HomeDiariesLe Tour de France 2009 - Stage 13: Vittel > Colmar, 200km
Bonjour from Colmar! A couple of unrelated items first: I just noticed that the Rolex ad on the back of yesterday’s L’Equipe is a picture of Turnberry, with Ailsa Craig in the background – ah! the Auld Country!
The footwear of choice for Tour journos this year is ‘basies,’ as we used to call them – baseball boots; I’m gonna stick with my deck shoes.
Vosges Matin, the local paper, has a Tour pull out, all the riders, all the stages and with a great pic of Sorensen, winning in Vittel, yesterday – the French do embrace the race.
Right, we’ll try some joined-up stuff.
The smell of the bakeries in Vittel this morning was wonderful, as Martin and I ambled round to find the team buses.
But first, we took 10 minutes to watch the publicity caravan roll out; you would have to be really cynical not to manage a smile for the caravan.
We had four goals today: interview Tyler Farrar; get the DS’s opinions on what could and should have been a turning point in the race; watch the race live on the last climb and give Charly Wegelius his wedding present, a bottle of Drambuie.
Tyler is a joy to talk to, polite, lucid and insightful – that was an easy job.
We caught up with Charly, he larked about, trying to put the Drambuie in his Canyon’s bottle cage – the TV crews appeared, as if by magic; “do that again, Charly!”
Talking to the DS’s was cool, especially Konyshev – a legend.
He was second to Lemond in the Worlds, 20 years ago and still winning pro races up until a year or two ago.
A “baroudeur’s” stage, tomorrow – maybe a sprinters; but that depends how mad Cav is about Hushovd snaffling the green jersey.
OK, time to watch le Tour on German Eurosport – why German?
Tell you tomorrow.
Ciao, ciao.
Tour 09 Stage 13 Map.
Tour 09 Stage 13 Profile.
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Al Hamilton
“Batalla en los Vosgos”
I couldn’t get my hands on a copy of AS this morning so had to make do with Marca.
They lead with today’s battle in the Vosges mountains; there are many riders who say they will be attacking on the roads to Colmar. Alberto Contador is expecting attacks, but said it was up to the others, he would be waiting.
Martin and Ed think they might have been at the wrong race, only seeing a few boys battling today, and lots of laughing and chatting as the three big groups went past on the last climb, the Firstplan.
The big problem for all the riders could be the weather as “tormentas, frio y viento” (heavy rain, cold and wind) has been predicted for the stage.
Armstrong is saying “it could be a shit stage with many difficulties, lots of attacks from rivals and a crisis in my team on the final climb. We will have to analyse the situations as they arise”.
“Es una de las etapas más duras y decisivas del Tour” (this is one of the hardest and decisive stages of the Tour) said Giovanni Lombardi, the manager of the Schlecks.
The Devil gets his photo right in the centre of the report, which shows there wasn’t much to say about yesterday’s stage to Vittel. “Pellizotti, a bone for Egoi” refers to the chase for mountains points which enlivened the breakaway as Marca puts it, “making a beautiful pulse in the hills”, but the quote of the day has to be the jump of Nicki Sörensen, “like a cat out of water”.
Banzai!
“’Banzai’ hacia Paris”. Historic, two Japanese riders might finish the Tour for the first time ever! Tomoharu Masuda, producer of J-Sport, the TV channel that retransmits the Tour in Japan says “there are many young road cyclists in Japan”.
“Contador no quiere ‘gorilas’” Alberto does not agree to Lance having three “gorilas” bodyguards with him. The madrileño (Contador) is simply a cyclist, not a person of fiction or a Hollywood artist.
They do keep picking away at each other, do these “teammates”.
So that’s today’s news through the eyes of Spanish sports daily; Marca.
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.
We used to have Brian Blessed as the voice on the satnav. Today however it was Daffy but even with our little American Black Duck guiding us it’s a fair old hike from Peebles to Bridge of Alford to watch the Scottish Road Race Championships 2021.
Yes, there are days when we’ve criticised the racing – those endless ‘sprinter stages’ where only the last five minutes saves the day. But we were puzzled by the comments we saw about yesterday’s stage to Rodez on social media; the "Bore de France" and the break "allowed for purely commercial reasons"?
Last Thursday, on the roads around Dumfries and along the beautiful Solway Firth Callum Thornley endorsed his potential, taking silver in the British u23 Time Trial Championship, beaten only by 2022 Baby Giro winner, Leo Hayter but leaving riders like Groupama FDJ big hitters Sam Watson and Lewis Askey in his wake.
I first heard of Fabio Aru (Astana & Italy) when he won the 2011 Giro della Val d’Aosta U23 stage race in Italy from US rider Joe Dombrowski – who’s now professional with Sky. Aosta along with the Tour de l’Avenir and the U23 Worlds are the big shop windows for the professional talent scouts. Aru had been fourth in Aosta the year previous and would win it again in 2012.
It was back at the start of last year we last spoke to Englishman, Toby Perry and when we saw he’d ridden the inaugural Gravel Worlds – an aspect of the sport which has piqued our interest – we thought we’d best have another word with the man.
In Scotland the last two weeks have seen us lose two fine young men from our cycling scene; gone before their time, Ben Abrahams and Dougie Young. But over in the Belgian Heartland they’ve suffered too – with the recent passing of Daniel (Danny) Willems at 60 years of age. ‘Who’s Danny Willems?’ I hear you ask. I’m not surprised you should ask that; there’s been very little reaction to Willems demise - but those of my generation remember him as tall, stylish, classy and a big name in pro cycle sport in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
I wasn’t privileged enough to call Alan Hewitt a close friend but he was certainly a pal and on the infrequent – unfortunately for me - occasions I met him in recent years he would always greet me as a long lost brother with that smile, a hearty chuckle and a big, strong handshake. Alas, there’ll be no more of those.
After the W Clarke bolt from the blue of yesterday, there was no way that Stage 3 of the TDU was going to be anything but a bunch sprint, and all of the key teams worked together to guarantee this today, with Andre Greipel from Lotto again the winner.
The big man can sprint! Will he finally threaten Cav this year?
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