TDF 2020, Stage 11 Chatelaillon-Plage – Poitiers 167.5 km
Ewan wins the stage. Race officials decide to expand Bennett’s Points lead with controversial ruling.
DENVER, CO – We all had a long day ahead of us or had just finished one up as we sat down to watch the sprint into Poitiers. Coming off the feel-good stage yesterday, we were hoping for something similar today. Could Sam Bennett (Deceuninck-Quickstep) double-up stages and take a win in the town where his mentor, the legendary Sean Kelly, won his first ever Tour de France stage? And what about the Green Jersey competition? Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) did not look half-bad yesterday. He finished a highly respectable third place, might he be coming back onto form at the perfect time? It was a long flat day, no threat of winds, so might as well watch the replay of the Intermediate Sprint, then catch the final kilometers.
The Intermediate Sprint was taken by the lone breakaway rider, Matthieu Ladagnous (Groupama-FDJ), leaving 17 points still available to whoever crossed the line in second. The intermediate sprint was a rather dull affair where Sam Bennett in Green took the 17 points, his lead-out man Michael Morkov (Deceuninck-Quickstep) actually took 3rd place behind Bennett to eat up points that Sagan, finishing in 4th, could have had. Bennett’s Points lead lengthened. Then dear Readers, let us fast-forward to the finish. In the final 6 km, Sagan’s teammate Lukas Postlberger (Bora-Hansgrohe) launched a daring stealer attack reminiscent of the 1K Flyer he accidently launched to win Stage 1 of the 2017 Giro. Interestingly, Sam Bennett’s teammates, Bob Jungels and Casper Asgreen (both Deceuninck-Quickstep) bridged to Postlberger. The three rode on forcing Caleb Ewan’s Lotto Soudal teammates to chase them down. All three were caught by 2 kilometers to go, but Ewan was already down to just one man on the front. The run-in was weird, no team really wanted to take the lead-out reins. Finally, in the last 400 meters Wout Van Aert, who had been let off the leash by his Jumbo-Visma team, came surging up to the front, Bennett and Ewan lurked behind him. At 200 meters to go, Van Aert launched his sprint, it was a clean straight line on the right side of the road. On his left came Bennett in Green drawing even, but around him also came Ewan. Meanwhile, despite his large size, Sagan was sneaking up the barriers on Van Aert’s right side, coming from a long way back. O! it was a close call, Sagan certainly nudged Van Aert as he came up. But who would take it? All four were looking good. On the line….Ooo! A photo between all four! All four with the bike throw. Look at that arrangement, dear Readers, it was a beautiful sprint. “Bravo to Sagan bouncing back after struggling that first week! And Bennett, Ooo! he was close, did he win like King Kelly of old? I think Van Aert was a close but clear 4th. Ewan probably took it though. Yes, there are the results: Ewan, Sagan—really? Wow!—Bennett, Van Aert. Well, well, Sagan surely must be coming back onto form, and with that second place he shall close the gap on Green to Bennett. As our commentator, Simon Gerrans, has just declared: this was the best sprint of the Tour so far.” These were our thoughts, dear Readers, watching the replays and seeing the initial standings, but they were denied to us.
Alas! dear Readers, Sagan was relegated for his nudging and bumping with Van Aert along the barriers. He was placed at the back of the sprinting peloton in 85th place. Now, dear Readers, I am not here to give my judgement whether his move was so dangerous it was worthy of relegation, I cannot formulate an opinion of my own. In such matters I feel judgement must be conferred singularly to current and former sprinters who have experienced situations like this one firsthand and then have thoroughly analyzed the current replay. What look like fierce headbutts or flaring elbows to the average viewer may not actually be so violent at such high speeds. Much of the barging and nudging are only knee-jerk reactions in order to stay upright or are the nature of the beast that is sprinting. I will say, seeing Sagan come up that close to the right-side barriers eerily reminded me of Fabio Jakobsen’s (Deceuninck-Quickstep) hideous crash at the Tour of Poland one month ago, the worst crash I have ever seen quite frankly—I sincerely advise the dear Readers not to look it up. But I still don’t even understand who comprises the juries in such decisions: are they officials who work for the Tour de France or officials from the UCI, cycling’s governing body? Are they judging just the isolated safety of this sprint on its own, or are they involving the optics of the situation and do recent events weigh in on their decision-making as well? Have any of them ever sprinted in a bike race before? Seriously, I feel that is a necessary condition, because not everything is as violent as it seems from the TV; this is something only experienced people should attempt to make judgement calls on. But, dear Readers, in this situation I shall not even consult the expert sprinters’ opinions, because I am not interested in any opinions on whether this was a fair or cheap play this time. I don’t care that Wout cried foul, it’s expected when he finishes in a lower place. I haven’t even looked up reaction from Sagan’s camp. I am simply and plainly frustrated that such a good sprint is now marred by the controversy and that is the only topic for the rest of the day.
