The riders gear up for another stage start in the August sunshine in France
Irish pro rider Siobhan Horgan brings us behind the scenes at the shoestring budget but hard fought women’s Tour de France, where she just falls short of a top 20 overall.
Many of you are probably unaware that there’s a women’s ‘Tour de France’ called Route de France Feminin which ran over nine days from August 4th to 12th.
Financial considerations restrict the race to just nine days. Basically if an organiser wants to run a race for 10 days or more he/she is required to include a rest day. Because women’s cycling is really run on a shoe string I guess the organiser can’t justify including an extra day with no racing – but with all the costs…. So nine days it is.
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We started in Dunkerque with a 5km prologue and covered a lot of the stages that the men’s Tour did, including the famous Les blanche des Belles Filles. Our road stages were normally about 120-130km, but each stage also had about 8km neutralised at the start.
Having spent a lot of time racing in Holland and Belgium over the years I normally dread these ‘neutralised’ parts – they are lethal. Everyone is always fighting to get to the front and there is at least one guaranteed crash. In fact I would go as far as saying that the neutralised is often more dangerous than the race. Having said all that, in this case the neutralised was run at a nice 20kph average – and so was a nice opportunity to chat to some riders and warm up before kilometre 0.
The accommodation varies on races like this. In some cases we were staying in schools where there can be up to six to a room, no TV, no internet and communal bathrooms and showers. These are a total nightmare. On the other hand though we also got to stay in some nice Ibis hotels – where we did have wi-fi and TV in the room.
This was great as we got to catch up on the Olympics. One night I was watching the Olympics on the French channel France 3 and there was an Irish boxer (Michael Conlon I think) fighting a French boxer. As it turned out the Irish guy won, but the French commentators were going mad saying it was so unfair and that the judges were biased. I was laughing to myself thinking that commentators are the same the world over. I’m sure at the same time on RTE Bernard Dunne and the boys were telling Bill how Michael deserved the win as he was the better fighter. However, had the result gone the other way I’m sure the roles/commentary would have been reversed.
Each stage started about 1 o’clock in the afternoon. But I thought the organiser made a mistake starting the stages so late. In each hotel/school we were permitted to have breakfast until 8.30am. However that goes against the old ‘3 hour rule’ that all of us racing cyclists abide by, ideally we would like to have eaten at 10 o’clock or alternatively eat at about 7.30am and again at 10am. Either way, 8.30am was the latest that we could eat and they organisers and hotels would not negotiate on that!
Breakfast consisted of baguettes, a choice of cereal (usually cornflakes or coco pops), natural yoghurt and coffee. But looking around at the teams every morning I could see that each team had their own cereals – like porridge, museli, Special K etc. In the evening we got the same thing every single night – a salad and bread to start, chicken and pasta for the main and a fruit salad and yoghurt for desert; nine days of this becomes very bland. So we normally got the team to buy us some extra food.
There was a Brazilian girl on the race called Flavia who is gluten intolerant; a total nightmare for her. All she could eat was the chicken and some veg. And often the hotels were very inflexible as regards giving extra. For example one evening she asked for two pieces of chicken as she was not taking pasta or bread – and there was no way they would give it. I suppose they have been given a certain quota per rider but I reckon it would all balance out. I normally don’t eat the chicken (especially in the schools) so on that occasion I gave her mine – and asked her to get some pasta which I took off her hands.
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I have to say though that in general the race was well organised on nice roads. Every day the racing was good and was quite safe. However there was a bit of an argument during the stage to Les blanche des Belles Filles.
It was one long stage; 125 km and it was about 30 deg. The race had been very active up to the feeding zone and as we entered the feeding everyone just took their foot off the gas a bit to make sure that they could get a feed. I went to the front of the peloton to get my bottle and as I did so I saw two from the Italian team Be Pink get their bottles and attack.
There is an unwritten rule in racing that you don’t attack in the feeding zone. But that didn’t seem to bother them. I reckon this was pre-planned as their soigneur was the first one in the feed zone – so the two ‘ladies’ got their bottles and off they went. By the time the peloton exited the feeding zone the girls had almost 1 min. I communicated (as did others who saw it) what happened and immediately the chase was on! There was no way the bunch would allow them to get away.
As their team car passed the bunch to try to get up to them for service (a team car is permitted up to a break once they have about 1 min) the whole bunch were shouting, giving the car the fingers etc.
In the end we brought them back quite easily – so there was no harm done. Another day, there was something on the road – just on a dangerous corner. As the bunch swung into the corner there was a clatter of carbon as about 30 girls came down. I was lucky enough to stay upright but I got out of the saddle after slowing to avoid the girls on the ground and there was no way my back wheel would grip the road.
I saw afterwards that a lot of the girls were tweeting that there was oil put on the road as a form of sabotage (like the tacks in the TdF). I don’t know if that was the case – but it was certainly very dangerous and two girls were forced to abandon the race afterwards.
As for the race itself…. Well I have only done two stage races this year so I was quite apprehensive going into it. Also I have really reduced my training hours this season (I have a new coach) so I didn’t know if this would affect my form as the race went on. Normally I get better as the days pass. But this time I wasn’t sure.
As a team we were quite pleased with the performance. We managed to be active in breakaways, got a 3rd and a 4th in bunch gallops and a 2nd in the young rider classification Personally, I was quite pleased with my performance up until day nine.
On Les blanche des Belles Filles I climbed to 19th on the stage and 18th overall and the following day I was very active and in some early breaks. However, it all fell apart for me on the last day. The stage started with a 25km climb and I made the mistake of trying to go with the early break.
I knew after about 2km that I was in trouble. A few groups came across to us, and as the pace increased I just had to let go. It was disappointing but there was nothing I could do. I saw two of my teammates coming up to me in a group so I waited for them and we rode together. There were so many DNF’s on the last day – the stage was so, so hard! In the end I finished 31st overall but I suppose I can take some consolation in the fact that only 37 finished the race – so I guess I was pleased to have done that! If only the race was 8 days long I would have been top 20 on GC.
Until next time
Siobhan
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