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When it comes to riding mountains, it’s tempting to divide the peloton into two: those who can climb, and those who can’t. But the reality is slightly trickier than that.
While a pure sprinter like Marcel Kittel isn’t going to make it up anything much more than a lump at the same pace as a recognised climber, there are plenty of fast men who go alright going up.
Known as puncheurs, these riders can get over short, sharp climbs fairly comfortably and then have a turn of pace left in the bank to sprint away to victory.
Peter Sagan has won the last three Tour de France sprinters’ jerseys in a row primarily because he can climb pretty well, and therefore claim the points on offer midway through the high mountain stages. It was how he won the green jersey so emphatically last year, despite not winning a single stage overall.
However when we head into the Pyrenees and the Alps, the pucheurs and sprinters take a back seat to the real climbers.
It’s not necessarily that someone like Sagan or even Michael Matthews couldn’t make it up a fearsome, 2000-metre-plus berg in reasonable time, it’s that mountain stages are rarely single climbs – you can be looking at three, four or five summits in a single afternoon, each of which probably dwarfs Mt Kosciuszko.
As such, it’s a completely different style of fitness and training required to make it through one day of mountains in the lead group, let alone the 26 mountain summits this year’s Tour packs in total.
But while you’re never going to win a Tour without serious climbing skills, a ‘true’ climber riding onto the Champs-Elysees wearing the Maillot Jaune doesn’t happen as often as you’d think.
The last climbing specialist to win the Tour was probably Andy Schleck in 2010 (even if his victory came 18 months after the fact, when original winner Alberto Contador was stripped of his victory for doping issues).
Schleck had a devastating turn of pace while climbing. When the mountain would ramp up and most others would be struggling to just keep the pedals turning over on a low gear, Schleck would pounce, unleashing a withering burst of speed that only the best could keep up with.
The ace in the hole Andy had was his teammate and older brother, Frank. Frank would let Andy go, shadowing his rivals. If one or more of them responded to Andy’s pace, Frank would follow in their wake, preserving his energy by riding in their slipstream.
If they caught Andy, Frank would give his brother a bit of a breather before taking his own turn trying to ride their rivals off his wheel.
If they caught Frank, Andy would go again, and so on.
It’s a tactic known as the one-two punch, it’s devastatingly effective and is the reason GC contenders want a strong climber on their team – to help cover these kinds of attacks, if not do their own punching.
Andy’s 2010 win came without Frank by his side, his older brother crashing out on Stage 3, long before the mountains came into play.
The following year the brothers returned, ready to punch their way to victory. But while they both ended up on the podium, they were unable to knockout a man who had no real allies in the high mountains.
Cadel Evans’ 2011 Tour win was a prime example of the other way to climb.
While far stronger in the mountains than the vast majority, Evans lacked the burst of speed the Schleck brothers had. As such, when Andy, Frank, or any of the other ‘pure’ climbers would accelerate away, if Evans didn’t get onto their wheel fairly quick smart, he often let them go.
While simply allowing your rival to get the jump on you seems like throwing in the towel, it is often the smartest tactic.
You’ve only got a finite amount of energy, and sprinting up a mountain burns through it a lot quicker than simply finding a comfortable rhythm and pacing yourself.
This was best exemplified on Stage 18 of the 2011 Tour.
With three days left to race – the final day traditionally treated as a celebratory procession into Paris – Evans was second overall, ahead of third-placed Frank Schleck by four seconds, with one minute 18 seconds on fourth-place Andy.
As the leaders began to ascend the Col d’Izoard – the second of the day’s three unclassified climbs – Andy burst forward, leaving the rest of the contenders in his dust.
Frank was the more immediate concern for both Evans and first-placed Thomas Voeckler, but also they were 60 kilometres from the day’s finish, with two enormous mountains to summit. There was no need to cover Andy’s move – it was suicide.
But this was no one-two punch. It was a combination.
Two of the Schlecks’ teammates – Joost Posthuma and Maxime Monfort – had taken off in the day’s early break. First Posthuma sat up and allowed Andy to catch him, then paced his leader until Andy regained some breath and continued on.
On the d’Izoard descent Schleck caught Monfort, who was in a group of four other riders, and Andy worked with the group along the flat leading to the day’s final climb, the Col du Galibier.
With around 10 kilometres of the stage left, Andy had an enormous four-and-a-half minute gap on his rivals – had the stage ended there, he would have taken the yellow jersey with a two-minute lead.
At that point, with the rest of Evans’ group unwilling to take up the chase, the Aussie went to the head of the peloton and slowly began to claw back Andy’s lead. And while it was nowhere near as impressive to watch, Cadel’s consistent pace saw a group of dozens whittled down to just four by the final few hundred metres. No one helped him set the tempo, he simply found his rhythm, gritted his teeth, and pushed on.
Andy’s bold move is now known as ‘The Ride’, and is regarded as one of the greatest shows of climbing in modern cycling. But such audacity comes with a serious energy cost, and though Andy won the stage, Evans pulled the four-and-a-half-minute deficit with 10 kilometres to go, back to just over two minutes by the stage’s end.
While it was not until the penultimate day’s time trial that Evans took the Maillot Jaune, it was his efforts on Stage 18 that saw him become the first Aussie to win the Tour.
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