Stage 17 Berne / Finhaut-Emosson - A Sweet Win for Zakarin

Stage 17 and the Tour resumed from the final rest day for 184.5 km ride to the mountains from Berne to Finhaut-Emosson in Switzerland.

With another hot day forecast, Gabs prepared a cool and refreshing cucumber and smoked trout terrine with some trout caught by Phil that morning. To smoke the fish Phil improvised by converting the caravan of commentary into a smoker by placing the time trial hot seat in there with some cuckoo clock wood shavings.

No butter in the recipe and with only a handful of stages remaining Gabs’ vow to make this Tour ‘the year of the butter’ is looking very shaky indeed.

The rest day was largely a relaxed affair with the riders cooling off with a dip in the Aare River that runs through Berne.

With the Olympics just around the corner it was time for some riders to take stock and consider whether to push on to Paris. Mark Cavendish answered the call from the British selectors to come home and Rohan Dennis called it quits.

When we joined the caravan of commentary the race was well and truly on. Warren Barguil was spotted sporting a torn-look jersey. Was he making a fashion statement? No, turned out he was involved in a crash with Borut Bozic, and Gorka Izagirre and the road surface, which acted like a grater on breathable fabric and skin.

The scenery was incredible with many oohs and aahs from the couch peloton. Switzerland, you hot mess of a country you!

If you thought the mountains were spectacular, the waterfalls (or cascades) were equally impressive – just don’t go chasing them, save the chasing for the breakaway. Oh yeah, whatever you do don’t go standing under La Cascade de Pissevache...

With a big cat. 1 and hors categorie climbs ahead, Robbie reflected on how difficult a mountain stage was in the final week of the Tour. To Robbie it was like, “you look down at your legs and all you’ve got is two barbecued sausages”. Now I’m not sure if he was referring to severe sunburn, legs burning red hot with lactic acid or a hunger induced meat-o-vision hallucination like in the cartoons.

Cooked

The Ps made their catch at 36 km to go and came across some very impressive precision crop circles at Valais. Paul thought a farmer must have used a GPS guided tractor. The Swiss are known for precision but the execution of the lines and circles looked TOO precise for GPS.

Phil talked about his time when he encountered the famous canine breed the Saint Bernard. He had difficulty controlling them, they kept running away and rescuing people buried in snow and wouldn’t sit still long enough for Phil to pour a brandy from the barrel under its chin.

The riders reached cat. 1 Col de la Forclaz. Tony Gallopin went on the attack in the desperate hope he could try and get a French stage win. Alexey Lutsenko went solo but Rafal Majka made it first to the summit hoovering up more KOM points. Jarlinson Pantano was riding with the pride of Colombia on his shoulders for their national day and went over the top with Majka.

Back in the GC group on the Forclaz, Tejay van Garderen was dropped with all hope of a high finish in Paris gone. Post race he said he had no excuses. Phil and Paul thought he was suffering what Paul calls a ‘strange reaction’ to the rest day. Whatever it was in the end it was I beg your pardon, I never promised you a van Garderen.

Vincenzo Nibali nursed his protégé Fabio Aru up the climbs and I can’t seem to shake this disturbing image of a grown man attached to one of Nibali’s nipples.

Diego Rosa played a role as a booster rocket for Aru but was ejected when the job was done. Meanwhile Katusha rider Ilnur Zakarin was rocketing up the final climb to Finhault-Emosson.

Riding for Colombian on its own wasn’t going to do it for Pantano. Russian Zakarin has his bags packed for Rio but still doesn’t know if he’s going.

Zakarin crossed the line to win his first stage at the Tour and even I was exhausted just watching that uphill drag to the line in the final couple of hundred metres.

Back in the GC group with van Garderen gone it was up to Richie Porte to take the lead for BMC. Froome latched on to his wheel and Porte was working for Froome. Again.

