A RACE BLOWN APART
Crosswinds cause havoc in the peloton, destroying hopes of winning Le Tour. Adam Becket takes a look at tempestuous stages, and the exciting racing wind creates
Le vent qui rend fou. The Autan of Provence is renowned as the wind that drives people mad. And when the wind blows at the Tour, it causes insanity to fall upon the peloton. When crosswinds blow a race apart, there is only so much space in each line of riders. As those at the front surge forward, people are ejected out the back, their stage or sometimes their whole race left in pieces, cast to the winds.
Crosswinds, and the echelons they create, are a factor whenever the Tour visits the coast or an exposed landscape, especially if a stage enters Provence, where races can be torn apart by winds like the Mistral, the Levant or the Tramontane.
As Michael Schär of CCC put it, on days where crosswinds are a possibility, when the weather is set, the peloton is “incredibly nervous”, waiting for it to happen, usually after a sudden change in direction.
Stages that have been upended by blustery conditions include last year’s stage 10, where Thibaut Pinot lost over a minute and a half to the front group, as the race splintered in the last 30km. Another echelon day was stage 13 of the 2013 Tour, from Tours to SaintAmand-Montrond (pictured), when what looked like standard flat stage was upended, with Omega PharmaQuick Step powering away to the win. Alejandro Valverde lost nine minutes after stopping for a puncture, the wind ending his overall ambitions.
Stage 2 in 2015 was a classic crosswind stage, from Utrecht to Neeltje Jans, along the pan-flat Dutch coast. With the terrain offering no problems for the peloton, it was the weather’s turn to cause havoc, splintering the bunch, with Nairo Quintana losing a minute and a half to Chris Froome on only the second day of the Tour. There were no climbing metres gained in the whole day, and yet the power of wind caused almost 90 per cent of the peloton to finish at least a minute and a half behind.
Schär, who finished in the front group that day after working for Greg Van Avermaet, said that crosswind stages at the Tour are even more fraught than usual.
He explained: “The fight is crazy, no one wants to let you in, because if you’re not their team-mate, there’s less space for them. If you have a team-mate behind you, you call, and get the space, but sometimes you can trick them into giving you space. But there’s an inner circle, people you know can go fast. If someone calls, ‘Hey Schär,’ not, ‘Hey Michi,’ I know not to let them in.”
Once a gap opens, that is it for the chasing group: “It’s always good to be in the first echelon, but the other thing is that it’s not like a flat tyre. You can never help each other in the crosswinds; it’s an impossibility to come back as a two against 15, 20 guys. It’s a bit of a dilemma, because you want to help your leader, but the only thing you can do is try to slow down the group by going to the front and slowing down the speed.”
On days when the winds blow, the aim is to be at the front, or a whole race might be lost in a tempest, as many GC riders have found to their cost. Unlike powerful rouleurs like Schär, team leaders are not necessarily equipped with the skills to navigate crosswinds. Those who do master it, though, have a potential race-winning tactic to use, taming the madness.