Stickybottle on the road with Aqua Blue Sport on race day
The crowds at the Tour de Yorkshire were truly spectacular and each of the three stages saw tens of thousands of cycling fans come out and support the riders. Stickybottle managed to get a behind-the-scenes look at the race inside the Irish Pro-Continental team Aqua Blue Sport and here is an account of day two in the car where the team went all out to win the stage.
By Brian Canty
Adam Blythe is the darling of Yorkshire and wades through the crowds with ease to sign on.
He’s in no rush now and he bathes in the love his people shower him with.
“Beep, beep,” he calls out to an oblivious young lad who almost had his ears clipped by Blythe’s brilliant white bar tape.
Advertisement
The 27-year old is picking his way through the masses as he approaches the stage but he deliberately left the safety of the team bus early for he knew he’d be mobbed.
Journalists grab him for a word and he gives them hundreds. He high-fives friends, former teammates and just about anybody who calls him.
He’s in great form today and his teeth, skin and eyes all sparkle.
It’s a gun-metal grey sky overhead but his starched white kit lights up the picturesque hamlet of Tadcaster this morning.
“He’s a good lad,” an elderly man assures me, eyeing Blythe’s every movement.
He’s a Sheffield boy, born and raised and if he was attracted by the bright lights of Monaco for a few years while with Tinkoff and BMC that was only because he was in his early 20s with looks to boot and money to burn.
Blythe is the Aqua Blue Sport star rider and he went into the race this weekend with high ambitions of delivering a big result for the team.
“I love it here in Yorkshire, I wouldn’t be anywhere else right now,” he tells me in an interview later.
He and his partner Kelly are due their first baby in eight weeks and life is as good as can be for him.
Team Sky are here with crowd favourites Ian Stannard and Luke Rowe but the biggest roar is reserved for Blythe who bounces onto the stage like the rock star he is.
It’s a stage for a gritty, punchy sprinter like him today – and he can’t avoid the question from presenter/commentator Laura Winter.
“We’ll go for the win today for sure,” he says, tickling the enormous swell of people gathered below.
The finish in Harrogate is 122 kilometres away and already the crowds are three deep there.
Winter reckons the attendance will surpass those of the Tour in 2014 when Cav hit the deck in the final.
After a few words on-stage, the Aqua Blue Sport’s star turn unhooks his bike from the steel railing, spins back to the bus, gets his game-face on and his race radio dialled in.
On the other end of that today is Corkman Timmy Barry, a neo-pro in the DS game.
Tim tells me the team aren’t too fussed about sending a man up the road today, though Conor Dunne doesn’t understand that directive and he makes a few hard digs after the flag dropped.
Performance Director Leigh Bryan issues instructions to the team prior to the start of stage two. From left to right are riders Mark Christain, Larry Warbasse and Matt Brammeier.
Eventually, a group of four breaks free and are given a four-minute lead as the team of race leader Dylan Groenewegen (Lotto-JumboNL) shut the door at the front.
Dunne never managed to wriggle free this time but it’s no big deal as the onus will be on others to chase.
Blythe’s job, meanwhile, is to win, plain and simple. The team have not won in 2017 yet and he knows he might not get a better opportunity this year.
“I should have won Handzame, the guys did an incredible job for me that day,” he would later say in relation to the Handzame Classic when he was edged by U23 road race world champion Kristoffer Halvorsen (Team Joker).
It’s an uphill finish he knows very well and the whole team have been briefed on exactly what’s required.
They know to take turns ‘minding’ Blythe; get him bottles if he needs them, protect him from the wind that will blow all day, encourage him throughout.
In short, get him to the final kilometres as fresh as possible so he can do his thing.
In the team car, Timmy demands a weather update from staff at the finish. He double-checks with another person. “You never know who will come in useful,” he says with a smile when he receives vital intelligence.
Timmy’s job today is far from an easy one. He must drive the team car on narrow country lanes, staying mindful of the fact there are thousands of fans on either side of the road.
We were given a front seat in the team car on stage two and we learnt that if things look smooth and automatic on the road it's only because of what happens in the control pit of the team car.
Related News
There are dropped riders chasing back on from behind and there are riders puncturing all afternoon up ahead.
