatching a plan for the next day. The message I sent the lads before going to bed on Thursday night captures it in a nutshell.

‘Gentlemen, I think it’s only fair I give you a heads up this evening so you can be mentally prepared tomorrow. I’m going to be going after the yellow jersey tomorrow in a somewhat unorthodox manner. I am counting on the initial difficulties of the day putting Columbia under stress and allowing a strong break to go. The stage is not suited to many sprinters and so there is a chance there will not be an organized chase. Add to this the fact that a hard start will put over half of Columbia in serious trouble, and there are all the ingredients for a chaotic stage. This will obviously allow me the opportunity to wreak my own havoc. I am going to need help though, and that means the initial chaos being covered by us. We need to make the race hard and we need to be in every move that leaves the front of the peloton. I will be waiting at the front for when everybody starts to buckle and then will go. Hopefully bridging up to an already strong group where one of you already resides! We need to be 100% unified tomorrow, looking after each other and racing hard. The hardest part of the day is going to be that first hour. Let’s rip the Tour de France up, after all, it’s Friday.’

Needless to say the boys were on board and super motivated to tear up the Tour. To say it worked well was an understatement. What we set in motion was what will end up being one of the hardest days of the Tour de France. It was awesome to watch our team omnipresent at the front of the race. All I could see were yellow numbers attacking and bridging up to moves and glued to other attacking wheels. Will set the wheels in motion by being on the wheel of the first attack of the day, that of Christophe Moreau. This was a brave move as that is often the hardest as you’ve had no warm up and you will no doubt get swamped by the next strong wave of attacks. But by doing it, Will was essentially leading the rest of the team into battle. From then on in, we had our riders present in wave after wave of attacks. T-Bag and Danny were incredible. Danny (right) was just making me sick by the sheer number of attacks he put in. Just when I thought he must have done his last move, he would get out the saddle and launch again. The Pate is a sick puppy. It was working though. The Columbia riders were getting whittled down, and approaching the top of the first climb, they were down to just two riders with Kirchen.

This is where it was my turn to start launching and I went with 2km from the top with Jens Voigt. We bridged up to moves in front and went right by them. This is where I became aware of the fact that I was on a good day. Nobody could hold my wheel and I had to sit up over the top of the climb and wait for riders to come up to me. This is where it started to get hard. This is the point in the race where normally the elastic will break. Everybody approaches their redline physically, and what it comes down to is will power and guts. This is where Jens comes into his own. He knows that other riders will be hurting too much to keep going when every single part of their body is screaming at them to stop. It’s when you reach this point that you have to attack again because that is when the move will go.

Robert Millar (no relation…), the great Scottish climber, once said something like, ‘When it starts to hurt really bad, that’s when I attack.’ When you’re lucky enough to be a strong rider, you know that when you’re hurting bad, everybody is hurting bad and often worse. Hence why it comes down to will power and guts.

So what came next was 25 km of attacking after attacking, move after move. The plan was working in that the peloton was getting put under enormous stress and the big guns were starting to come out to play as they could see an opportunity arising. At one point, we had a very strong move of eight riders gone. It was the dream move: Voigt, Ballan, Nibali, T-Bag, to name a few. Columbia was in pieces behind and I thought it was going to go. But then Lotto decided to chase us down. This I hadn’t counted on. So it came back together again. Then we hit another hill. The Pate set about on his own personal one-man-race-demolition once again, and as he got a move going off the front, Christian led me up the side of the now exhausted peleton and launched me. I bridged up to Danny et al and then carried on. This is where the move finally went. It was km 50 I think and the peloton was now in pieces and we had a strong move of five riders.

The only problem was that my breakaway companions were as exhausted as the chasing peloton. We weren’t going anywhere quickly and I was having to do a lot of the work. Normally in this situation, once the move is formed, it is necessary to ride real hard together for the first 10 km or so in order to cement the time gap and break the peleton. Then the race forms and pacing comes into play. The problem was that it had been so hard everybody was on their knees. Jens was with me and he obviously didn’t miss a turn, but even he wasn’t firing on all cylinders. It appeared that we had made it through and were in the for the long haul. The plan was working…

Then I punctured. I didn’t notice at first. What brought it to light was turning off a super fast descent on a massive road on to a slip road that went up hill. I came into the corner at over 60 km/h, and as I was approaching maximum banking, I felt my front wheel slide. To say I got a scare would be grossly understating what went through my head. It not only slid but went onto the edge of the rim. I corrected it but was convinced I was going down. I then had to lean into it again in order to make it round the corner. This put it onto the rim again and it made the most fearful sound as it ground along the tarmac and slid. I lay in bed last night going over it again in my head, and it made me feel a bit sick. It was so close to being multiple fractures as I would have slid at 60km/h into metal barriers. Not a nice thought.

The tyre still didn’t feel like it was flat though and I was at first baffled to why my front wheel had slid like it had. Then a few kilometres later, I was able to feel it losing pressure. As I was becoming aware of this, I was hearing on the radio that the peloton had split into five groups behind us in the crosswinds. Oh shit, I thought. So now I had a Tour de France echelon in hot pursuit while I had a slow front flat and the team car stuck behind five mini pelotons. The best laid plans of mice and men…

Within another 5 kms, the echelon was upon us, led by a charging CSC who were making the most out of Cunego crashing out of it. We only had Christian in the group of what appeared to be about 30 riders max. I had an ever flattening front tyre and was beginning to think that all the team’s hard work was going to be for nothing. Then miraculously Whitey made it up behind us. How he did this still baffles me. But he had answered my calls and demands to the race commissaires to allow him up there. Now there was the problem of performing a bike change while we were in a crazy echelon. Guys were getting dropped from it still, so making a bike change without being dropped was going to be tricky to say the least, especially as there was no convoy. I had Whitey look at the profile and figure out when the next uphill was as this was going to the way I would stand a chance of stopping, changing bikes and getting back into the group again. The problem was that my tyre was now dangerously flat and proving a handful to control.

Within five kilometres, the small hill I had been praying for arrived. I looked behind, gave the car the signal, slammed on my brakes and skidded to a halt. I removed my Garmin in a moment of lucidity and dropped my bike to the side. Inaki the mechanic was already out the car before it had stopped and tore my bike off the roof. I was on it and being pushed away in a matter of seconds. The group was already a little way up the road. I just put my head down and sprinted. By the time I looked up again, I was much closer and relieved to see it was bunching up, meaning it was slowing down. I made it back on with almost no issues amazingly. I went straight up to Christian and told him I was back, much to his relief as I’m pretty sure he was resigned to being isolated up there once he saw I’d punctured.

Then the race was effectively out of our hands. Everybody was tired and thrashed and it became a hard chase to the line with regroupings and then new splits and happenings. The last climb was that little bit too hard for me after all the efforts I’d put into the first half of the stage. Christian (right) was there looking good though and is holding his place well. We lost our yellow numbers, but we did it by racing aggressively and hard. The stage became the hardest stage of the Tour so far due to our racing style and panache. I’m very proud of that. It’s what I wanted our team to race like.

After all, he who dares wins…