As the year plunges ever deeper into off-season, the world darkens, and live road racing becomes a distant memory, it’s a good time to look back, take refuge in nostalgia, revisit the good times. In that spirit, here’s the third instalment of a new series called ‘Retro Rewatch’ in which we, well, rewatch retro races; we’ll cover what happened, rediscover the characters in play and locate the event within the context of the time.
Before we get going, let’s just address the fact the 2014 is stretching the ‘retro’ label. However, it’s far enough in the recent past for the main protagonists all to be retired – well, nearly all of them – and, recalling some of those characters and their exploits, it feels like a bygone era of our sport: this was the era of the Skytrain, of Nibali and Contador, Sagan and Cancellara, ‘Purito’ Rodriguez and Thomas Voeckler, of Tinkoff, Katusha and BMC, of nine-rider Grand Tour teams…
It was also this author’s sophomore season as a committed cycling fan and, after watching the peloton pass the bottom of my road on the Cambridge to London leg of the Grand Départ, this was the first Tour whose key stages are etched into my memory, just like the iconic ITV jingle for their Tour coverage.
After an opening four stages dominated by sprinter Marcel Kittel, stage 5 of the 2014 Tour de France saw a rare, even controversial, visit to the Roubaix cobbles, a stage that was a thrill for some and dreaded by many others, but for fans of the Tour, it was a tantalising spectacle and a welcome obstacle for the increasingly dominant GC teams whose weaknesses seemed few and far between.
Setting the stage:
- The Tour’s reigning champion was Kenya-born Brit, 29-year-old Chris Froome, the second of Sir Dave Brailsford’s back-to-back British winners after Bradley Wiggins had broken the duck in 2012. Froome’s buildup to an attempted defence started well in his first race the Tour of Oman, then sixth at a very close Volta a Catalunya – the whole top 10 within 48 seconds – followed up a month later with Tour de Romandie victory via the final ITT.
- The 2014 Critérium du Dauphiné was a memorable one and a bad omen – in hindsight – for Team Sky. Froome led the race from the start until stage 7’s hors-catégorie summit finish, the day after what looked like a fairly heavy crash for the gangly Brit, on which he handed 20 seconds to Alberto Contador – who was arguably winning the contenders’ buildup – who moved into the race lead. While Froome cracked spectacularly on the crucial final stage, it was 25-year-old Andrew Talansky who was able to take advantage by sneaking into the winning move after the first climb of a dramatic day in the Alps. Mikel Nieve won the stage and a consolation prize for Team Sky as their leader tumbled to 12th, and Talansky snatched the race lead from an isolated Contador to score the biggest win of his career.
- A cobbled stage had been re-introduced to the Tour for the first time in 25 years in 2010, in which after 213 km including seven cobbled sectors, Thor Hushovd took his eighth Tour stage win from a six-man group whose advantage was 53 seconds over the next on the road. With Hushovd were three future Grand Tour winners in Geraint Thomas, Cadel Evans and Ryder Hesjedal, as well as eventual 2010 Tour winner Andy Schleck (he was awarded the title in early 2012 after the conclusion of Contador’s CAS hearing) and his teammate and two-time Paris-Roubaix winner (so far) Fabian Cancellara.
- Vincenzo Nibali had opted out of the 2010 Tour in favour of the Giro and Vuelta, with the latter becoming his maiden Grand Tour title. The Italian then joined Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome on the Tour podium in 2012, before scoring his second Grand Tour victory at the 2013 Giro d’Italia. By the time he arrived at the start of the 2014 Tour in Leeds, Nibali had become a solid podium contender who was extraordinarily motivated to seal the Grand Tour trilogy.
- Other overall favourites who had no choice but to face unfamiliar terrain on stage 5 of the 2014 Tour included Alberto Contador – who had finished 13th in the 2010 cobbled stage and won the yellow jersey before those results were retroactively stripped from his palmarès following the clenbuterol case – Alejandro Valverde, and young French hopes Thibaut Pinot and Romain Bardet.
