‘They were attacking each other like juniors’
Thursday, July 20 – Stage 18: Briancon to Col d’Izoard (179.5km)
O UR hotel room was so small last night that Amael Moinard had to put his suitcase out on the balcony and I had to put mine behind the room door just so that we could move.
A heavy thunderstorm jolted me awake at 5am and with another hard day in the mountains on the cards, I put my earplugs in, rolled over, and hoped it would pass before we rolled out of Briancon a few hours later.
Happily, the sun was shining by the time we left town this morning and I found myself riding alongside my cousin Dan Martin, who is currently sixth overall.
Back in 2005, when Dan and I were still dreaming of riding the Tour de France, we drove to Barcelonette – one of the towns along today’s stage route, and spent a few days there tackling some of the big climbs in the area on our own mini training camp.
We reminisced and pondered the odds of both of us making it to the Tour at all, let alone riding the same route 12 years later.
ATTACKS
Racing began on an undulating dual carriageway this morning so every time the road rose up at all it prompted attacks, one of which saw myself and ‘Demma’ (Alessandro De Marchi) get up the road in a group of around 20 riders on a drag after 6km.
Just at the top, someone let the wheel go and Demma went clear with French trio of Lilian Calmejane, Thomas Voeckler and Élie Gesbert.
They soon had 49 seconds but as today was possibly last chance saloon for anyone bar the sprinters or time-triallists to win a stage, waves of attacks kept coming from behind and big groups kept forming and breaking up between Demma’s group and the bunch.
Amael came up to my group with maybe a dozen riders and we moved off again and we had a minute on the peloton when we joined Demma at the front after 20km. When I looked around the group, I couldn’t believe how many riders were there.
We had four and a half minutes by the time we hit the third-category Cote des Demoiselles Coiffees after 50km and with all but three teams represented in our 51-man move, I expected everyone to just ride through and get as much time as possible before thinking about going for the stage win, which was still more than 140km away.
Instead, the attacks started. And they just went on, and on, and on. After blowing up on the Col du Télégraphe yesterday I tried to ride a bit more conservatively today in the hope that my legs would come around for the final climb.
Our group split with five or six riding away at the top but we caught them in the feed zone, where much to my disdain, everyone started attacking again. We were in a huge breakaway with six minutes on the bunch and were attacking each other like juniors!
I hurriedly grabbed a musette and stuffed my food in my pockets before our group split again, and I went clear with around 15 riders but once we hit the Col de Vars, the pace dropped and half of the riders we had left behind caught us again.
When Daniel Navarro, Alexey Lutsenko, Romain Sicard and Tony Gallopin jumped clear I was just happy to stay where I was.
In the valley after the descent, Steve Cummings went to the front and rode so hard that I was surprised to see our advantage drop to four minutes by the time we hit the climb to the summit finish. At the bottom, with 15km to go, the attacks came again and I was left with three others.
Knowing that the stage win was gone and our best-placed rider Damiano Caruso was in the whittleddown peloton behind, I continued riding so that I could give him a hand if he needed me in the last few kilometres. As the favourites’ group caught me with 10km to go I could see Damiano just off the back, so I got in front of him and rode as hard as I could to try and limit his losses as much as possible.
With 5km to go, we caught Amael, who took over when my legs left me 3km later, and Damiano held on to his 11th place overall.
In the end, even though my breakaway had built up more than eight minutes at one point, none of us survived to the summit finish, where King of the Mountains Warren Barguil of Sunweb took his second stage win and sewed up the polka-dot jersey for best climber on this Tour.
I’m happy to have the high mountains out of the way now, even if we have a long and lumpy stage to come tomorrow.
If it was the first week of the Tour I think tomorrow would end in a bunch sprint but after three tough weeks and with a lot of the sprinters gone home, I think tomorrow could go any way.
I’ve been in the break five days in a row now but there aren’t many options left now, so maybe I have to consider getting up the road on a ‘flat day’ now Tour de France, Live, TG4 13.10/ Eurosport 11.00