Another day in the bag, yellow held, Richie very much in the race now, and onto the next challenge.
Yesterday was all about staying vigilant, eating and drinking enough, keeping Richie and Greg out of any danger and making their lives as easy as possible.
For a domestique, it´s our role to do the pace-setting when we´ve a man in the leader´s jersey and that meant sitting on the front for much of the opening half of the stage yesterday, once the break went.
Four riders got away and once happy with the composition, we just settled into the task of riding on the front and slowly, slowly letting them fry themselves out there.
There was also a headwind for much of the day, so staying away was even more difficult for the guys out there.
The day went really quickly, actually, and though 195 kilometres is a hell of a day for anyone, it seemed to fly by – as completing it in 4 hours and 25 minutes would attest.
And most of that into a headwind too. It helps when Michael and Stefan are riding so strongly and seem to be able to just sit there on the front and churn through the kilometres effortlessly.
I´m feeling good too, though yesterday I broke the gel count record I think when I devoured 17 of them!
A big day at the Tour demands so much of your body and we need to constantly stay on top of it; that means eating and drinking all day long.
We talk about the ´now´a lot in this game and our mantra is, if you are hungry, eat now. If you are thirsty, drink now. If you need a jacket, get it now. If you need to lose a layer, lose it now. If you need to move up, move up now!
One lapse in concentration and you forget to drink, your power is down and you need to make up for it by using energy unnecessarily. Energy that can be used later on when things heat up in the final.
Speaking of the final….another seat of the pants moment for us when a huge crash happened in the middle of the bunch like a bomb going off. A touch of wheels is all it takes and 20 guys are on the floor.
Thankfully none of our guys and we´re onto today´s stage with all skin intact!
Today´s stage takes us 204 kilometres from Lorient to Quimper and ahead of us lies a day designed for Greg.
We could see an exciting sprint but the short climbs will probably select the group a bit more than usual.
I don’t expect all the pure sprinters to hang on after 2,600 meters of climbing and 5 categorized climbs, especially if we consider the 700 m at 9.1% that appear 12 kms before arriving.
Expect some real fireworks there.
This final, especially after all the climbing, looks great for Greg and some of the other classics guys.
The short punchy hills and the finish with for 4.8% in the last k will be exciting as it demands that bit of extra power in the legs.
At that point, and after 200ks only the guys who have done ´nothing´ all day will be able to go there.
We’ll be at the front once again and that will be a demanding task.
Yesterday was one of the best days I’ve ever enjoyed as a bike rider and I will cherish it for the rest of my life.
I was part of a stage-winning team in the biggest bike race in the world and it came about by sheer hard work, effort and execution of a plan we’d hatched months ago.
To win a team time-trial at the Tour de France is an amazing feat and one that very few riders ever get to put on their CV.
For some riders, it may be the only chance they ever get to stand on the winning podium and if it never happens me in my career again I’ll always remember the town of Cholet and July 9th, 2018.
Okay, we were one of the favourites for the test yesterday that started and finished in Cholet; we have the best bikes in the peloton, a highly-motivated group and the course was good for us too.
But the margins at this level are tiny and one wrong corner or mistimed pull on the front can really upset your rhythm and see you slip down the standings.
We had the morning to recce the course because our start time wasn’t until 3.30, so we used this time wisely.
We drove around yesterday morning so we could get a feel for it with the crowds gathered. We also rode around it and our coach Marco Pinotti was advising us on where we could go full gas and where would be better to back it off a little.
In actual fact, we rode the course last Wednesday as well when there was no traffic. We all flew in the night before, so this was no accident what happened yesterday. That line about working harder and getting luckier springs to mind…
Marco’s experience was just one another part of the jigsaw, the rest was up to us as a team to decide who’d pull and when.
The rule in this year’s Tour is your finishing time (on a team time-trial) is dictated by the time of your fourth rider crossing the line, meaning we could ‘sacrifice’ four riders if necessary.
By this, we can effectively ‘select’ who would go off hard and who would be ‘spared’ until the latter part of the test.
We knew Michael (Schar) would be dropped but to his immense credit, he emptied himself early on and did some pulls that had me on the ropes.