- In the Tour so far, Marcel Kittel had already won three stages including the first into Harrogate where 25-time stage winner Mark Cavendish crashed out in devastating fashion on the closest thing to home soil for the Manxman who had made a home in Essex, which the Tour would pass through in a few days’ time. Nibali then moved into the yellow jersey with a punchy stage victory into Sheffield on stage 2, ahead of Greg van Avermaet and Michał Kwiatkowski, so as the Tour arrived on French shores, the Italian led the race by two seconds.
- The day before the fateful cobbled stage, defending champion Froome had crashed hard early in the stage but had raced on and started stage 5, albeit heavily wrapped up, especially on both his wrists – far from ideal before several kilometres of rugged cobbles.
In lieu of full highlights, we’re turning to our friend Cosmo Catalano and ‘How the Race Was Won’. Also worth a watch, though, are edited ITV highlights here, and the good old days of the Orica-GreenEdge backstage pass.
How it happened:
- As if a Roubaix stage was not already hard enough, northern France and Belgium got a thorough soaking on July 9th 2014. With that in mind, two sectors were removed by the race jury before the start in Ypres, but with a stiff wind whipping at the rear of the peloton as rain continued to fall, the high pace and twitchy peloton had a difficult day ahead of them.
- Worst off was the weakened Froome whose stage 4 crash meant the reigning champion began the Roubaix stage with a splint on one wrist and heavy bandaging on the other. Given the significant jarring on the seven cobbled sectors ahead of him, not to mention the usual requirements of reaction and positioning in the peloton, Froome had his own personal storm cloud over his head.
- The early breakaway was particularly strong, with world ITT champion Tony Martin (Omega Pharma-QuickStep), Samuel Dumoulin (Ag2r-La Mondiale), Janier Acevedo (Garmin-Sharp), Tony Gallopin (Lotto Belisol), Marcus Burghardt (BMC), Rein Taaramae (Cofidis), Simon Clarke and Mat Hayman (Orica-GreenEdge), and Lieuwe Westra, whose presence eased the pressure on his Astana teammates in the bunch.
- That said, Astana was never far from the pointy end as they sought to keep Nibali well positioned, and just as well too, as crashes became part and parcel of proceedings from the start. Froome was one of the many fallers, and though he got back up once, his second crash proved too much and the reigning Tour champion climbed into a team car before the first cobbled sector, the Carrefour de l’Arbre.
- Cannondale (with Peter Sagan) and the Belkin duo of Sep Vanmarcke and Lars Boom appeared particularly keen to force it as the peloton ate into the cobbles, with the added complication of GC teams attempting to keep their leaders upright and in touching distance of the yellow jersey.
- Nibali, meanwhile, was racing like a seasoned cobbled classic specialist, he and his teammates gradually trimming away major contenders like Contador, who was struggling more than most, until finally Talansky and then Jurgen van den Broeck fell away by the 40-to-go mark.
- The yellow jersey continued to take the terrain and the slimy conditions in his stride with the particularly strong support of Jakob Fuglsang and early attacker Lieuwe Westra, who went straight to work when the survivors of the breakaway were swallowed up with 28 km to go.
- Westra’s last gasp reduced the front of the race to just 16 riders as the gap to now-leading GC favourite Contador stretched beyond two minutes. Still in contention were Sagan and Cancellara, though they seemed overly preoccupied with one another, not to mention the four Omega Pharma-QuickStep riders in the group.
- Just like Paris-Roubaix, the group repeatedly fragmented and reformed in the closing phases, right up until the decisive move comprising Nibali, Fuglsang, Westra and Boom – his teammate Vanmarcke had punctured out of contention – snuck away just outside the last 10 km, when Boom darted into a gap cracked open by white jersey-wearer Michał Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) behind the Astana jerseys.
- Boom was significantly outnumbered, but with Westra well and truly in the red and the other two about as far from cobbled specialists as it was possible to be – on paper, at least – the former cyclocross star lay in wait, and pounced on the Wallers sector with 5 km remaining.
- Nibali was shepherded across the line by Fuglsang just 19 seconds after Boom took his heroic victory on what would go down in history as a defining moment of all their careers.
