The rubber hits the road as the 102nd Tour de France opens with a 14km time trial around Utrecht.
Is this going to be fairy tale Tour? A win for Tom Dumoulin in front of a home crowd is the perfect start however this looks like a predictable win for Tony Martin.
The Route: everything you’d expect from an urban time trial around a large Dutch city. It’s as flat as a pannekoek and the only changes in elevation come from canal bridges and underpasses and since we’re measuring vertical gain in centimetres, there are some speedbumps and raised sections of road too. There are many corners as the route takes circles around Utrecht and a few tighten up, we’re talking a dab on the breaks here, a gear change there and that’s as technical as it gets. It’s a course for the time trial specialists who can supply the raw power and the refined aerodynamics.
The Contenders: Tony Martin is the prime pick. He’s almost unbeatable in flat time trials and normally he’d be the nailed on, screwed on, glued on and welded on certainty. But form-wise there’s not much to go on, he’s the new German TT champion but that was an easy win and we haven’t seen him tested in another solo time trial since May’s win in Romandie. He’s the most obvious winner today but he’s yet to wear the yellow jersey, some cite this like it’s a curse but it probably has more to do with the prologue’s fallen status under Christian Prudhomme’s Tour tenure.
If Tom Dumoulin could surf the sonic wave from the cheering Dutch crowd he’d win. But what if Utrecht is too early for him? Not the 4.25pm start time but an air of Bradley Wiggins and the 2007 London start where a local rider is highly-rated but it’s too much too soon. Still he’s in form after two stage wins in the Tour de Suisse and is the rider who must worry Tony Martin the most. There was a shock when he was beaten in the Dutch TT championships and he blamed it on fatigue. Has he recovered? The crowd will hope so as he can become the first Dutchman to wear yellow since Eric Breukink in the 1989, that vintage Tour.
To recovery of a different kind as Fabian Cancellara is still on the way back from a crash that ruined his cherished spring classics campaign. Once upon a time was unbeatable in an opening time trial like this, these days the talk of retirement and legacy gets louder. One more for the road? What better way to show he’s still on top than a win and the maillot jaune? His third place in the final TT of the Tour de Suisse was impressive on a hilly, awkward course and today’s route seems ideal.
Movistar have two options with Alex Dowsett and Adriano Malori. Dowsett has been trying to get rid of some muscle bulk from his successful Hour record bid so could be down on power while Malori is still waiting for that big breakthrough win, he took the Vuelta’s final stage last year but it didn’t earn as much attention as Dowsett’s perfect Hour. Malori lost to Martin by milliseconds in the Volta ao Algarve and is one of the world’s best specialists. But that’s not all, there’s Jonathan Castroviejo too but he’s been better at the shorter, daredevil prologues.
Reprising the Hour record theme brings us to IAM’s Mathias Brändle but despite his 60 minute glory yet he’s enjoyed more success in short courses and prologues. This is Rohan Dennis‘s moment to shine before he’s supposed to start toiling for Tejay as BMC Racing helper de luxe. He’s got the pedigree and the power but where’s his form?
Michał Kwiatkowski was well off the pace in the recent Tour de Suisse but don’t write him off. It’s said to be the after effects of an altitude training block rather than a genuine lack of form although he’s been striking a cautious tone in interviews. He’s normally excellent in an effort like today, that’s him pictured winning the Paris-Nice prologue in March.
Peter Sagan is in the right shape but today’s course is the wrong shape. He has won short time trials with his raw power and handling skills but today he can’t rely on late braking and sprinting out of too many corners; green points go down to 15th place so his green jersey bid starts today. Lars Boom is the revenge pick… if he rides given the storm over his cortisol levels. He is similar to Sagan in that he can win prologues from time to time but relies on big power and skills, this course isn’t for him. Trek Factory Racing’s Bob Jungels is an outsider pick, he’s good in short time trials and so was Edvald Boasson Hagen once upon a time, we’ll get the measure of his form today while team mate Steven Cummings could post a faster time.
So far, so niche. But 14km is long enough to test aerobic fitness rather than prologue power. Among the GC contenders, Tejay van Garderen has been talking up his form and finished fourth in the 2012 Tour’s prologue. Notionally Chris Froome is the best of the Big Four in a time trial and team mate Richie Porte excels too.
