Make sure you stay up on Sunday night as this is where the battle for the Yellow Jersey really begins. Sunday night is the the first proper mountain segment of the race – labelled a Medium Mountain Stage.
The course, by tour standards, is short but with seven ‘pinch climbs’ over the 157.5km course from Belfort to Porrentury, it is considered difficult.
Given that the 40.7km individual Time Trial, from Arc-et-Senans to Besancon, is the next day I expect that the likes of Cadel Evans and Vincenzo Nibali will look to put the screws into Bradley Wiggins – who is the most dominant of the GC contenders when it comes to individual time trials. The 40.7km time trial suits Wiggins as the course has a couple of very long straight sections and is not considered very technical.
Cadel is well aware that he needs to limit the time damage against Wiggins and he, and BMC, would be well aware that this, and the stage 19 time trial are places where Cadel can lose the Tour. Stage 19 is 52km long and is not technical at all. Being almost dead flat, Wiggins should be ideally suited to this stage.
The point to be made here is that Wiggins will be a lot fresher going into stage nine than he will be at stage 19 after a solid two weeks of climbing.
Riders and teams, don’t break, they crack. I expect Cadel to use the chisel on Wiggins on Sunday night and chip away at him in the climbs and hammer him in the descents where Cadel’s far superior bike handling skills and descending put him in an ideal position to catch Wiggins.
Cadel will want Wiggins entering the next stage, the time trial, feeling the effects of a hard day in the saddle. Cadel knows Wiggins is susceptible to the mind games of the sport and you want your opponent rattled when they should be focused. Nothing would please Cadel more (though he is too kind to say it publicly) than going to sleep on Sunday night knowing that Wiggins is lying in bed wondering if he can attack the time trial as well as he had hoped to before the Tour de France kicked off after being physically and mentally bashed the day before.
The real damage will not be done until a few days later when the Tour enters the proper mountain stages but cycling is a game of numbers. Cadel and BMC will have an excellent gauge of what kind of time that Wiggins can put into Cadel in the time trials.
Cadel is a rider that is willing to take risks and I expect that to start on Sunday night.
Make no mistake – plenty of time can be put into people when climbing, but often even more time can be put into people when descending.
Tactically I believe Cadel will take one or two riders with him and look to be pushing on the front of the second climb of the day so that he can get clear and descend aggressively. At the speeds they descend at, Cadel will need to be right up the front as passing people on the descent is often very difficult to do.
If Wiggins is trapped behind other riders trying to descend, including BMC riders acting as unofficial ‘blockers’, then massive time can be lost.
Let the games begin.
Until next time, clip in!
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