HomeDiariesLe Tour de France 2009 - Stage 11: Vatan > Saint-Fargeau, 192km
‘Cav sez; “Gotcha!” to Baz’, as the Sun might say if it were to cover Le Tour de France, and today’s stage into Saint-Fargeau. It took Barry Hoban a whole career – two decades – to notch up eight Tour stage wins – but they didn’t all come from bunch gallops.
It’s taken Cav just two-and-a-bit Tours to equal Barry’s record – but every one of those has come from a mass purge for the line.
Mark Cavendish.
Pro cycling is a sport where “ifs,” “buts” and “maybes proliferate, but if Barry had Renshaw and Co. to support him, who knows how many he might have won.
But it was different back then; it wasn’t until Post’s Panasonic team started to make a science of it that we had lead out trains, “as we know them, Jim.”
The Bill Gates of the sprint train was Cipollini; on his day, few were the men who could come round him at the end.
Barry Hoban.
When he won the Worlds at Zolder, every bike rider in the pro peloton had known for a whole year that all they needed to do to wear the rainbow jersey was to come off Cipo’s wheel, at the end.
Neither Robbie McEwen, Erik Zabel or anyone else could do it.
Cav can win the Worlds, if the parcours suits him. And it wouldn’t have to be pan flat; his win in Milan-San Remo proved that.
It’s impossible and improper to demean Cav’s achievement, but I think Lady Luck has paid her part in the rise of Super Cav.
He’s on the scene at a time when there’s not a proliferation of rapid finishers.
Hoban was grazing his elbows against all time greats – Van Linden, Sercu, Karstens, Maertens.
Freddy Maertens.
Not just fast men but madmen – Van Linden and Karstens were of the “win or crash” school.
It’s all a lot more PC, clinical and much less physical these days.
In this Tour, Cav is only being troubled by Hushovd and Farrar.
Hushovd is a great pro but suffers from the “too many cooks” syndrome at Cervélo – the same one that Zabel used to succumb to at Telecom; if you have a GC guy to look after (Ullrich or Sastre), there can’t really be enough horse power left for your sprinter.
There’s no such confusion at Columbia – just like Bruyneel would never contemplate wasting his time with a sprinter at Disco and Postal, when the GC was to be won – there are no overall or KOM notions with Stapleton’s team.
You won’t see Columbia (or Astana) ‘up the road’ there’s only one job to be done; leave the show boating to AG2R, Agritubel and BBox.
Tyler Farrar.
And what about Tyler Farrar? He doesn’t fit in with the typical “hyper” sprinter image; he’s cool, calm, polite and laid back – ’til the flame rouge, that is.
He’s in the Cipo mould, a ‘drag racer’ he needs it to be long and fast – no one knows better than Farrar that if you let Cav get his kick in first, then it’s over.
Farrar’s Garmin guys are fine on the run in; Wiggins, Pate, Zabriskie, Hesjedal – all big strong chrono guys.
Bur when it comes to those vital last couple of kilometres, he doesn’t have a Martin or a Renshaw or a Big George.
Matt White, DS at Garmin says that building a train for Tyler is a priority at Garmin this winter, let’s hope so – we want to see Cav challenged and not making crass statements about; “how easy it is to win.”
Anyway, enough of my sprint based rant – that’s Vik’s job!
Ailsa Craig has just disappeared under the wing tip, off to the right; next stop France – and le Tour.
We’ll be there, live and in full effect ’til Cav wins the last stage on the Champs Elysées – and I promise to try and not rant too much.
Ciao, ciao.
Tour 09 Stage 11 Map.
Tour 09 Stage 11 Profile.
* * *
Al Hamilton
The back page of AS sets the pace for all the “race” reports, yes the ban on race radios, or as they are called in Spain “pinganillos”, of course the photo is quite nice to look at also!
AS’ back page today.
Fourteen of the teams were against the decision to ban the race radios, six were in favour of the ban, but in the end they rode till the last 30 kilometres and then they raced for “Cav’s” stage win, this didn’t stop the fans coming out to enjoy the spectacle.
