Carcassonne—Quillan, 183km
Despite such a dramatic culmination to the Manx Missile’s Record Chase, not even 24 hours later the Tour has moved on. Heading South out of Carcassonne, the next battleground where war would be waged was seen off in the distance, France’s other greatest mountain range, the Pyrenees. The Pyrenees are France’s Southwest border, a remarkable natural wall separating France from Spain. It is a place of millennia cultural divide. For some 500 or 700 hundred years—almost the entirety of the Middle Ages—while the proto-kingdoms of Spain were overrun by the Moors, the Pyrenees served as one of the global dividing lines between the Christian and Muslim world. And for the last 5-or-6 centuries, the famous kingdoms of Europe centralized their authorities, gobbled up smaller regional kingdom neighbors, and tried to inculcate their practices and customs on the new frontier lands. Before the Renaissance even began, all the way through the Enlightenment, and culminating in the Napoleonic Wars these national territorial conflicts became the norm for most generations of Europeans. After Napoleon the endless virulent wars launched for the conquest of strategic slivers of land at the far-reaching borders came to an end more-or-less for a century until WWI. It was between Napoleon and WWI that all the European nations went about cementing and instilling national pride in all their citizens—especially those at the fringes who usually were (or even still are today) more loyal to their regional than national identity.
Admittedly, this instilling of nationalism in the French border citizens was much more needed in the Alps where the borders were much more influx than in the Pyrenees which had already long been a cultural divide. But at the turn of the 20th Century one of the greatest tools to help the French learn about what was and wasn’t France was the newly created Tour de France. Should one run through the maps of the first 40 editions or so of the Tour de France, it will be difficult to miss how the race almost exclusively ran along the margins of the country—it even criminally shafted the country’s interior. The Tour would often go to Nice near the Italian border to establish that Nice was once-and-for-all French—a not-at-all well-established fact until decades after Napoleon. It would venture into the Brittany peninsula each year to remind or to impress upon these formerly ancient Brits or Celts—and the rest of France—that the Bretons are French too. It would defiantly visit the cities along the German border where territorial conflicts were most heated around the time of both World Wars. And it would always survey the Pyrenean villages to let them know they too are French and not forgotten. Thus, for over a century, the Tour has visited the Pyrenees not just for dramatic racing, but to help define France’s southern cultural border. O! Please keep the history lesson in mind for the next 5 stages as the Tour de France meanders across and through France’s Pyrenees, its southern high border wall.
Today’s Stage 14 would be an hors d’oeuvre of sorts for the main course of Pyrenees high mountain stages to come. Today was a lumpy hilly stage containing a combination of 5 Category2 and Category3 climbs. It was a day that could not prove decisive in the King of the Mountains competition, but it could certainly swing those close standings. And with the pivotal and high mountain stages to come—perhaps what is the Queen Stage of the Tour transpires tomorrow—this was an ideal day for the breakaway to go away to the line. Thus it was a ferocious fight to make the break, it was a hostile battle to have the honor to ride in the vanguard as it entered the premiere mountain range of this edition of the Tour de France. The vanguard is the leading company or unit at the front-and-center of the battleline. It is a place for the best and bravest, it is an honor to be chosen for the lead, it is the greatest responsibility in the battle, and it is a perilous position. In cycling, such terms of ancient and medieval warfare can often easily be applied to the peloton, but they are always in a way twisted. For though the peloton travels together like an army on an Odyssey, the wars the riders wage are not against the locals whose homelands they are invading, but are pitched battles of civil war between themselves. So it was today, once 14 men had earned their way into the vanguard of the Tour’s entrance into the Pyrenees, they then immediately began waging war upon each other as they distanced the peloton behind.
