The Tour of Britain 2011

The Tour of Britain is just a baby on the ProTour circuit, a mere eight years old, but given the rise to prominence on the circuit of the British riders - think Brad Wiggins, Geraint Thomas, Mark Cavendish here - and, of course, the quality of the riders racing it, the course is worthy of a mention.

It was only a week before the beginning of the Tour that Mark Cavendish announced that he would be riding his national tour for his ProTeam of HTC-Highroad.  Such an announcement probably struck fear into the heart of his competitors, and with good reason - Cavendish took an easy win on Stage 1 from a bunch sprint with Aussie teammate and lead-out man Mark Renshaw second.  Of course, the other perk of taking a victory on the first stage of a week-long tour is taking the leader's maillot as well, leaving Cav in the yellow at the end of the first day.  He was lucky enough to keep it the next day as well, but through less clement circumstances.  Due to dangerously strong winds along the coast generated by Hurricane Katia the stage was cancelled, and instead the riders took part in a ceremonial two laps around Kendal, the starting town of the stage.

Though the cancellation of stage two meant Mark Cavendish had to forego the honour of finishing his 'home stage' in Blackpool, the beautiful sunny weather of the following day meant the race was back on!  Even with the still-windy conditions the riders were up to all the usual games, but thanks to the hard work and steep pace set by American team HTC-Highroad, no-one who left the peloton could stay away.  This set the stage for Rabobank's Michael Matthews to springboard Lars Boom to a sprint win on the uphill finish, taking the yellow jersey from Cav in the process.

Day 4 was not much of a surprise, to be honest.  If I say it was a bunch sprint at the end of a stage with mountains, who springs to mind?  If your answer is the God of Thunder Thor Hushovd then yes, you would be right.  After the three-man breakaway was reeled in with a few kilometres to go, Hushovd stormed home, with Lars Boom tight on his wheel.  Though Boom missed out on a second stage victory, he increased his lead on the yellow jersey by 12 seconds over local boy Geraint Thomas, the home-country favourite.

Stage 5, not so expected.  There are really only two names that jump to mind when you think of bunch sprints.  But when it came to this bunch sprint, you'd be a day late if you said Hushovd, and wrong if you said the Manx Missile.  The 12-man breakaway was reeled in a little way out, and when it came down to a bunch sprint, Mark Cavendish came second to his own lead-out man, Mark Renshaw.  The rider famous as the world's best lead-out man was keeping mum afterwards about why him and not Cav.

Lars Boom must have been happy on Day 6.  He seemed a little miffed about coming second to Thor Hushovd on the fourth stage to Caerphilly, despite the fact that Boom was, you know, leading the GC and all, but an outright victory in Wells probably helped improve his mood.  The peloton can't have been impressed, though, after letting Boom slip through their fingers early on and jump ahead to the breakaway from which he was later able to springboard his win.  The stage didn't go so well for home favourite Geraint Thomas, though, dropping down the GC leaderboard following a crash.

The theme of successful breakaways continued onto Stage 7, when virtual unknown, Lithuanian Gediminas Bagdonas, took the stage honours within the breakaway of six and Mark Cavendish led the peloton home in seventh place.  Little change in the GC, but for Lars Boom, still in the leader's maillot, the game was still on for Day 8, the double-doozy combo of a short time trial followed by a 10-lap crit on the same roads.  Boom showed he could hold his own in the time trial, coming in just five seconds behind winner Alex Dowsett, who was resplendent in his lovely new white skinsuit of the British time trial champion.

But of course Cav had to have the last word, especially in his national tour, and promptly pipped everyone else to the line to take the last stage victory, clearly wanting the matching set of first-and-last-stages for his trophy cabinet.  Lars Boom played it safe and finished comfortably in the bunch, securing his nice yellow jersey as he enjoyed his first trip to Britain.  Leopard Trek had two top-ten finishers, Australia's Michael Rogers took out 11th and Cav finished a respectable 13th, right behind Geraint Thomas in 12th.

Au Revoir, Leopard

Pour un an, j'ai été un fan fidèle de l'équipe Leopard Trek.  J’ai attendu avec impatience à voir le maillot de l’équipe, et j’ai acclamé les porteurs de ce maillot.  J’ai vu chaque étape du Tour de France cette année, suivi l’USA ProCycling Challenge, et acclamé mon gars Andy tout le temps.

