Yesterday's stage was looking to be an incredibly dull one. It was pretty much flat, with a few uncategorised climbs unlikely to trouble even the sprinters, and it dropped down into the valley for a flat finish. The only real trickiness was six roundabouts in the final six kilometres which might shake the peloton up a bit.
I kept half an eye on twitter during the day, as I was too busy to watch it all. This was a mistake. It turned into something amazing. From the moment the flag dropped, Jack Bauer and Martin Elminger steamed off in a break. This is normal, neither are massive names, and wisdom is the peloton will let them have their fun and then catch them up later. Then it rained. It absolutely heaved it down. This soaked the roads and riders hate wet roads. It's tricky enough to not fall off on dry roads, but downhill with next to sod all grip and in a pack it sorts those that are good from those that aren't (dear reader, your correspondent is firmly in the latter category). With 50km to go, the pair was still out there. And at 40km. And 30km. As a rule of thumb, the peloton will catch a break at a rate of a minute per 10km. This was going to look very tight; the calculation at 20km was "caught on the line".
With 10km, you begin to shout the TV. You will the riders in the break to make it, especially after spending all day out on the front. At 5km, the shouting stops and you begin to look at the time gap, and peer into the background of each and every shot, looking for the motorbikes that mark the front of the chasers. With 1km to go and the motorbikes peeled away you start to shout once again.
Jack Bauer wrote:
Bitter disappointment. A childhood dream to win a stage of the Tour, and for a person like myself, a domestique, I’m normally working in the service of others so this was my first chance to actually be 'up the road’, and with the change, and the wind, and the weather, in the last 100 km we really realised, myself and Martin, we were in with the chance of the win. So I played him in the finale. I tried to look as though I was as tired as possible when I thought I still had one more punch, so I launched at 400 to go and man I thought I had it. I realised in the last 50 meters I had nothing"
Bauer tailed the winner, Kristoff, in by 3 seconds. He finished in tenth, and stopped just after the line, head bowed trying to choke back the tears.
It was incredible.
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Mr Chris wrote:
MaliA isn't just the best thing on the internet - he's the best thing ever.