Crossing from the GC to the local picks include Wilco Kelderman, hard to see him winning against all these riders but he can take time early on GC and team mate Jos Van Emden is on nobody’s lips but excellent in short time trials. Cannondale-Garmin’s Dylan Van Baarle is promising too.
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Tony Martin |
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Fabian Cancellara, Tom Dumoulin |
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Malori, Dowsett, Dennis, Kwiatkowski, Kelderman, Froome |
Weather: hot and sunny with a temperature of 32°C in the shade but hotter in the heat of the city. There will be a light breeze from the west. Most forecasts say it’ll stay hot all day but some warn of a thunderstorm building out of the heat.
TV: Daniel Teklehaimanot starts at 2.00pm Euro time and riders go every minute including the last riders with Vincenzo Nibali the last to go at 5.17pm. All the start times are listed at inrng.tumblr.com and all will be shown on TV, or it depends on your local channel.
It’s the race that’s easiest to find on TV around the world but if all else fails count on cyclingfans and steephill.tv for links to feeds.
Timber! There will be lots of “Boom” headlines, explosive news indeed but of course boom is Dutch for tree. Like all riders Astana’s Lars Boom underwent pre-race medical screening by the UCI. The results were passed to the MPCC and it turns out Boom’s cortisol levels were low. Under MPCC rules, to which Astana subscribes, he’s not supposed to start. Astana appear to accept these provisions and are flying in Alessandro Vanotti as a late replacement but the UCI say it’s too late to change riders. So Astana could walk out of the MPCC and start with Boom anyway. If this happens it’s as if they’re saying “we liked the rules and tried to comply but we couldn’t so we don’t like the rules any more”. As said before on here, the MPCC might look hollow but that’s how voluntary groups work and the joke’s really on the teams that bail out when the going gets tough. Otherwise the MPCC has sensible ideas on cortisone (ab)use, banning Tramadol and we should wish the UCI copies it just as it’s already adopted and co-opted its “no needles” policy and, new for 2015, the concept of punishing whole teams in the event of multiple doping infractions.
Enough politics as the most important thing in all of this is Lars Boom and his health. All we have is talk of “low” cortisol levels but just how low are they? If they are deemed too low, why is this so, is it the testing procedure or is something up with his health? Is it healthy for him to start the race? Answers soon please.
Man I love prologues/short time-trials to start a Tour or any stage race. Big crowds. A great atmosphere. Large roars for favorite riders. High speeds. And a maillot juane at stake. I’m ready for the Tour!
“Answers soon please.”
Agreed.
Im sure as its Astana everything must be above board
Great shame we have to start the sports major showcase with yet more questions about the area most want to avoid. Surely the teams doctors should have realized there was a problem, long before the MPCC were handed the UCI test results. If Astana start a rider who could have health problems ‘or something else’, we are in for three weeks of questions and probably no real answers.
The case for the UCI taking on board this MPCC members rule become more obvious with every case.
When will these abject fools start to take the situation and their responsibilities seriously ?
When they put you in charge, obviously.
Among. I normally avoid responding to anonymous posters because their contributions are generally completely irrelevant and poorly informed- as yours is in this particular instance.
I give you some simplified background you appear unable to comprehend. We have an International body, the UCI, a ‘members club’ MPCC, TUEs, team doctors, Professional teams, WADA and endless groups and individuals with a financial interest, all of whom have a vested interest in the sport of cycling being considered clean. You would think that between them they have sufficient precedent to have avoided the present situation, which inevitably leaves journalist’s searching for the truth – probably for the next three weeks.
One person won’t solve this problem. It requires common sense together with rules which are clear, unified, unambiguous and effective. That the sport appears incapable of moving on from its past is to be much regretted.
A response worthy of this site to a comment unworthy of it. Well done, BC.
Yes, indeed.
Better than your first effort but obviously written by someone who knows nothing about cortisol and what low cortisol levels may or may not indicate.
Yet you still feel able to say that teams doctors “surely … should have realized there was a problem” and call professional people “abject fools” from the comfort of your keyboard.
Worthy of this site? No. Just yet another keyboard warrior getting on his high horse.
Don’t presume AD – Are you really trying to defend the predicament that the management of our sport continually finds itself in ? I don’t know why I bother to answer unworthy posts, so it will be short but hopefully helpful.
