2014 Tour de France: Rain and Cobblestones Wreak Havoc on Stage 5
By Chris Carmichael
Everyone knew Stage 5 of the 2014 Tour de France had the potential to be dangerous, but when the riders awoke this morning to a steady rain their worst nightmares were confirmed. It’s one thing to race over cobblestones when they are dry, it’s still extremely difficult, but today was brutal. The wet roads of Northern France were littered with wounded riders and broken bikes today, as the peloton raced over seven sections of cobblestones. Yet most of the crashes seemed to happen before or between the sections of cobblestones, rather than on the stones themselves. The peloton was nervous, the speeds were very high, and the pack wasn’t the same as you would have seen in a cobbled classic like Paris-Roubaix. The result was a splintered peloton, with significant time gaps between overall favorites for the yellow jersey, and the unfortunate abandon of defending champion Chris Froome.
Vincenzo Nibali rode a very impressive stage today, defending his yellow jersey and putting rivals like Alberto Contador, Andrew Talansky, and Alejandro Valverde two minutes or more behind him in the general classification. Perhaps winning the 2013 Giro d’Italia, where it rained almost every day, was excellent preparation for today’s stage! He and his Astana team stayed at the front and let the conditions and terrain take their toll. They didn’t really have to attack; the cobbles, weather, and crashes created gaps and it was difficult for anyone to mount an effective chase.
Do stages like this one belong in a Grand Tour? Was this stage just a spectacle for the fans that disregarded the safety of the riders? Those are difficult questions. Without the rain today’s stage would have been hard and had a few crashes, but it was the rain that made the big difference – and you can’t predict that months in advance. It’s also important to remember that the riders make the race, not the course. We’ve seen examples in the past of the Tour de France and Tour of Italy when the peloton deciding to neutralize a stage they felt was too dangerous. Unfortunately, there’s no formal procedure for that; it requires leadership from within the peloton and consensus among the riders and teams. With so much at stake today, and so many contradictory agendas among teams and individual riders, that consensus would have been difficult – if not impossible – to reach.
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One issue race organizers may want to consider, though, is the composition of the Grand Tour peloton compared to the Classics peloton. When you line up for Paris-Roubaix, it’s a one-day race and you know exactly what you’re in for. If you don’t want to take the risk or it’s not a race that suits you, then you don’t toe the line. But in a Grand Tour there’s no option to sit out a stage, and you have a peloton that includes slightly-built climbers, Classics specialists who have won races like Paris-Roubaix, and riders who have little to no experience with cobblestones. There are advantages for some but heightened risk for all. Saying “they ride cobbles in April, so they can ride them in July” is misleading, because it’s not the same peloton and it’s not just one day of racing.
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I’ve been getting a lot of questions about riding over cobblestones, and even though most cyclists will never have the chance to race over the pave of Northern France, the techniques riders use to fly over the cobbles are the same as you can use to go faster over rough terrain wherever you are:
- Roll a big gear: Momentum is key over rough terrain, and rolling a big gear evens out your power output to keep you plowing forward. The lower cadence also means slower leg turnover, which helps to keep you from bouncing around in the saddle as badly. Mountain bikers have long used this technique to power through rock gardens, and cyclocross riders often attack sandpits and loose terrain in a big gear for the same reason.
- Sit back in the saddle: Getting back in the saddle not only helps with turning over a big gear over rough terrain, but it also shifts your weight back so your front tire can skip over the stones more easily. Weight over the rear wheel also helps to keep it in contact with the surface so you don’t waste your energy spinning the back tire against thin air. You have to be careful, however, to keep enough weight over the front end that you don’t bounce into the weeds, and you have to weight the front end again to get through the corners.
- Stay loose: The tighter you grip the bars, the worse you’re going to bounce around. It may seem counterintuitive, but the smoothest and safest way through cobblestones, sand, gravel, or mud is to keep a loose grip on the bars and ride with bent elbows and relaxed shoulders. The bars are going to move a lot, but rather than trying to keep them still, you just want to keep them from moving too far.
