HomeDiariesLe Tour de France 2009 - Stage 18: Annecy, 40.5km ITT
There’s a little breeze fluttering the trees in Annecy, it’s mild at 25 degrees but rain is forecast – chrono day. The thing about a Tour time trial is that the conditions I have just described might prevail for first starter, at 11:10, F des J’s Belorussian champion and lanterne rouge (now that Kenny has gone home) Yauheni Hutarovich.
But when Bert bumps that Trek down the ramp at 16:47, the conditions could be completely different.
Our game plan today is two fold; drive the course, behind Garmin sprinter, Tyler Farrar, then do a ‘before and after’ on the Big Guns.
It’s 12:40 am now; need to finish this after sleep.
Bon nuit.
Later…
A long but exciting day on Thursday – we did our following car ‘thing’ with Tyler Farrar and then spent all afternoon looking at how the big GC guys fared.
What’s not, is the running around it takes to get the precious “stee-kerr” for the windscreen that enables you to enter the hallowed start area, then follow your rider.
You run around daft, have all sorts of language hurdles to jump; then you meet the right guy, who speaks perfect English, sticks his hand in his pocket – ‘et voila!’
A part of the day I really enjoyed was getting to the start; to get there we had to drive the second part of the course – there’s so much joy, fun, expectation and sheer glad to be alivedness evident.
Lance; for sure he generates interest but for me the minders, the tweeting, the ‘spin’ against Alberto and then, on the day the Spaniard confirms his dominance, to announce his new team – it’s all against the grain.
But I’m 54 and grew up when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Bert’s dignity and professionalism are in marked contrast to LA’s tweeting, PR, and invideous remarks. Did you notice even Bruyneel doesn’t wear Astana gear? It’s all Livestrong teeshirts and polemics.
Alberto, on the other hand is a pro; as Philippe Brunel says in L’Equipe; “The Spaniard avoids the politics but his gestures are eloquent…
In other words, he talks with his pedals.
There’s a photo in L’Equipe which sums it up. Three Astanas warm up on the turbos for the test; one has a Livestrong thing on, one sports an anonymous vest, but only one wears an Astana top – Alberto.
Yes, if he does the ride of his life, tomorrow; he’s only nine seconds behind Lance, but in turn, he has Kloden just two seconds behind him, with climbing ace Frank Schleck just 23 seconds down.
The Tour and cycling makes it big on the back page of today’s AS, first Contador is in the good section with congratulated on his securing his victory by taking more time, then in the bad section we have the failure of Armstrong who lost time and fell off the podium and De Luca is also in the bad section with his positive for CERA at the Giro.
AS headline.
Also on the back page is an argument over why Contador stopped his attack on the Schleck brothers on the last climb yesterday, there is more about this on the inside pages.
AS says: “Heroica etapa que no gan Contador porque Bruyneel le frene”. So the reason he stopped was orders from above!
The attacks had dropped Wiggins, Armstrong and eventually Klöden, but it looks like the time loss of Lance was more important than a stage win or more time in the bank for Alberto?
Bruyneel is leaving Astana at the end of the year, maybe to set up the new “Team Armstrong” which will probably not include Contador, so….
Spanish paper AS does a great job of race coverage.
Are you happy with things before the time trial? Contador is asked; “now I have more time between me and Wiggins I have a little more tranquillity.
The time trial in Annecy is long and Klöden and Armstrong are specialists”. Have you won the Tour? “For nothing are the next two days the key, the time trial and Ventoux…I keep my feet on the ground”.
Other quotes: Sastre: “Attacking is my only option”
Nibali: “I collaborated with Lance in the final kilometres; I hope to gain some time in the time trial”:
The President of France, Sarkozy: “Contador is magnificent”.
Bradley Wiggins also thinks he will do well in the time trial; “I hope to recover my place on the podium in Annecy”.
Last bit of news; and if you saw Jens Voigt’s crash you won’t be surprised to hear that the doctor in the Grenoble hospital that treated the German said “the helmet saved his life”.
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.
VeloVeritas took the road to Glasgow on Saturday morning - carefully avoiding the road works on the Forth Bridge - to cover the Scottish criterium champs and to meet our boy Evan at the finish of the Tour of Britain 2007.
Thursday 08.30, Caserta, Frascati. We're in Italy's answer to that hotel where Jack Nicholson lost the plot in 'The Shining'. Huge, empty corridors, plumbing and electrics that have a mind of their own, plus the world's most disinterested and rude staff - maybe they are zombies? Still, we were glad to lay our heads down here late last night: it was a long day.
Cav, like him or loathe him, what a sprinter. His train is by no means HTC - the GreenEdge boys were much better organised, yesterday - but all that does is to underline his quality. Today, in the stage from Savona to Cervere, he was isolated and boxed - he was free-wheeling at one stage - the gap opened and he was through it in a blink.
11.20: Picked-up the Danish guys, Alex Rasmussen and Michael Mørkøv at Lyon airport. It's a hassle because it's hard to park the camper and security is tight. Alex looks slimmer than last season whilst Michael is still skeletal. We have to drive all the way back to Grenoble now. At least the sun is out and the scenery is good.
We've been stalking him since Beijing; and at last, we've cracked him - Chris Hoy, Olympic gold medallist in the team sprint, keirin and individual sprint. We've heard that he now retains Max Clifford, "PR guru to the stars," as his agent, so we decided we'd better check out the financial aspect of the interview, first.
It was completely surreal. It was the 26th of July last year, and we were in Lourdes, sitting in a neon-lit, scruffy, greasy-spoon café at 1:00 in the morning. Our pizzas were cooking in the oven, but we weren't really that hungry anymore. We had travelled to the summit and back down again today, both literally and metaphorically; we'd had a wonderful day working on Stage 16 of the Tour de France which took the race to the ski station, 5,600 feet high, at Gourette - Col d'Aubisque in the Pyrenees, and it had been turned completely on its head.
Our man in the peloton - Endura's Evan Oliphant - took us through the rigours of The Med and Haut Var. Murcia may have been no cake walk but it had a happy ending for Endura - taking the sprints jersey and numerous top ten finishes. Here's what Wick's finest had to say...
I raced the Trofeu Joaquim Agostinho this weekend past weekend. The Prologue was very tricky, very technical. I did my best and I was very pleased. I didn’t have any great expectation for it, which was a good thing as I missed quite a lot of my warm up, due to everyone going berserk when my team mate and Time Triallist Alejandro Marque broke a gear cable just minutes before he was due to race. I also haven’t touched the TT bike since February.