All eyes were on Nairo Quintana with time running out for a Paris podium finish. CANtana do it? Adam Yates, Romain Bardet, Aru and Louis Meintjes had other ideas and left Quintana in their wake. Adam Yates must have been inspired by the ‘Yates You Can’ slogans that have been painted on the roads throughout the Tour. Sadly, for Quintana this Tour is shaping up to be CAN’Tana.

Froome increased his lead over Bauke Mollema to 02’ 27”. It’s going to be tough for anyone to try and pare back that lead.

When you’re out of gas in the final week of the Tour it’s a loooong walk to the next petrol station in the mountains.

Stage 17 Digne-les-Bains / Pra Loup – This is not a Strava ride

Stage 17 and the Tour hit the Alps proper after the rest day on a carbon copy of stage 5 in the Tour warm up Criterium du Dauphine.

Over to the kitchen and Gabs cooked up a delicious chicken and capsicum casserole with olives. The riders looked at the forecast for yet another hot day and again there were questions about the wisdom of being served up a winter dish. Gabs insisted they were going to need a hearty feed for the remaining days in the Alps.

No butter in the recipe and despite the flying start in the first week of the Tour, the buerremetric counter hasn’t budged from 200g for days now.

Out on the road Bertie was having a fairly good day doing some damage in the peloton. Not such a great day for Tejay van Garderen who had started the day in third and had been battling a splitting headache until finally he abandoned, looking shattered, at 70 km to go. It was a sad end to a highly successful Tour.

The temperature climbed to 30 degrees and Phil forecast that it would rain ‘torrentiary’ at around 4.15 in the afternoon. In the absence of any cows, let alone seated cows, there was no real reference point to confirm this so Phil was forced to consult an unreliable forecast provided by Météo-France.

Troll DJ was happily laying down the tunes and played Tour standard ‘Bicycle Race’ by Queen. OK the title is a bit obvious (bicycle race, duh) but listen closely and the references in the song lyrics are pure genius:

You say black I say white – MTN-Qhubeka jersey
You say bark I say bite –  Froome Dog
You say shark I say hey man – Nibs ‘The Shark of Messina’
Jaws was never my scene – after Sunday I don’t think it’s Mick Fanning’s either.

John Degenkolb was on the move riding like he’s got some serious shampoo sales targets to hit before the end of the Tour. The peloton skirted the old border of the Savoie region whose culinary delights are known as Savoie fare…

‘Simon Gesture’ - Geschke to the rest of us - was leading the race at around 27 km to go in the rarefied air of the Alps on the climb of the Col d’Allos. Paul was a little concerned with dark clouds and how it would affect the descent.

The Jensie reported that he expected ‘open fire works’ between Alberto Contador and Nairo Quintana on the climb which is a relief because the concealed ones really burn when they go off.

Pinot in action at Bathurst

Paul mentioned Thibaut Pinot’s previous psychological problems with mountain descents and noted he had special training on a racetrack. The only mountain racetrack I can think of is Mt Panorama at Bathurst NSW.

Paul is rather enamoured with the all this GPS tracking bizzo on the bikes which would come in handy if someone tried to pinch it. He’s thinking of getting one of those Strava thingies for himself. But this is the Tour, this is not a Strava ride Paul.

The downhill run from Col d’Allos loomed and it’s pretty scary. One would hope the riders had a fresh pair of knicks in their suitcase of courage because they were going to need it.

Pinot made his way over the summit and a little chute on a left-hander would give anyone the yips but he had the composure to get straight back on and did a pretty good job off the ride down. Looks like that Bathurst training is really paying off.

The heads of state started to make their moves and as Paul would say they were ‘going for the juggler’.

The sky was looking angry, in the air and on the ground as Chris Froome wouldn’t let anyone take a second off him. He looked composed as you don’t want to lose it all in the Alps and the gels don’t stay down well on the dizzy descent of the Col d’Allos.

Simon Gesture kept his lead as he ascended the final climb to Pra Loup and nearly took out a team car in the process.

Back up the road Alberto Contador crashed and Peter Sagan was right there to help. Bertie sustained some damage to his knicks but the real damage had been done to his time losing more than two minutes by the end of the day.

