Stage 21 Évry / Paris Champs-Élysées - All Over Red Rover

With the podiums done and dusted in stage 20 and after three hard weeks in the saddle, the Tour was finally on the home stretch from Évry to the most famous boulevard in the world the Champs-Élysées in Paris. 

Final day of the Tour and Gabriel Gate has reached the end of his recipe book. On this special day he prepared a special treat of Raspberry Millefeuilles. But alas, NO BUTTER. Sigh. This brings this year’s Beurremetric Counter competition to a close and weighs in on the podium at 1.12kg.

The peloton hit the road and the run up to Paris resembled a Sunday coffee ride. As is the tradition there was Champagne for the victor Vincenzo Nibali (Asstana) and lots of photo opportunities for pouty selfies. It was also a chance for the riders to have a friendly chat among themselves about what they’ll be doing after the Tour like how long the grass must be after three weeks and the first job is to mow the lawn when they get home.

Phil and Paul idled away the time but we could sense a little bit of tension in the commentary box. Paul spotted what looked like 300,000 tonnes of pre-stressed concrete. All Phil had to say in response was “Say no more!”. Ouch! I don’t know how they’ve done this gig together for so many years. Even if they are the best of friends you’d think they’d still be ready to kill each other after three weeks in that tiny commentary box.

If the Ps are looking for a gig where they’re not in such close proximity they could always put their knowledge of fishing, vulture watching and modern building materials to good use and work as tour guides on a Scenic River Cruise boat. But as usual they’ll probably back in that God awful hell-hole of a commentary box next year.

The riders finally reached the Champs-Élysées which is normally a busy street but was closed off today for bike racing. The women graced the Champs-Élysées earlier in the inaugural La Course by Le Tour de France event won by Marianne Vos (Rabo-Liv).

Sylvain Chavanel (IAMYOUAREWEARE Cycling) was the first to go on the attack. Trekie ‘The Jensie’ made his move and in his final Tour picked up the last of the available intermediate sprint points. This was no casual lap of honour for the oldest man in the universe. I bet he worked for it, probably muttering under his breath “shut up legs” all the way. What a legend and he’ll be sorely missed from the Tour when he retires at year’s end.

It wasn’t a race without drama. Jean-Christophe Peraud (AG2R C3PO) crashed and his second place on the podium looked in jeopardy but Nibs, the gentleman he always is slowed the pace to let Peraud get back into the race.

Then it was game on as each lap of the famous thoroughfare counted down. At lap six Phil declared three laps to go in an eight lap race. Phil, that calculator in the drawer does more than spell ‘shell’ if you turn it upside down. In a thrilling sprint finish Marcel Kitteh (Giant-Shimano) pipped Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) at the line. Another nice set of bookends for Kitteh who won the first and last stages of the Tour as he had done in 2013.

Sicilian jersey in honour of Vincenzo Nibali 'the Shark of Messina'

Nibali was crowned Tour champion and goes home with a full pride of podium lions in the Asstana team bus. He also completes the set of grand tours on his palmares. Debate will simmer about the outcome if Chris Froome and Alberto Contador hadn’t crashed out. It‘s a moot point really. Nibs simply rode superbly over the three weeks and I firmly believe he would have won it anyway.

For the record books the jersey winners are:

The Golden Fleece: Vincenzo Nibali (Asstana)

Green: Peter Sagan (Cannonball)

Polka dot: Rafal Majka (Sinkoff Taxo)

White: Thibaut Pinot (FDJ)

Team: AG2R C3PO

Super combative: Alessandro De Marchi (Cannonball)

In other news I’m trying to get my ‘Rollands’ song penned for stage 1 recorded. Lorde has yet to return my calls but Weird Al Yankovic has shown interest in doing a polka version.

Thank you as always to Gabriel Gate for the wonderful recipes, Matt Keenan, Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett for your call of the race. If it wasn’t for you guys I wouldn’t have anything to write about except maybe a serious chronicle of an annual major sporting event.

