Andy Schleck

21 July 2011. Stage Eighteen: Pinerolo (Italy) to Col du Galibier

200.5km. High mountains

It was a stage destined for the history books. But that was the whole point. On the hundredth anniversary of the Tour’s first expedition into the Alps, the eighteenth stage finished at the top of one of the most mythical of mountains, the Col du Galibier.

The Galibier featured in 1911, but almost didn’t. The road was finished just in time. Although to call it a road is pushing it a little: from the old pictures of riders pushing their bikes up the rough, rutted surface, the Galibier pass resembled a goat track.

A hundred years later, the Tour’s fifty-seventh visit to the Galibier was to be its first finish. At 2,645 metres, it would be the highest ever. And this eighteenth stage of the 2011 race included two more brutes: the 2,774m Col d’Agnel and 2,360m Col d’Izoard. Then the Galibier. (Officially, the finish would be listed as Serre-Chevalier, the name by which the southern Hautes-Alpes valley’s enormous winter sports resort is known: a disappointing but hardly surprising prioritising of commercial interests over heritage.)

The Galibier, when it first featured, was remote, desolate and soared higher into the sky than the Pyrenean climbs, prompting Henri Desgrange, the Tour’s founder, to consider other mountains in a diminished light. ‘Oh! Sappey! Oh! Laffrey! Oh! Bayard! Oh! Tourmalet! I will not fail in my duty by proclaiming that beside the Galibier you are but pale and vulgar beer: before this giant, there is nothing to do but tip your hat and bow very low!’ Given such an endorsement, it is fitting that Desgrange’s memorial now sits close to the summit: a towering, pale stone monument, cylindrical in shape, like a lighthouse.

The Tour’s founder seemed to enjoy inflicting pain and suffering on the riders; as far as he was concerned, this was its raison d’être. The Tour was all about incredible feats that captured the imagination and explored the limits of human endurance. Desgrange would have enjoyed stage eighteen of the 2011 race.

* * *

‘Don’t give me credit,’ says Andy Schleck when he sits down, eighteen months after the event, to talk about the Galibier stage. ‘But the idea was mine.’

In 2011 it was all going wrong for Schleck. Or Baby Schleck, as he was disparagingly known. He had other nicknames, none of them flattering: Schleck Minor, Andy Pandy. Which was odd, in some respects, because Schleck was a likeable, goofy, buck-toothed Luxembourger who seemed perpetually trapped in a younger self. Skinny-limbed and size-zero gangly, Schleck was the child prodigy who never grew up, and seemed permanently on the cusp of greatness. But never quite there. He was a pure climber in the classic mould: lightweight, angular (surprisingly tall, at 1.86m), with an upright riding style in the mountains, a little like – though not quite as bolt upright as – the Eagle of Toledo, Federico Bahamontes, the great Spanish climber of the 1950s. Indeed, in the modern era, which favoured all-rounders, Schleck was a throwback. Like old-school climbers, he seemed incapable of producing anything approaching a decent time trial. If he deserved mockery for anything, it was for his haplessness in this discipline.

The Baby Schleck nickname was particularly unfair, because Andy’s palmarès was better than that of his older brother, Fränk. Yet Andy, for all his apparent class on a bike, appeared to lack something, and the 2011 Tour seemed to be exposing that quite brutally. He had finished runner-up for two years, both times to Alberto Contador, though he would eventually inherit the 2010 title when Contador tested positive for clenbuterol. In the official history, the winner of that Tour is Andy Schleck. But it doesn’t count, insists Andy. He wants to win on the road; to enter Paris in yellow and be crowned champion on the Champs-Élysées.

In 2011 Contador was back, not because he had served his suspension, but because his doping case from 2010 was still unresolved. He had ridden the Giro the month before the Tour, and won, but in doing so dug deep into his reserves.

It should have meant that the race was on a plate for Schleck. But as the first two weeks unfolded, and they entered what should have been Schleck’s hunting ground, the Pyrenees, something was wrong. It was as though he missed his duels with Contador; as though the Spaniard had drawn something out of him that he was incapable of finding within himself. Without Contador – or with a diminished Contador – Schleck seemed diminished himself.

