Welcome to my 2008 Tour de France story with the HTC Columbia team.
The riders that I have selected for this tour and their individual roles & aims are as follows:
Mark Cavendish – The Manx missile will be our main hope for some stage wins & in the green jersey competition.
Linus Gerdemann – He will be supporting Michael Rodgers and Kim Kirchen in the mountains, whilst also trying to get into some breakaways.
Michael Rodgers – One of my 2 contenders for the top 5/10 of the GC.
Kim Kirchen – My other contender for a high finish in the GC.
Marcus Burghardt – A team-mate for Cavendish, his main job will be to catch the breakaway and then to lead out Cav.
Roger Hammond – A team mate for Cav, who will try and get into the break from time to time.
Thomas Löfkvist – The other team-mate for Rogers and Kirchen, supporting them through the mountains as best as he can, and possibly having a tilt at the KoM title.
Bernhard Eisel – The main leadout man for Cav, who will be going for stage wins if Cav does not have good form on the day, or if he gets dropped by the peloton.
Andreas Klier – Another man responsible for chasing the breakaway to try and bring the peloton to a mass sprint finish, whilst also trying to get into a few breakaways.
My main aims for the tour are:
3 Stage wins
Top 10 GC
Top 3 Green Jersey Competition
So, let’s get started with the first stage! Edited by hamilton162 on 21-07-2010 17:20
With around 5km gone, Hammond and Klier both got into the morning’s breakaway as instructed with around 10 other riders, but they went too early and were pulled back after being in the lead for less than 10km.
Later on, Klier tried again and this time got into a breakaway that contained around 6 riders, who had a 3 minute advantage over the peloton.
The pack started to pull the break back in with around 80km left, so Klier attacked again and managed to pull out a gap of 5m30s with 60km left.
However, the peloton were ruthless and reeled him in with 27km left of the 194km. (He is seen below at 40km to go, with around a 1m30s gap over the main field)
Then at around 15km from the finish, the peloton was split by the very strong crosswinds, which left a group of around 40 riders clear of the main field by 45s, but the gap stayed fairly constant. The HTC riders in this group were Cav, Eisel, Hammond & Gerdemann
With 8km until the finish line, Gerdemann launched himself off the front of the escape group.
Several attacks followed, but none were successful in reaching the German, who stayed away to win the opening stage of the tour and claimed the yellow jersey!
Stage & GC Rankings:
The Peloton finished +2m09s behind the stage winner Gerdeman and of the main contenders for the GC are @ 2m29s
After his terrific win on the opening stage, breaking away as the pack neared Plumelec, Gerdemann was sporting the yellow jersey this morning, as he may be for a few days.
As usual, there was a morning breakaway which contained 14 riders, with the highest being Bert Grabsch in 40th place.
They held around 6 minutes on the peloton, before ourselves, Barloworld & Credit Agricole decided to pull them back & set up a duel between Hushovd, McEwan and the Cav the Manx missile.
Unfortunately, on the way into Saint Brieuc, Cav suffered a puncture which left Hushovd to claim a relatively easy win on the line. Amazingly, Kim Kirchen finished 2nd after his pace making at the front of the main field as I turned my focus to getting Cav back into the pack, and left him to do the pace making!
After finishing in the pack for the 2nd day running, Gerdemann has the honour of wearing the maillot jaune again on the 208.4km stage from Saint Malo to Nantes.
The early morning breakaway, or should I say breakaways, consisted of around 5 groups of 1 or 2 riders, with a larger group of 4 men out in front.
With the gap to the lead group at a massive 16 minutes, and with no other team looking organised at the front end of the main field, we took charge of the pace making and looked to haul back the breakaway.
We caught the breakaway at 17km left, and then I sent the whole team to the front of the main field to maintain a high pace and ensure a good lead-out for Cav. However, everyone apart from Cav himself managed to get themselves off the front of the peloton, without me meaning to do it!
This meant that Cav had a far from ideal leadout, and with -5 form, it wasn’t going to be easy, so I switched my attention to Eisel. Unfortunately, when the whole of my team finally got back to the front of the main field, a group of 5 riders launched themselves off the front of the peloton, including Hushovd, Friere & McEwen.
Freire won the race to the line to claim the stage win, ahead of McEwen with Hushovd 3rd. Eisel continued to sprint for points and edged out Jimmy Casper & his lead-out man to grab 24 points in the race for the sprinter’s jersey.