Our interest was piqued to see this vanguard breakaway crest every climb; yes, the competition for the King of the Mountains Jersey was in full swing today. Arkea-Samsaic’s Nairo Quintana began the stage in the lead of the KOM Classification with an even 50 Points, Jumbo’s Wout Van Aert was in second with 43 Points, Start-Up Nation’s Mike Woods was in third with 42 Points, Bahrain’s Wout Poels was in fourth with 39 Points, and Trek’s Bauke Mollema was in fifth with 36 Points. First and second places, Nairoman Quintana and Swiss Army Knife Van Aert, had not gotten into the break today, but third, fourth, and fifth places Woods, Poels, and Mollema had. On the Category3 climbs, only 2 Points are available to the first rider over, and 1 Point for the second. Thus the first Category3 climb of the day was not heavily contested, especially since the breakaway was still in the process of establishing itself. But at each of the Category2 climbs to come were 5 Points available to first to top, 3 Points for second, 2 Points for third, and 1 Point for fourth. As stated, taking 5 Points over the top was not an embarrassment of riches, but it was a significant return for a rider’s efforts, and with three Category2’s on today’s route the same rider could gobble up a sizable share of KOM Points if they were at the front of the race in the breakaway. Thus it was really thanks to Mike Woods’ and Wout Poels’ quest for KOM Points that the breakaway was formed on their coattails as they rode out of the peloton for the points available atop the first Category2 climb of the day. Wout Poels took the maximum KOM Points in a bike-throw as Mike Woods kicked himself for seeming to have botched the sprint. But on the next Category2, the tables turned and Woods got the better of Wout Poels; both had then scored 8 KOM Points each on the day. Thus Woods drew level with Nairo Quintana who was then currently wearing the Polka-Dots back in the peloton. With 2 climbs still left on the day for the break to score Points, and the peloton with no seeming interest to even bring back the breakaway, it now seemed Woods or Poels would be moving into Polka-Dots tonight. The question was which one.
The Woods and Poels battle continued up the next Category3 climb, and this time it was Poels who took the maximum 2 Points available, while Woods took the 1 Point. With the 1 Point, Woods had provisionally moved into the Polka-Dot Jersey, but with only a 2 Point margin on Poels. The last Category2 climb of the day, the Col de Saint-Louis, would decide the Jersey between them. Ah! But the wholesome competition was quickly marred on the descent. As is often the case at the Tour de France, bizarre things were afoot. It was so hot in the Pyrenean valley the Tour was traversing: the asphalt of the road was starting to melt. Apparently the melting was not significant enough to need any race neutralization, but all the riders were warned over the radio. Which if you are a rider on the Tour…what do you do with that information? How do you react or prepare to ride over a possibly melting road? When I heard the commentators declare this, I did not think much of it: I figured it was just an overblown detail to make the Tour sound even more grueling and difficult, but nothing would come of it…And then minutes later Michael Woods, leading the breakaway on the descent, slipped out on a corner exactly where Race Radio had said the melting would be. Having come to the sport very late with a talented runner’s background, it has always been noticeable Mike Woods lacks the same technical bike-handling proficiency of the average professional cyclist who essentially grew up on two wheels. Thus it is hard to tell if the slide out was due to his subpar bike-handling, the bad luck of being the first to tackle the unexpected difficult melted patch of road, or if it was some combination of the two. In the end, the incident just further hurts his handling credentials, Woods scrapped up some skin and tore some shorts, and he had created a taller task for himself on the final climb to nab the KOM Polka-Dot Jersey. But to his credit, Woods was up very quickly, and seeming unphased by the crash, he rejoined the 14-man break within a couple of kilometers to be back in the hunt for KOM Points and the stage win.
