A taste of Tour heartache on a climb with Cadel
SEB RAMSAY joins Tour de France winner Evans to ride a section of this year’s race
I DON’T mind admitting I’m in a bit of trouble. This never-ending road is rising at a ridiculous gradient and my 49-yearold heart doesn’t have anywhere to go.
What did I really expect? I’m riding with the winner of the 2011 Tour de France. He was also World Champion in 2009.
If that wasn’t enough – and it is – we’re at nearly 7,000ft and yesterday, like most days, I was at around 180ft sitting in front of a computer in Oldham. How did I get here? What’s my name?
When the brains behind the world’s biggest annual sports event come up with the Tour de France route, it’s the culmination of a huge lobbying process.
It’s not just French cities, towns and villages that bid to be on the route but also most of the countries in Europe. For the winners, the footfall and exposure generated by the circus are enough to justify the sort of lavish bidding process that would make FIFA delegates look twice. Witness the kickback for Yorkshire hosting the Grand Depart in 2014, the hugely successful annual Tour de Yorkshire race is only the start of a legacy that will continue to deliver for years to come.
So this year Switzerland has lucked out and has ended up with what looks likely to be one of the race’s key stages.
That’s how I’ve ended up on the verge of dissolving into a quivering, lactic mess, some distance above the Alpine village of Gstaad.
I’m riding with Australian Cadel Evans. Having retired from competitive cycling last year, 39-year-old Cadel now works as an ambassador for his former race team BMC. The Swiss company have partnered with Switzerland Tourism for a marketing push ahead of the Tour’s arrival. The Swiss stage is on Wednesday – July 20 – and will start in the country’s capital Bern before heading south through towards spa town Thun.
It will then start climbing through swanky ski resort Gstaad into Vaud and then down into the canton of Valais where riders will climb very steeply towards the French border near Chamonix.
The reason it’s likely to be a key stage is that it’s one of a diminishing number of opportunities for the climbers – mean race contenders – to take time out of their rivals.
The final 34km of the stage from the Valaisian town of Martigny sees riders climbing over the much-cycled Col de Forclaz before dropping briefly and then carrying on steeply to the picturesque Emosson Dam.
Attacks on this stage are likely to come thick and fast as those still feeling it after 3,000-odd km of racing aim to make serious gains.
I’ve some experience of being on the receiving end of a good kicking on the road bike and my sympathies are with the majority of the field that will just be riding for survival after two-andhalf weeks of the Tour. Talking of which. “What’s your heart rate Cadel?”. My machine gun-like delivery is all about smashing out a sentence and getting back to gasping pronto.
“Aaaah, it’s 140.” The contrast in our voices couldn’t be more marked. His says ‘running at about 50 per cent,’ while mine screams hypoxic panic.
Fortunately, this isn’t Cadel’s first rodeo and, possibly in a bid to avoid losing a journalist to a cardiac infarction, he suggests we stop to take a few pictures. Genius. I take about 20. A Swiss resident now, living near the Italian border on Lake Como, Cadel started off racing mountain bikes and ended up winning World Cups before switching disciplines around 2001. He’s a four-time Olympian.
At dinner that night we talk about Italy, dogs and skiing and not much about cycling.
The next day he’s heading to eastern Switzerland to support a young Aussie mountain biker at a race, so isn’t able to check out the rest of the stage with us. It’s fair to say my legs are less disappointed than the rest of me.
The following day we drive into the canton of Vaud and then on to the stunning Valaisian vineyard village of Saillon.
This south-facing idyll on the side of the Rhône Valley is home to the Dalai Lama-owned world’s smallest vineyard.
We rode the final 25km of the stage, picking up the Forclaz climb near the summit and then heading up to Emosson Dam.
The first chunk up to Forclaz is quite mellow and the pace is bound to be devastating as the stronger teams shell out the lesser climbers in a bid to either pull back an attack or set up their stars.
The final 10km from just below Finhaut are brutal as the road switchbacks relentlessly at up to 12pc. When we rode it the name of Martigny local Sébastien Reichenbach was liberally sprayed across the road.
It’s a Saturday when we ride it and it’s clear that this hitherto overlooked dam service road is bathing in the full glare of the cycling community’s spotlight prior to the big day.
Hundreds of riders of all shapes and sizes are toiling up.
I’ve actually ridden the road before, around six years ago. That time I was on a mountain bike, which weighed more than twice as much as my borrowed BMC road bike and had tyres that were about four times as wide.
It wasn’t as much fun. But I did get to ride down almost all the way back to Martigny off road. This time our bikes are shepherded away and we jump on the Verticalp series of funiculars and trains to make the descent.
The next morning we make the short journey from Martigny up the Val de Bagnes to Verbier and spend a day riding the trails in the ever-expanding mountain bike park.
Verbier’s off road riding is world class, but the resort also has Grand Tour pedigree.
It famously played host to the Tour in 2009, staging a mountain top finish where Spanish Grand Tour legend Alberto Contador crushed his then-teammate – ‘comeback king’ Lance Armstrong – by leaving him for dead on the climb from La Châble up to the village.
Armstrong, supposed to be supporting Contador, had gained a chunk of time on him a few days before by attacking his own team leader in a crosswind which had split the pack.
The Verbier stage was the Spaniard’s very public revenge.
The Spaniard has already been one of this year’s casualties and we all know about Armstrong, so the cast of heroes and villains will be different, but the cycling world and the people of Valais are expecting a Big Wednesday.
I can’t wait.