The Millar Diaries, stage 3

UPDATE: This diary entry was written Monday evening — since then Vande Velde’s condition has improved significantly, and he is traveling back to Girona Tuesday afternoon for further examinations.

May 11, 2009:

We just went and visited Christian, rarely have I seen somebody in so much pain, even our attempts to lighten the mood backfired as laughing is about the worst thing he can possibly do. He’s been given loads of painkillers and is still barely able to move from the pain. It’s horrible to see. For the moment two ribs are fractured, but it will be a couple of days till they can see if there’s anything else. It’s always the same after one of these big crashes, the full diagnosis can’t be done for a few days as it takes that long for all the injuries to appear visible on an xray. It is devastating for us as he is such a strong component of the team, and for me in particular as I enjoy so much racing with him and the two of us thrive off each other. Just as I come back, he goes…

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, our sport is so dangerous, not every day, but nearly every day, somebody crashes and hurts themselves seriously. In March alone, we as a team had five riders on the operating table after crashes. I was one of them. Christian looks like he’s escaped the operating table but that doesn’t mean his injury is going to heal any quicker. He’s been incredibly relaxed and doing EVERYTHING right with the Tour in mind. What will be, will be, and you can be sure that Christian will be doing everything in his power to get healthy again and then back to race fitness. He’s got a tough time ahead of him these next weeks, physically and mentally, but he is a tough guy – one of the toughest – and he will be ok. All our thoughts are with him.

As for the rest of the day, well that was hard after losing Christian, we had to regroup and focus on the finish for Tyler. It was harder than yesterday with three hills on the run in and a 1km gradual hill with just under 4km to go. There was a fairly crazy circuit once again into the finish, I made sure I was with Ty at all times on the hills in the run-in and the two of us were lucky enough to avoid the crash which once again split the bunch up. Mark C went down, and Ty got his rear derailleur housing ripped apart seizing it in the 12. We only had 10km left and all hell was breaking loose so he couldn’t bike change (not that the car was there as it was stuck behind the grounded debris of the peloton).

I asked if he was ok, and he told me that he’d be fine and that we were still all systems go. I liked his style! The best thing for me to do was make sure he was in first place going into the 1km hill with just under 4km to go, the foot was a dead-turn-small-road-switch-back, so being at the front was going to make his life much easier, especially as he was effectively riding a two speed bike! I did my thing and peeled off letting him go into the corner in first place and gave him a farewell, ‘GO TY!’ In all honesty I thought he was bravely fighting a losing battle, but when I got to the finish and hear he’d come second after being on his own those last 3.5km (with only two gears) I was very proud to be his team mate!

Tomorrow is the first mountain day and we’re going to ride it for Brad and give him a go at riding full gas up the big hills, he’s lighter than he’s ever been and appears to be flying. It will be interesting to see…

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