Mais désormais mon équipe n’existera plus.  Dans un tour très imprévu par tout, l’équipe nationale luxembourgeoise va se joindre à l’équipe américaine Radioshack.  C’est un choque aux fans, parce que Leopard a été crée pour les frères Schleck à pouvoir courir avec une équipe nationale, et avec ses résultats pour sa première saison, cet effort s’est passé bien.

Selon L’Équipe, ce tour est dû au départ du manager, Brian Nygaard (qui, ironiquement, vient à l’équipe australienne, GreenEDGE), et le manager de Radioshack, Johan Bruyneel s’intéresse aux coureurs luxembourgeois depuis longtemps.  Flavio Becca, désormais ex-patron de Leopard, explique dans un entretien récente avec Le Quotidien que cette «double perspective» de Bruyneel a des grandes espoirs pour les frères Schleck, particulièrement pour Fränk.  Avec champion du monde de contre-la-montre Fabian Cancellara, les frères devient les leaders de l’équipe.

La question finale de cette fusion est celle de coureurs.  Avec les règles de l’UCI, une équipe peuvent avoir 30 coureurs dans son effectif.  Quelques coureurs sont déjà départis pour des autres équipes, comme Stuart O’Grady à GreenEDGE, et Becca a dit que tous les contrats qui ont été signé pour l’année prochaine avec Leopard «seront respectés».  Mais il reste beaucoup de coureurs qui n’ont pas tout restent dans l’effectif de la nouvelle équipe, qui a été nommé par le management dans une façon horrible - 

 Radioshack-Nissan-Trek.  Oui, c’est vrai.  Et «Leopard Trek» a apparait si belle.

Stage 18 - Pinerolo => Galibier Serre-Chevalier

Oh.  My gosh.  The Col du Galibier.  FINALLY.  Mountains high enough to get some excitement going.  I will confess, though, that one thing does annoy me about the mountain stages - either you have a breakaway that breaks up and leaves scattered riders all over the course until you have no idea who is where anymore, or else everyone goes quietly off the back of the peloton, never to be seen or heard from again.

But moping aside, mountains!  There was, of course, the usual intermediate sprint with all the associated green jersey action, but all the work of HTC-Highroad to get Mark Cavendish up there in front of JJ Rojas was somewhat wasted, given the breakaway made their break only one kilometre from the sprint point, sweeping through with the top 13 places.  Such big names as AG2R-La Mondiale's Nicolas Roche and everyone's favourite battler, Johnny Hoogerland of Vacansoleil.

But what baffled everyone was the inclusion of Leopard Trek riders Joost Posthuma and Maxime Monfort and BMC's Brent Bookwalter in the breakaway.  As the two teams with GC riders most likely to win the Tour, road race tactics dictate they avoid joining breakaways and try to reel in any that do form.  As we were to discover, Leopard Trek was simply enacting their grand plan.  Maybe BMC had conceived the same plan and missed their opportunity too enact it, or maybe they were simply marking Leopard's move.  It's hard to say.

The number of riders in the breakaway went out to 15 just before the Col Agnel, when Marcus Burghardt (BMC), Mickael Delage (FDJ) and Egor Silin (Katusha) caught up to them.  At the beginning of the first hors-categorie climb the now-16 strong breakaway had almost a nine-minute lead over the main peloton.

And then began the fun of the mountain stages.  As the hills kick in, the climbers check in and the not-so-climbers check out, which left the lead group at 11.  Katusha's Maxim Iglinsky was taking the lead, cresting the Col Agnel first with Johnny Hoogerland right behind.  The group moved straight onto the Col d'Izoard, only six making it to the top in the lead, Leopard Trek's pace-making making it difficult to keep away.

The reason soon became apparent, in one of the most gutsy and unorthodox moves in modern cycling.  60 kilometres from the finish of a mountain stage, Andy Schleck went off the front off the group of favourite riders and began to make his way up the Col d'Izoard alone.  No one was sure what the hell he was doing.  No one was sure he could actually do whatever he was doing.  But he is Andy Schleck, one of the most capable riders in the peloton.  He blazed right past the remnants of the breakaway group as he blazoned on up the Col.

And this was where Leopard Trek's unusual tactics began to show.  As the group of the top contenders behind him finally began to up the ante, maybe not believing he could really stay off the front until the end, the two Leopard riders up from front, Joost and Maxime, waited for Andy to catch up with each of them in turn, and then paced him as far as they could go.  But there was still Iglinsky way out in front.

