The race leaves the Vendée region to head into Brittany, passing through the heartlands of French cycling. There are more amateur races organised in this area than anywhere else in France. The course is flat if there’s a single categorised climb on the day, it is not a hill but a bridge (Cat 4, 1.1km at 4.9%). This is a day for the sprinters.
It’s all the rage these days. Alessandro Petacchi has threatened to swap the maglia azzurra of the Italian national team for that of Kazakhstan after the Italian authorities raised the idea of banning those with doping convictions from representing their country. Now Grega Bole is sporting a jersey in the colours of the Dutch national champion. Only he is Slovenian.
My second piece for cyclingnews.com is now online. I wanted to take a look at what happens when the riders cross the line because if the race is over for the day, the work is not done. In particular, riders can face a long drive to get to their hotel and the stop for the night varies, it might be luxury but more often than not it’s a chain hotel.
The profile says it all: 23km and it’s flat. The course is not as technical as the last time the Tour included a team time trial when several teams were blown to pieces by hills and corners. Bbox lost several riders in one go but that can’t happen this time since the team, now known as Europcar, has its HQ and service course in Les Essarts.
In the event that a rider or riders suffer a fall, puncture or mechanical incident in the last 3 kilometres and such an incident is duly recognised, the rider or riders involved are credited with the same finishing time of the rider or riders they were with at the time of the incident.
They are attributed this ranking only upon crossing the finish line. If after a fall, it is impossible for a rider to cross the finish line, he is given the ranking of last in the stage and credited with the time of the rider or riders he was with at the time of the incident. For exceptional cases, the decision taken by the stewards committee is final.
This measure does not apply to:
• finishes of the 2nd stage, which is a team time trial and of the 20th stage which is an individual time trial;
• summit finishes of the 4th, 8th, 12th, 14th, 18th and 19th stages.
That’s Article 20 copied and pasted from the 2011 Tour de France rulebook. It means that following today’s Tour de France stage, both Alberto Contador and Samuel Sanchez lose time to the other race favourites.
Each morning during the Tour de France I will preview the day’s stage. It’s hard to predict a winner but there are some certainties about the course and conditions that can help give us some insight into what might happen.
So here goes, here’s The Spin on Stage 1.
The race might start on the slippery submarine Passage du Gois road and then take an exposed coast route for a while but it’s the closing moments of the stage should be the key. The seaside part of the race should see ideal weather, the forecast says no crosswinds meaning reduced danger that the race splits up early on.
Green jersey
The intermediate sprint in Avrillé after 87km is literally straightforward, on a long wide road with a very mild uphill gradient, it’s for the proper sprinters if their teams can contain the breakaways.
A quick note, one that’s too long to fit on Twitter but not a big deal either…
The team feels’ deeply harmed by the consequent media focus on what happened today, which we feel has damaged the team’s image and the image of cycling in general
The police today seized the Quick Step bus, driving it to a compound in La Roche sur Yon to search it for doping products. Nothing was found… except the event got maximum media coverage for a short moment, the media waiting to cover the race tomorrow rushed to get the story and apparently at one point a cameraman fell to the ground in the crush to get the scene on camera.
BMC Racing’s troubles with a rogue soigneur are bad news for the team. The casual way which Sven Schoutteten was hired from time to time reflects the way many teams operate, a pro image up front but behind the scenes people are hiring their pals. But the role of a soigneur is crucial to the team and not something to get careless about. Indeed France has moved to regulate their role with a law in 2004.
Definition
A soigneur is a team helper, whose job ranges from general dogsbody and factotum to masseur and nutritionist. “Soigner” means “to care for” or “to treat (an illness)” in French and a soigneur is carer, although someone who works helping the sick or the elderly is usually called an aide soignante, the term soigneur is reserved for the cycling world… although it’s used to label someone who looks after zoo animals.