Making history at the Tour de France
The battle for the yellow jersey has taken something of a backseat this week as a succession of riders made history in a feelgood start to the Tour. Featuring Bardet, Girmay, and of course, Cavendish.
Netflix must be delighted with how this Tour is going, because even if you tried, you probably couldn’t script better stage victories than some of those we’ve had so far.
On day one French veteran and hero Romain Bardet launched a surely doomed long-range attack, the kind he excels at – except he pulled it off. Bardet has had a glittering career and seems to be enjoying a renaissance in the twilight of it, now sporting yellow for the first time, at his final Tour.
His was a hugely popular stage win and was all the more brilliant for the tiny margin of victory. Commentators were writing him and plucky companion Frank van den Broek off in the closing 15km, but they clung on to win by five seconds as the peloton surged down the highway behind them. The win also featured a fantastic turn by Tour debutant van den Broek, who completed nearly 190km out in front and still had the energy to trade turns with Bardet, and will probably be fighting off suitors when his dsm-firmenich PostNL contract expires.
Day 2 saw Bardet hand over the baton to countryman Kévin Vauquelin. It was another win from the breakaway as Vauquelin surged clear on the beautiful San Luca climb, securing back-to-back French victories at the Tour (albeit in Italy.) The 23-year-old’s sensational ride broke another record, this time going back to 1968, which was the last time the first two stages of the Tour were won by a Frenchman. France has a long history of building up general classification hopefuls who then never quite meet the sky-high expectations set for them, but Vauquelin at the moment looks a stronger contender than Groupama-FDJ’s struggling duo of David Gaudu and Lenny Martinez.
Vauquelin also made it a first win in eleven years of trying for Arkéa-B&B Hotels, as the comparatively smaller teams continued to take this Tour by storm. After months of think pieces bemoaning the soul-sapping dominance of big-budget behemoths Visma, UAE, and Ineos, the early stages of this year’s Tour provided a handy blueprint of how to outsmart them.
That continued on day 3, as Intermarché’s Biniam Girmay secured a history-making win in the Tour’s first sprint. It was a messy finale in Turin with several riders put out of contention by a crash in the closing kilometres, but that took nothing away from his inspired finish as he became the first black African to win a Tour de France stage. It’s a ground-breaking role the Eritrean clearly relishes and he looks in fine form to add to his tally.
Also on day 3, Richard Carapaz became the first-ever Ecuadorian to take yellow. The favourites for overall victory in Nice sat up as the sprint unfolded before them, all unwilling to have a target on their back as the Tour headed to the Alps. Carapaz felt no such reluctance. He finished up there with the sprinters and was plainly delighted with the achievement, as he should be.
A Cavendish tour de force
And speaking of making history. Newly-knighted Sir Mark Cavendish has always had a preference for stage 5 of the Tour de France – four of his 34 stage wins prior to Wednesday happened on stage 5, so it seemed only fitting that the day he finally broke his record-equalling achievement would be on another. This time it was on a nearly 180km run to the nondescript French industrial town of Saint Vulbas, finishing near a nuclear power plant. Well, that’s something a scriptwriter would probably change.
But in every other respect this was a fairytale ride. After the grim sight of a plainly miserable Cavendish throwing up on the bike on day 1, overwhelmed by the Tuscan heat, all talk of number 35 seemed to be tempting fate. But this week was a microcosm of Cavendish’s entire career: striving against the odds, gritting his teeth, and getting through it. He recovered over the weekend, survived the Galibier on stage 4, and by the start line on stage 5 the dream was very much alive.
And it was a very Cavendish win in the end. His lead-out – formed of sprint train heroes of former Cavendish victories – crumbled in the melee and the Manxman had to plot his own path. It was victory the way he does best, earned the hard way, through guile, pure instinct, and the experience of 15 Tours. Surfing wheels, threading his way through the mass of sprinters, choosing his moments and darting into impossibly small pockets of pace. The current best sprinters in the world couldn’t keep up with him, couldn’t visualise the route to victory the way he could, and in the end his power and acceleration – even at the advanced age of 39 – was just too much for the rest. It was magical.
Of all the participants of Cavendish’s first Tour, in 2008, only he and Chris Froome are still active. He’s outlived generations of sprinters. He’s overcome illness, crash after crash, broken bones, depression, years of non-selection. He’s been written off time and time again, a relic of a bygone era. Times have changed. The Tour route is now wholly hostile to a man of Cavendish’s abilities, instinctual approach to sprinting, and body type, but the man endures, and the man still wins.