It’s not every day that a race plan works out, but for three teams to execute their plans nearly perfectly in the same race? Unheard of.
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Ahead of each race, a plan is formed. The ideas come together with input from multiple Director Sportifs, Team Managers, and sometimes even riders. There are race days when the plan is quite straightforward. Control the peloton, don’t let a breakaway get too much of a gap on the bunch, and lead out the sprinter for the finish. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Easy as. Then there are race days where the plan feels almost pointless, where so much could go wrong, there’s almost no reason to put pen on paper.
Stage 5 was one of those days. It was a stage that could only have been cooked up by a madman, with eight categorised climbs in 140 km; the stage came out to be 2,900 metres of elevation gain, only 600 metres less than the Queen stage on Friday that includes Mont Ventoux.
Making a plan for a stage like Wednesday’s feels like making a birthing plan. You can make the plan, but there’s a 99% chance that the plan is only a piece of paper.
Regardless, a plan needed to be made. Perhaps, like a birthing plan, it is only for peace of mind. Directors took what they knew about the first four stages, analysed what they needed to get out of the stage, talked about it for hours, and eventually took that plan to the riders to try to execute. They then sat in air-conditioned cars and watched that plan play out on tiny screens while other directors anxiously drove in the convoy.
For three teams in particular, those pre-race plans actually went almost completely according to…
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