Now, as it turned out, we finished with five men coming across the line which not only shows how strong we were yesterday, but it also showed an element of caution/maturity because we could allow for a puncture or mechanical.
In other words, had we been down to four riders for the final 10 kilometres and one of them lost contact, the rest of us would have to wait and we wouldn’t have won.
Our winning margin yesterday, by the way, was just four seconds….over 35.5 kilometres. We clocked 38” and 46 seconds at an average speed of 54.9 kilometres an hour.
That’s quite something and a result I am very proud of, considering the wind, the roundabouts and the hills.
We completely deserved that win. Keung was unbelievable yesterday and Greg too. It was just brilliant to see him pull on the yellow jersey after such a long wait in the hotseat.
On that note, I’ve been in that hotseat before for long afternoons counting the riders in.
Primoz Roglic dumped me out of it on the final stage of Pais Vasco, as did my teammate Tejay in California and it’s a sick feeling when you lose it so late.
But not yesterday. After the rush of hugs and high fives and handshakes we got a group photo behind the podium and it’s a moment I’ll cherish dearly as long as I live.
There is something about nailing a time-trial with a team. It brings us closer together and as we head into stage four today, we know we are a closer unit.
Speaking of today, we have another day for the sprinters.
We all know how things can turn around in one second, even on these flat stages, so we’ll have to be completely focused on getting to the finish line safely and protecting Richie as much as possible.
He’s still 51 seconds behind Geraint Thomas, the best placed GC contender, so there’s no gap to lose time on this terrain anymore.
Today we’ll start at La Baule, in the Breton area, and we’ll cover 195 kilometres on rolling terrain to finish in Sarzeau.
It’s not a hilly stage compared to what we’ve ahead, but it’s not a pan flat day.
Even a classified climb (4th category) will come at 135,5 kms. Nothing hard or long, but those looking to wear the the polka dot jersey on at least one stage might want to give it a little squeeze there.
I expect a sprint finish and unlike the second stage, the last kilometres are held on a wide and long avenue (I’ve been told, is one of the longest straight lines in French cycling).
Anyway, sprinters should be aware that as per the roadbook, the terrain has a slight uphill with 2 kms left.
Launching all the power too soon could ruin some expectations to wear green this afternoon.
Let’s just hope they can make it all to the line together and give the public a textbook finish.
Stage 2; Mouilleron-Saint Germain – La Roche-Sur-Yon, 182.5km
Day two is safely in the bag and I guess you could say it is mission completed with all BMC boys coming home in one piece and we turn our attention to today´s team time-trial.
Yesterday, the stress levels went up another few notches as a few of us who lost time on stage one needed to ensure Richie lost no more time to his fellow GC rivals.
Richie is our GC leader going for the overall and having lost 51 seconds on Sunday my job was to protect him from the wind and keep him out of trouble all day yesterday.
And boy was it tough.
The stage was 182 kilometres long and we covered that in just over four hours. Yes, that´s an average speed of around 45 kilometres an hour. Rapid!
The speed wasn´t so much the problem, though. It was the constant yo-yoing in the pace that caused all the stress.
With one rider out front, hat tip to Sylvain Chavanel of Direct Energie for that solo effort, the bunch had to keep a close eye on him and not just assume he´d be caught.
Sylvain is a horse of a man but not even he was likely to stand a chance of winning on his own so early in the race when everyone is still fresh and motivated – and fancies their chances in the sprint.
We were fighting and scrapping for position in the wind one minute and suddenly the pace would drop and you´d fall back the bunch knowing there was a bit of a ceasefire and not so much of a requirement to be in front.
That softening of the pedals feels great as you can recover, take a nature break and just ride and eat and drink.
Doesn´t last long though because what also stresses everyone out is the endless amount of roundabouts and road furniture we have to navigate!
It seems like we are in the most heavily roundabout-populated part of the world!
Despite all this we got through unscathed and without losing time.
My relief at getting Richie through unscathed gave way to pure euphoria when I learnt that my friend and fellow countryman Dion Smith is currently in the King of the Mountains jersey!
What an amazing ride by the guy to go for that and nail it. I couldn´t be any happier for the guy – and what a nice one for New Zealand to have one of our own on the world stage like that!
