Cruelly, the gradient at Green Mountain offers no respite even beyond the finish line. Romain Bardet (AG2R-La Mondiale) managed about 20 metres after placing second on stage 4 of the Tour of Oman before he ground to a halt at the roadside and unsteadily dismounted.
While riders inched over the line in ones and twos in the minutes that followed, Bardet sat on the tarmac, seemingly oblivious to all around him as he stared at his shoes and recovered from his attempt to match and then out-kick stage winner Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) on the final ramps. Bardet eventually came home 9 seconds down on Nibali, and now lies in second place in the overall standings, 15 seconds behind the Italian.
Once his breathing had gradually returned to normal, a group of reporters approached and Bardet beckoned them closer, the Frenchman’s by now sufficiently reanimated to joke that he could at least take shelter from the mid-afternoon sun in their shadows.
ADVERTISEMENT
“It was very difficult, very steep and with the heat, it’s stifling,” Bardet said. “But it was a good test. I lost the sprint in the last 150 metres against Nibali, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. I couldn’t react when he went, but I did what I could on the climb.”
While Nibali’s Astana team had looked to dictate the terms of engagement all the way up Green Mountain, Bardet proved a most unwilling subject. He was, as Nibali said admiringly afterwards, the “most active of them all” on the climb, making several attempts to force his way clear as the gradient sharpened in the final three kilometres.
“In the end, I was very close to getting the win against one of the biggest champions of his generation in Nibali. When I got back up to him with 150 metres to go, he accelerated again and went very, very hard,” Bardet said.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest News http://ift.tt/1Lz1Kpx
No comments:
Post a Comment