My third piece for cyclingnews.com is now online.
I wanted to take a look at the first hour of racing because sometimes – not every day – the racing can be exciting and dynamic but all too often the TV cameras are not there and viewers miss the action. It’s too easy to switch on the TV for the last hour and watch the breakaway either get reeled in or to see the escape fragment under attacks and think this is the big action of the day when sometimes the riding needed to escape is heroic.
If you enjoy playing one of the several fantasy cycling teams then Cyrille Guimard is a name to remember. He has correctly picked five of the seven stage winners so far in the race.
The first week of racing is done and things change with the race heading into the Massif Central area of France. You can see this from the profile alone, the long upward slope and the new altitudes, it doesn’t look like anywhere all day dips below 350 metres above sea level. The lowest point in the day is higher than any point reached so far during the last seven days.
A few thoughts on who is up and who is down after the first week…
Alberto Contador
First up, it is safe to say things are not going to plan for Alberto Contador. He got booed last Saturday but like I said a week ago, he’d been avoiding the French media and whilst this was ugly, he missed a trick to get the public on side with some TV appearances before the race. At the least he could have started his opening press conference with a “fact pack” for the media.
Image and presentation aside, the real story was his time loss on the opening stage. Scanning the media during the week I couldn’t help notice a few headlines saying he might have lost the Tour de France and to this day bookmakers have been adjusting his odds. Now Andy Shleck is narrowly the favourite to win with the bookmakers.
During the Giro I gave away a couple of keyrings and it was a fun competition because it was simple. Winning packages were dispatched to Spain and Poland. Now it’s time for a Tour de France giveaway competition.
Famous for its 24 hour motor race, the start town of Le Mans will have hosted the race for no more than 18 hours before the riders head off to Châteauroux, a town famous for nothing.
The stage crosses flat terrain, if you think France as the land of baguettes and croissants, this is where the flour comes from, with fields of cereal as fare as the eye can see. The race also passes through the Loire valley, home of many impressive châteaux and vineyards. But I have to describe the landscape as there’s not much to say about the stage.
Robert Chapatte was a professional cyclist for 11 years, riding the Tour de France nine times and finishing 16th in 1949. He was the first French cyclist ever to do a TV interview and perhaps this encounter with the media changed his career forever.
The longest stage in the race but no marathon. The races leaves Brittany and heads for Normandy and its woodland bocage where they grow the apples to make calvados. Note the presence of three categorised climbs, if a breakaway goes then someone has the chance to take the King of the Mountains jersey, albeit with a slender lead.
The video above is an advert from Škoda, a car brand belonging to the Volkswagen group. Once infamous held up as examples of why the Soviet Union was doomed Škoda is a modern European manufacturing success story.
With his win today on the Cap Fréhel, Mark Cavendish’s total of Tour de France stage wins stands at 16 stage wins. That puts him above übersprinter Freddy Maertens but still a few places behind André Darrigade, the Frenchman who took 22 stage wins from 14 Tour de France appearances. Aged 26, Cavendish has time on his side to achieve more wins.