Scan the start list of the men’s road race for the Olympic Games and you’ll spot several sprinters and fast finishers. Mark Cavendish, André Greipel and Peter Sagan for example. Who is the fastest?
The answer is obvious, it’s rider number 42: Mickaël Bourgain of France. He’s four times world champion in the team sprint event. On the track.
The race transfers to Corsica and the opening stage of the 2013 Tour de France is a 200km race from Porto Vecchio to Bastia. There’s a climb with 10km to go but the chances of a bunch sprint are high and many of the sprinters will want a chance to wear the yellow jersey.
Back in March Bradley Wiggins came to visit the course ahead of riding Paris-Nice. The route has probably been on his mind since October when the route was released. For all the talk of “we’re taking this day by day“, Stage 19 and the road to Chartres has been a fixture. Except today feels like his birthday, a victory parade.
But that’s for tomorrow. Wiggins can win the stage but Chris Froome might be out to prove a point and the top-20 overall is not settled yet, many riders have personal goals to achieve. Tour founder Henri Desgrange once said that to win the Tour “il faut être moyen partout” or “you need to be average everywhere” meaning consistency was needed. But having only been marginally outclimbed by his team mate Chris Froome in the race and having dominated the time trials, Wiggins exceeds the maxim of Desgrange. A second stage win in the yellow jersey is on the cards.
If yesterday was the greatest hits of the Pyrenees, today is the experimental album. At just 143km, the stage has some tough climbing ahead of a summit finish.
Today’s rest day brings to mind Antonin Magne, winner of the Tour in 1931 and 1934 who said “the Tour is won by sleeping”. He didn’t mean he snoozed on his bike, instead that recovery was so important. Many riders today will have been working hard on their rest day, going for the right ride, eating correctly, stretching hard and getting a strong massage.
They’ll need it given the two giant stages in the Pyrenees. Playwright Antoine Blondin said the great cols of the Pyrenees “separate once and for all the racers from those who use a bicycle to go to the market” and more than the Alps these climbs can be traps with irregular gradients and twisty descents.
The last of the sprint stages, today’s race will sweep across the champagne region of France before the fizz of the finish. Again this looks like a day for the sprinters but with the first summit finish looming tomorrow the GC contenders will try to ride in economy mode.
If it is a sprint finish the final kilometre has a dangerous narrow point followed by a sharp turn turn.
The profile above suggests a sterile stage with a flat route and a sprint finish. But today’s stage hugs the exposed coastline for a long time and there’s an uncategorised climb before the finish to derail the sprint trains.
A fast sweep across Belgium. In recent years the near-certainty of victory by Mark Cavendish would make this kind of stage almost dull to watch, even if this is testimony to Cavendish’s peerless sprinting. This year however it’s different, a sprint is still likely, “Cav” could win but there are many more sprinters who can challenge.
Luxembourg’s Le Quotidien has a good piece on how to beat Wiggins, asking several team managers for their suggestions
Whilst Wiggins is the great favourite for the race I think the next three weeks can bring plenty of surprises. But let’s run with the idea that Wiggins is the rider to beat, here are the suggestions from the team managers plus some extra ideas.
It looks like the perfect picture for a cycling team. A smiling rider stands tall on the podium, dressed in yellow with the team logos in evidence as the girls hold their pose for the cameras. Even his sunglasses are perched just right on the team-issue baseball cap. But there’s something wrong with the picture.
I’m not talking about the composition of the image. You might notice the podium girls haven’t zipped up their jerseys fully but it’s not that. No, the problem here is that Radioshack-Nissan’s Jakob Fuglsang has won a race and bizarrely this could prove damaging for the interests of his team.