Life around Tour de France – Stage 16
Sports Travel / Tourism
Mont Blanc – what a sight!!
The sight of this majestic mountain top covered in snow is an unforgettable one. With this being summer here, the majority of the mountain tops at this Ski resort is just plain rock or with some greenery around it. And with Mont Blanc in the background the whole scenery looks all the more appealing.
We met Etinne & Lucie who live in the Les Arcs Ski resort where we were staying and once we had a chat with them, we realized why they have left Paris to settle in this skiers paradise. Etinne is a mountaineer & has climbed the Mont Blanc & some more peaks in Nepal. Very shy by nature, he explained how difficult it was to climb the Mont Blanc, a feat which all aspiring mountaineers in Europe try their hand at.
The route for the tour today passes through the very tough col Grand St.Bernard. The tour is visiting this mountain stage after a very long 12 years gap. The local tourism authorities have done a splendid job of promoting this as a cycling destination and today in the summer there are 1000’s of them trying their cycling skills out on these mountain roads.
The 16th Stage of the Tour de France started off at Martigny in Switzerland and finished at the ski resort mountain top Bourg-St.Maurice in France – a distance of 159 kms, but with some very difficult climbs.
It was an ideal day for the break away & there were repeated attacks right from the first 200m. But every attack was reeled in by the peleton and it was only after the first major climb the ‘hors category’ col du Grand-Saint-Bernard that a group of riders could escape the Astana led peleton and make their way away. (The St.Bernard we are mentioning here is the same as for the great breed of dog that we have heard stories about on how they rescued marooned skiers & mountaineers – though we have not seen one in real life here so far!!)
Going into the second climb of the col du Petit-Saint-Bernard was when Astarloza teamed up with 3 others and they started working in tandem. Their lead over the peleton was over 3 minutes at one stage, but with Contador in the yellow jersey Team Astana simply pulled its muscle power to cut the gap to under a minute.
For the aggressive rider that Astarloza is, the punch in the descent was just too much for the others to take and Sandy Casar a breakaway expert couldn’t even catch him. Atsarloza won comfortably in the end and admitted that his victory was the greatest in his career so far. Casar finished second for the 6th time in his career in tour de france, me thinks another record in the making here!!
For the record in Stage 16 – the winner was Mikel Astarloza of the Euskaltel. The individual standings of the top 3 remains the same with the Yellow Jersey retained by Alberto Contador. Lance Armstrong remains on second spot – still 1’37” behind Contador. Bradly Wiggins maintains his 3rd position. The Green Jersey remains with Thor Hurshod of Norway & Andy Schleck retains the White Jersey.
A serious casualty in today’s race were Cadel Evans & Carlos Sastre – both title contenders – who have really fallen back by over 3 minutes. But with Astarloza in such fine form and vowing to do something more on this tour, Team Astana cannot take it easy from hereon.
Jens Voigts, a tour veteran with over a decade of racing in the tour had a very hard fall and is in the hospital. Team mates at Saxo Bank are all worried about his condition and the chances of Andy Schleck reaching the podium at Paris remains in doubt as Voigts was the fulcrum around which the whole team was moving.
The 17th stage of the tour is from Bourg-St-Maurice to Le Grand-Bornand a distance of 169 kms which also has not les than four Cat-1 climbs. Me thinks there will be an attacks by some of the title contenders who have failed so far and would want to see if they can claim some of the time gap back. But with Astana express rolling on so strongly, its doubtful if any of them can escape away!!
Au revoir!!…
Email : mrq@planningfactory.in