TDF prologue will help decide the final yellow jersey
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At 2pm on Saturday, June 30th a nervous bike racer will roll off a plastic and steel start- house, down a ramp and sprint out of the Parc d’Avroy in the centre of Liege to begin the 2012 Tour de France.
This is the prologue time trial; a 6.4-kilometre rush of lactate and pain that leaves every rider tasting blood, collapsed and hardly able to breathe when they cross the line.
It will be the first shuffle of the cards for 2012.
The prologue was invented in 1967 as a device to bring order for the first stage by letting a short time trial decide who wore the first yellow jersey, and what order the team cars followed the race, but nothing more.
Now there are bike racers who make their whole year, whole careers even, out of winning the prologue time trial of the Tour de France. But I think this will be one of the most important prologues ever in deciding the eventual Tour winner.
What does it take to win? Physical characteristics come first, but there’s a whole lot of mental attitude and preparation involved in winning a prologue.
Prologues are short time trials, where the racers start at equal intervals and the fastest around the circuit wins. The shortest Tour prologue was one kilometre in Pornichet-La Baule in 1988, and the longest was 10.4 kilometres in Roubaix in 1969. The Tour has started with a longish time trial, like the 19-kilometre one in 2005, but that’s not really a prologue.
Prologues are made for endurance track racers. The best prologue racer ever, GB rider Chris Boardman, was Olympic and world champion at the individual pursuit and still holds the world record for the event. Boardman did three of top five fastest ever Tour de France prologues, including the best; 55.152 kph in Lille, 1994.
Prologues also suit powerful time triallists, particularly time triallists who can attack late in a race and hold off the whole field to win. The Swiss racer Fabian Cancellara can do that, and when the prologue was last held in Liege in 2004, Cancellara won it.
He’ll be the favourite on Saturday, because the course that suits him. It doesn’t have many corners and is mostly flat, apart from one drag away from the river. It will come down to horse power, attitude and good technique; Cancellara has all three.
As multiple world time trial and reigning Olympic champion, he has the horse power. He also has the attitude and technique. I interviewed him about time trialling a while back and he told me. “I learn the course and let it play like a film in my head over and over. I really focus and try to feel what I will feel when I’m riding; the wind, the drag on my legs of a big gear or a hill, how it will feel in the corners, everything.”
Cancellara plays the film when he thinks about the race, and during his warm-up. He’ll ride for a couple of hours on the road on Saturday morning, have lunch then put his time trial bike on a static trainer about 30 minutes before his ride. All Tour riders do a turbo trainer warm-up, slowly racking up the intensity until they are pedalling to nowhere with their bodies at race pace.
Most listen to music, inspiring stuff to up their arousal. Some specialists even have warm-up playlists. Magnus Backstedt, the Swedish winner of the 2004 Paris-Roubaix and a good prologue racer, says; “My playlists depended on what sort of time trial it was. You don’t want to be too revved up before a long time trial, music that does that can make you go off too fast, but my prologue playlist always had lots of boom.”
Warmed up and revved up, each rider makes his way to the start house and sits down, waiting for the one in front to go. Then they mount up, settle and focus.
The riders are clipped to their pedals, held up by a man stood behind clutching their saddle; balanced, ready.
The countdown comes. An official counts backwards to zero; showing five, four, three, two and then one finger to each rider.
Then they are on the course. “You take each 1.5-kilometre section and focus on it, riding it as you’ve planned to ride, riding as fast as you can. You tick that one off and move to the next,” says Britain’s Bradley Wiggins, one of the favourites to win the Tour.
The Liege prologue will suit Wiggins but not his biggest rival Cadel Evans; well, not as much. It’s a short one, 6.4 kilometres, and it’s flat. It favours a former track champion more than a former mountain bike champion.
Six point four isn’t much in a race of 3,479 kilometres, but it will tell a lot.
Wiggins must beat Evans. If he doesn’t then his confidence will take a big hit. But Evans must get close to Wiggins. If he doesn’t Wiggins’s will soar, and the Tour could fly out of the Australian’s reach.
Prologues are important in modern Tours because margins of success have never been smaller, but the Liege prologue will be one of the most important ever.
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The Crowd Says (10) | Page 1 of Comments
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June 26th 2012 @ 9:23am
jameswm said | June 26th 2012 @ 9:23am | Report comment
The heading and an early sentence say this:
“But I think this will be one of the most important prologues ever in deciding the eventual Tour winner.”
