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Columbia-HTC's stage 3 throw down presages great TTT battle on Tuesday.
George Hincapie should know. He called Monday’s amazing collective performance by his Columbia-HTC team as the greatest he’d been associated with. And that’s saying something when you consider that the American veteran was on all seven of Lance Armstrong’s winning Tour de France campaigns.
What the Discovery Channel and U.S. Postal Service teams never did was put all nine of its riders on the front of the peloton during a flat stage and split the race apart. Columbia did just that on Monday afternoon, taking 16 other riders with them, absorbing a four-man break and then driving the move all the way to the finish line in La Grande Motte.
Prior to their putting down the hammer, Hincapie and his eight teammates had been riding at the head of the peloton for the best part of an hour. “We were getting angry that none of the other sprinters teams were helping us bring back the break,” he told VeloNews. “So we decided to accelerate in the crosswind.”
It may not have been a totally planned move, but it was as close you can get to one in the ever-changing environment at the Tour de France. Team Columbia-HTC’s course “spy” Erik Zabel had ridden the closing kilometers of the stage; and, like savvy journalists who drove the final 70km of the course instead of taking the recommended diversion, Zabel saw that the prevailing north wind changed to a south wind and gathered strength where the race hit the coast 30km from the finish.
Zabel, who won the Tour’s green sprinters’ jersey six times in the 1990s, has been working with the Columbia sprinters, especially Mark Cavendish, and by actually riding the last kilometers of stages he can give the British star and his teammates the very latest road and weather conditions via the team radio link.
On Monday, that information included him telling the team that the wind was blowing strongly off the sea. So when the nine Columbia riders turned right and headed along a narrower section of back road across the marshlands of the Camargue, team leader Mick Rogers shouted to his men: “Let’s do it now!”
Their acceleration — which netted Cavendish another stage win, pushed Rogers back into contention (and helped move a savvy Lance Armstrong into third place on GC) — surprisingly took all the other contenders (except for yellow jersey Fabian Cancellara) by surprise.
Perhaps as important as the 41 seconds that Rogers and company gained on pre-race favorites Alberto Contador, Cadel Evans and Denis Menchov was the morale boost it gave them heading into Tuesday’s stage 4 team time trial.
A fierce battle is in prospect, not only for the stage 4 win but also for the yellow jersey. On the individual GC, Columbia’s brilliant young German Tony Martin is only 33 seconds down on Cancellara. That’s a time gap that Columbia could conceivably overcome on Cancellara’s Saxo Bank team, especially after Saxo’s Schleck brothers were “caught sleeping” on Monday, according to their team manager Bjarne Riis.
The TTT victory could go to any of the four teams that go last in the stage because of their respective positions in the overall team competition: Garmin-Slipstream (starting at 4:22 p.m. local time), Saxo Bank (4:29 p.m.), Columbia-HTC (4:36 p.m.) and Astana (4:43 p.m.).
In theory, there should not be great time differences between these top four squads, but Tuesday’s 39km stage is not being held on a typical point-to-point course. It’s almost a complete loop, starting on the narrow streets of Montpellier’s ancient heart before heading out on hilly back roads through the vineyards to the north and west of the city, and returning on suburban roads to the Yves du Manoir Stadium on the edge of town.
What’s more, fierce winds of up to 30 mph are being forecast. They will be head and crosswinds on the way out and tail and cross winds on the way back.
Instead of time gaps that would be small on flat, straight roads, this is not a test of pure strength and speed. The winner will be the team that can best stay together around the constant turns, and up the frequent hills.
Judged on the first three stages of this tremendously exciting Tour, the stage win will be between Columbia-HTC and Astana. Garmin have great strength on paper, but none of its nine men managed to make it into Monday’s split of 25 riders, and there will be huge pressure on the weaker riders to stay with its TT stars Brad Wiggins, Christian Vande Velde, David Millar and Dave Zabriskie. And, at Saxo Bank, Cancellara is clearly stronger than all his teammates, who have had to ride tempo at the head of the peloton for two straight days.
Except for their efforts in Saturday’s Monaco TT opener, the Astana riders have had a relatively easy start to the Tour. While Columbia has been working hard to bring back breakaways and set up Cavendish for two straight wins, Astana has been relaxed — and it’s conceivable that Armstrong’s squad will dominate the stage in his favorite discipline.
So, given the circumstances, a likely result of the stages will be 1. Astana, 2. Columbia, at 0:10; 3. Garmin, at 0:30; 4. Saxo Bank, at 0:40. If that’s the case, then there will be almost a dead heat for the yellow jersey between Armstrong, Cancellara and Martin. It can’t get more exciting than that!
Follow John’s twitter at twitter.com/johnwilcockson.