Carlos Sastre enjoyed the day; he said “today was a journey of tranquillity in the Tour. Without attacks. Without nerves. Without orders.” Maybe he was referring to the fact that they didn’t race till near the end, than not having a radio?
The yellow jersey wearing Rinaldo Nocentini was visited by his girlfriend Manola. She says: “Me llamo Manola y soy la mujer del lider” (my name is Manola and I am the woman of the leader). She has been his girlfriend for five years, likes to wear cowboy boots, rides in the AG2R bus and waits near the sign-on area to be there to the last second.
“La mujer del lider.”
Nocentini has been sharing a room with Spaniard, José Luis Arrieta. Rinaldo says of the man from Navarro “he is very Italian” and “on the day in Andorra he paid for the cava”. The Tour leader loves his football and is a big fan of Milan and of Ronaldinho, the Italian press announced that “Rinaldinho is the leader of the Tour”.
Contador has reiterated that Friday’s stage to Colmar will be the “dangerous” stage, so more wins for Cavendish and then ¡BANK! Looking forward to Friday.
Ed and Martin, our top team! They try to do the local Time Trials, the Grand Tours and the Classics together to get the great stories written, the quality photos taken, the driving done and the wifi wrestled with.
It was a difficult phone call to make, he picked up on the tone of my voice at once; 'no, don't tell me, please!' But it was best he heard it from me; 'Flecha, he won Het Nieuwsblad well, Viktor, sorry!' 'That's it, I'm finished with Pro Cycling, for good!'
World Road Championships 2011 and it was wearing on for midnight when we pulled in to the truck stop in the north of The Netherlands; hundreds of artics lined up, many with refrigeration units chugging away on the cab roofs - how do the drivers sleep? You have to think it would be more environmentally friendly to haul all that freight by train? Anyway, 'Green Ed' what a thought that is.
Bonjour 08.30 we're just getting ready to roll. This is our second F1 hotel of the trip, Grenoble two nights ago and here, last night, basic but clean and the beds work fine - 33 euros for the two of us, so musn't grumble. It's another beautiful day in France, more that can be said for St. Etienne, which seems to be re-inventing itself as a 'Techno Town.' The old part of town is fine though, we had an excellent pizza in a little restaurant last night. Motorbikes and Emma Davies Jones!
Getting to Flanders yesterday for the kuurne Brussels Kuurne was painful - a two hour delay at Prestwick, then a battle through the rush hour traffic on the Brussels ring road. Dave and I are getting good at indiscriminate lane changing and not indicating, but we really have to brush up on our tail-gating technique if we want to drive in the authentic Belgian fashion.
Germany, somewhere near the Taunus mountains at 09:22 Sunday. We left the Zürich Six Day at 03:00 and there are still 400 kilometres to go to the ferry at Amsterdam. It began to snow like Hell about an hour into Germany; there were roadworks, we were diverted off the motorway and there were either no diversion signs or they were snowbound. Whichever it was, we ended up hideously lost and dropped a chunk of time.
From the very first chase there was little doubt about who was in charge of the Copenhagen Three Day 2020; Dutchmen Jan Van Schip and Yoeri Havik were the strongest men on the track. In the recent UCI World Cup in Milton, Canada Van Schip won the Omnium then teamed up with Havik to win the Madison – so we knew they were on form.
Daryl Impey is the man who suffered a horrific crash in the final metres of the Presidential Tour of Turkey in 2009, with the yellow jersey on his back - when Theo Boss decided that the South African might like to make a close inspection of the crash barriers.
We humbly ask for your help to support our dear friend and beloved colleague Ed Hood. Ed suffered a devastating stroke in February last year and faces an uncertain future.
As a result of the stroke, Ed has lost his ability to speak, and to read, and has lost movement on the right side of his body. He’s working with speech and physical therapists on rehabilitation but all strokes are different and each patient responds differently, so unfortunately recovery is one day at a time.
Ed ran his own business installing windows but will not be able to work again and his financial future is uncertain, so please consider joining us to make a contribution to the GoFundMe page to help stabilise and secure Ed's future. Thank you.