The roads are barely wide enough for two cars but if a rider requires assistance, Timmy must get up to service him as quickly as possible.
As the stage is short, the pace is unrelenting so when a rider drops ‘out’ of the peloton, every minute he is spent ‘out’ of it is energy wasted.
An example is 26-year old American Larry Warbasse dropping back for bottles around the midway point.
“I can take one more,” he tells Timmy, seven already stuffed down his jersey.
Timmy has one hand on the wheel, one foot on the accelerator, the other foot kissing the brake (so as not to rear-end the Team Roompot car) and his left hand is giving Warbasse a mildly sticky bottle.
Chris Hamilton (Team Sunweb) is on duty for his team and barks ‘this convoy is fucking crazy man’.
Warbasse, from Dearborn in Michigan, later tells a good one about getting bottles during a Vuelta stage.
“We were lined out at 60 fucking kilometres, three kilometres from this climb and the DS yelling ‘if you want bottles you come back NOW’. I looked back and the thing was a fucking kilometre long.”
One rider we got to know a lot about was American Larry Warbasse. The former BMC and IAM Cycling rider is one of the team's top stage racers and targeted a top GC position this weekend.
Warbasse pulled out of a screaming lineout, fetched eight bottles and to get back into the bunch required 650 watts for a full minute. We urge you to try that after two weeks of racing.
“That was my highest minute power that entire Vuelta. The guys after were like ‘Holy f*****g shit man that was insane.”
That is what getting bottles can be like. Today, thankfully, the pace is slightly more civil but it still stings Warbasse.
The kilometres tick down and the pace ramps up and as we get into 30 kilometres to go, Matt Brammeier is calling for another weather update. More phone calls. More information.
Brammeier has done this for 10 years now, chaperoning the world’s fastest men to the finish lines and even if he’s below-par today because of sickness, he still does an amazing job keeping Blythe’s nose out of the wind.
Racing into Harrogate the tension mounts inside the car and out.
“They’re on their own now,” says Timmy. “There’s nothing more I can do from this point.” A helicopter hovers overhead and the din of people cheering can be heard miles away.
We imagine Blythe like a caged animal in the bunch.
Blythe didn't once shirk his duties and obligations as national champion and was always on hand to sign autographs, pose for selfies and mingle with the crowd.
A deathly silence washes over the car. Zoran, the team’s Croatian mechanic shifts around in the back-seat and cranes his head forward for a better look.
Timmy bites the back of his knuckles and turns on the air conditioning.
Lotto-JumboNL is doing a ferocious job pulling on the front of the bunch, towing Groenewegen to the line as the road meanders its way into Harrogate.
Blythe appears for the first time all day. He has done a perfect job so far of staying stealthy, despite that outlandish white kit.
He’s weaving and moving around like a cocky middleweight in the first round. He ducks and dives into the top 10 and waits for the sprint to open.
The heavy Harrowgate roads bite into the peloton’s legs and the bunch starts to fragment. Blythe is hanging in there desperately but losing ground on the front.
And as subtle as a baseball bat to the ribcage, Nacer Bouhanni springs clear and immediately gets daylight on his would-be challengers.
He gallops clear on his own and the surge of acceleration is too much for Blythe whose head drops at the missed opportunity as two riders come around him with meters to go.
Blythe had no answer to Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis, Credits Solutions) on stage two with a 10th place the best he could do.
He goes all the way to the line but 10th place is not what the British national road race champion came for and he drops his head at not being able to do better for the thousands who came to see and support him.
But there are no excuses either and 15 minutes after the finish he is mingling amongst fans outside the team bus, signing autographs and posing for selfies. The anger clearly having subsided.
It wasn’t the perfect day from a racing persepctive by any means but Aqua Blue Sport have preached from day one that they are more than just a cycling team.
The first message on the team WhatsApp group appeared at 6.30am that day and the last one was close to midnight.
They have 19 people on the race today as well as a team bus, a team van, a team chaparone, two team cars, hundreds of kilometres to drive, thousands of fans to impress so as soon as the disappointment of the result is digested it’s ono the next set of problems.
The first of those is how on earth to get to the team hotel in York when Blythe has a queue half a mile long for pictures...
Topics
