If gravity is the cyclist’s friend, wind is the enemy, and the tramontane, the wind that blows across southern France, funnelled between the Pyrenees and the Massif Central, has been doing its worst with the Tour. The north-westerly turned stage 11 into what some claim could be the toughest day in the whole race to the ultimate profit of Peter Sagan. While he won his second stage this year and Chris Froome gained 12 seconds on his rivals, it has caused Thursday’s key climb up Mont Ventoux to be cut short.
On paper the 162.5km from Carcassonne were destined for the sprinters, a classic “transition day” in which the overall contenders would rest. Instead, the 192 riders were all stretched to the limit. Such was the chaos and the intensity that Froome and Sagan were able to escape in the final 10km with the their team-mates Geraint Thomas and Matej Bodnar to provide a spectacle unprecedented in recent Tours: the green jersey outsprinting the yellow jersey for the stage finish.
Froome continues to seek out every opportunity to wrestle a few seconds here and there, although even he wondered if the 10 minutes of intense effort towards the end of this stage was completely worth while. When Sagan powered across a 10 metre gap to Bodnar and the yellow jersey and Thomas sensed the opportunity, the race was physically and mentally in pieces after a day of crashes and constant splits in the field.
Critically, Nairo Quintana was some 40 places behind in the string when the quartet disappeared. The Colombian had no team-mates with him and was unable to affect the course of events. As a psychological point, it was well worth Froome’s making.
After crashes early on as the riders fought for position, the trend was set. The wind bent the olive trees and whistled through the vineyards; it blew on the riders’ backs, so the speed was high, and whenever the course turned meaning that the breeze came from one side, one team or another – most often Sagan’s fluourescent yellow Tinkoff, sometimes Froome’s Sky – would go to the front and accelerate, swapping turns to keep the speed high as the field fanned and stretched in their wake, each man looking for shelter from the wheel in front, calculating the wind direction.
Sometimes, Tinkoff and Sky played a particularly cruel trick, manoeuvring in a quarter or half the road width rather than the full space of the tarmac, to expose as many men behind them to the full force of the wind on their shoulders; “putting the race in the gutter” as it is known. The line behind would stretch and snap, forcing those left behind to chase in desperation. Then the race would turn into shelter – a small town perhaps – and the back markers would catch up. But the true brutality of a three-quarters tailwind is that even when the front of the race steadies, they are still going so fast that the speed and effort needed to regain contact is much higher than usual.
Team support is critical on such days as the cumulative fatigue and stress mounts up, and the men delegated to shelter Froome through the stage – Ian Stannard, Luke Rowe, Vasili Kiryienka – ensured he was fresh at the key moment. “Bodnar took a few metres lead, I saw the group was very long [stretched out] so I thought I would pull to split the bunch,” Sagan said. “You had to be in the right place at the right time.”
Behind, no team had the legs or the numbers to chase, although the impetus as the field sprinted for fourth – Thomas had dropped back in the final kilometres once – brought the lead back to a mere 6sec at the line; Froome’s second place time bonus extended his overall lead by 12sec.
A glance down the stage standings underlined the havoc. Four main groups finished about 35 strong but the rest were in sweat streaked, exhausted dribs and drabs, with the last man home finishing 17 minutes behind. There were two losers among the top 10 overall, Joaquim Rodríguez of Spain, and Louis Meintjes of South Africa, while Thibaut Pinot was buffeted back and forth between one echelon and another and lost almost four minutes.
A workout of this intensity was hardly ideal preparation for Thursday’s finish up Mont Ventoux, even in truncated form. The 10km ascent to Chalet Reynard, finishing 6.2km short of the observatory, is still demanding enough, topping out at 1,435m with zero respite, but cutting the climb could make what precedes it more intense, because more of the field can aspire to win a shortened stage.
As Sagan put it, “I’m sure it will be hard just to get to the foot of the Ventoux, the wind will blow and it will be a crazy stage.”