Today’s stage has a lot of expectation around it for us. The TTT on the Tour de France is always a big day and it will be specially for our team, not only for being one of our strengths, but also because this could be a good chance to help Richie make up some of the time lost on the first stage.
This test against the clock will benefit specialists like me as it covers a relatively flat course, starting and finishing in Cholet. It is also a distance I can do very well, that being 35 kilometres.
Anyway, being a flat day doesn’t mean we’ll have an easy day on the saddle. This is the kind of course that requires full concentration from the squad due to the undulations of the course and the crosswinds that may affect us.
Roundabouts and narrow, twisting roads through towns will also be demanding.
There will be extra pressure around some GC teams, as they need their leaders to recover the time lost on the first stage, just like us. It should be an epic afternoon where we really see a bit more of who is on the egde.
Let’s hope we can have a fast and safe stage!
Keep an eye on the black and red guys today, though!
In this race, everything is turned up a notch (or 5) and even the easier days are hard.
It’s easy to forget the enormity of the race until you take to the start on day one.
We started from Noirmoutier-en-l’Île, an island off the coast of western France in the Vendée department and rode onto the mainland to Fontenay Le Comte.
It was pretty flat with just one categorised climb coming 28 kilometres from the finish but nothing hard enough to dislodge any of the sprinters who were eyeing up the stage.
A break went early, three guys got away and the race was going exactly to plan for us. The gap to the three out front hovered around four minutes but came down, as you’d expect, coming to the final.
The reason that gap tumbles is a quickening in the pace from us behind. I mean real speed.
Speed means tension and tension can lead to crashes and the day escalated in the space of one crash which our GC hopeful Richie was caught up in but thankfully, unhurt.
When that happened, the pace was really on so we had to try and get him back up to the front as quickly as possible, all the while trying to spare his legs as best we could.
We rode as hard as we could to pace him back up but not even a combined effort from ourselves and the Michelton Scott boys couldn’t close the gap as the sprinter teams started leading it out from a long way.
This was one painful reminder of just how hard the Tour can be!
The first stage is always nervous and today’s opener was no different with everyone feeling fresh and motivated and eager to be at the front.
But of course the road is only so wide and the pace can only be so quick, meaning there comes a point when you just cannot go up any higher.
Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) lost time in the madness, as did Froome who tumbled into a grassy verge after clipping another rider. And before I had time top process that Nairo Quintana (Movistar) punctured!
But we got through it, with the help of five gels!
Today’s stage is another one for the sprinters, if nothing extraordinary happens. We will again will try to stay safe after the crashes and the stress from yesterday, but this is the Tour and anything can happen, even on pan flat days.
I am writing this from the start at Mouilleron-Saint Germain in the Vendée province and this afternoon we will cover 182.5 kms in the countryside.
The only categorized climb will come 28ks in, when we tackle 1 km at 3,9%. Nothing hard, but a breakaway will probably start setting up after this little bump.
The rest of the stage is flat and the only difficulties will come at the final kilometres where the breakaway will presumably be controlled already and the teams aiming to win this sprint will start seeking their chances.
The road book shows there are sharp corners and roundabouts and the last 900 mts have a slight rise on a narrow road so it will be fun to watch how the specialists handle that lack of space!
NOTE: Watch out for some ´outsiders´ involved in sprints again today. This year’s Tour organisation decided to give extra bonifications for sprints on the first 8 stages (No TTT included) that won’t count for the Green Jersey, attracting other riders to the finish line.
Paddy Bevin is one of four Kiwi riders on the start-list in this year´s Tour de France. He will be blogging for Eat Sleep Cycle from the BMC Racing Team camp each night throughout the race.
Tomorrow I will start my second Tour de France and my third Grand Tour having done the Vuelta in 2015 with the Cannondale-Drapac Pro Cycling Team.
It’s my first Grand Tour with BMC Racing Team and to say I’m excited for the next three weeks is an understatement.
It’s been a very good season for me personally and I’m here on merit having had a perfect lead-in with the Tour of Yorkshire – where Greg (Van Avermaet) won and I was 9th, the Tour of California and most recently, the Criterium du Dauphine, being the ideal race programme.
Though I was on the long list for the Tour, you´re never sure of your place in the team until you’re standing at the team presentation like I was yesterday.
