If you believed Mark Cavendish, it was one of those spur-of-the-moment things. According to him, the dramatically unexpected tactical shift that prefaced his win in yesterday's third stage of the 2009 Tour de France, and may also have transformed the race into one of the most memorable in its 106-year history, just came into his team's heads as they turned a corner and the wind changed.
It was hard to believe. At this level, cycling is like chess on wheels. Fate can play a part, certainly, but brilliant gambits are usually the result of careful forethought. Yesterday Cavendish and his eight Columbia-HTC colleagues manipulated the race with a collective skill that could only have been the result of rigorous planning, even if the details of timing were left to the moment.
The stage began in Marseille, and for 130km it proceeded as if the entire field had taken a pledge to reproduce the events of the previous day's run from Monaco to Brignoles as precisely as possible.
Taking advantage of a series of relatively friendly climbs through the whitened hills of the Bouches-du-Rhône, including one crest that provided a perfect view of Cézanne's Mont Saint-Victoire, four unheralded riders – Samuel Dumoulin, Maxime Bouet, Koen De Kort and Rubén Pérez – made a break that they were able to stretch to 12 minutes.
Needing to preserve the yellow jersey for Fabian Cancellara, the Saxo Bank team again rode at the front of the field for much of the day, halving the gap but then letting it expand again. As soon as the field had circled the ancient walls of Arles and turned into the flatlands of the Camargue, however, the white and yellow jerseys of the Columbia-HTC squad took the initiative.
Flying along the straight roads running south-west, with neither shade nor shelter, the nine Columbia riders made a thrilling sight as they lined themselves out at the head of the peloton, gradually reeling in the four escapers. Their action, Cavendish said, was a rebuke to those other teams choosing to take it easy in preparation for today's team time-trial.
"We were the only team that wanted to ride today," he said. "Saxo Bank did a great job early on but none of the others wanted to take the race on. They were saving themselves for tomorrow, so it was left up to us. In the end, if you take it on you're going to succeed. We took it on."
That much became apparent when, with 32km to go, the riders turned right and straight into a headwind. Suddenly the Columbia riders accelerated as one, taking it in turns to make the pace in order to fight the wind and escape the rest of the field.
Even Cavendish joined in, conspicuous in his green jersey. Leaving around 150 riders trailing, they were joined by a dozen others and, within minutes, by the leading quartet, who were absorbed into a group now 28 strong.
The presence in this larger breakaway of Lance Armstrong and two of his Astana lieutenants immediately became the subject of speculation. Since Alberto Contador, who started the day with a 22-second lead over Armstrong in the general classification, had missed the break, this clearly presented the Texan with the opportunity to overhaul his designated team leader and set his sights on the yellow jersey. Could Columbia-HTC's strategists have enlisted Armstrong's help in order to reinforce the break's chances of success?
When that was put to Armstrong, he issued an airy denial. "You know what the wind is doing and you see a turn coming up," he said, "so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that you have to go to the front.
"It was good positioning, experience, a little bit of luck. Before that corner I was 20 guys back and I decided it was an idea just to move up to be on that if it went. There wasn't a lot of talking."
Other participants in the break included six Skil-Shimano riders, two each from Cervelo and Milram, and Cancellara. But it was Astana's Yaroslav Popovych and Haimar Zubeldia who helped Columbia's George Hincapie, Michael Rogers and Tony Martin to hold the gap between the leading group and the peloton at around half a minute, effectively acting as Armstrong's lieutenants in the day's deeper narrative strand.
As they headed towards the finish line in La Grande-Motte, a 1960s holiday centre on the Golfe du Lion, Cavendish played out his now-customary endgame, rocketing off the wheel of the faithful Mark Renshaw and this time dismissing the final challenge of the 31-year-old Thor Hushovd, one of the great sprinters of his generation.
"A couple of attacks went," Cavendish said, "and Mark [Renshaw] showed his experience by keeping his cool and using the slipstream of the guys who'd attacked to deliver me perfectly. I had to leave it late today, inside the last 200 metres, because of the headwind. Mark didn't slow down at all and I was able to springboard off him."
The real action, however, had come 32km earlier, when Armstrong got himself into position to go with the day's decisive move. "It wasn't like it was an ambush," he said. Maybe not. But for Contador and the other favourites who got left behind, it was certainly a mugging, executed with deadly panache.
From Guardian.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment