About 30km into the stage today, Fabian Cancellera (aka: Swiss Bear, Spartacus, Big Baby, Freak…) pulled up beside me, sat up and reached inside the front of his jersey while shouting in his loud cheery way, ‘Millar! I have a present for you!’ This was the conclusion to what had been the most-wacky first 30 kilometres I’ve done in any race.
In the meeting this morning we’d been briefed by Whitey of the narrow country roads we’d be starting on and the strong tail crosswind that was picking up in strength outside the bus window while he was speaking. Not surprisingly this wasn’t a scoop and every other cyclist taking the start of stage 11 of the Tour de France had been told the same thing. As expected once we passed kilometre zero all hell broke loose and the peloton was riding too fast for the amount of racers we were, on the roads that we were on. Our own fault…
So crash two (crash one we’d missed) happened at about 20km. We were at the front and heard it go down behind us, it was way too sketchy to look around and see what had gone down. This is the instinctive reaction, although common sense and self-preservation keep your eyes forward. So it was only the commotion on the radio that informed me that Christian had been involved. I left Brad at the front and pulled off to the side. There were only about 40 guys left and behind us the pack was in pieces. I rolled along slowly at the side of the road regarding the desperate chasers in their ones, twos, and little groups trying to rejoin the front peloton. There was no sign of Christian. On leaving the town we were rolling through, there was a big inflatable arch across the road bidding us farewell. As I approached it at now walking pace it began to deflate. Still no sign of Christian…
I increased my speed a little in order to make it through the now half-collapsed arch and came to a stop a couple of hundred metres on the other side and watched in complete awe as riders unclipped and pushed their way through the deflated arch. Just when it seemed the arch was going to completely block the road it started to inflate again. Odd to say the least! At this point the cars came flying round the corner and Christian and Julian were behind one of them. So then I started to chase back up to them and just as I caught them we entered a big roundabout only to find the exit blocked by the Tour de France at a standstill. Obviously the collapsing arch scenario had panicked the commissaires into a race stop – no neutralising – just a complete stop and total confusion. This lasted for a couple of minutes allowing Christian to go and get his bike sorted properly, although his glasses had been lost, his radio broken, and his jersey nicely ripped.
We then started again, the peloton having learnt from the previous 25km. We were at 60plus km/h within a kilometre jostling with each other once again. We then worked our way up to the front as a team, so much easier said than done, this took about 5km and on our arrival in the front part there was immediately another mass pile up. I was in the middle of this and somehow came out unscathed. We were all tangled up, and as there was nowhere to go, and I had Martijn next to me, I decided to take his radio off him to give to Christian. It was total pandemonium, like a bomb had gone off, with Martijn and me in the middle trying to remove his radio as calmly as we could. Then we were off again, in another mad pursuit.
Coming up to the next village Whitey pulled up next to me, I passed him the radio to give to Chrisitan just as he smashed Ryder’s spare bike on a rather oddly placed low hanging road sign. Just par for the course by this point! Whitey then carried on ahead to the front of the race dodging the carnage on his way.
It was at this point that Fabian pulled up next to me, way more calm than one would expect considering the circumstances and gave me my present. He had been in the mass pile up as well, but behind me, and in all the confusion I hadn’t noticed my Garmin Edge 705 had been knocked off my bike.
Fabian had seen it laying in the middle of the road, and recounted to me how while getting going again he’d seen it and had slammed on his brakes, done a full U-turn ridden back in the opposite direction to everybody and everything and picked it up for me and U-turned once again in the grass next to the road before setting off again. He was very pleased with himself, and I have to admit I was very pleased with him too. I gave the Swiss Bear a big hug while we were still chasing just because I thought it was the loveliest thing!
What’s amazing is we hadn’t even completed a quarter of the race by this point. The finale was amazing, most definitely my high point of fear for the day was in the last 2km (which if I have time in the morning I will do my best to recount.) It was 160km after I’d given Fabian his big bear hug for rescuing my Garmin. Days like today remind me of just how totally crazy our sport is. Fun-crazy, dangerous-crazy, insane-crazy.
Just plain crazy, just the way we love it.