In previous years, whenever Contador had jumped away in the mountains, Schleck had gone with him; they kept each other company on these steep climbs, at times seeming too cosy. In 2010 the denouement was their ‘showdown’ on the Col du Tourmalet. But they rode up side-by-side, keeping a cautious eye on each other, sparring rather than going for the knockout. That was fine by Contador: he was in yellow. But Schleck needed to do something, at least to show aggression. As the Tourmalet wound up, his final chance to dethrone the Spaniard vanished in the fog that enveloped the summit. Defeat was conceded not with a bang but with a whimper (maybe this fact, too, has affected Schleck’s response to being named ‘winner’ of that Tour; perhaps, deep down, he feels that he doesn’t deserve it).

It seemed to confirm Schleck as a nearly man: brilliant, talented, precocious, but not a champion. And yet he was a member of that rare breed – Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault, LeMond – who had finished on the podium in his début Grand Tour (second at the Giro in 2007, aged just twenty-two). So what was the problem? That he was too nice? That he didn’t have the required ruthless streak?

There was ‘chaingate’, an incident earlier in the 2010 Tour, when Schleck attacked towards the summit of the Port de Balès, opening a gap of around ten metres before he unshipped his chain. Behind, as this happened, Contador was reacting to Schleck’s attack. And as he caught the Luxembourger, it was clear to everybody – and must have been clear to Contador – that the rider in the yellow jersey was suffering a mechanical problem. As Schleck fiddled with his chain, and had to dismount, Contador spread his wings and flew. Schleck gave chase on the descent – not his forte – but was 39 seconds down at the finish. He was furious; wide-eyed with indignation. ‘I have anger in my belly,’ said Schleck.

By the next morning – after Contador had posted a video on his website apologising for taking advantage of his rival’s misfortune, insisting that he hadn’t realised Schleck’s chain had come off – the fire had gone out. On the start line Schleck shook Contador’s hand. All was forgiven. And, as though decreed by fate, Schleck went on to lose the Tour by the amount of time he lost on the ‘chaingate’ stage: 39 seconds.

So here we are in 2011. Week three. The Alps. It has come to the point where Schleck has to do something, because people are mocking him. In the Pyrenees, where he and Fränk had been expected to tear the race to pieces, they failed. Worse, they hadn’t even seemed to try. They prevaricated. On Plateau de Beille, the final Pyrenean climb, Andy launched a series of attacks, but no sooner had daylight appeared than he would glance back, seeing what damage he’d done.

Andy’s attacks were head-turning, all right. But the only head that was turning was his. In the French press he was given another nickname, ‘Torticollis’ – a reference to a condition in which the sufferer has a stiff neck, forcing their head to one side. He seemed to ride up Plateau de Beille with his head cocked, keeping an eye behind him, searching for his brother Fränk.

* * *

At the summit of Plateau de Beille, Schleck entered the Leopard team bus and slumped in his leather-upholstered chair. Twenty minutes later, Stuart O’Grady, his friend and team-mate, entered. O’Grady was perhaps feeling a bit silly, too. Their team had been launched with such fanfare, based in Luxembourg and built around the Schleck brothers, with a portentous pledge inked on the side of the bus: ‘True Racing’.

True racing? Today, at the summit of Plateau de Beille, that looked more pretentious than portentous. And O’Grady had contributed his own hubris, mocking the Europcar team defending Thomas Voeckler’s yellow jersey. ‘Gonna be fun watching Europcar trying to control the race,’ O’Grady had tweeted.

Now, as he sat with Andy at the end of the stage, he could reflect on the fact that Europcar had controlled the race. And that Voeckler was still in yellow.

‘OK, Stuey, here is what I’m going to do,’ Schleck told him. ‘I feel strong, but I haven’t shown it yet, so on the big Alpine stage I’m going to go early. Not leave it to the Galibier, but go on the Izoard. If I come over the top with a minute and I have help in the valley, I will go to the finish.’

‘Mate, if you do that …’ O’Grady didn’t even finish the sentence.