To my right on the stage was our GC hope, Richie Porte from Australia. He’s in awesome shape having just won the Tour de Suisse and my job for the next three weeks will be to help him win this race. To put it simply, he’s our Plan A, B and C.
He’s never won the Tour before but if we take it day by day and he has a little luck along the way, he can really challenge for the yellow jersey.
I’m proud to be here helping him and the team because my own selection went right down to the wire and I really had to earn it. That gave me a lot of satisfaction. I’ve been riding at the level required but cycling is never a sure thing. Not for me, not for anyone.
The Tour is the Tour, the biggest race on the calendar and the one everyone wants to be in. I remember the sheer scale of it last year when I made my debut. It’s just enormous. The crowds on the roadside from start to finish are mind-blowing and it really makes all the effort and sacrifices worthwhile.
I’ll be hoping for a better start than last year, mind. That’s my first goal! Most of you will probably remember I crashed on the opening stage after six kilometers and broke my foot. I’m not sure if there are records but I quite possibly became the youngest Tour debutant to crash so early in the race!
But I got through it and I helped Rigo (Uran) finish third overall. It sounds like a cliche in cycling but with that experience in my back pocket, and knowledge of what the race entails, I am more aware of how to take on this race, physically and mentally.
I’ve taken strength from that episode and used it as a springboard for this year.
It’s about improvising in the Tour and for sure things will go wrong for us and everyone else.
You just have to be robust and I think we have a pretty robust team with a lot of experience. You can’t substitute that experience for any amount of ability.
Simon, Greg, Richie, Tejay and Michael have been around the block and know what it takes to get around here. Damiano too – and he’s flying as you saw in the Dauphine. Myself and Stefan are a bit younger but we can get over some of the big climbs and go okay on the flat, and that’s where we´ll be needed.
There’s a lot of wind in the first 10 days and the team time-trial on Monday is a stage we’ll obviously be targeting. There’s cobbles and wind and rain and any amount of things to negotiate so we just need to be vigilant at all times or the race could be over.
The start-list this year is as strong as I can remember and I hope it’ll make for some really good racing. Last year I think it was a bit of a procession to the finish after day 9 or 10.
It was Froome-Bardet and Rigo all the way and the only argument was in what order they’d finish.
They’ll all be there again I’m sure, but I don’t see the race being as straight-forward, not with so many other guys going well.
There are six proper mountain stages in the parcours this year – three of which feature summit finishes – one individual time trial, a team time trial, eight flat stages and five moderately hilly stages.
It’s day by day for us, however, because as we saw with Richie last year, it can all end in a flash.
But I’m ready, Richie’s ready, so roll on the Tour.
As Girona based pro rider Paddy Bevin takes the Leaders Jersey in Tirreno Adriatico, Brian takes a look back at Paddy’s career to date.
Years in the making, a potential finally being reached
Knowing the guy a little, he’ll probably hate reading this. He’ll probably say it’s pointless, unnecessary and way over the top. In his eyes, it’s just bike racing. It’s not war, or death or famine. Or the All Blacks in a Test match.
Paddy Bevin is the guy who crashed in the opening minutes of his first Tour de France last year and slammed into a steel barrier so hard that he broke his foot – though the fracture may have occurred as he skittered along the slick tarmac before coming to a shuddering halt.
An eerie silence followed a rapturous applause as he picked himself up and trundled to the finish among the last finishers.
It was sickening to watch and it could have very easily ended his career. Over three weeks later he hobbled into my house for some well-deserved burgers and post-race beers.
In each hand were crutches, his fingers holding the race number he promised he’d bring back for our shop in Girona. ‘Bevin 183’. He didn’t care much for the numbers.
“Mate, I’m not that tough. It was fine,” when a few of us asked how the hell do you finish the Tour with a broken foot.
Paddy Bevin most definitely is not Phil Gaimon.
“How the f*** do you get bottles for Uran? How the hell do you sprint? How is it possible to wake up after two weeks and face a Pyrenean stage knowing your foot is fucked and Contador is going to go bonkers from the gun?”
“Honestly, it wasn’t that bad; you just suck it up and get through it. How’s all at Eat Sleep Cycle?” he says in one unbroken sentence.
