Inside the Tour de France with John Wilcockson: When the peloton shows solidarity

Not often in the history of the Tour de France have the riders crossed the finish line like they did in Spa on Monday afternoon: moving as one and not contesting the sprint for second place behind the solo stage winner. In fact, that very scenario has happened only once previously, in 1967, the day after Tom Simpson died on Mont Ventoux and the peloton allowed his British teammate Barry Hoban to go ahead to finish the stage minutes ahead of a respectful peloton.

Just as sad an occasion came in 1995 the day after Fabio Casartelli died in a horrible crash descending a Pyrenean mountain road: all of his remaining Motorola teammates were allowed to ride the final kilometers a short distance ahead of the main pack to cross the line in Pau in line abreast. Lance Armstrong, riding his third Tour that year, was one of those Motorola team riders and says that on that day he gained enormous respect for the peloton — which not only completed a full mountain stage at a moderate pace in heat-wave weather but also donated the entire day’s prize money to Casartelli’s widow.

Once, in 1978, the complete peloton neutralized the whole stage and even walked across the finish line together at Valence d’Agen, wheeling their bikes. This was a protest, led by a young Bernard Hinault, against the organizers putting on two stages in one day and not giving riders enough time to recover because of an early start after a late night due to a long transfer after the previous day’s mountain stage. Two stages in a day was never repeated after that.

The only other time that a peloton did not contest a stage was in 1998, the year that French team Festina was excluded from the Tour for organized doping and the Tour was disrupted by various police busts and rider protests. The conflict between the riders and the authorities came to a head on the stage from Albertville to Aix-les-Bains in the French Alps.

The prior night, police had raided the hotel where Dutch team TVM was staying, hauling off the riders, some of them still in the shower, and took them to a police station for questioning. They didn’t get dinner till near midnight. When, during the early kilometers of the stage to Aix-les-Bains, the other riders found out what happened they stopped at the foot of the day’s first climb and only continued after race director Jean-Marie Leblanc agreed to the demands of peloton spokesman Bjarne Riis to investigate the TVM incident.

At the end of that prolonged day, which included a little racing, a long sit-down and a laborious completion of the stage, the peloton reached the finish just as the sun was setting. And some of the Spanish teams, angered by the harsh police treatment of riders, didn’t even finish and simply pulled out of the race in protest.

But this Monday’s go-slow in the stage 2 finale was neither a protest against the organizers nor a mark of respect for a fallen colleague. It was a genuine show of solidarity between the teams — first, to not take advantage of riders crashing on the oil-slick descent from the Col de Stockeu and, second, to not sprint for second place because points leader Alessandro Petacchi and green jersey contender Tyler Farrar were badly injured and riding many minutes behind the pack.

The Quick Step team proclaimed its dominant day of winning the stage with Sylvain Chavanel, and taking over all three main jerseys: yellow and green for Chavanel and the polka-dot for teammate Jérôme Pineau. It was an accomplishment for the Belgium-based team (with its two French riders!), and Pineau did clinch the Best Climber’s jersey before the Stockeu crashes, but without the carnage Chavanel would certainly not have won.

Time splits indicate that his lead over the main peloton had dropped from 1:19 to 50 seconds when Fabian Cancellara got the word from his Saxo Bank team boss Bjarne Riis that the two Schleck brothers had both fallen and were three minutes behind. Over the remaining 31km, when normally those 50 seconds would have been erased in 10km, Chavanel steadily added time, to end up with a 3:58 gain to take yellow and a 25-point advantage (no other points were awarded because of the neutralization) to take green.

Not since 2003, when mass pile-ups on run-ins to sprints caused more than 100 riders to crash in week one, has the Tour seen such an accumulation of crashes. Unfortunately, many more men will fall on Tuesday in the stage that the riders have really been fearing: the journey over seven sectors of nasty cobblestones on the 213km stage 3 to Arenberg. Unlike Monday’s unforeseen crashes — caused by a combination of heavy rain and a television motorcycle spilling oil or gas in trying to avoid the first man to fall on the Stockeu descent — everyone knows about Tuesday’s challenges. And no one will be waiting around for fallen rivals.

FILED UNDER: Tour de France TAGS: Opinion / stage2 / stage3

John Wilcockson

Former VeloNews editor at large John Wilcockson has reported on the Tour de France for more than forty years. He is also the author of a dozen books, including 23 Days in July, one of ESPN’s “Top 10 Sports Books of the Year.”

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