Schleck was aware of the criticism. ‘It’s what people do, it’s natural,’ he says when we meet in southern Spain eighteen months later. ‘It’s like me watching a football game; I criticise. When you’re in the race, there was not an awful lot more I could do. At 300 metres to go on Plateau de Beille, I went all out, and people say: “Look how strong you are.” But I gained nothing. They said I should have attacked earlier, but I had already attacked so many times. And there was a headwind: people don’t see this. And maybe I didn’t have the right legs that day.

‘Anyway, I don’t mind when people criticise, because it means they don’t forget you.’

He wasn’t waiting for his brother? ‘No, no. That’s silly. Of course we are better together, but …’

It didn’t get any better for Schleck after Plateau de Beille. Three days later, at the end of a stage to Gap, it got worse. On a relatively minor climb, the category-two Col de Manse, Contador used the rising road, tackled in torrential rain, as the launch pad for an audacious bid to haul himself back into contention. Cadel Evans was able to follow him, but both Andy and Fränk Schleck struggled to respond. They were distanced on the climb and fell further back on the descent, which Andy tackled like a startled deer.

He lost a minute that day. The stress was showing. ‘Is this really what people want to see?’ asked Schleck in Gap, referring to the descent, which he felt was dangerous. He said that he was worried about the next day’s ‘mortally dangerous’ downhill finish into Pinerolo. If he wanted to offer encouragement to his rivals, and to suggest where he might be vulnerable, he could hardly have been more obliging.

And yet, despite some nervous moments on the twisting descent into Pinerolo, Schleck finished with Cadel Evans and Contador. It meant that on the eve of the Galibier stage he was fourth overall, two and a half minutes behind Voeckler, with Fränk third, almost a minute and a half down.

‘We talked about specifics that night,’ recalls Luca Guercilena, one of two Leopard directeurs sportifs, along with Kim Andersen. ‘On the morning, we got down to the fine details.’

‘At the team meeting in the morning, the plan was made,’ says Brian Nygaard, who was the team manager. ‘Andy had been talking about it, he told me a couple of days before, and he was extremely confident. I hadn’t seen him that confident since he won Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 2009. Three days before Liège he had said: “No one’s going to follow me on Sunday.” The thing with Andy is, he’s either really chilled out or he’s excited. He was really excited for Galibier.’ Partly, admits Nygaard, that owed to his frustration at the criticism: ‘Criticism doesn’t really bother him, but once in a while he has what I would say is a really useful sense of pride. Then he reacts.’

The first part of the day’s plan was to put two riders in the main breakaway. There were four candidates: Maxime Monfort, Joost Posthuma, Jakob Fuglsang and Linus Gerdemann. O’Grady would keep an eye on things, and try and infiltrate the break if the quartet failed – because making the break is not as simple as it sounds.

‘Kim Andersen explained it to me,’ says Monfort. ‘We had had some bad days, especially into Gap. Andy losing a minute for nothing. We were all really disappointed. And Kim told me, “We have a plan for Galibier.”

‘When he told me what it was, I didn’t believe it.’

The plan was for two riders to go up the road with the break; for Schleck to attack from behind on the Col d’Izoard; for one of his team-mates in the break to drop back and help him; then for the other Leopard rider to pace him along the long valley road, where the wind can make it hard. Finally, Schleck would take off up the mountain. As he told O’Grady in the bus at Plateau de Beille, he believed he needed a minute on his pursuers at the summit of the Izoard.

Monfort was sceptical: ‘I said, “This is Playstation.” It was Playstation cycling. I told Kim, “It’s not going to work.” It was nice to hear that the team was ambitious, but this, I thought, was too much. Modern cycling does not work like this.’

* * *

The stage rolled out of Pinerolo, with a long run-in to the Agnel, the road rising gradually from 46km, the climb proper starting 40km later, crossing back into France at the summit. The pace was high from the start; with the climbs back-loaded, it was an opportunity to get in a break on what was being called the ‘Queen Stage’. There was an intermediate sprint after 46km, just before the climbing started, and that helped to glue the race together as Mark Cavendish’s HTC team, in the hunt for points towards his green jersey, led the peloton.

