In the Footsteps of the First Week

The first week of the French Grand Tour is over. This year’s Tour aroused enormous interest because every great active rider of our time started it. Not all with the same goal, of course, but Spain’s Alberto Contador (winner of all three Grand Tours, the greatest rider of our time), Britain’s Christopher Froome (two-time Tour de France winner), Colombia’s Nairo Quintana (Giro d’Italia winner) and Italy’s Fabio Aru (Vuelta a España winner) had openly made France their target from the start of the season, and such an abundance of first-rank favorites drew enormous interest from the many thousands of connoisseurs who love big battles. Nor does this year’s Tour lack second-rank favorites. Add to that a clearly mountainous route, especially concentrated in the third week. You could say the whole cycling world rushed to France in anticipation of a great — the greatest — Tour.

These were the preconditions under which the first stage, the first week, began…

I’ll say it now, as I’ve said ten thousand times and will have to repeat many times in the future:

You can’t win any Grand Tour in the first week, but you can lose it in the first week!

Everyone knows this well. As soon as the route of the next Tour is announced, for months the teams of the GC contenders discuss every danger of the first week in detail at their camps. Such teams specifically include riders whose main duty is protecting their captains during the first week. They go and ride the difficult sections of the route at training pace. They rehearse the descents. They study in detail the likely directions and strength of the winds, and countless other big details and less noticeable trifles…

And yet every year, in the first week, some big name inevitably loses the whole Tour, and with it the whole season. Months of tireless work are in vain. The hopes of countless people vanish during this week; the disappointment is immense.

We’ve seen a thousand stories, one drama covering another; in the first week several greats have fallen before, but this year only one. Only one — and what a one. The injuries from crashes on the first two stages proved fatal this year. El Pistolero fought. He rode eight stages with enormous effort; an infection was added to his injuries, and on stage 9 Alberto Contador got off his bike and climbed into the car. How will the great Spaniard rearrange his season? We’ll see. Perhaps we’ll see him at the Spanish tour! Vamos El Pistolero!

 

 

Meanwhile, five of the nine stages were won by Britons. The lion’s share of this haul belongs to Mark Cavendish — as I wrote, the king of the sprint is back, and how: he took three stages in direct sprints against all his main rivals. His last win, on stage 6, deserves special mention.

 

 

Before that, the great German did manage to take his own on stage 4: Marcel Kittel snatched a very hard sprint by millimeters from France’s hope, Bryan Coquard.

 

 

Stages 5, 7 and 9 were won with late attacks from the breakaway by a brilliant constellation of the genre in the world peloton, the soloists: Belgium’s Greg Van Avermaet, Britain’s Steve Cummings and Holland’s Tom Dumoulin.

 

 

 

 

I’ll return especially to the penultimate stage of the week, stage 8. It was a mountain stage, but with the finish after a descent nobody expected anything special. However, at the top of the last pass, taking advantage of a moment’s inattention by his rivals, Froome attacked. He gained a small lead, gave it up to no one, and as a result took the stage and pulled on yellow too. It’s obvious that he had rehearsed both his unorthodox technique and the descent itself. True, he and his whole team kept insisting he had been quite careful, but I’ll allow myself to stick to my view. What Froome gained can’t compare with what he could have lost. Yes, he got lucky, and it would have been very bad if something else had happened, but for me this is a sign that Froome is very nervous, and I can’t justify this attack and descent. In my opinion he lost control and could have lost the Tour as a result.

 

 

So far the great Colombian is effectively playing the role of a shadow. If we recall last year’s Tour, we shouldn’t expect anything else from him until the third week. And everyone remembers what Nairo is like in the Alps in the third week — which is why Froome is losing his patience.

The second week will probably be a transitional one, but here too the big battles continue from tomorrow. This is a Grand Tour, after all, and here everyone has their own war!

 

 

 

Featured image: Yuzuru SUNADA/www.yuzurusunada.com

Inside post thumbnail image: Yuzuru SUNADA/www.yuzurusunada.com

 

Special thanks to the Japanese photographer Yuzuru SUNADA for permission to use his works in our publications.

 

 

 

 

Translated from Georgian with the assistance of Claude (Anthropic), reviewed by the Velorbola editors.