I hate relegations and penalties like this one, dear Readers. I hate that now for the next 24 hours all we will be discussing is the worthiness of the relegation even though the decision is final and we all must move on—this is also why I never bother to understand who these officials are and who they work for, because what does it matter? The decision is final. But what I hate most, dear Readers, is that I saw a coming-onto-form Peter Sagan remarkably rising to the occasion, as everyone was counting him out, to keep the Green Jersey competition very tight. And now instead of keeping the competition around a 15-Point difference, the gap is somewhere around 60 or 70 Points which is perhaps insurmountable for anyone (obviously, dear Readers, when Sagan was relegated he lost the 30 points he was going to receive for 2nd place while Bennett now gained the 30). Jeez, seriously dear Readers, endings like these—where someone changes the result I saw—drive me up a wall. It is one thing when everyone with eyeballs calls foul immediately, like in the Jakobsen crash, or in the dark days of old when a doping test was failed and the result needed to be stripped; but here without any popular consensus or experienced consensus, a committee steps in and decides the outcome of the race instead of the athletes themselves. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, it is sickening.
Dear Readers, if you have been keeping up with my reports you know that Wout and Sagan are two of my favorite riders, and Bennett is continuing to soar in the rankings as well. So I really don’t have a dog in this fight about whether Sagan should have been relegated or not. I simply want to see an exciting race decided by the riders, which doesn’t mean the officials shouldn’t officiate, but they should make their presence as minimized as possible. With this controversial relegation, I do not believe they are minimizing their presence. It was probably these same officials that irrationally completely disqualified and booted Sagan from the 2017 Tour for a similar incident in a sprint, and that dear Readers, was my least favorite Tour I have ever seen. It was ruined and became boring, because officials overstepped their boundaries and decided the race. This scenario isn’t as bad, because maybe Sagan was being too dangerous and deserved a penalty, but maybe also this committee just decided the winner of the Green Jersey instead of Peter Sagan and Sam Bennett. Perhaps as a warning of disapproval, but without deciding the race, this committee could have heavily fined Sagan instead. Dear Readers, I finish by saying that I pray greatly that Sagan harnesses this incident as motivation to heroically come back from this deficient to win his 8th Green Jersey. I love the Sam Bennett fairy-tale and he is a worthy adversary and I wish him the best, but now I root for Sagan because I feel this committee or jury may have screwed over the “best man”—as in “May the best man win,” words I accuse the jury of not believing in when they insert themselves in such a way.
I don’t know, dear Readers. I am sure this will be my worst report yet. As I say in the title, I am deeply frustrated and scatter-brained because I cannot even tell if Sagan was in the wrong (nor do I care) and instead of talking about the riders we are now talking about some shadow committee we know nothing about who potentially just decided the Green Jersey Points competition for us. It is ridiculous. It is so ridiculous, that I will now watch the replay of today’s stage of Tirreno-Adriatico, what always turns out to be one of the most mediocre races on the calendar, as a rebound. The only thing the “Race Between the Two Seas” has going for it are its blue leader’s jersey and the massive golden trident trophy awarded to the winner. But seriously, any bike race without a disqualification will be better than the crap we just saw today.
Cycling Odysseys 