But, as is often the case, on a little uncategorized rise, Trek’s Bauke Mollema clipped off the front of the breakaway to try his luck with 40km to go. Woods and Poels were proving the strongest on the climbs, so why wouldn’t Mollema try to get a jump on them and the rest to have a head start for the last Category2 climb? Should he stay away solo over the top of that, it was just a descent into the finish where he should have little problem holding off any chasers. Thus, Mollema attacked, no one immediately tried to go with or close him down, and quickly before anyone realized it Mollema had a 25-second gap. Over the next 20km as they approached the final Category2, Mollema’s lead on the breakaway chasers would balloon to some 75 seconds. There was nothing flashy, or grand, or even audacious about Mollema’s attack; it was simply textbook perfect timing…so perfect it was almost boring. At 34, Mollema is a veteran of the sport, he has been a consistent rider for much of his career, and his best results have come from similar lower-key attacks just like this. He has finished many Grand Tours in the top ten on GC. He won the mountainous San Sebastian Basque Country Summer Classic riding away on a false flat in 2016. In 2019 he won the mountainous Race of the Falling Leaves Il Lombardia Monument by again attacking away on another false flat while the biggest favorites just stared each other down. And in 2017, he won a Tour stage that was almost a carbon-copy of this one: on Stage 14, around the Pyrenees, rolling and hilly terrain, he escaped from the break when there was a lull in the action. From a fan’s perspective, I have never seen Mollema really light up a race or invigorate with some sort of swashbuckling attack, but certainly all can appreciate the man’s talent for reading a race and taking his chance at the perfect time. For behind, his rivals could not get their acts together and mount a cohesive chase. Besides two spent B&B Hotels riders, everyone else in the breakaway had no teammates to pour all their energy into chasing down Mollema. All were cagey, not wanting to be the one to spend the energy to catch Mollema who was now completely emptying the tank in a 40km time trial.
They were certainly in the Pyrenees now, though they were not tackling the giant brutes, none could miss that they were in picturesque valleys that could grace the back of postcards and keep painters busy for hours. On Mollema drove it into and up the Col de Saint-Louis climb whose coiling-snake beauty from above was a highlight of the day. On the climb, it was make or break for the chasers to get their act together and eat into Mollema’s gap. But the chasers did not have it, they pulled Mollema to within a minute, but that was the best they could do. Woods rode at the front of the chasers to nab the 3 KOM Points available for second while Wout Poels had cracked and would score nothing for that climb. Woods would move into Polka-Dots tonight while none would catch Mollema out front on the descent and into the finish. But many of the riders in that vanguard breakaway still rode hard and raced all the way to the line, most out of pride, some for reward. Most notably Socrates Guillaume Martin (Cofidis) who would finish a 1:28 down on Mollema…and 5:25 ahead of the peloton containing all the other GC favorites. The Frenchman Guillaume Martin had begun the day in 9th place on GC, 9:29 down on UAE’s Tadej Pogacar. With this 5:25 gap to the peloton, the Frenchman Martin has now moved up to 2nd place on GC, 4:04 behind Pogacar. Martin had tried riding for GC at last year’s Tour, but his campaign collapsed halfway through that Tour. He came into this Tour hunting stages, but after moving up to 2nd place on GC and being a Frenchman: surely now he must try to ride and defend his GC placing. What does Martin have left for the next high Pyrenean stages to come?
No offense to Mollema, Woods, Poels, and Martin, but today was not a blockbuster stage. It was a smooth transition stage to ease up into the Pyrenees and further set up storylines. Tomorrow comes the big day, the Queen Stage in many people’s eyes. Woods, Poels, Quintana, and any others interested in Polka-Dots MUST come out to play tomorrow. Was Quintana saving himself today? Will Woods and Poels have the energy to attack again tomorrow? If anyone actually dreams of beating Young Beowulf Crowned King Tadej Pogacar, they MUST try to exploit a chink in his armor tomorrow. But if all the GC contenders left have really already set their sights on racing for 2nd place Overall, at the very least tomorrow shall be a compelling day of drama in that narrative. Yes, led by the battles of the Vanguard breakaway today, the Tour de France is now well and truly the Pyrenees, the premiere mountain range of this edition of the Tour de France. One Pyrenean stage is down, still four more to go.
Cycling Odysseys 