Then, unexpectedly, a seven-man break formed just before the sprint. ‘I was trying from the beginning to get away,’ says Monfort. ‘Jump, jump, jump. Then I stopped, because it didn’t make any sense. It’s always the same story: you fight, but everyone fights, until eventually everyone has had enough and riders need a break or they stop for a piss. On this day, though, no riders were getting away.’

No surprise, with the speed at 50kph. Then came the lull, just before the sprint, and seven slipped off the front. Joost Posthuma was the only Leopard rider in the break. ‘I could see them with fifteen, twenty seconds,’ says Monfort, ‘and I jumped. I gave it all I had. Joost was there, but I gave it everything. I was strong, but a bit lucky, and I caught them. So I was in the break.’

Others jumped across until it contained sixteen riders. They included the Irishman Nicolas Roche, the highest-placed rider on GC in 21st, the Kazakh Maxim Iglinsky and a rider who seemed to suffer a nervous disposition that made him unable to sit in the peloton, and prompted him to seek to be part of every break in every race he rode: Johnny Hoogerland. The sixteen committed to the task in hand, working together. The peloton relaxed. After a 50kph first hour, in the second the average speed dropped below 35. The lead kept building: as they began the Agnel, it was almost nine minutes.

The pace behind was slow. It wasn’t exactly fast in the break, either. ‘On the first climb, the Agnel, we were so slow, too slow,’ says Monfort. ‘I was a little bit stressed by that. We had to maintain the right gap between the breakaway and peloton. We wanted it not too big, not too small: about seven minutes. But they were slow behind as well.’

Halfway up the climb, Schleck dropped back to the team car, to chat to Kim Andersen. Luca Guercilena was in the other car, behind the break. By this point Schleck had realised that he’d made a mistake. He was wearing the wrong shirt; it was Monfort’s. This was typical Schleck. ‘I’ve never known Andy to have an orderly suitcase,’ says Nygaard. ‘He regularly forgets bike shoes. He had done that on this Tour, earlier in the race: left his shoes at the hotel. Somebody had to go back and pick them up. Fränk is the polar opposite, very organised.’

Dropping back to speak to Andersen in the team car on the Agnel, Schleck checks that everything is OK up front. He is concerned that his group is going too slow; that the gap will be too big to bridge. It is an indication of how slow they are riding that he can drop back like this on a climb. ‘Don’t worry,’ Andersen tells him. ‘The break isn’t going especially fast, so you don’t have to worry about that. But use a couple of team-mates in the peloton, make it a bit faster.’

Schleck speaks to O’Grady, who moves to the front, upping the pace. At the summit they are five and a half minutes behind the break, led by Iglinsky. Posthuma has been working hard on the Agnel and to the base of the Izoard to keep the speed high. The Izoard is a brute: 14.1km at an average gradient of 7.3 per cent, with much steeper sections halfway up and close to the summit. From the southern side they ride through the barren, spectacular outcrop known as the Casse Déserte. The Izoard is etched into the history books as the scene of famous exploits and battles involving Coppi, Bobet, Bahamontes, Merckx …

And now Schleck attacks, jumping up the outside, flying into a hairpin so fast that he almost has to brake. He glances back and sees Pierre Rolland, the young Frenchman, trying to follow, but Schleck’s eyes lock on the road in front and he doesn’t look back again. Rolland does not make contact and gives up.

‘I knew the corner where I was going to attack,’ Schleck says, his eyes flaring as he recalls his move. ‘Having two guys up ahead was ideal. Or I wouldn’t have attacked: it would have been stupid.’ His one fear was that Bjarne Riis, his old manager and now Contador’s directeur sportif, would know what he was up to. ‘Bjarne’s a clever guy, but what could he do when Contador wasn’t so good? So I knew it was my moment.

‘When I attacked … I had been waiting three days to do that. I went from second, from behind Stuart, and I just went with everything. You have to. I looked around after 200 metres and thought: now I have got to go. I went up there hard, and later, when I saw it back on TV, I could see they were nervous behind. There was still a long way to go, and they were maybe thinking I was going too early.’