- Keep your eyes far forward: Look at where you want to go and keep your head up. When you drop your head and focus on the small obstacles in front of your wheel, you start making innumerable small corrections and lose sight of the best path out of the whole mess.
The cruel truth about riding cobblestones is that the faster you go, the easier it gets. It’s not that it’s easy to generate the power to go faster, but that the higher speed helps to smooth out the ride. There is no benefit to taking it slow – you’re still have a good chance of getting a flat tire, you get bounced around more, and you’re on the cobblestones for a longer period of time. Rough terrain is not a place to conserve energy; it’s the place where brute power, literally, saves your butt.
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Comments 10
My sister says cobblestones are most ly flat.I said not necessarily. Who’s right.
Author
The cobblestone roads used in the Tour in 2014 and 2015, and in Paris-Roubaix and other races aren’t smooth. The stones themselves are generally square/cube-ish, but they are not laid out smoothly like a patio or driveway. These are Napoleonic-era roads with irregular stones that have risen/sunk/rotated/broken over time. On top of that, the roads are narrow, barely the wide enough for a single car, and heavily crowned (the middle is a lot higher than the sides). They are also farm tracks most of the time, so depending on the weather they are slick with dust or slippery with mud.
Videos (the links are red on red background, but they are there. We’re fixing that problem).
Cool, slow mo video of riding on cobbles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1QXKjc1nLY
GCN video in real time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVXWhEmeuxM
I am a road bike rider and I would have to disagree with some of the previous comments. I love everything about the Tour and have watched it for years. However, I see no need to put riders at increase risk for crashes and injuries. I think they should take the cobblestones out of the race as much as possible. The cobblestones meant that the riders used a different type of tire and different tire pressure, which could have been why they crashed on the smooth pavement. Rain cannot be predicted, however, the race should be made as safe as possible. These guys deserve better.
Living the last 4 years in the land of cobbles, I first hand know you are ABSOLUTELY correct! I am by no means a Kassien fietser but the ones who are motor fast over those mofos, relaxed grip and big ring.. thanks for a great post!
I believe that a stage with cobble stones should become part of the Tour every year. The cobblestones require handling skills not represented in the other disciplines, i.e., time trialing, sprinting and climbing.
I was surprised today to hear so many complaints from the riders. Most of the crashes were not even on the cobblestones. The early days of the Tour was rough, unpaved roads.
The Tour is meant to be a challenge not a picnic…
France has cobblestones, Texas has chipseal. Thanks for the tips! I will attempt to apply them all while my body is vibrating over the miles. Appreciate the daily pointers to coincide with TdF.
Today’s stage was epic on the cobblestones. It was the perfect storm for race anarchy. Having followed the TDF for many years I hate to see crashes happen but know they are part of the sport and are frequent the first week of the TDF. If you took the cobblestones out there still would have been crashes due to the rain. Frankly the worst crashes I have seen have been on clear days. Is it spectacle? Absolutely but that is what the TDF is about. If it wasn’t impossibly hard, sometimes dangerous and a spectacle it would be just another race.
Good advice. I mostly ride my road bike but also MTB at least once a week. I know that MTBing improves my bike handling skills, plus it is just great fun! I also take my road bike into dirt on occasion(I am lucky to have a 4 mile, 5-6% grade with washboard and soft stuff close my house, an alternative route to the mountains nearby, Viejas Grade, close Anderson TT a very popular MTB trail(s)) just to keep from becoming that roadie that feels they have to pick up and carry their bike over anything that even smells like dirt! ha ha!!
The tour should have the cobblestone stage every year. It was a good change in pace from the unenjoyable 100 miles stages that all end up in a sprint to the tape. Why the tour has these boring stages is a mystery to me. Every stage should demand something different from the riders. Why not a 230 mile stage for instance? They certainly can be more creative in designing stages than they are now.
Only when they get to the mountain and demand some climbing ability does the tour become exciting.
I agree. The Tour( and I’ve been watching for over a decade) is 100 miles of boring cycling and tv bah bah, and if we’re lucky an exciting 10 miles to the finish. I think these cyclist get a little spoiled with their $10,000 bikes and massages. Today they worked, and I enjoyed.