On Cortisol you are simply plain wrong about my knowledge base. In your haste to be abusive, you completely miss the salient point. Astana are a member of a club where low cortisol levels (130 in this case) require the rider to be ‘rested’ for eight days. What the low level may/may not be indicative of is not the point. On professional people. Do you have the first idea of some of the unsavoury characters you call professional, most without a professional qualification to their name, or even some of those holding professional doctorate qualifications, who are still active in the sport today?
Thought not.
very well amplified I must say
I’m guessing that if Wiggo and Küng were here they’d probably get a mention. Go back to a similar 14k course earlier this year at De Panne and a certain Mr A Kristoff, with the power of the leaders jersey, produced a bit of a ride. If he’s after Green then I wouldn’t be surprised to see him match Sagan.
I’ll take Cancellara, mostly because I would love to see one more storming Tour de France from the big Swiss. Remember, he has worn the yellow jersey for 28 days in the Tour, tops among riders who have never won. Go Spartacus!
Nice! Thanks for the link
What reason can there be for presenting the results of Boom’s test at such a late stage that they can’t replace him? This gives Astana an ‘out’ because they will say they were perfectly willing to replace him. That is the real problem here.
Great question. The tardiness of the announcement doesn’t help anyone
The tests were onl conducted on July 2nd. Getting the results out for 200 riders in less than 24 hours is good going.
So why not test a day earlier?
Probably because not everyone is available.
Turning around 200 samples for routine cortisol screening would not be a problem for most labs.
Even a small hospital lab in the UK would process a 1,000 samples a day. Cortisol is routinely measured using commercially available assays. The link Daniel Friebe provided on twitter (http://www.ffc.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PV-BEF-+-annexes-du-31-7-2014.pdf) suggests that a commercial immunoassay supplied by Roche is used so 24hr turnaround time would not be an issue.
This does raise a pertinent point raised by Phil which is; why is the test not scheduled such that any ‘adverse’ finding can be acted upon by replacing the affected rider? I can only assume the lack of coordination is due to this being an MPCC rule and not a UCI one.
As mentioned repeatedly, the solution is for the UCI to adopt the MPCC rules or for the MPCC to perform its own testing on an earlier schedule.
As to the significance of the low cortisol result – I think no matter how they sugar coat it with talk of the rider’s health, this is about catching abuse of exogenous steroids. I am willing to accept that a rider in poor health may have low cortisol levels but the test is not sensitive enough to use for this purpose as an ill rider may also have elevated or normal cortisol levels. A rider taking sufficient exogenous glucocorticoids will always have suppressed cortisol levels.
As you say the MPCC and UCI are competing in some senses so the UCI won’t bend its rules to suit the MPCC. Likewise the MPCC rule exists for health but the underlying reason is the widespread abuse of cortisone over the years as riders/teams have exploited TUE’s for performance reasons.
Why is this a problem?
If there is something found which breaks UCI rules then why should a team be allowed to say “Aw, shucks, we tried to sneak that one under the wire but what the hey, let’s just go with another rider instead.”
Why not punish the team by letting them go into the race a man short?
And if that principle applies to UCI rules then why not to MPCC rules also?
The DS mtg was at 10.30 Friday morning, while rider analyses were made at 2.30, four hours later. Why not bump up the testing time to avoid what’s now happened: Astana is starting Boom? They haven’t broken any UCI rules, but their MPCC link is now gone or soon will be.
Rules aren’t to punish everyone at all. They are in place for protection. It is the usually cycling Chaos and debacle, which could have been easily avoided with common sense and better planning. I don’t think a health-check, with a single test is appropriate to say anything deciding. It can be a sign to look closer, if there is a health or doping problem. But not more. To use it as the MPCC dies, is just for publicity and we see the result of that becoming increasingly clear. It is high time MPCC scraps that rule or does, what some teams seem to have already asked for: If an initial low cortisol value is found, another series of tests must varify the risk for the rider health’s health and only then has he to be pulled out of the race.
No one mentioning a certain Welshman?
I don’t think Tom Jones is riding this year.
Thomas? He seems to be spreading himself across several things, good in the mountains and the classics. As such he might do well today but the win seems hard.