Finally, thank you for your positive feedback and retweets of Le Wrap. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it much as I’ve had putting it together. This is Le Wrap’s second year and what a more fitting way than to finish on blog post number 42.

Stage 12 Bourg-en-Bresse / Saint-Étienne

The Tour has passed the halfway mark but there’s still a long way to go. The stage 12 parcours from Bourg-en-Bresse to Saint-Étienne is very similar to stage 11 but different. For starters it’s in a different place with roads that take in the vineyards of the oh so pretty Beaujolais region. 

In the Tour caravan kitchen Gabriel Gate has been really hitting up on the desserts this year. And why not celebrate summer fruits in season by drowning them in a delightfully fruity Beaujolais from the vineyards of the region? The cherries are plump and plentiful so Gabs put wine and cherries together to create Cherry and Beaujolais Syrup with Almonds. No butter. The Beurremetric Counter is firmly stuck on 500g. Don’t tell us you’re on a health kick again Gabs?

After a week of freezing cold rain the riders have been hit with a sudden burst of summer heat. As the temperature rises so does the need for water for drinking and cooling off.

Forget the hoohah of experimenting with on board bike cameras, I reckon the next thing teams will be toying with is a helmet shower system. All they’d need is one of those Tinkie bottle vests with some plastic tubing, a small battery powered pump and a shower-head mounted on the helmet et voila, automatic cooling system. No need for riders to fumble with bidons as they try to squirt fluids over themselves.

An early prototype helmet shower system

Vineyards, chateaux and pretty churches. This stage had all the elements of an all inclusive Scenic Cruise on a bike package. Whether David de La Cruz (NetApp-Endura) was distracted by the sightseeing on his first Tour or his front wheel slipped out on the taffy like surface of the melting roads, he came a cropper on a bend and went out with a broken collar bone. Ouch.

Clarke, Clarkie, Sims, Simo, knackers, whatever you call that bloke from Orica-GreenWEDGE was out in front with the likes of Gotye (Oooooropcar) until hunger-flatting at 5km to go. 

The run home wasn’t without drama. Andre Greipel (Lotto-Belisol) and Sylvain Chavanel (IAM, YOUARE, WEARE Cycling) crashed and the Gorilla and Chava had words. 

In the final bunched sprint to the line Peter Sagan (Cannonball) was bridesmaid again pipped by Alexander Kristoff (Katusha). 

It would be amiss not to mention the terrible news of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 shot down over eastern Ukraine. Tweets reporting a crash of a Malaysian airliner in eastern Ukraine started to appear as the Tour stage was nearing its conclusion.

My initial reaction was to suspect a cruel hoax or a sick joke. Sadly the news turned out to be true and the cause of the crash, apparently from a surface to air missile, makes it even more horrifying.

These events are beyond words and sympathies go out to friends and families of the victims.

Stage 15 Givors / Mont Ventoux – Fly me to the moon

Mont Ventoux. The giant of Provence. The very name is said in reverent awe by Tour fans everywhere. When this bad boy is in town mothers gather their children and hurry them indoors. This is a 242km long stage and the struggle and effort required will make the riders feel like Le Tour is about to conquer the moon.

Indeed it is a desolate moonscape at the top. Erosion has exposed the 91 million year old rock which has Phil wondering what stories these ancient rocks could tell. If the rocks could speak they’d probably say things like “pleased to meet you and by the way I'm a very old rock”.

The summit of Mont Ventoux

Many spectators turned out to line the route to the top of Mont Ventoux. Phil estimated there would be hundreds of thousands of people on the slopes. It’s a miracle they were able to fit them all up there.

Being Bastille Day, the French national holiday, you’d expect at least one French rider to ‘do it for France’ and put on a heroic showing. Frenchman Sylvian Chavanel (Oooomega Farmer – Quick Stop) did just that going on the attack at 25km to go but it wasn’t going to be France's day.

