As Tejay van Garderen and his BMC teammates readied themselves for stage 8 of the Tour de France in Rennes on Saturday morning, Marco Pinotti was already thinking 24 hours ahead. The Italian is the time trial specialist on the squad’s coaching staff, and half an hour before the start, he was climbing into a team car to set off on a reconnaissance of Sunday’s team time trial, from Vannes to Plumelec.
“The directeurs sportifs have gone to see it already but I’ve just seen it on video and studied it closely on Google maps, so I’m going to check it out in person now,” Pinotti told Cyclingnews before he set off. “The riders will do their recon on Sunday morning, but in principal, I think it’s very similar to the team time trial at the Dauphiné [which BMC won – ed.]”
Regardless of the parcours, this team time trial was always going to pose a rather novel problem for participants. ASO had to get special dispensation from the UCI to hold a team time trial so late in the opening week – normally, they must take place in the first third of the race – and the accumulated fatigue of eight days of racing adds a new series of variables to the event.
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“It’s different because you don’t know what condition the riders are going to be in. There will be riders you’d expect to go well who might be more tired, and others who have recovered better,” Pinotti said. “It might be the case that within a team, the performances might be different to those you’d expect in a team time trial early in the race.”
The course, too, presents obstacles not typical of Tour team time trials past. Though just 28 kilometres in length, it includes three climbs, the ascent to Monterblanc after 15 kilometres, La Croix Peinte after 21 kilometres and then the final 1.7km haul to the finish line on the Côte de Cadoudal in Plumelec. Like the Boston marathon’s Heartbreak Hill – or the Cauberg at the inaugural team time trial Worlds in 2012, where BMC narrowly missed out – that last ascent could render the intermediate time checks meaningless.
“The roads are good, they’re not a problem, but the key will be getting to that final climb with five riders left who are all capable of going up it well,” Pinotti said. “I think the gaps will be a little bit bigger than the similar time trial at the Dauphiné because it’s a bit longer, although I still wouldn’t anticipate gaps much bigger than 45 seconds between the top teams.”
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