L'Hexagonal - Prologue & Stage #1

"Don't poo in the shower please."


L'equipe nationale d'Australie


Warm up for the prologue

After much anticipation, the Hexagonal is underway. We arrived yesterday here in Vittel for the presentation des equipes, and we were surprised to discover that the organisers had decided to run and ad-hoc exhibition event as a curtain raiser to the grand depart, which was sheduled for the following day. The race was a team pursuit format run over 2 laps of a 600m course made up of logs, piles of gravel and sandpits. It not really my cup of tea but, our team of Dan McConnel, Adrian Jackson, Dellys Starr and myself made it to the semi finals where we came up against the Russian team. Everything was going well until AJ had some bad luck and dropped his chain on the last lap. Since the time was taken as the third rider passed the line so we lost the pursuit. However our time gave us the 3rd place and a Hexagonal podium...not bad!

The second surprise of the race was that the hotel that the race put us up in was 50km out of town, and was a "fomule 1" in a dodgy industrial estate. Our room smells like cigarettes, not really cool. There is a few good point though, like the thoughful sign on the shower that says: "les douches ne sont pas des WC, merci de votre comprehension". That basically translates to: "don't crap in the shower". I do not what to know what prompted them to realise they needed those signs!

The start of the race proper was today, a 7km individual time trial. With the clouds looming, it looked as if the starting order could have a big influence. Keepy, Nick Both and I where roughly half way through the field starting about 50min after the first rider, AJ was half an hour later and Dan was right near the end with Christoph Sauser (current world champ). As i was warming up i felt a few drops of rain, but it held of for my race. I felt pretty good, and clocked a time of 14m54s. As i was warming down i bumped into Dan Mac (our team's GC hope) about to start, i said to him: "go with clear glasses because it is getting really dark in the forest, and that the track is getting quicker so you can pin the D". Just then it started to sprinkle, then by the time i was back at the car it had started to chuck it down. Just as Dan rode out of the start house, it started to hail. It was ridiculous, the hail got heavier and heavier at at one stage they were up to 2cm in diameter. Dan came back in wet and muddy and covered in welts from the hail stones.

So the weather really shook up the general classification after stage 1. A few of the favourites were lucky enough to score a dry track, where as Dan Mc, Sauser and Ludwig Dubou lost a far bit of time. It turned out well for me as i ended up in 24th, 1m13s down on GC, 2sec behind Nick Both (1st Aussie) and 2 sec in front of AJ who had an awesome ride despite coping a lot of rain.

Tomorrow is a 50km stage made up of 4 laps of a track around vittel. I should get a pretty good spot on the start grid but there will be some hitters down the back that will be keen to make up time from today.