Around midday on Saturday 2 July 2011, 198 riders massed at the start line to begin the 2011 Tour de France. The race began in northwestern France. From there the route headed south during the second week before visiting the Pyrenees. The main climbs would be in the French Alps.
The weather at the start of the Tour was sunny and 22 degrees, perfect conditions for riding. Hundreds of thousands of fans turned out to see the riders set off. At first, the peloton moved slowly. So early in the race, everyone was feeling friendly and enjoying the atmosphere.
First-day nerves and tension weren’t far below the surface though. The wind picked up as the day went on, leading to several minor crashes. Cadel’s old teammate Philippe Gilbert of Omega Pharma-Lotto looked like the rider to beat, so the favourites were working hard to keep up with him.
Racing for the Stage 1 finish was hectic. The French roads were narrow and the peloton was packed close together. With about 8 kilometres left until the end, an Astana rider clipped a spectator and came off his bike. Rider after rider piled up behind him. Bikes, arms and legs were all twisted together.
Cadel avoided the big crash. This was partly good luck, although BMC’s other riders did play a huge role. On that first day, the team was really firing. The riders worked together brilliantly to keep Cadel out of crashes. BMC’s strategy was to stay at the front of the peloton at all times. The position was hard to maintain, but it was the safest place to be when crashes were happening.
Cadel managed to keep Gilbert in his sights and finished the stage in second place, only three seconds down. Cadel’s main aim had been to avoid losing time against any GC contenders and he did that. His 23-second defeat in the Tour back in 2007 was still fresh in his memory. More than most riders Cadel understood just how much every second counted.
Stage 2 was a team time trial, which made Cadel nervous. The team time trial had undone his Tour just two years earlier. He didn’t want a repeat of that disaster, especially not so early in the race.
Luckily for him, Cadel’s BMC team was quite different from his team in 2009. Unlike Silence–Lotto, BMC was functioning well as a unit. Each rider’s mission was the same—to help Cadel win yellow. On top of that, team morale was sky high after wins in the Tirreno–Adriatico and the Tour de Romandie. For the first time ever in a team time trial Cadel wasn’t thinking about how to avoid losing time. He was wondering how much time he could gain.
Riding its slick new time trial bikes BMC scored second place overall, just four seconds behind winners Garmin-Cervélo. With two stages complete, the BMC team was looking good. Cadel didn’t want to get overconfident though. Wearing yellow in Paris was still a very long way off. He had to stick to the plan. BMC needed to stay at the front of the peloton, keep focussed and steer clear of trouble.
Cadel was looking even stronger after Stage 3. He was in third place in the GC, one second down on the leader, Thor Hushovd. Cadel’s position was still not enough to rank him as a favourite though. Cadel was happy with that—the more a rider was fancied to win, the more he was hounded by journalists looking for a story. Cadel preferred to keep things understated.
Stage 4 brought heavy rain, making conditions tricky. Right from the start Cadel and his team worked hard to keep breakaways from gaining too much time on the peloton. With 15 kilometres to go, a rider from a rival team slammed into Cadel. Cadel’s bike was still working, so his instinct was not to stop. George Hincapie persuaded Cadel it was better to stop and change his bike. The team could get him back to the front of the peloton.
Hincapie might have been confident, but the team still had to get past 190 of the world’s top riders. BMC made it look easy though, expertly finding a way through the peloton and positioning Cadel at the front again. Teammates had nicknamed BMC’s Marcus Burghardt ‘Bulldozer’. That day he earned the name. Forcing their way to the front of the peloton made the BMC riders unpopular. Cadel didn’t care. He was there to win the Tour.
The riders hurtled towards the finish line. Cadel knew he needed to make the most of the position his team had put him in. But rivals were attacking him from every angle, especially Contador. The Spaniard had something to prove that day. He was not going to let his Tour title go without a fight.
Cadel held off Contador’s attack only to be attacked again. The two stars battled the entire way to the finish, wheel to wheel. They crossed the line so close together that Cadel couldn’t tell who’d won. Contador thought he had and raised his arm in a victory salute.
Nerves jangling, Cadel waited for the official results. When they came, he discovered he was the stage winner. He’d also won the polka dot jersey for the mountain classification. The wins were brilliant. But Cadel was even more thrilled to have beaten Contador when his rival so desperately wanted to win. He’d grabbed precious seconds from Contador, as well as Bradley Wiggins and Andy Schleck.
Moving into the second week BMC’s confidence was soaring. Cadel stayed cautious though. If the riders got overconfident, they might slip up or crash, or miss opportunities to gain time. Yes, his team was doing well, but it was vital the riders kept their eyes on the overall win.
Cadel was right to be cautious. There were lots of crashes in the second week. In Stage 7 Contador crashed again. There was also big trouble for Bradley Wiggins. He broke his collarbone in a crash, which put him out of the Tour. This meant one of Cadel’s main rivals was gone. Wiggins was in great form and Cadel admired him. Of course, Cadel wanted to win the Tour himself. But he wanted to do it by showing he could beat the best, and that included Wiggins.
The drama of Stage 7 didn’t end at the finish line. Sprinter Mark Cavendish won the stage and a huge crowd surged around him at the finish line. Race officials had to help Cavendish through the crowd just so he could reach the podium. An official barged past Cadel. Without thinking, Cadel squirted the rude official with his water bottle. Cadel’s aim was off and the water squirted Cavendish instead. Squirting Cavendish was obviously an accident and Cadel quickly apologised. He couldn’t take the incident back though because it was filmed and posted on YouTube. A fleeting moment that turned into something the world could judge Cadel for.
Stage 9 brought more upset with a number of big crashes. Contador crashed and rebounded off another rider’s shoulders. Then, as the peloton sped down a steep descent, there was yet another pile-up. Alexander Vinokourov broke his collarbone and had to abandon the race, as did Cadel’s old rival Jurgen Van Den Broeck. BMC’s Brent Bookwalter was also involved in the crash, although somehow he managed to keep racing.
Finally, about 35 kilometres before the end of the stage there was another awful crash. A five-rider breakaway was heading for the finish when a car from a French TV station tried to pass by. The driver swerved to avoid a tree and hit a rider from Team Sky called Johnny Hoogerland. The impact sent Hoogerland flying into a barbed wire fence. He was so badly cut up he needed 33 stitches.
The crash slowed the whole peloton. No-one took crashes lightly, especially not after a rider had been killed in a freak accident during the Giro earlier that year. The peloton slackened its pace to allow those who’d crashed to get going again. Incredibly, Hoogerland went on to win the stage in spite of his injuries. The GC standings were also shaken up. After seven days in yellow Thor Hushovd lost the jersey to Frenchman Thomas Voeckler.
Voeckler was a dark horse. He hadn’t held the yellow jersey for five years, so no-one really knew what he was capable of in 2011. Most assumed he’d lose the jersey the next day.
Cadel thought the other riders were underestimating Voeckler. He turned out to be right. Voeckler would hold on to the yellow jersey for ten days straight.