With the help of teammate Maxime and the three other riders around them, Andy caught Iglinsky with 30 kilomeres left to go, by which point he was far enough ahead of Thomas Voeckler to be wearing the 'virtual' yellow jersey.  With 15 kilometres to go, Max Monfort had finally run out of steam and left Andy to go it almost alone, keeping Iglinsky and Nicolas Roche (AG2R La Mondiale) for company.

Meanwhile, Contador had decided that enough was enough and started chasing down Andy Schleck.  The three-time Tour de France champion clearly felt he had already lost too much time on his two-time runner-up and was doing something about it, but pretty soon the pace-making all fell to Cadel Evans.  After a couple of abortive breakaway attempts, the also-two-time runner-up clearly decided to ride his own race and simply paced himself up the hill, coincidentally with the yellow jersey group in tow.  As they hauled themselves up the final climb of the Col du Galibier, almost four minutes separated Andy from the groupe maillot jaune.

Finally within the 10-kilometre mark, Andy clearly saw fit to shed his baggage and raced away up the mountain.  Behind him the gap was slowly closing, as Cadel literally dragged the world's top riders up the world's most famous biking mountain.  Though clearly not finding it easy, Andy stuck to his guns long enough to get them over the finishing line in first place, while Contador couldn't stick to his further downhill and fell off the back of Cadel's group, kissing another yellow goodbye.  Andy's brother Frank found his legs and was able to sprint off the front of Cadel's group in the last few kilometres to take second behind his younger sibling.

In a miraculous twist, Voeckler was able to stick to Cadel's wheel, who brought him in 15 seconds ahead of Andy and thus kept his yellow jersey for yet another astonishing day.  So with Contador is clearly out of the question, the question itself reads thus: Andy or Cadel?  Cadel, or Andy?  And here at Maillot Jaune, I've already picked my side.  It's Cadel, all the way.

Stage 16 - Saint-Paul-Trois-Chateaux => Gap

So I guess medium mountain stages are better than flat stages, but they're still not nearly as fun or exciting as the high mountains.  Well, not unless top-level-mountain-climbing-GC-contenders like Alberto Contador decide that an otherwise unremarkable stage is the perfect time to attack and try and gain time on the other GC contenders - and decide the outcome of the Tour de France in the process.  Yes, as of today I'm staking my reputation, such as it is, and calling it.  But I won't spoil the surprise yet.

Today's breakaway took quite a while to form, but the composition will surprise few.  Several are familiar names from other breakaways: Thor Hushovd, of Garmin-Cervelo; Jeremy Roy, FDJ; Marco Marcato, from Vacansoleil; and other familiar names include Norwegian sprinter Eddie Boasson Hagen; and strong GC rider Tony Martin, of HTC-Highroad.  Once released the riders flew ahead and gained huge amounts of time on the peloton, until they'd built up a lead of six minutes with 45 kilometres to go and the peloton stopped chasing after it realised they wouldn't be caught before the intermediate sprint point.  First Katusha's Mikhail Ignatyev, followed by Quickstep's Dries Devenyns, tried to break from the group, but the breakaway soon caught their wheel and forced the 10 to stick together.

Canada's Ryder Hesjedal then took up the breakaway's pace-making, and finding the others unable to keep up, took off on his own.  Sky's young sprinter Edvald Boasson Hagen, who is showing himself to be reasonably adept at scaling mountains as well, soon decided to take up the chase, and was followed by Hesjedal's teammate, world champion Thor Hushovd, who marked Boasson Hagen's every move but refused to help in the chase of his co-equipier.  Behind them the breakaway splintered, the remaining riders destined to drift across the finish line over a period of a few minutes.

With all eyes on the breakaway and the fierce competition between Hesjedal, Boasson Hagen and Hushovd for stage supremacy, of course it was in the peloton where the action was taking place.  Feeling the gradient suddenly kick up on the bottom of the Col de Manse as the peloton rounded a bend, Alberto Contador suddenly jumped to the front of the peloton and attacked, and all of a sudden the race was on.  The Schleck brothers of Team Leopard Trek, Cadel Evans (BMC) and yellow jersey of Thomas Voeckler (Europcar) all followed, trailed by Olympic champion, Euskaltel-Euskadi's Sammy Sanchez.  Contador went again, and this time Andy Schleck struggled to keep up, not faring so well on the medium slope.  Contador attacked a third time, and this time he was gone, and only after a few seconds could Cadel and Samuel Sanchez catch up, the Schlecks and Voeckler left behind.  Sanchez quickly assumed the lead from Contador to try and put some distance between the three and their chasers, who were separated from the main peloton.

