Chris Boardman's Tour de France blog is back for 2017.
Throughout Tour De France 2017 we will give you a behind the scene blog by Chris Boardman with his thoughts, insight and view of the race. As well as what it is like living in amongst a mass of trucks and cables for the month of July in France.
Enjoy!
The Final
The mountains didn’t disappoint and gave us some great racing, but on the other side of them, it was the same strong riders that emerged. Only Fabio Aru, with his dysfunctional team, slipped significantly.
The time trial is a rare occasion when the entire entourage is in the same place, including the gaudy publicity caravan. As we reversed into our parking spot, we were passed by a meadow and a cow on a box. That must be a tough job to explain to people.
Although there were some surprises in the time trial, the places reminded largely the same. Uran jumped from third to second which was predictable but although Bardet finished in the place expected, it was an incredibly close call, just 1 second between him and Team SKY’s Landa.
Now it was time to get to Paris, some 750km away…
When we had arrived at the race we were already dreading the final transfer back to Paris. This final journey is often long but this year it was exceptional. So we were astounded to find that for the first time, we’d be flying to the finish. In a private plane! Luxury indeed.
As it happened, we flew through a violent thunderstorm and spent a reasonable amount of the flight weightless (people pay a lot of money for that). We arrived in Paris at a very civilized 11:30pm
The Tour is all about tradition and our final hotel in Paris hasn’t changed in all the years I’ve worked on it. The Alison is a little backstreet place, with it’s 70’s styled signage still marking it’s place on the narrow Rue de Surène. If you like shabby- chic with the emphasis on shabby, you’ll love this place.
SKY proved themselves by far the strongest team in the race led by the most astute captain, physically and tactically better than his rivals. He might be up to his own high standards physically this year but when you have a former world time trial champion for the flat (Kiryienka) Former Road world champion (Kwiatkowski) of the main mountains and a guy capable of winning the race himself (Landa) qt your disposal, that’s got to help.
Great to see French riders pushing the British outfit hard and personally, I thought Roman Barnet’s 3rd place on this occasion, was better than his 2nd last year. He animated the race uphill and down, never giving up hope of overturning Froome.
Simon Yates came on another big step this year, remarkably, emulating his brothers White jersey win but more importantly for his future, not having a bad day in the hills.
Michael Matthews was a worthy winner of the Green Jersey, fighting all the way and proving heart is as important as legs in this marathon event.
And that’s it for another year: French Bowels, terrible hotels, motorized chickens, slippery descents in the mountains, wine and service station food. There’s not many events in the world where you can put that lot in the same sentence. But that’s why I keep coming back.
Rest Day 2 to Stage 17
We arrived at a tiny hamlet 20KM outside Le Puy-en-Velay in the dead of night. No lights were on and the street was deserted. We stepped into a 1953 house, which was a full sausage pillows, hold-the-shower-in-your-hand, establishment.
Next morning, things didn’t look half as bad, tilting away from decrepit and towards quaint. After a great day of racing, we returned to our vintage hostelry, where our hosts laid on a great rest day dinner. This was followed by a mandatory late night game of Petanque (french Bowles played on gravel). Truth be told, it started out as a drunken shambles and went downhill from there….
Sore headed, we bid our new friends goodbye the morning after and set off for the next finish line in Le Puy-en-Velay, to make the rest day program. The medieval town was nothing short of stunning. On the pilgrimage trail to Santiago de Compostela, ancient religious architecture was everywhere. The narrow traffic-free streets of the old town led towards a volcanic pinnacle atop which, seemingly defying gravity, was the Saint Michel d`Aiguilhe Chapel. It was definitely somewhere I’d love to have spent more time. Sadly, as is always the case, it was onwards and another long drive.
We arrived at Romans-sur-Isere, the site of the stage 16 finish. With strong winds blowing across the surrounding plane, conditions that were forecast to continue for the following days race. We knew it would make for an exciting stage, and so it proved. More time has changed hands on the ‘flat’ stages than in the mountains on this race and technical skill has played almost as much a part as physical prowess. The riders battled stiff cross winds from the off and weakness was exploited ruthlessly.
Marcel Kittle, who along with many of his Quick-Step Floors team had been suffering from illness lost contact early. His rival in the Green jersey competiton, Michael Matthews made sure he never came back and set about taking full advantage. The Australian rewarded his team by taking both the sprint points on route and his second stage win of the race. I can’t see Kittle’s mountain form improving so it's easy to believe he’ll grab more points in the mountains, possibly even overtaking Kittle before Paris. The final sprint is likely be the decider.
SKY can now smell victory and know they have just two tough mountain days to defend but if they can, then Frome, the best against the clock by far, will win overall for the fourth time. That said, it’s the closest race in years and no one can afford to make a mistake, or even have an ill-timed mechanical.
And with a descent all the way to the finish from the top of the Col de Galibier to Sere-Chevalier on stage 17, there’s another opportunity for Bardet, the best descender, to grab time, especially if the rain forecast for the afternoon arrives before the final down hill...
Second place rider Fabio Aru has suffered with a lack of coherent team but stage 19 will bring his opportunity, the race's final summit finish atop the monster Col D’Isoard. He’d need to wipe out his deficit and gain over a minute on Froome if he wanted to have a chance of winning overall. But it’s possible.
The dark horse of the lead pack is Rigaberto Uran, a former team mate of Froome. He’s bagged a stage win already and has looked quietly strong all the way, somehow flying under everyones radar.
