It’s an ill wind that blows through the opening week of this year’s Tour. A risky and crash-ridden opening stage in Holland, late (and then later still) stage finishes, and huge, occasionally unruly crowds have put the Tour field, and most of those in the race caravan, in something of a grouchy mood. Yesterday’s stage was supposedly slowed by strong head winds, but three hours of speeds only just exceeding 30 kilometers per hour stretched even that theory. With the first three road stages finishing as much as an hour behind schedule, already over-taxed nerves have been stressed even more.
The Tour doesn’t end simply when the last rider crosses the line. In fact, for many on the race that’s when the working day really begins. Team personnel such as masseurs, managers and mechanics all get busy planning for the next day and tending to their team’s needs. "It’s the first time that I haven’t been able to massage all the guys before dinner," says GAN soigneur Jean Louis Gauthier. "We’ve been finishing at midnight and then starting again at dawn."
"Last year everybody complained that they were arriving too early, and this year they say they’re too late. Only journalists would complain like that," contends Jean Marie Leblanc, himself a former journalist for French paper L’Equipe and now the race director of the Tour. "The wind is to blame anyway. Anybody who’s ridden a bike knows that a headwind as strong as the one that’s been blowing since Holland slows you right down."
But some other riders are less than pleased with the race organization. "We finish so late that there’s no time to do anything in the evenings," said Pascal Richard. "No time to look at the next day’s route, to wash my things, call my wife — even without all that done, I still don’t get to bed before 11 o’clock."
And there’s the rub. Italy’s great Tour champion of the 1950’s, Fausto Coppi, once said that the Tour is "won in bed." By that, the Italian, twice winner of this great race, was talking of the crucial need for recuperation after each day’s exertions.
At the moment, the Tour’s 191 riders simply aren’t getting enough rest. With so many hilly stages yet to come and the threat of hot weather in the Massif Central, their powers of recuperation can expect to be sorely tested - these hurried evenings of the Tour’s first week may yet play a part in the twists and turns of this year’s race.