As the trio raced uphill, another trio was racing down.  Nine kilometres from the end Boasson Hagen, usually described as a "sprinter", had caught sole Canadian pro-cyclist Hesjedal, Hushovd still sitting comfortably in his younger countryman's wake.  Now both Garmin riders sat back, letting Boasson Hagen do the pace-making, the black-clad rider knowing all the time that the teammates on his back wheel were co-ordinating their attack against him.  In truth it was very simple and not at all unexpected.  With a couple of kilometres to go Hesjedal took up the pace-making again, Hushovd at the back, Boasson Hagen sitting in between checking constantly on the bigger sprinter behind to see when he would make his move.  The three moved warily down to the flamme rouge of one kilometre to go, and then they went.  Hesjedal increased the tempo to open up the sprint, and when Boasson Hagen wasn't expecting it Hushovd simply jumped out from behind and went ahead.  The younger Norwegian sprinter was no match for the older Norwegian sprinter, and Hushovd took a second stage victory from his compatriot.

Meanwhile the fight was still very much alive behind them, and as Contador, Evans and Sanchez crested the climb they had around a minute over the other GC riders pursuing them.  But the gap increased on the descent, for Cadel Evans, clearly a better descender than either of the Spaniards, rode downhill at his own pace, and at one point had nearly 30 seconds over his two followers.  The pair managed to bring this down once they reached the flat section leading to the finish at Gap, finishing three seconds behind Evans and around 20 seconds ahead of the pursuers behind, who included Thomas Voeckler and Frank Schleck but not his brother, Andy.

So to finish my earlier comments, I'm now calling the yellow jersey of the 2011 Tour de France for Cadel Evans.  Of the serious contenders for the maillot jaune who are left in the race, Cadel is the best time-trialler and will finish with at least 30 seconds over the nearest of them.  He can keep pace with Andy and Alberto in the high mountains, those being the two known for their quick accelerations on steep ascents, and is quite comfortable in medium mountains, something which Andy Schleck (and possibly Frank) is definitely not.  He is in brilliant form this year, looking much better than any of the other riders, and  lastly his team this year is excellent. BMC's Tour de France team was chosen with direct input from Cadel Evans and with supporting Cadel to yellow in mind, and all of the team members have been visible doing exactly that, while Contador's Saxobank-Sungard side made mistakes from the word 'go' (beginning with the crash in the first stage where the team should have moved Contador up the front out of trouble like the other teams had done).  Andy and Frank's team of Leopard Trek are all brilliant, but maybe their issue lies therein.  Leopard truly is a 'team of champions', each one renowned and celebrated with several victories to their name, whereas by contrast BMC appears to be the proverbial 'champion team' - eight good, solid, unremarkable riders all focussed on the single goal of helping Cadel Evans win the Tour.  With all this in his favour, I fail to see now how he can lose.

Wouter Weylandt

All eyes in the cycling world were on this year’s Giro d’Italia, as always, but the Giro was sadly marred by the untimely passing of Team Leopard Trek cyclist, Wouter Weylandt.

 
On May 9, Weylandt clipped a wall and crashed into the road while descending the Passo del Bocco in Stage 3 of the Giro.  Racing at around 70kph, Weylandt was thrown across the road and killed instantly from internal injuries.  Despite the best efforts of the Giro doctors and a helicopter medical team, Weylandt was unable to be resuscitated and was pronounced dead around an hour later.

That night Team Leopard Trek released a short statement on their website, offering their condolences to Weylandt’s friends and family.  26-year-old Weylandt leaves behind his girlfriend, Sophie, who is pregnant with their first child.

The following day of the Giro was turned into a tribute ride, with no points or times being awarded towards the overall rankings.  Instead the teams took it in turns to lead the stage, along with Team Leopard Trek and Garmin-Cervelo’s Tyler Farrar, Weylandt’s friend and training partner.  Church bells along the route tolled in mourning, and spectators held up replicas of Weylandt’s race number, 108, which has now been retired from use in the Giro.  Leopard Trek and Farrar, arms linked, were allowed to cross the line first, and Farrar announced that evening that he would be leaving the Giro that night, followed by a similar announcement from the riders of Leopard Trek the following day.  The team lined up for the Tour of Calfornia a few days later, saying they would be riding with Wouter as their inspiration.

Photographs courtesy of Team Leopard Trek at www.leopardtrek.lu