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.
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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.
I wasn't sure about the 'blip' at La Toussuire when Froome distanced Wiggins in the finale - I thought it was 'mountain out of molehill' stuff. Although we did hear that Wiggins was 'raging', that night in his room. But today, there seemed little doubt that a message was being sent; 'I can drop you any time I want.' The body language and facial expressions around the team aren't relaxed, happy or positive. But there's little doubt now that Brad will win - barring Acts of God.
'Rest day' - it's a misnomer if you're a fanatic; but you could do one interview then hang out, I guess? But if you're like us, confirmed saddos, then it's a great opportunity to get a lot of talking and snapping done. Albeit on rest days you can linger a bit longer over breakfast - which is nice in a week of always having to be somewhere/do something right now or in five minutes. We asked our Trek contact if we could get an interview with Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne winner, Jasper Stuyven.
Viktor has barred us from attending any races which are patronised by Graham Baxter Tours, this means that the Tour of Flanders is out.
The next-best thing therefore, is Driedaagse van De Panne. It covers many of the roads that Flanders does, the 'Flanders fever' is in full flow but the security is non-existent so you can skek bikes and annoy mechanics to your heart's content.
Peter Sagan’s quote of the day? “What is pressure?” As team mate Marcus Burghardt said; “he was such power in his head and that’s what makes the difference.” Despite pulling his foot in the sprint at the top of that nasty finish climb he was just too quick for everyone...
The Belgian papers are something else. Whilst you do get superb cycling coverage; in yesterday's 'De Gentenaar' we had to endure a colour photograph of a fatal road accident, complete with burnt out car and mangled push bike; a racist photo manipulation of Michelle Obama as a character from Planet of the Apes and images from a slaughter house, including a cow getting it's head chopped off - I'll stick with the Guardian.
The Czech Republic's Radomir Simunek junior shares his name with his father who remains the only man ever to be a world champion at junior, amateur and professional cyclocross levels. Radomir senior died tragically early at just 48 years-of-age in 2010. Young Radomir has been a runner up in the Worlds at both Junior and U23 levels but has had the misfortune to be a round at the same time as his countryman Zdenek Stybar – one of the most gifted cyclocross performers in the sport’s history.
We spoke to Scotland’s Stuart Balfour at the start of the season but word has been trickling back that 21 years-old from Heriot who is a Rayner Fund rider with Cotes d'Armor-Marie Morin Veranda Rideau, ‘en France’ has been ‘doing the biz.’ Best have another word, we thought to ourselves...
In English we’d say, ‘Birdsong’ – in Danish it’s ‘Fuglsang.’ Despite the fact that he seems to have been around for a long, long time, Jakob Fuglsang is still only 28 with his best years as a stage race rider surely yet to come. We felt we needed a proper look inside an Ardennes Classic; so who better to speak to than Amstel top 20 finisher, said Mr. Fuglsang?
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