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.
While Jarlinson Pantana was winning the stage today for IAM Cycling and Columbia (that's his contract sorted for 2017 - IAM folds at the end of the season) Ed and Callum were race-bound, flying in to Geneva to get the car and get organised with race accreditation.
Jan Bakelants today, but they couldn't resist it; "Tour de Farce" trumpets the headline in the Sunday Times. I'm not really a Times man, my dad wouldn't have approved. But I wanted to see what David Walsh had to say about Stage One.
On Stage Eight to Albacete, once the break got caught with around 20 miles to go it looked like standard sprinter stage fare – Giant, Lampre, F de J and GreenEDGE would control it for their sprinters, with Nacer Bouhanni prominent.
We have to start betting ‘each way’ – yesterday we said; ‘Michael Matthews’ and he was third, today we said; ‘Nacer Bouhanni’ and he was second. And much as we admire the wiry Frenchman, John Degenkolb was 100% correct when he said of Bouhanni’s complaint about the German shutting the door on him; ‘on the right side there was only the barriers.’
The Scottish road racing season kicked off last Saturday at Gifford and any fears of 'same old, same old' were quickly dispelled by 'Master Tom Arnstein'.
No appraisal of Scotland’s cycling medal hopes for the 2018 Commonwealth Games would be complete without speaking to multiple Commonwealth, Worlds and Olympic visually impaired tandem champion, Neil Fachie.
Here’s what the man had to say to VeloVeritas, recently:
We talk to Shane Archbold about the Fiorenzuola Summer Six Day. My favourite Shane story is the one where I pulled him in off the track at Copenhagen during the Six Day.
In the language of the Gael, Glasgow is, ‘The Dear Green Place,’ on Sunday for the European Road race Championship 2018 it was certainly ‘green’ – we’re not do sure about ‘dear’ though; it was grey, miserable, and wet – just plain DREICH. But we still love the city – last time we went west for the Commonwealth Games Road Race, this time we decided to get soaked in the East End.
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