- After stage 5, Nibali led his nearest legitimate GC rival Jurgen van den Broeck by 1:45, with Team Sky’s new leader Richie Porte 1:54 down – and thanking Geraint Thomas for some sterling work to limit losses in the finale. Dauphiné winner Talansky was next in line 2 minutes down, just ahead of Valverde, while Contador had lost a massive 2:35.
Top 10 on the stage:
- Lars Boom (Belkin) 3:18:35
- Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) +0:19
- Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) “
- Peter Sagan (Cannondale) +1:01
- Fabian Cancellara (Trek Factory Racing) “
- Jens Keukeleire (Orica GreenEdge) “
- Michał Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) +1:07
- Lieuwe Westra (Astana) +1:09
- Matteo Trentin (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) +1:21
- Cyril Lemoine (Cofidis) +1:45
DNF: Chris Froome
GC top 10 after stage 5:
- Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) 20:26:46
- Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) +0:02
- Peter Sagan (Cannondale) +0:44
- Michał Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) +0:50
- Fabian Cancellara (Trek Factory Racing) +1:17
- Jurgen van den Broeck (Lotto Belisol) +1:45
- Tony Gallopin (Lotto Belisol) “
- Richie Porte (Team Sky) +1:54
- Andrew Talansky (Garmin Sharp) +2:05
- Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) +2:11
Brief analysis:
- With most of GC contenders losing at least two minutes, Astana proved that it was not enough just to survive, their best bet was to race and race for the win. While Nibali and co. had surely done a recce of the key sectors, he had never yet raced Paris-Roubaix nor Tour of Flanders – though he would try his hand at the latter four years later, finishing 24th. Cobbles were definitively not his thing, but he knew enough that to race fast and hard was essentially the safest and most efficient way of arriving at the finish relatively unscathed. Nibali didn’t completely escape incidents between Ypres and Arenberg, even getting held up when a teammate crashed in the lead group after their GC rivals had all been dropped, but staying up front and taking cues from old hands paid dividends for the Italian.
- While it couldn’t convincingly be said that Nibali won the Tour on stage 5 given that he won by 7 minutes and 37 seconds, he had made a significant down payment on the eventual title, if nothing else in sheer confidence from himself and his team.
- As for Lars Boom, the 28-year-old Dutch rider’s stage 5 win was the 20th of his road career which had included a Vuelta stage in 2009, Prologues at Paris-Nice and the Dauphiné, and overall titles at the Eneco Tour (now Renewi) and Tour of Britain. On the cobbled sectors and slippery paved roads of stage 5, the burly Classics specialist rolled back the years to his cyclocross peak, his bike an extension of his own body and his mind finely tuned to the race situation and the road ahead.
What happened next?
- In the absence of Froome – who revealed he had fractures on both sides in his wrist and the other hand – and with Contador too forced out of the race with a broken leg by the end of stage 10, Nibali found the road to Paris suddenly much clearer than it had been two weeks earlier, and after collecting three more stage wins, the yellow jersey and the Grand Tour trilogy were his.
- Thibaut Pinot emerged as a real contender on stage 10 to La Planche des Belles Filles, the same day Contador was forced to abandon. As Nibali strode away to his second victory of the race (of four), this time in the yellow jersey, Pinot proved best of the rest just 15 seconds behind, with his young compatriot Romain Bardet just seven seconds behind, which saw the AG2R man take over the white jersey. The French fans got a battle for the best young rider for the remainder of the race as the pair traded blows, and Pinot ultimately took control by holding firm in the yellow jersey group on stage 16, as Bardet lost almost two minutes.
- With that effort on stage 16 to Bagneres-de-Luchon, Pinot moved up onto the podium, just one step and 29 seconds behind Valverde who himself was 4:37 down on the yellow jersey. At that point in the race, there were three Frenchman in the top 5 in Pinot, veteran Jean-Christophe Péraud and Bardet. Then with Valverde’s disastrous ITT on stage 20, Péraud leapfrogged up to second overall, where he stayed, with Pinot also sticking like glue to the podium – twice over as best young rider.
- And the following year? After the disappointment of 2014, Froome and Team Sky smashed their way back into control of the Tour de France and their strangle-hold remained until 2020 when Tadej Pogačar became the first non-Team Sky rider to take the yellow jersey, and by doing so, shepherded the cycling world into a new era.
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