12th was a good result
That’s a fantastic preview. Thanks Mr Ring. Salivating for the Tour now. Could see Frome getting some much needed time on his GC rivals today.
Would like to see Dumoulin win, for the home crowd. Or Spartacus as the sun is setting. Or… Bah, just enjoy it!
Fat Larry once wrote a song about Lars. Looking forward to Lemond of Cycling on Eurosport!
Interesting piece about cortisone use & abuse from a couple of years ago from @Kenny_Pryde http://www.biscuittinmedia.com/alejandro-marque-cortisone-confusion-tour-of-portugal-2013/
Appears to boil down WADA not wanting to upset FIFA.
Good point re FIFA.
As an ardent supporter of a mediocre team (Plymouth Argyle since you ask) I often hear football supporters going on about drugs in cycling. My reply about our own team members repeatedly taking cortisone injections to get them through matches they otherwise couldn’t play does cause a pause for thought. The players are under huge pressure to be treated this way and the health risks are enormous. Many of the users of cortisone become – effectively – severely disabled when they hang up their boots.
Chavanel?
He’s past his best. A nice guy but a fading force; still good though and we should see him in the breakaways… he’s just starting now which means he’ll go on to set the fastest time 😉
Navardauskus might be worth a mention. What a disaster a win by Boom would be. He won a prologue a long while back in Paris-Nice, but that pan flat parcours suits others better, thankfully.
What a shame, waking to the Boom headlines.
He surely can’t be allowed to race by Astana, that is going to give out the wrong message entirely.
And leave self-regulation up the junction.
Shame.
Anyway, never mind that stuff.
It’s on the telly now.
Wooo. Fantastic.
Love to see Dumoulin do it, but I am an old romantic.
Why didn’t the MPCC co-ordinate the timing of all this better? The team should have been notified before the DS meeting, giving them time to change riders. After all if this is about rider health as they claim then there should be no punishment to the team.
Surely the cortisol rule has to be adapted now? At the very least they should sort out the timing with the UCI to allow for substitutions. As some MPCC teams clearly don’t agree that a low pre-race cortisol level is much to worry about, maybe they should all sit down and have an honest chat about this ‘rule’.
Easy to say but 200 tests were done in the morning, it’s not easy to get the results that quickly.
Regarding Boom, I think Astana have done the right thing (not often I think that).
They had no choice, given that those are the UCI rules – would be ridiculous to start with 8 riders.
It would be very interesting to know:
How low are these cortisol readings?
What is considered dangerous, medically?
Do the MPCC have their levels set correctly/how reliable a test of bad health is this?
How many non-MPCC riders are at the same levels?
This is an example of why the MPCC does not work – you cannot have two sets of rules.
Also, the moment teams don’t like the rules, they leave.
Plus, you only have to look at the teams in the MPCC to know that it is just a PR stunt for many.
It’s a bit daft that Boom can’t be replaced, which it seems like they tried to do. You can replace a footballer if he gets injured in the warm up. Why would they disadvantage themselves with only 8 riders especially when not all teams are signed up?
Okay, what I gather from the Dutch news is that boom’s level was 130, while a normal level is between 200-500. Specialists say however that this stress hormone varies during the day, so the time of testing is important to know. Boom also uses exercise induced asthma meds which also lower cortisol levels. I’m not choosing any sides here but there are questions on both the Astana and mpcc sides. Regardless, low cortisol does not necessarily indicate doping. Cortisol testing was initiated as an indicator for bad health back in the “dirty” doping days, a sort of first indication something was fishy. Critics of the mpcc say that test is inadequate nowadays. Lotto jumbo had the same thing happen just before the giro, and they took their rider out (Bennett), but later it appeared the mpcc test was done incorrectly. Lotto then left the mpcc. Again – I’m relaying the Dutch news, I know too little about doping to say if any of this is true but pls enlighten us if you do.
You sign up to the rules of an organisation, you stick to them, leave or try to get them changed. Lotto argued, disingenuously in my opinion, that the test was conducted too early in the day. Funny thing is that the highest cortisol level is around 8 am.
Nice ride Rohan Dennis.
Pinot has to be the huge surprise.
Thanks Inrng,
Nice to see BMC start out with a win, perhaps some momentum for TJV.
Would of been nice to Phinney race, pre-broken leg! in the top 5 at least.