Simon Geschke soloed to the line for his first Tour stage finish and there was no hiding the emotion of winning a big mountain stage.

Quintana and Froome came in across the line and there was talk from German commentary a rider went over the side of the mountain. Fortunately there was no substance to the rumour and the only thing that looked like it went over the side of a mountain was Bertie’s chance of a place on the podium in Paris.

Stage 9 Vannes / Plumelec – The Fifth Man

Stage 9 and it was time for the time trial trial (TTT) on an undulating 28 km course before the Tour takes a well earned rest day. Two things made this TTT unique – it happened relatively late in the Tour and the uphill finish on the 1.7km Cote de Cadoudal in Plumelec.

Since this was the last stage before the rest day Gabs prepared a special dinner of pan-fried scallops with cauliflower. Another 10g of butter in this recipe, the buerremetric counter now sits on 130g.

Looks like from the small amounts of butter added day by day, Gabs has taken a leaf from the Skybot’s book and implemented a marginal gains strategy.

Out on the course the teams assembled at the start which was more of a start speed hump than a start house.

A much depleted Orica-GreenEDGE was the first to go. If they’d had the full complement of riders they would have been favourites to win the stage but with three out due to injury and a badly battered Bling on the team the aim was to finish with their chins up – or down I should say because you want to be sitting as low as possible to get the maximum aerodynamic advantage on a TT bike.

Paul noted the similarity in times of OGEs Yates twins at this Tour. Well Paul, since natural cloning hasn't been banned by the UCI it's no real surprise there's only a small time gap between Simon and Adam.

Asstana started out strong with some textbook paceline 101 but by the time the team reached the ‘tunnel of noise’ their performance had turned into one big scrappy mess with Nibs dangling off the back. Still they managed to clock a pretty good time and even got to sit on the barbecue hot seat.

The tunnel of noise, which is the new corridor of noise in Phil and Paul speak, seemed to cause problems for the riders who had trouble yelling out instructions to team mates over the fans.

Back in the caravan of noise Paul was stuck on repeat; “the finish time is taken on the fifth man.” Check. “Brittany is the epicentre of French cycling.” Check. I swear all this ‘fifth man’ talk would make great material for the Twelfth Man, although their gig is cricket.

Tejay after his ride

The noise from the fans caused some real bother for the Moviestars who in an attempt to use hand signals looked to be drowning not waving. Despite this they managed to knock off Asstana by 31 seconds and finished third. It came down to one man, Alejandro Valverde, who according to Paul, “doesn’t have a V8 engine or even a V12 engine, he’s a Ferrari.”

Clearly Paul was taken by Valverde and noted, "If you're the strongest man it's fantastic, you're having a bit of a floater." Er, thanks Paul.

An under-strength Katusha finished back in nineteenth place and did their best to stay away from the white lines. Tinko Soxo Saxo put in a workman like effort to finish in fourth.

Then it was down to the last teams, the Skybots v BMC. Sky’s riding high with Chris Froome in yellow with a solid squad around him. BMC aimed not just to win the stage but to try and snatch the golden fleece for Tejay van Garderen as well.

Reigning world TTT champions BMC rode hard to post the best time of the day. As the riders came in across the line Phil noticed van Garderen had worked really hard and his “mouth was opening and closing like a gold fish.”

Then it was down to the last team of the day, the Skybots. They looked dangerous at the time checks but fell just one second short to BMC. Froome managed to hold a 12 second lead over van Garderen.

There was a bit of a hold up with Froome’s podium preso with talk of officials going through bikes like shit through a goose checking for hidden motors again. Spare me.

Post race Tomo and Macka caught up with Tasmanian Richie Porte who spilled the beans on the worst kept secret in cycling history – that Porte would be leaving the Skybots. Seems he doesn’t want to be Froomey’s roomey no more. Where to next, BMC, the OGEs? Watch this space.

Looking back over the week this certainly was no easy start to the Tour. Some riders may be thinking that after the mayhem of the first week the mountains will be a relief.