Crash solutions, quiet Quintana, Van Garderen's glee, plus more
Monday 13 July 2015 14:34, UK
The first week of the Tour de France delivered great racing, searing heat, raging crosswinds, cobbles, crashes, big-name departures, stress aplenty and left several riders close to tears.
Some flourished but others wilted, and big gaps have consequently already appeared between the pre-race favourites.
Here, we sift through the key talking points from the first nine stages…
The first week was supposed to be 2014 winner Vincenzo Nibali’s chance to gain time on his rivals, but it instead turned into a total disaster. He lost time in the crosswinds on stage two, gained nothing over the cobbles on stage four and surrendered more seconds on the two uphill finishes on the Mur de Huy and Mur de Bretagne.
It all leaves his Tour defence in tatters. He is 2min 22sec down on leader Froome and, given that he is an inferior climber to the Briton, he is quite literally facing an uphill struggle to regain parity in the mountain stages to come. It’s still too early to write Nibali off, but there can be no denying that his hopes of a second successive Tour win are now slim.
The first nine stages were rife with crashes, with two in particular causing particular alarm. The first, which left riders piled up against a lamppost, forced five riders to abandon the race, including then race leader Fabian Cancellara, who broke his back in two places. The second incident involved another then race leader Tony Martin, who broke his collarbone and also brought down Nibali, Nairo Quintana and very nearly Froome.
Crashes have always been a feature of cycling and most likely always will be, but that is not an excuse to sit back and let the carnage continue. Riders’ lives and livelihoods are being risked by these accidents and, surely, the time has come to cut the risk.
The most obvious solution is to reduce the number of riders in the race from its current 198 so that the peloton isn’t so congested. This could be done by having eight-rider teams rather than nine, or by scrapping the wildcard system. As it stands, the 22 teams who take part in the Tour are made up of the 18 WorldTour teams and four invited “wildcard” teams from cycling’s second tier, the Pro Continental Tour.
Perhaps a hybrid of the two – two wildcards instead of four and eight-rider teams, leaving 160 riders in the race – would be a good solution.
Froome made little attempt to show off his bristling form in the opening week, but on the other hand, Alberto Contador and Nairo Quintana offered few clues about their condition. Both were dropped by Froome on stage three on the Mur de Huy (Quintana finished 11 seconds down and Contador 18 seconds), but other than that, we haven’t seen much of them.
Had Quintana not been caught out by crosswinds on stage two, he would be a lot closer to Froome than the 1min 59sec he finds himself behind, and although that is a lot of ground to make up, there has been nothing yet to suggest he is not capable.
Contador’s struggles on the Mur de Huy, meanwhile, suggested he remains tired from winning May’s Giro d’Italia, but he looked fresher on the Mur de Bretagne on stage eight and although he is 1min 3sec adrift, that too could be retrievable should he be firing in the mountains.
But in truth, we haven’t seen enough from Contador and Quintana to know either way.
With Nibali, Contador and Quintana all losing time, Tejay van Garderen proved to be the only man capable of matching Froome in an impressive first week for the American. Although he too was left behind by Froome on the Mur de Huy, he has been at the leader’s side for pretty much the rest of the race so far and appears to be in peak form.
Van Garderen finished 10 seconds down on Froome at the Tour’s key build-up race, the Criterium du Dauphine in June, and is confident he can mount another stern challenge when the race reaches the mountains on Tuesday’s 10th stage.
Froome, Contador, Quintana and Nibali were dubbed the “Big Four” contenders for the yellow jersey before the race starts, but Van Garderen's performance so far suggest that should have been the “Big Five”.
Mark Cavendish looked a shadow of his former self when losing out to Andre Greipel in the sprint finishes on stages two and five. Each time he appeared to panic and launch his sprint too early, and each time he faded in the final 100m and was overtaken. However, he made amends on stage seven by biding his time and reacting to Greipel’s sprint, rather than the other way round. The result was a bike length’s victory and a 26th Tour stage win.
It proved that Cavendish still is one of the fastest and best sprinters in the world and that suggestions he is a spent force were premature. He just needed to show patience.
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