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Moncoutie’s Magic Moment

Inspiration at the Tour de France comes in many forms. For French riders there’s extra motivation on the 14th of July and for the second successive year a local has won the Bastille Day stage. Today the hero was David Moncoutie. The 30-year-old gave the host nation its first victory in the 2005 race. He began his attack at the 70 kilometer mark of the stage from Briancon to Digne-les-Bains, but it was in the final 37 kilometers that his determination was really put on display.
Moncoutie was part of a 13-man escape group that surged ahead of the peloton on the first category-two climb on the first truly hot stage this year. But it was on the Col du Corobin that the Cofidis rider shifted into high gear and instigated his superb winning move. Over the penultimate summit Moncoutie was 30 seconds ahead of the other fugitives. The Spanish champion Juan Manuel Garate joined forces with compatriots Angel Vicioso and Jose Luis Arrieta, Italian Franco Pellizotti, Belgian Axel Merckx and two more French hopes, Sandy Casar and Patrice Halgand. This is when their futile pursuit began.
Each seemed capable of claiming the win. None of the escapees were a threat the yellow jersey and the Discovery Channel squad opted to allow the opportunists a chance to battle it out for stage honors. The chase group may have been let off the leash by Lance Armstrong’s crew on the day the squad lost the services of Manuel Beltran (who crashed on the Col Saint-Jean and was one of the four riders to abandon the Tour today), but they could not make a dent on the lead established rapidly by Moncoutie.
Essentially, this was a day with two prizes: the stage win and the green jersey. The leader of the points classification since stage two, Tom Boonen, was forced to forfeit his place in the race. He crashed early yesterday and pushed his body over the Madeleine, Telegraphe and Galibier climbs but the swelling on his knee never subsided. His absence prompted both Thor Hushovd and Stuart O’Grady to chase down the 11 riders who attacked on the Saint-Jean climb.
The Norwegian and Australian were second and third in points classification after 11 days of racing. One of them would wear the green jersey at the end of day 12. But neither would have the legs to follow Moncoutie on the terrain on which he excels so well. Their presence in the lead group did, however, animate the peloton at the half way mark. Four Davitamon-Lotto riders came to the front of the bunch and began to chase the escapists. Their intention was to set up a sprint for last year’s points champion Robbie McEwen. This was not a day for the sprinters. And with Merckx up the road, there was little point in persisting with pursuit.
Thirty-six years ago, in his debut Tour, Eddy Merckx won the third stage of his career on a day the race followed a similar course as today. Axel looked a likely candidate to repeat his father’s efforts. The man who became a father for the second time only two days before this year’s Tour never gave up hope of winning the stage.
After Moncoutie’s attack Merckx did huge turns of pace at the front of the chase group. Garate, Vicioso, Arrieta, Pellizotti, Casar and Halgand swapped off with the hopes of reeling in Moncoutie, but Axel was even more motivated. In the end the pursuing riders simply didn’t have the power to get close to the stage winner.
The chasers’ deficit to Moncoutie hovered around 30 seconds from the moment the Frenchman bolted ahead. Together the seven should have come closer to the chance of contesting the stage than what they did.
Moncoutie reached the final kilometer with enough of an advantage to savor his second stage victory in the Tour. Last year he won the 11th stage a day after Richard Virenque’s coup on Bastille Day, in 2005 Moncoutie bolstered his reputation in France with an inspired victory on a national holiday.

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