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.
Ciao from il Giro d'Italia 2010, amici! I was saying to Martin that I'm a bit worried, I've been wakening up feeling great - always a bad sign. The trouble with my usual Giro partner in crime, Dave being back in Scotia and suffering from Giro withdrawal symptoms (he's coming to le Tour, though) is that everything we write and photograph is subject to close scrutiny.
I forgot to turn off the message alert on my BlackBerry and it started beeping away just before 04:00 am – it didn’t matter, I was awake anyway. The aphids had breached my defences and the irritation of the bites had wakened me. The French, Danish and Netherlands teams all showed themselves in the Junior Road Race World Championships 2013 - as Androni manager Gianni Savio always says; ‘you must honour the race!’ - with Franck Bonnamour away with Colombian Martinez in the closing stages.
I was the one who said that the Giro d’Italia doesn’t have a great field – but the fact is, ‘so what?’ It’s only stage three but already the ‘Bigs’ are at it, knocking lumps out of each other. I was thinking of an ABC of ‘key words’ for each of today’s protagonists – for big Ryder Hesjedal it was ‘aggressive’ but maybe it should be ‘anxious?’
Braveheart rider Andy Fenn took an excellent bronze medal in the World U23 Road Race Championship 2011 on a windy but dry day in the northern suburbs of Copenhagen. The French team proved best motivated and organised with a dazzling one-two. Let's hope that Arnaud Demare doesn't go the way of so many French amateur and U23 champions in the past - big hype, big contract then a gradual slide in to obscurity.
Junior, Jordan Stokes of Pedal Power took an easy sprint win in Sunday's Sandy Wallace Cycles 50 mile road race around a bright but blowy Redcraigs Toll circuit.
Second was 'oldie but goody' Callum Gough (Onimpex RT) with Lindsay Gordon (Musselburgh) rounding out the podium.
The start village of Wellwood near Dunfermline gave us The Skids lead singer, Ricky Jobson and Barbara Dickson - and on Sunday it gave us sunshine for the fifth Super Six 'B' race of the season.
The alarm went at 06.00 this morning, we're driving the full stage today, all the way from Orthez to the top of the Col d'Aubisque, that's 218.5 kilometres with a 3rd, two 1st and two hors categorie climbs. It's 07.45, and we're trying to exit the autoroute at Orthez, but Tour traffic is clogging the toll plaza, in the midst of all this are Marge, Homer, Bart and Lisa Simpson, on their four-up bike. They are advertising their movie, on the Tour publicity caravan, I wonder where the wee one is? - transpires that Marge is carrying her, none of them have a helmet on, either.
Alex Kristoff wins in the town which used to be the heart of the French bicycle industry – St. Etienne. We also managed to get our paws on L'Équipe, again - for the day of Nibali's second coup, on La Planche des Belles Filles. The front page features a satisfied Nibali, a devastated Contador as well as Bardet and Pinot - at last French guys with realistic GC ambitions. C'est bon!
All night drive-in pharmacies here in Trinidad & Tobago aren't really the place cyclists should be seen at gone midnight, but Leif liked the 'skin powder' the Red Cross guys used on his abrasions so much that we had to pop in and see if we could get some more. They didn't have any, but it was another one for my 'experiences' file.
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