France spared a winless 100th Tour
L’ALPE D’HUEZ, FRANCE — After five gruelling hours of riding, as he strained and sweated to victory in an eye-popping Tour de France stage with crowds that turned cycling’s most famous climb into a huge and raucous high-mountain party, Christophe Riblon didn’t want it to stop.
Winning a Tour stage is always special.
Becoming the first French stage winner at the 100th Tour was doubly special.
Doing all this in front of hundreds of thousands of screaming fans, several rows deep up 21 steep hairpin bends in the Alps, well, Riblon wanted the pleasure to last and last.
“It was as if the crowds were carrying me. Magical,” Riblon said. “The last kilometre wasn’t long enough. I so would have liked to have profited more from that moment with the crowds. It was incredible. I would have liked for it to go on for 10 kilometres like that.”
In a Tour that has offered a kaleidoscope of racing drama and scenic beauty from its June 29 start point on the French island of Corsica, this Stage 18 was the one that most set hearts racing and tongues wagging when organizers unveiled the race route last October.
When their bodies and minds are already sapped by more than two weeks of racing, it sent the riders — should that be victims? — not once but twice up the legendary climb to the ski station of L’Alpe d’Huez.
Between the two ascents, the route hared down a sinewy, narrow and risky descent with no safety barriers that some riders, including Tour champion-in-the-making Chris Froome, felt was dangerous.
The double ascent to L’Alpe d’Huez made the roadside hordes doubly frenzied. And the French got a perfect crescendo when Riblon spared them the indignity of a Tour without a stage win. The last time that happened was 1999. With just three stages left after Thursday to the finish in Paris, French chances were fast running out.
“A Frenchman winning on L’Alpe d’Huez is a beautiful recompense for France and for the Tour de France. We, the French, France, our team, didn’t deserve to come out of this Tour de France without a stage victory,” said Riblon.
Victoria’s Ryder Hesjedal won the stage’s first climb, a 13-kilometre ascent up Col de Manse, before settling into the peloton and finishing 43rd. He moved up three spots in the overall classification to 62nd.
David Veilleux of Quebec City was 77th in the stage and improved to 128th overall, while Svein Tuft of Langley, B.C., was 158th Thursday and moved up to 173rd overall.