Porte just hanging in there as Alps beckon

THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2019 themercury.com.au SUBSCRIPTIONS 1300 696 397 NOT for the first time, it has not been Richie Porte’s Tour de France.

While there hasn’t been that crushing dose of bad luck, he was put back by Trek-Segafredo’s poor team time trial on Stage 2 and lacked support in the crosswinds on Stage 10.

At 34, mortality is stalking him. That, and the fear that perhaps he may never podium at the Tour when in the past two years he was capable of winning it before Lady Luck turned her back on him.

And yet, as the Tasmanian tonight rolls up the sleeves for a Tour-defining three-day stint in the Alps, he is completely calm. Acceptance is the wrong word, but he is brutally honest over his standing among the Tour contenders.

“I don’t know, I guess I’m sort of in the twilight of my career and things just change don’t they?” Porte said.

“In training I was pretty good. The numbers were good. I think now, I’m 34 and when you’re comparing yourself to guys like [Thibaut] Pinot and [Julian] Alaphilippe, they’re really coming into their prime aren’t they?

“You do feel that you probably don’t recover from those hard efforts as quickly.”

Porte’s wife Gemma and young son Luca have also spent days with Porte this Tour and as the flecks of grey grow, so too does the perspective.

“I haven’t let anything become a catastrophe, which I think is a bit of a mental thing and an age thing as well,” Porte said. “I’m not anywhere near one of the favourites so I’m enjoying that, just riding along and trying to hold the wheel in front of me, which is not easy.

“I’m sort of doing it alone without a teammate to fight for a wheel on the climbs. It’s not the easiest way to do it, but I’m enjoying it.

“This team ride differently in the peloton than [former team] BMC. I mean, BMC was a fantastic team, but continually in your ear over the radio was ‘ Be at the front, be at the front’. Here it’s not quite so high stress. But that’s probably part of the reason we lost the time on Stage 10 as well.”

Yet there have been signs of life in the mountains for Porte. Now the Tour finally enters a phase he has long maintained will decide the race — stages 18, 19 and 20.

“It doesn’t make sense [to attack],” he said. “I just think, for me, it’s just about hanging in there to be honest.”