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 17 Saint-Gaudens / Saint-Lary Pla d'Adet – Nudge Nudge. Wink Wink. Say No More

Day two in the Pyrenees and it proved to be another toughie on the 124.5km route from Saint-Gaudens to Saint-Lary Pla d’Adet on three category 1 climbs with a ’horse categorie’ finish.

After 16 days of riding the body craves a bit of comfort food and Gabriel Gate had just the thing with a hearty Onion Soup with Pyrenees Cheese. 120g of cheese and 30g of butter completes the dairy double. The Beurremetric Counter is on the moove again to 870g.

Two and a half weeks on the road and you might expect tempers to flair and that’s exactly what happened with Orica-GreenWEDGE’s Luke Durbridge. He came off his bike after a collision with a Moviestar soigneur. Durbo got up and gave the soigneur a shove who bumped into a fellow standing behind him who turned and took a swing which connected with the jaw of another fellow standing at the bar. The piano stopped and at that moment a young chap in the corner flipped a table sending cards and drinks flying. Then it was on for young and old. Up the stairs a dude was punched and fell through a flimsy banister crashing through the table below. The bartender ducked as a chair hurtled into the mirror behind him.

After the floor of the bar was swept of broken glasses and whiskey bottles, Durbo got back on his bike and took off up the road. Every second off the bike is critical in the Tour and to get back into the race often means having to ‘ride like a man possessed’. Whenever I hear Paul utter those words I always wonder if he's watching a rider whose head is swivelling wildly spraying green vomit everywhere.

The peloton went on a little excursion to Spain before returning to France. A conga line of camping cars lined the route for as far as the eye could see. Camping cars come in an array of colours, white or off white depending on whether they've been washed or not. They’re a bit fancy too equipped with tellies to watch the Tour on. Some even have toilets.

Soaring high above all this were the ubiquitous Pyrenean vultures who, according to Phil,  have ‘the best seat in the house' to watch the race. When they're not picking over abandoned Sky team strategies they’re always looking for stragglers up the back of the peloton so it’s not a great idea to stop for too long.

  

But it was to be polka dot jersey wearer Rafal Majka’s (Sinkoff-Taxo) day. Thinking he was in a Monty Python sketch he launched a series of nudging attacks on the final climb. His boldest move came when his hand 'accidentally' grabbed hold of sticky aerial on the back of a TV moto as if to say, “Follow me. Follow me. I like that. That’s good. A nod’s as good as wink to a blind bat, eh?” He managed to free his hand and continued on turning to the moto camera with a cheeky wink.

With victory in sight he turned to the camera for one more wink and "nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more", Majka won the stage. Another feather in the cap of the Polish rider.

Stage 14 Grenoble / Risoul - What Goes Up Must Come Down

The Tour is rounding the bend into the final week of racing and stage 14 capped of a two day sojourn in the Alps. The 177km route from Grenoble to Risoul has two category 1 climbs and the ‘hors categorie’ Col d’Izzard. Mind you, the giant Col d’Izzard is no laughing matter on a 19km climb on an average gradient of 6% soaring to 2360m.

Gabriel Gate cooked up some Apple Fritters as a treat for the peloton as it hit the road. A nice change from the usual boring old bananas. As he waved goodbye to the riders who set off on their way, Gabs set off for Risoul to get the evening’s dinner ready. He thought a barbeque would be just the thing and chuckled at the thought of pulling a culinary word play prank by making rissoles in Risoul. This was going to be soooo goood! Unfortunately, the joke sailed over the heads of most of the riders who insisted on calling them ‘sliders’ and ‘mini-burgers’. Gabs really lost it when he was asked, “and just WHERE is the chipotle sauce?” Bloody hipsters.

What goes in must come out and we saw FDJ’s Arnaud Demare pull over for an emergency toilet break in a spectators camping car. Whether the camping car actually had a toilet is not clear. What is clear is that all reports pointed to Demare overdoing it on the zucchini cheese flan and paid the price the next day.

After yesterday’s monster climb to the finish at Chamrousse in hot conditions, there were bound to be some very tired and sore legs. But as with what goes in must come out there’s what goes up must come down and there was some awesome descending action on the way to Risoul.

Come on Tom sing it!

Descending these mountains takes a great deal of skill and sheer butt-clenching determination. Riders can hit speeds of about 100km/h and on some of these roads the drop can be many hundreds of metres.

Phil and Paul talked about how FDJ’s Thibaut Pinot sought cycletherapy to help him overcome his fear of descending. This involved techniques such as being put at the wheel of a racing car, being fired out of a canon and standard trust building exercises like falling off a log backwards hoping your team mates will catch you. Whatever it was the cycletherapy worked. Pinot put in a blistering performance to come in fourth for the stage and to hold on to fourth in the overall standings.

Blistering performance could not describe the commentary of the Ps. SherLiggettisms were firing thick and fast about sand bags and yo-yoing but it all got a bit weird when talk turned to 'the big boys taking on Goliath', melting clocks and trees not growing on alpine slopes when clearly they were. Phil admitted to being delirious in the high mountains but this state of ‘delirium’ is regularly observed at sea level too.

Paul put it down to the ‘rarefied air’, which is going to get a lot worse in the commentary van when they get a good feed of cassoulet into them when the Tour hits Carcassonne.

But the real tell tale sign the Ps were suffering delirium came in the belief  Geriant Thomas was going to pull off a Sky victory. Poor Sky. Plan A failed with Chris Froome crashing out. Plan B with Richie Porte, well that went well. Plan C was try and get a stage win. After all else there’s always Plan D to fall back on and that’s to go home winless.

At the end of the 12.6km 6.9% average gradient climb to the finish Polish Sinkoff-Taxo rider Rafal Majka crossed the line - unzipped - to his first stage victory at his first Tour.