Friday 22 July 2016

Stage 19 - The race explodes and Tim sees the dead eye stare

Stage 19 - Albertville to Saint-Gervais Mont Blanc Le Bettex. The final mountain summit finish of the Tour and clearly a confusing one on what to call the finish. We rode the first km of the climb yesterday on the way to Megeve and the finish is definitely at Le Bettex. Clearly the bigger Saint Gervais was having none of this and got its name on there and Mont Blanc who has nothing to do with any of this shoved my first driving instructor Les Bains out the way and got its big snow capped mountain face on there.

Albertville is one of those places that you see lots of signs for when in the Alps. Apart from hosting the 1992 Winter Olympics there doesn't seem to be a lot more said about the place, though Wikipedia was keen to stress that despite the Olympics, the town is still more industrial than tourist driven...phew.

After early morning rain in town, we rolled in for a breakfast of coffee, a baguette of half jam and half honey and a second coffee, we thought we should think about the final climb. Not only the final climb of the day but my final climb of the Tour.

Before we left Saint Gervais (Les Bains) a strange thing happened. Yesterday I was reading a small plaque that said that the town was liberated on 17 August 1944, which I thought was a nice connection to the grand depart in Normandie, when over the speakers in the town they played Dido's 'White Flag'.

Strangely at exactly the same time today they once again played Dido's White Flag. I later learnt that at the exact time the Nazi's raised the White Flag the town plays the song as a reminder and has done since 1945 when Dido released it. She must have spotted a gap in the market.

Saint Gervais looked like a Tour town, partly because there is no room at the top of the climb so all of the team buses and media area is in the town. There was a big queue for the cable car to the summit and after realising that I wouldn't get my bike in, we set about riding up. Finally I started to feel some cycling legs and found the climb ok. I decided to say hello to every flag I recognised on the way up which took my mind off the climbing and appeared to make me incredibly sociable and friendly and
slightly unhinged.

The bitter disappointment of being stopped by the Police came at 2km to go, why leave it so late?!? So me and Chris found a spot next to a very nice French couple who shared Haribo and had a small television. We had a nice chat with some Londoners just across the road before we were joined by a couple of friends from back home, who are staying nearby and had walked about 10km up the mountain from their car. I won't list everyone today but about 200 yards down the road there was a group of very excitable Italians, behind us were singing Danes, we had the obligatory Colombians, 'Nairo, Nairo' sang one as I rode past at which I shouted that I was quicker than Nairo Quintana at the moment. The only other person I would mention is the Luxembourg man, who was decked head to toe in the his country's colours (with flag), in addition to this was a horn, a little stereo which played a song he could sing along with and he had a routine which he did every 100 yards.

The climb was not very long and with a free cable car getting people to the top it was a very busy mountain. We had placed ourselves on a spot which meant they would come round a corner and drift across the road to take the next turn that we were on, pretty tight to the corner.

About half an hour before they came through it poured down but this just added to the spectacle. We were getting news through that a Frenchman was leading and as I said yesterday the French love their riders and never more so than when winning a stage of their race. It was also clear that the rain was causing all sorts of trouble on the descent of the penultimate climb, with news of a number of crashes so who knows what the race would look like when it eventually came through.

The Police motorbikes were pushing us back so it was obvious that we would be right in the angle they would come through, then the helicopter appeared and the news that the leader was Frenchman Roman Bardet was true and the crowd were loving it. The French were so excited, everyone else was joining in and Bardet looked a nailed on winner. There was just one rider to go through before, sooner than expected the bunch of favourites came though. That was the first time on this trip that I was peering round the people in front of me to suddenly see the crowd step back and have a rider coming at me, but you simply step back carry on ringing the bell and screaming 'Allez Allez' in their ear. This is why you climb up a mountain, up there for four hours, some of it in a thunder storm because the race is there, a foot away, the dead eye stare in their eyes as they wait for the crowd to part, to turn the next hair pin and get themselves to the finish. They go past and you look at the name and number on their backs to confirm its who you thought it was and you can because it's a foot away. It was also pretty easy to tell who had crashed because the jerseys were ripped and they had been patched up on the go by the doctors. I was the wrong side to see the rips in Froome's jersey but I did see Pierre Rolland who looked a bit of a mess after his nasty crash.

There was a casualty on the mountain that won't be reported in the papers, just as a small group were coming up, mid ring, cow bell suddenly broke and was lying in the road helpless. I obviously panicked and kicked it out of the way.

As we were probably three quarters of the way through the field, riders started coming back down. Due to the size of the climb and space available, everyone had to make their way back down the same
way. Chris nearly got hit by Team Giant's Warren Barguill and at one point we almost had a traffic jam of riders descending while others were still racing up. Finally the grupetto arrived and this time there was no messing about as they filled the road and we were forced on to the curb.

The road was still slightly wet as we descended, a lot of the crowd were still watching riders descend
so we had plenty of room and an audience, the only issue being the fact that we didn't want to get in
the way. I would say 10 riders came past us on the descent, all very quick and making it look very easy. Eventually we were down but not before, in traffic, my wheel was an inch away from that of Eviti of Movistar (#14), I had time to get my phone out, set to camera and press the wrong button before he was away and gone again.

We made it down in time to get to the buses and see what was going on before the obligatory ice cream and ride back to the hotel.
Had a nice chat with a couple that had their first taste of the Tour today and loved it and after Chris has packed his bike away, ready for the drive back to Paris we went for dinner.

We returned to a previous venue for dinner, salad again and it was home. A great day on my last mountain stage. We only see the start tomorrow in Megeve, then it is off to Paris and the final stage of this years Tour.

Stats
Miles driven - 2760
Miles cycled - 297
Cheese of the day - None all day!
Tat of the day - very quiet day but I did steal the sports section of the paper from the cafe
Famous people spoken to today - None unless you count screaming in cyclists faces.

I didn't take so many pictures today so Chris and Bagshot Daren have kindly let me use some of
there's.


Me screaming at this poor Lampre rider (Daren)


Mr Luxembourg 

Fabio Aru warms down 

The grupetto makes its way up 

Thomas makes his way up after giving his bike to Froome (Daren)

Today's not so shabby view 

An AG2R rider works his way down the mountain 


A Trek rider fights his way up (Chris)

Bardet storms to a stage win (Chris)

Nibali gets there eventually (Daren) 

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