As the climb progressed more riders up front were ‘asphyxiated’ according to Paul. The climb was high but not 747 cruising altitude high. The only asphyxiation that’s been going on in this Tour has been in a sealed commentary box after a big feed of cassoulet.

Ever the showman Cannonball Peter Sagan popped a wheelie and everyone went wild. Quite a difficult stunt to pull off on a road bike. He’ll be doing those H&R Block ads SBS has been running pretty soon.

Higher and higher the riders climbed with Froome Dog (Sky), The Mighty Quintana (Movistar) and Alberto Contador (Taxo Sinkoff) left to battle it out.

The fans were out in force cheering them on. There were some obligatory mankinis and a surprising number of men in tutus. A case of watching too much of the NRL Footy Show? A blow up doll made an appearance and now the whole world knows now what that spectator had been doing in the camping car. Then again, there’s all that time to kill waiting for Le Tour to arrive. We’re thankful we didn’t have to witness moonscapes of a different kind from the roadside.

Contador was the first to crack. Quintana and Froome duked it out for the remainder of the race until Froome burst out of the blocks to win not only the stage but the King of the Mountains classification and keep a handy lead in yellow. With seven days of racing to go anything can happen. But with the way Froome's riding it would be difficult to imagine any other rider standing at the top of the podium in Paris on Sunday.

Today is a rest day in Vaucluse. It’s hot work climbing a mountain and what better way to cool down than with Glace à l'abricot auxAmandes Caramélisées or apricot ice-cream prepared by Gabs. No butter of course and here’s hoping we don’t see Beurremetric counter still reading 286g on Sunday.

Stage 7 Montpellier / Albi – TGI Friday

With the arduous battle of the Camargue cross winds behind them and thoughts turning toward the challenging Pyrenees ahead, the riders set out from Montpellier for the 205 km race to Albi. But this wasn’t going to be an easy coast-into-le-weekend-flat-stage kind of a ride. Race organisers made it a little more interesting, throwing in some lumps and a couple of categorised climbs to get them out of the Friday comfort zone.
 

The Cannonballs weren’t taking any chances with getting the Sagan Wagon first to the finish line forming a lead-out train some 140kms earlier than what was really necessary. But the stakes were very high. SBS cycling computer Anthony Tan’s threat to parade around the streets of Albi in the Tankini still stood if Peter Sagan didn’t get the stage win.

A crash 10km into the race resulted in Sharmin Garp’s Christian Vande Velde abandoning Le Tour. Apart from this the day was incident free and mostly about getting to Albi at beer o’clock for some Friday arvo frothies.

 

 

Somewhere in the world it's beer o'clock time

 

In news that’d slipped under the radar until Paul and Phil’s long suffering apprentice Matthew Keenan brought it up was Oooomega Farmer Quick-Stop’s Sylvain Chavanel being fined 100 Swiss francs ‘for eating in a way that damages the image of cycling’. Let’s think about this for a moment. With all the doping scandals that have rocked the cycling world in recent times it would be reasonable to expect the UCI to be out there day after day kicking down doors and taking down the real criminals. But no, they choose to come down like a ton of bricks on things like incorrect cutlery usage such as starting from the inside progressing outwards on a four course dinner.

We’ve since learned dining etiquette wasn’t one of Chavanel’s stronger disciplines in finishing school. What he actually did to attract the fine remains a mystery, but short of shoving a banana in his ear hole I can’t think of any other reason.

Tour fans breathed a sigh of relief as the Cannonballs safely brought the Sagan Wagon home for the win. Orica-GreenWEDGE’s Daryl Impey gets to wear yellow for another day. I must say the Ps were remarkably restrained in acknowledging the significance of yellow on the shoulders of a South African cyclist and what that might mean for African cycling in general.

The Ps were fairly quiet and restrained for the whole race come to think of it. This may have been helped by that plate of Croquants deCordes almond biscuits Gabriel Gate dropped off at the commentary box. But Gabriel, you left out the butter. Who the feck makes biscuits without butter?