Convention says Switzerland is a boring place but convention doesn’t ride a bicycle. The Tour of Switzerland waited until the last day to pick the winner and even on the duller stages during the race the scenery made you want to dash to the Alps for a ride with a cowbell soundtrack.
Rui Costa wins the the mountain time trial up the ski resort of Flumserberg, putting enough time into race leader Mathias Frank to take the overall lead at the last minute. This was the moment the race was won.
After eight tough stages, it’s now time to settle the overall classification. Tour de Suisse often ends with a time trial but never one like this.
Despite the distance of just 26.8 km, the riders are in for a day full of pain. The profile is extremely brutal with a final section of 10.3 km uphill with an average gradient of 9 %. The first 16.5 km are flat so we can expect the riders to start out on a time trial bike and then change to a road bike before the climb starts.
This 8th stage of Tour de Suisse seems like a good one for a breakaway to make it. The GC favorites will be happy to get a quiet day before the final time trial and for many teams this is the last chance to get a stage win in the race.
L’Equipe in English
Having reviewed their app yesterday, French newspaper L’Equipe get a mention again. They’ve produced a superb interactive piece about the climbers and the mountains of the Tour and it’s even available in English. With giant photos, videos, graphics and more it’s a good scroll even for the illiterate but the writing is a bonus too. More at lequipe.fr/explore/born-to-climb
The GC contenders had an easy day on Stage 6 when the peloton decided to let Kolobnev, Grabsch, Hayman and Rast stay away. What could have been a hectic final turned out to be quiet day at the office but now it’s time to fight for the overall classification.
The old and the new. This is a collection of 30 themed Tour de France photo galleries, each with about 20 images. Using new technology the photos of the past become more accessible and involving than a coffee table book. It’s also a reminder that the annual contest produces perennial images where the same scenes can be repeated over the years only with different characters.
But this is more than collection of old photos assembled into a slideshow, the themes and images selected make it an entertaining resource, albeit restricted for now to Apple users.
On paper this stage may look like a good one for a breakaway to make but the final part isn’t as hard as it may seem. The profile shows two small climbs starting with less than 30 km to go but they aren’t very steep. The first one, a 3 km long category 3 climb, … Read more
It has to be the wettest racing season living memory. Anecdotes aside, meteorological data show high rainfall for Italy and France and the Tour of Switzerland has seen a stage modified because the road was still closed by snow. There are signs the bad weather is changing and summer must starting as the French air traffic controllers are on strike today, frustrating riders trying to get to the Tour of Luxembourg and the Route du Sud.
So before the weather hots up, here’s a quick look at an item of pro kit that’s not often featured: the rain bag.
This is a small bag belonging to each rider containing the clothing they need on a damp day. It’s packed into the team car and can be brought out when rain falls. The pro cyclist’s version of an umbrella.
Peter Sagan probably didn’t read the road book for Stage 4 as he was caught up in the middle of the peloton heading into the last corner. He tried to make up for it but he went the wrong way around and almost crashed against the barrier. He still managed to finish 7th on the stage and I think he is eager for revenge.
La polémique. Yesterday’s news from L’Equipe.fr that Pierre Rolland should not have started the final stage of the Dauphiné has caused an obvious fuss for French cycling featuring a big name, being weeks from the Tour de France and, like it or not, bringing the suspicion of dopage.
The first thing to note is that this is not an anti-doping measure. Instead it is for health reasons and if Rolland is not enjoying the headlines the silver lining is that he’s now able to rest and recover from a potential health scare. But what is this test and what happened with Rolland during the Dauphiné?