Then the rest of the article offers no explanation why. Is it because of whose team will have to do a lot of work early?
June 26th 2012 @ 5:20pm
Chris Sidwells said | June 26th 2012 @ 5:20pm | Report comment
James, although all seconds gained and lost are and will be important, I was trying to get across that this could be a tight Tour and the mental aspect of giving or taking pressure will be crucial. I think that if Wiggins doesn’t beat Evans on Saturday, and by some margin, he will be taking pressure, converesely if he beats Evans by some margin he will be giving it. Given Wiggins’ emotional nature the question of whether he is giving or taking pressure is crucial. He’s been giving it all year and he’s been awseome, but if you look back at when he takes it he starts to become erratic and makes mistakes.
June 26th 2012 @ 3:23pm
Jimbo said | June 26th 2012 @ 3:23pm | Report comment
Read the last 2 paragraphs, James
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June 27th 2012 @ 10:43am
jameswm said | June 27th 2012 @ 10:43am | Report comment
I still don’t think there’s much explanation.
Anyway, I reckon the best result for Cadel is to lose by a few seconds, have Wiggins just win, and let him carry the pressure of protecting the maillot jaune for the first week. I haven’t looked at the stages, but Cadel doesn’t want it till late in the 2nd week, or later.
June 27th 2012 @ 10:43am
sittingbison said | June 27th 2012 @ 10:43am | Report comment
One of the defining aspects of the GC will be how Wiggins psychology and emotional state handles the pressure as each day unfolds. So yes, how he goes against Evans and other GC contenders in the prologue could well have implications, not in time but in the mind.
June 27th 2012 @ 12:56pm
jameswm said | June 27th 2012 @ 12:56pm | Report comment
Yeah Wiggins in yellow leading into the mountains, ideally for Cadel a few people have a crack at him, tire him out, and then Cadel goes for it when he’s fatiguing. That’s how I see Cadel winning it. He showed last year he can be aggressive.
Only one real summit finish though. The 4th last stage could be interesting. HC, then cat 1, then a smaller one. That might be Cadel’s chance to take a break, esp after a toughish stage the day before.
Cadel does have a tendency to be conservative though. Go all out on those two stages, then an easier day, then that massive final (flat) tt.
June 27th 2012 @ 5:48pm
Chris Sidwells said | June 27th 2012 @ 5:48pm | Report comment
That’s exactly what I was getting at, the outcome of this Tour depends as much on Wiggins’ mental state as it does the legs of the participants. If the meastro of mind games Armstrong was playing Wiggins he’d be working on that now. He tried with Contador in 2009, but Contador is super-tough mentally, so it didn’t work.
June 27th 2012 @ 5:51pm
Chris Sidwells said | June 27th 2012 @ 5:51pm | Report comment
Sorry Jameswm, I replied to the wrong post there, I was replying to the last point sittingbison made.
June 27th 2012 @ 8:26pm
Maria Szczerba said | June 27th 2012 @ 8:26pm | Report comment
Yeah! Wiggins for me will do it in the time trial and so will Team Sky! Why? Because if the likes of Cadel go out too quick too soon, he could end up doing what he had done one year and had put too much pressure on himself to win, I say go with the time trial and do a good time but don’t put too much expectation on winning the time trial as there are other stages for him to improve and come out firing for the team BMC team!
I agree with Chris and the prologue for the Tour De France is important but it is the stepping mark for this year’s tour and good luck to everyone, as all riders have to set their mark ready for the mountain stages! All riders want their best team and riders there till the end but that cannot always be the case with a Tour such as this!
Good luck to everyone!
June 27th 2012 @ 8:26pm
Maria Szczerba said | June 27th 2012 @ 8:26pm | Report comment
Yeah! Wiggins for me will do it in the time trial and so will Team Sky! Why? Because if the likes of Cadel go out too quick too soon, he could end up doing what he had done one year and had put too much pressure on himself to win, I say go with the time trial and do a good time but don’t put too much expectation on winning the time trial as there are other stages for him to improve and come out firing for the team BMC team!
I agree with Chris and the prologue for the Tour De France is important but it is the stepping mark for this year’s tour and good luck to everyone, as all riders have to set their mark ready for the mountain stages! All riders want their best team and riders there till the end but that cannot always be the case with a Tour such as this!
Good luck to everyone!