Posthuma, who had done so much to ensure that the break had a seven-minute lead as they began the Izoard, was dropped on the climb. Two kilometres after breaking away, Schleck had 45 seconds on his pursuers. Just over a kilometre later he caught Posthuma. It gave him a breather: Posthuma dug deep, using what strength he had left to pace Schleck for as long as possible. With Posthuma’s help, Schleck’s advantage stretched to two minutes. And then Posthuma was done: he swung over as Schleck continued up the climb.

Up ahead, Monfort heard what was happening from Guercilena, in the car following him. ‘The goal was that I would reach the top of the Izoard with Andy,’ says Monfort. ‘But the gap was about two minutes; I was a little bit too far ahead so I had to ease up and almost stop. That was great! For the last 500 metres of the Izoard I could take it easy. I had two [energy] gels, two bidons, and I could really rest for two minutes. I knew he was coming. I had Luca behind me, who was hearing from Kim. Luca said, “Max, you have to stop, you have to stop.” I got to the top and then did the first two corners alone and then Andy was coming.’

‘I felt I only needed a minute at the top,’ Schleck says. ‘I knew that if I came over the top of the Izoard with a minute and had help in the valley that I could go to the finish alone. I said, “If I go on the climb, then it’s only the leader of another team who can go as fast as me. If they have to work hard, that suits me. And if they catch me, then Fränk can go.”

‘I met Max, he was waiting, and he was really on a mission: he needed to do the time trial of his life. He’s a super team-mate, super loyal.’

Ahead, the original breakaway had splintered. Schleck and Monfort caught Roche and another two survivors, the Dutchman Dries Devenyns and Russian Egor Silin. Iglinsky was ahead. Schleck’s problems of the last few days, into Gap and Pinerolo, had owed much to his apparent lack of descending skill, as with the loss of those 39 seconds to Contador in 2010. But with Monfort leading him down the Izoard, choosing the lines around the hairpins, and with Schleck putting his trust in his Belgian team-mate, they dropped like stones.

In the valley, into the headwind, Monfort sat on the front and dragged the group along. Schleck helped, Roche and Silin contributed little, but Devenyns seemed a willing worker, perhaps helping Monfort, a fellow Belgian. Monfort barely noticed. ‘I couldn’t speak in the valley,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t hear. I was just full, full, full gas.’

‘I told Max he had to do the time trial of his life,’ Guercilena says. ‘We were playing to win the Tour. We knew in the valley the wind would be bad, but the goal was for Andy not to work too much and save his biggest effort for the climb. In the car, following, it was really thrilling. I can say I saw Andy incredibly focused on the race. I have told him many times since, that at the moment he joined the breakaway it was like he entered a tunnel and could only see the finish line in his head.’

Presumably, Monfort could tell his leader was in the form of his life. ‘Actually, no. Only afterwards I realised. He helped me a little in the valley and we had some help from Devenyns. That was nice, it meant Andy could have twenty seconds easy and I could take a drink.’

The valley was hardly a valley at all: the road dropped into Briançon and then began to rise steadily for 15km before they began the Galibier, via the Col de Lautaret. The climb to the finish was really 23km. ‘There was a false flat in the town of Briançon,’ says Monfort. ‘It was a crazy headwind. Luca was in the car, and said: “OK, Max, you’re a time triallist now; you go to the point where you can see the summit is in 23km,” at the foot of the Galibier.

‘But when I got to there, I thought, I’m OK. Exhausted, but still OK. I’ll try to get to 20k to go. That was my next goal.’

Schleck’s lead stuck stubbornly at two minutes. There were 40km left. Still the chase was disorganised; riders were rolling through, keeping the gap respectable, but not riding hard to close it. Cadel Evans’s BMC team was working, but without going all out, perhaps because sitting behind Evans was Fränk Schleck. They didn’t want to give Fränk a free ride, to tow him up to his brother only to watch him fly away. All the way through the valley, to the base of the Galibier, the older Schleck shadowed Evans, then, as the slope started, he switched his attention to Contador, the more explosive climber. In the valley, Contador and his fellow Spaniard, Samuel Sánchez, sat together at the back of the group talking, as though hatching a plan. Then Sánchez’s orange-clad Euskaltel team-mates appeared at the front with Contador’s Saxo Bank lieutenants, and began to chase.

