It was – and I think this is the technical term – pissing rain in Valence. The humid heat broke at some point between our arrival in the press centre – a handball stadium on the gritty outskirts of town – and the peloton arriving; first with rain on the roads from an hour or so out, and then, as the race closed on the finish line like a gathering storm, outside the press centre. There was nothing to be done about it.
There’s a lot of waiting at bike races. Waiting for reception. Waiting in traffic jams. Waiting for the finish. Waiting for Paris. Waiting for the sweet embrace of death. Today, there was the added component of waiting and walking: a bike race in dire conditions, watched on phone screens under umbrellas on the trudge to the buses, five minutes walk away. Then it was time to choose where to wait: hedging bets on the bus to stand at, on the off-chance that you’ll choose the right one for the most immediate reactions.
Iain Treloar
I chose wrongly. Jonas Abrahamsen was away – still one of the few riders who might, possibly, be capable of holding off a charging peloton, but the catch was made after a few minutes standing in the rain at the Uno-X Mobility bus. That wasn’t so bad: there was an awning, and unlike other buses (which may or may not belong to Visma-Lease a Bike) at least the driver gave a heads-up that he was about to push the canvas up with the tip of his umbrella, setting loose a waterfall off the edge of the awning.
One crash, then, under the flamme rouge, another one. “Faen,” came the collective outburst from Norway’s squeaky-clean TV2 broadcasters and a couple of Uno-X staffers. “Det var Stian,” said someone. He was right. It was Stian Fredheim, caught up in the crash, a red and yellow figure in a pile of battered bodies.
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