Inside the Tour, with John Wilcockson – The Alps are here!
There are seven major mountain climbs to tackle in the next three stages of the 95th Tour de France: the Col Agnel, Prato Nevoso, Col de la Lombarde, Cime de la Bonette, Col du Galibier, Col de la Croix de Fer and L’Alpe d’Huez. Race leader Cadel Evans has ridden them all in training, and he is ready to defend his yellow jersey, starting with Sunday’s stage 15 that heads into Italy with a mountaintop finish at the ski station of Prato Nevoso.
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By John Wilcockson
Photo: Graham Watson
There are seven major mountain climbs to tackle in the next three stages of the 95th Tour de France: the Col Agnel, Prato Nevoso, Col de la Lombarde, Cime de la Bonette, Col du Galibier, Col de la Croix de Fer and L’Alpe d’Huez. Race leader Cadel Evans has ridden them all in training, and he is ready to defend his yellow jersey, starting with Sunday’s stage 15 that heads into Italy with a mountaintop finish at the ski station of Prato Nevoso.
“The collection of the stages together is a worry,” Evans said, “but I think it’s an equal worry for everyone. The Alpe d’Huez stage [next Wednesday] is so mammoth, and coming after two hard stages, it’s at a critical point in the Tour. And add in the fact that, on paper, it is the hardest stage of the Tour de France, only true GC riders need apply. Particularly, the Prato Nevoso and Alpe d’Huez stages are going to be very important for who has yellow in Paris.”
Insiders at the Tour have been pointing out that Evans’s Silence-Lotto team does not have the strength in depth of the CSC-Saxo Bank squad, which has two serious challengers in Fränk Schleck (only a second behind Evans on GC) and Carlos Sastre (sixth at 1:28), along with powerful support riders for the mountain stages, including Andy Schleck, Jens Voigt, Volodymir Gustov and Nicki Sørensen.
“Normally, we’re not as strong as CSC, but hopefully smarter,” Evans said. One way in which Evans and his best climbing teammates Dario Cioni, Mario Aerts and Yaroslav Popovych could be smarter in the Alps is to play off the different challengers against each other, especially the riders that immediately follow on Evans on GC: Fränk Schleck, Christian Vande Velde, Bernhard Kohl and Denis Menchov — all of whom are on different teams (respectively CSC, Garmin-Chipotle, Gerolsteiner and Rabobank) and all less than 60 seconds behind Evans.
Photo: Casey B. Gibson
Discussing the possible tactics, Silence-Lotto team manager Marc Sergeant said, “We have more or less five riders within one minute, so [riders like Sastre] can’t really attack us alone as a team, they have to attack the other ones, too. So we’re not isolated. If we were five minutes ahead [on GC], I’d say it would maybe be more difficult, but I think it’s not bad like this.”
Evans agreed. “Like Marc says, maybe it’s to our advantage that we’re all so close, because if sixth place is going to attack, so fifth place has their own interest to defend, as well [as me].” He could have added that another likely scenario is that riders farther back on GC, such as the two Euskaltel-Euskadi men Mikel Astarloza (in ninth at 3:51) and Samuel Sanchez (11th at 4:26), will get into an early break on one of the three alpine stages. Should such a break gain three or more minutes, threatening everyone in the top 10, then all those teams would have an obligation to work to close the gap.
However, stage 15 is not a typical mountain stage. After only 14km (barely time in which to warm up), the riders hit the 24km-long uphill approach to the Col Agnel, which itself is 20.5km long, climbing to a height of 9,002 feet (2744 meters). There are two possible scenarios: there’s a general pact not to attack on the massive climb (so that the non-climbers can finish within the day’s time limit) or the CSC team puts on the pressure to isolate Evans — and then attacks him on the climb to the finish at Prato Nevoso (11km at 7 percent).
If that happens — and all the CSC riders took it easy Saturday so they would be ready for stage 15 — then Evans could be in big trouble. It is also possible that most of the field will regroup on the 55km of flat roads after the Agnel, and CSC will put down the hammer on the approaches to Prato Nevoso. If that’s the case then a third party, such as Menchov, could come through and win the stage (and move up on overall time).
“Menchov has shown that he gets better as the race goes on, and he also has a strong team,” said Evans. “So for me Menchov and obviously Fränk Schleck, they’re the main people to watch initially; but there will always be more [contenders], and by the rest day [on Monday] who knows what positions we’re going to be in; there’ll be others bouncing around the top 10, and even the top five.”
Prato Nevoso is the first stage to finish in Italy since Lance Armstrong famously won at Sestriere in 1999. That was the first of 11 mountain stages the Texan would win during his seven years of dominating the Tour. Will Evans also win the Italian stage, and go on to win the Tour, just like Armstrong?
“I’m a GC rider, maybe a pure, pure GC rider,” Evans said. “I think Armstrong had advantages. He had a very strong team that you saw eliminate half of his competitors before he even had to attack on his own. I’m not going to expect Robbie [McEwen] to ride 160 riders off his wheel on Alpe d’Huez. Armstrong was a different rider with a different team. GC is what counts for me.”
So who does Evans think will be his chief opposition in the Alps? “Menchov and Sastre are the proven performers over three weeks,” he said. “As for Fränk Schleck, we still have to see how he performs on GC day to day over three weeks.”
Asked about Schleck’s stage win at L’Alpe d’Huez in 2006, Evans said, “Put it this way, we’re not going to let Fränk Schleck go in an early breakaway on the stage to Alpe d’Huez like he did two years ago.”
Evans is probably better prepared, and riding more strongly, than ever before. Like Armstrong, he even analyzes his rivals’ climbing form. “I’m here to talk to my coach [Aldo Sassi],” Evans said a few days ago. “He does a really interesting analysis of some climbers and their capacities and so on … like some other famous cycling coaches and advisors have done. We do the same. It’s very important information.”
Whether he has enough information (and a strong enough team!) to fend off the challenges of Sastre, Menchov (and perhaps Vande Velde!) will come to light this week at Prato Nevoso, Cime de la Bonette or L’Alpe d’Huez. It’s going to be electric.