With 30km remaining, Iglinsky was finally caught by the Schleck group: now there are six. Five kilometres later, Schleck’s lead has grown to 3:10. Devenyns has been doing a lot of work but doesn’t last much longer. And then, with 17km remaining, Monfort is finished. A few hundred metres later, so is the Russian, Silin. ‘I got to 20km to go, and I had some energy left,’ says Monfort. ‘Then, suddenly, I was empty.’

It is easier to empy yourself for someone else, says Monfort, a rider who seems happier in the role of domestique. ‘When I knew I had Andy on my wheel, I could really kill myself without even thinking about making it to the finish myself. I had a real role. It was important for the team, and there was a plan, a tactic. And it was Andy’s last chance.’

As the climb began, Schleck’s lead shot up. On the shoulder of the Lauterat, with 15km to go, the trio of him, Iglinsky and Roche had almost four minutes, but the work was all being done by Schleck. ‘It felt like I had wings,’ says Schleck. ‘They stayed on my wheel but as soon as I hit the hill, when it started to get steeper, I didn’t want them there any more. I didn’t think about that because when you think about that you lose the concentration. I just rode hard and I knew that I was strong and they wouldn’t be able to hang on.’

Guercilena, in the following car, tried to keep Schleck in the moment, focused on the effort, not letting his mind wander, or start making calculations about how much time he had, how much he needed to claim yellow, or how much he wanted if he was to keep it to Paris. ‘We kept telling him: “Don’t think about the gap.” We had told him from the moment he attacked: first, reach the breakaway; second, ride to the bottom of the climb without using too much energy, using Max; third, try to win the stage at the top; fourth, check the gap. If you’re fighting for the time gap, the stress is too high. We weren’t giving him information on the gap to the others.’

On his own, with Iglinsky falling back, and riding through banks of supporters at the summit of the Lauterat, Schleck’s lead grows to four minutes, 24 seconds. Here you can see the dark clouds above the Galibier, the snow-capped peaks surrounding it, and the thin road slashing up its slopes. When Iglinsky finally could hold on no longer, Schleck glanced round once, twice, then lifted himself out of the saddle and pressed on. Never mind the stage, he could be winning the Tour today.

Finally, Evans realises that his Tour is slipping away. He looks around at Voeckler and Pierre Rolland, the Europcar riders, gestures with his hands, asking, ‘Why aren’t you working?’ When they don’t respond he looks disgusted. Then he attacks. Rolland follows, and Voeckler, in yellow, follows Rolland. Others claw their way back up after Evans’s brief surge. He’s a diesel, not a sports car. But what’s surprising is how far back Contador is. Fränk Schleck still shadows him, but it is obvious now that Contador is not on a good day.

The contrast in styles between Andy Schleck and Evans is striking. Evans is scowling and snarling, baring his teeth like an angry Jack Russell. Schleck, though he is suffering, is far more fluid and graceful. His upper body is so skinny you can see his ribs through his (well, Monfort’s) shirt. Evans’s grinding performance brings the gap inside four minutes, though this also owes something to the fact that up ahead, where Schleck is, the road has steepened.

Schleck, with his sunglasses perched on his helmet, grimaces. It’s him versus Evans, and the gap, as the Australian leads the others over the Lauterat, is three minutes, 30 seconds. Schleck keeps getting out of the saddle, trying to find a rhythm. Behind him, the red Tour director’s car has Eddy Merckx in it, and Merckx squeezes his ample frame through the sun roof. For a short time, as they inch up the mountain, he looms over the slight figure of Schleck like a colossus should. Merckx takes a special interest not only because it is a performance that is reminiscent of one of his own, but because the Schlecks’ father, Johny, was one of his domestiques.