I should have punched the guy.
Paddy doesn’t jaw about on social media like others do. He won’t use three words if two will do. Hence his Instagram description of BMC winning the opening team time-trial at Tirreno-Adriatico yesterday. ‘Get on bike. Pedal fast. Win race’.
Humble to a fault is how I’d best describe him.
He’s right on one thing, though. It’s just bike racing, but today he took the leader’s jersey in Tirreno after he finished fifth in the sprint and such was his high-placing that he deposed the two teammates who were before him across the line yesterday. And THAT is a result he has been a lifetime chasing.
OUCH: Bevin picks himself up off the floor after an horrific high-speed crash on the opening stage of the Tour de France last year.
His last day as leader of a GC race was the 2.2-ranked An Post Rás in Ireland four years ago. There might not be a next time.
“It’s a nice feeling,” he told reporters today. “It’s a really weird feeling to take a jersey off a teammate, especially one that’s here to lead the race. I don’t mind babysitting it for a day, but as we hit tomorrow nothing changes.”
There’s that humility again.
He’s a guy I first came across at the aforementioned Rás in 2014 riding for the New Zealand national team. There, he won a brutal stage two from four chasers by almost two minutes, despite a furious chase.
There were sizeable groups four, ten and twenty-five minutes down by the finish.
I recall the time gaps we got in the press car that day from when he attacked on his own with 40 kilometres to go – and the category one climb of Doonagore still to come.
I just thought ‘this isn’t normal’ but neither was the way he won another stage a couple of days later, chasing down a breakaway with just two teammates for help after the two others became ill.
Nobody else was willing, or able, to assist but that didn’t stop Bevin doing much of the driving over the 10 climbs that day, leading out the sprint into Caherciveen and then blitzing it.
That he didn’t win the race outright – or even finish in the top 10, did little to sway my thinking that the guy was simply world class and had to be at a higher level.
It took a year of mopping up wins for Avant Racing in Australia to really get noticed but fast forward a couple years and he’s at the Vuelta, riding for Cannondale and dying under a scorching Spanish sun.
For 10 and a half days he hauled himself around the country, only to climb off with illness on stage 11.
A day later I received a message, “You in town bro?”. The Vuelta had spat him out and he was back in Girona with his tail between his legs.
Sitting down to dinner that night he struggled for words, yet to his enormous credit, didn´t touch a drop or any of the sweet things I´d laid on. A weaker man would have folded and devoured the lot.
Then, life showed it wasn´t so much unfair as mean when an update on TV gave breaking news of a massive earthquake in Gisborne on New Zealand´s North Island – exactly where Bevin´s parents were at the time. He tried to contact them to no avail, but they were fine.
Still, an ugly moment where a man was kicked while already on the floor.
HANDS IN THE AIR: Bevin celebrates winning the fourth stage of An Post Ras in Ireland in 2014.
Every rider goes through misery but for a rider whose career was really only taking off, Bevin fell off a cliff and that month was a real slap in the face. His DNF at Eneco Tour a month later no less of a blow.
There have been many setbacks in the interim; injuries at the worst possible time – such as before the nationals this year when he was a banker to win the time-trial, the Tour de Suisse in 2016 was a disaster, riding on bikes clearly not up to the mark would crack any rider, missing an entire Classics season last year (except Paris Roubaix where he finished outside the time limit) to name but a few.
So, at the end of two years, aside from an amazing ride in the Paris Nice prologue (3rd), a few sniffs of victory at the Tour de Suisse, winning the NZ nationals, his only win was in a TTT in the Czech Tour, the latter NOT coming in contract year and in a field stacked with low-budget conti teams.
Hardly a CV you’d go to an interview sure of landing the job.
This is what makes today special for Bevin and anyone who knows him. Cycling is a puzzle that takes figuring out and because the pro game has become so specialised, that only specialists can really win on the big days.
Bevin is not a climber, or a sprinter, or a tester, but he can hang with the very best on his day.
He has been hammering on the door for years now and not had a huge amount to sing about.
Today, that all changed, and if he loses the jersey tomorrow, the day after or the day after, at least he can look at himself and say ‘today, I realised my potential’.
And isn’t that all any of us want to do with our cycling?