So plenty of racing and scenery to look forward to as the Tour curves through the Alps with Paris looming in the distance.
Rest Day
The 550km transfer drive across the middle of France though the night, took it’s tole on the team. We arrived at our Gite just outside Bergerac, in the middle of the night, the only ‘person’ to meet us a French Bulldog called Junior (we learned later).
Next morning we woke to a beautiful tranquil scene and a simple fare of good coffee and fresh bread.
But before we could kick back, a bit of telly had to be made, in which we reflected on the first weeks happenings.
It’s been a Tour of contrast so far, I’ve seen some of the most boring racing I’ve ever seen in the race and some of the most exciting on record.
The sprint stages have been torturously bland until the last 500m and then delivered spectacular thrills and spills.
By contrast the weekends mountain stages were action from the off -almost inevitable with hindsight, when you consider how many fresh legs went into the hills- attacks from kilometres zero continued all the way to the line.
Sadly via one means or another, we’ve lost many of the sprinters -Cavendish crashed, Sagan DQ’d and Damare didn’t make the time cut. Also out, Ritchey Porte with a terrible fall on the descent of the Mont de Chat, and of course, Geraint Thomas. Amazingly, after his crash, Geraint actually kept on riding before realising ‘something was wrong’, that something it transpired, was a broken collarbone! His second crash out of grand tour this year, interestingly, both whilst in second place and both on stage 9…
After recording our thoughts for posterity (and for TV4’s rest day program) we headed back to the Gite for dinner and a couple of local beers.
Now back on the job, there are 2 sprint stages in prospect, before heading into the Pyrenees where we hope to see some more Bardet action to liven up the racing again with his hard-to-combat, attacking the descent tactics.
It’s rare, possibly unprecedented, that you see the best climber and best descender role into one, but the young frenchman seems to have achieved just that. Let’s hope he keeps looking for ways to exploit his exceptional talent.
Stages 3 - 4
A quiet day for the riders today, as they wound their way to Vittel. Not so for the commentary team who faced their ultimate nightmare: A one man break escapes at km 0, and there is no racing for almost 5h….but you have to keep talking. Ned and Dave really earned their £20 today. It was, frankly, a boring day….. until the last 500m.
A dramatic sprint saw riders spilling in every direction and bodies hitting the floor, principal amongst them, poor Mark Cavendish who until that moment, had ridden a tactically perfect final.
Usually, having a good look at action replays makes it clearer who was at fault but in this case, it only seemed to make it more complicated, as we followed the moment string backwards to see what had caused each change of direction in turn. The spotlight was very much on Peter Sagan as the one who hit Cavendish, the collisions that ultimately brought him down. That seems to be how the race jury saw it too as after 45 minutes of deliberation, the world champion was relegated to the back of the main field. Only later, when we saw the helicopter shot, could we see that Segan barley moved off his line to follow the frenchman wheel, unable to even see Cavendish.
Almost overshadowed by the spectacle, both the yellow jersey Thomas and the race favourite Froome, fell in a mass crash too, thankfully, both were unhurt.
I think we’ll be talking about this incident for some time to come.
Tomorrow, there’s going to be more conventional drama as the Tour sees its first summit finish at the Planche des Belles Filles (or The plank Of The Beautiful Girl as commentator Paul Sherwin once unhelpfully translated) We’re excited to get our first good look at the contenders and see who will be in yellow at the end of the day.
Stages 1-2
And we’re off! The 2017 Tour de France
It was pretty much all the same faces that assembled in a drizzly Dusseldorf for the ITV coverage of the Tour de France. We might have gathering in a different city, but it was as if we have never been apart; bickering fighting, laughing…just like the dysfunctional family we are.
New on board this year is an old friend of mine, Graeme Corlett a former rider with a mild manor perfectly suited to deal with the ‘characters’ on Tour.
Day one saw him shoot out to buy paint and brushes to touch up the ageing TV set, stand in as cameraman on live telly and dissemble that same TV set at the end of the day before driving 170km across 2 countries. And all on his birthday! Quite a baptism (which he took in his stride).
Little does he realise this place is like Hotel California; he doesn’t have to come back next year…but he can never leave.
True to form, hotel room number one was not ‘normal’
After being informed the hotel was full ‘but don’t worry we have an apartment for you’ I was given instructions on the back of a scrap of paper. I walked 100m down a slightly run down street, through a garage to a door at the back, where I entered what I can only describe as a space that looked like it was used for making ‘home movies’ All standard TdF stuff.
A days telly down, and it was time to move on. Across into Belgium and the drizzle followed, making it a testy first-stage-proper for the riders. The rain certainly had an impact on the race yesterday too -quite literally as 7 riders hit the deck.
No one thought the first 14 kilometres would have such an impact on the overall race either, with star riders coping with the treacherous conditions in very different ways. Although it was Thomas who took the stage - a win popular with everyone- it was Froome who came away with the biggest prize in the shape of more than half a minutes advantage on virtually all his rivals.
On our side of the fence, life’s got a bit more exciting in the outside broadcast truck we call home, as we are now covering every minute of every day of the race live, so workloads have really gone up.
There are lot of tops and trips to surviving The Tour, like traveling with a fan in your suitcase for when it’s stifling hot in the hotel and a gang-plug, so only one adapter plug is needed. (Maybe I should write a book!) I haven’t started on the construction of my annual cardboard shelf at my desk, I’m saving that delight up for a really long stage.