The lead reduces to three minutes. Still no sign of Contador. And Sánchez has been dropped. All that Schleck remembers of his effort, at this point, is the wind. ‘The headwind was all day, 65km into the wind. You could see the flags. There were lots of Luxembourg flags on the Galibier but all I could focus on was that they were blowing towards me, because of the headwind. It was so strong. It made it very, very tough.’

Crawling towards the summit, the stage win in the bag, Schleck finally lets it out. His celebration is primal: a release of all the pent-up frustration at his own performances and the criticism that had followed. He raises his arms, opens his mouth, as though screaming – he looked angry rather than happy. But now, he says that he did enjoy it. ‘Yes, I did. I did. Because it was the plan, and the plan had worked.

‘Fränk came back to the bus and said to me, “How did it go?” He didn’t realise I had won; he thought there were still riders from the break ahead of me. He didn’t hear anything on the radio. In the mountains you don’t really hear the radios. But when I told him, he hugged me. Then he said, “That means I’m second!” We were one–two: that was nice.

‘My dad was there as well. And I enjoyed it when Stuey came back; to see his face, because he was the first one I told the plan to.’

The other story of the day was the carnage behind. Eighty-nine riders finished outside the time limit. They should have been thrown off the race, but the race jury relented. It had been an epic day, the kind that Henri Desgrange would have liked, though he might not have approved of the special treatment for the stragglers.

* * *

It wasn’t quite enough for Schleck.

The next day, a short stage to l’Alpe d’Huez that included climbing the other side of the Col du Galibier, saw a resurgent Contador try to salvage something from his Tour. He went on the attack early, Schleck followed, Voeckler was caught in no man’s land, and Evans seemed to be having all kinds of difficulty, changing his bike, though perhaps the real problem was in his head: he seemed to be panicking. On l’Alpe d’Huez, Contador and Voeckler paid for their earlier efforts and cracked. Rolland won the stage, Schleck rode into yellow and Evans did enough to ensure that the next day, on the penultimate stage, he would take the lead and hold it to Paris. Schleck, despite his 65km solo effort two days before, had not been converted into a time triallist: he was still lousy against the watch.

‘I was cooked from the day before,’ says Schleck of the Alpe d’Huez stage. ‘I wish I had been stronger. I have this mentality that if I ride hard for 100km one day I can do it again tomorrow, but it’s not really the case. That 65km into the wind: I really felt it the day after. I wanted to attack again but it wasn’t possible. I was happy just to hang on.’

When I met Schleck to speak to him about his Galibier stage win, he was happy to relive it. He had ridden that day without fear. Crucially, he said, ‘I wasn’t afraid to lose.’ Since then, it had all gone wrong: poor form from the start of 2012, then a crash in the time trial stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné, earning him more ridicule and, more seriously, a fractured sacrum, the large, triangular bone at the base of the spine, which separates the two hip bones. It put him out of the Tour de France.

Since then he has been a shadow of the rider who won the Tour’s highest ever finish. At the time of writing it is becoming one of cycling’s great mysteries: whatever happened to Andy Schleck after July 2011? He says he can’t answer it himself, only expressing his hope that he will rekindle the fire in his belly, or locate the wings that carried him up the Galibier. His team director, Luca Guercilena, says that he regularly talks to Schleck about the Galibier stage, hoping to inspire in him a Pavlovian response, or at least to instil the self-belief that made that day possible.

‘I don’t see myself finishing my career without at least once ending with yellow in Paris,’ says Schleck, perhaps more in hope than expectation. There is a hint of melancholy about him. But he has enjoyed reliving his famous stage win, he says. ‘That was agréable,’ he says. ‘Très agréable.’

Classement

1 Andy Schleck, Luxembourg, Leopard Trek, 6 hours 7 minutes, 56 secs

2 Fränk Schleck, Luxembourg, Leopard Trek, at 2 minutes, 7 secs

3 Cadel Evans, Australia, BMC Racing Team, at 2 minutes, 15 secs

4 Ivan Basso, Italy, Liquigas-Cannondale, at 2 minutes, 18 secs

5 Thomas Voeckler, France, Team Europcar, at 2 minutes, 21 secs

6 Pierre Rolland, France, Team Europcar, at 2 minutes, 27 secs