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.
* * *
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.
Today’s stage started in Benidorm, not beside the sea but on the north side of town, away from the football strip clad, burnt red, stag and hen madness and the karaoke bars. We caught the action at three spots before Nairo Quintana stormed into Calpe for a tremendous win.
Dylan Groenewegen (Lotto-Jumbo & The Netherlands) goes from way out, Arnaud Demare (FDJ & France) scrambles for his wheel but is lengths back at the line with Sonny Colbrelli (Bahrain & Italy) doing well for a man whose speciality is late season races in balmy Italy, taking third. We agree it was a great sprint from the Dutchman but it wasn't a vintage Kuurne Brussels Kuurne.
Today we're in Cervinia, looking back at yesterday's stage... we thought it was the end for Cav. The gruppetto was way down on the first of the two big climbs of the day - but Cav was even further back.
We have a look at the Edinburgh Nocturne in this article, but first, once again VeloVeritas finds itself in the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ situation — last year at the Worlds, we were about the only ones to point out that Brad heaving his bike after a mechanical in the TT was not particularly good patter.
This time last year I was traveling the world, sourcing suppliers for a new Planet X clothing range. One year on and we have made some giant steps forward. Not only has all the hard work paid off, with the new Planet X 365X clothing range now available both in store and online, we are also proudly supporting the Danish Professional cycling team Christina Watches - as official technical sponsor.
George Atkins was a name that suddenly appeared on the Scottish scene back in the summer. And on Sunday the versatile man from Leicester took silver in the British U23 Time Trial Championships, but before his foray into the world of riding 'alone and unpaced', he spent six weeks in Flanders, so naturally we needed to have a word with him, not long before the British Champs.
The British ‘25’ is still THE race to win - Sheil, Bonner, Engers, Lloyd, Doyle, Webster, Boardman ... Any rider would be honoured to add their name to that list. This year we’d all been expecting Matt Bottrill to add to his already impressive palmarès. But it was one of VeloVeritas' amigo, Dan Fleeman’s charges at Dig Deep Coaching who upset the form book: Ryan Perry (Langdale Lightweights RT) who’s 48:04 was 20 seconds too quick for Britain’s fastest postie.
Velon and the Tour of Poland (12-18 July) are pleased to announce a collaboration that will see real-time rider performance data being streamed to and combined with the live broadcast TV coverage for each of the race’s seven stages. In addition, the data and broadcast stream will be viewable to all fans via the Velon.cc website and the Velon Pro Cycling app for both iOS and Android.
We humbly ask for your help to support our dear friend and beloved colleague Ed Hood. Ed suffered a devastating stroke in February last year and faces an uncertain future.
As a result of the stroke, Ed has lost his ability to speak, and to read, and has lost movement on the right side of his body. He’s working with speech and physical therapists on rehabilitation but all strokes are different and each patient responds differently, so unfortunately recovery is one day at a time.
Ed ran his own business installing windows but will not be able to work again and his financial future is uncertain, so please consider joining us to make a contribution to the GoFundMe page to help stabilise and secure Ed's future. Thank you.
