Raid Gauloises
Hard Biking, Cool Strategy
Tim Lloyd - Manager Team Saab Salomon / 12.06.2003
It looks like 4 teams are leading the way – Human link (Sweden), Ertips (France), VSD Eider (France) and Montrail (USA) have opened a significant lead over the rest of the field at the start of the humongous MTB stage that will dominate nearly all of day 3. These 4 had put a chunk of clear ground between themselves and the following pack, but in a race as long as this there are still many things that can happen, the teams have not even reached the half way point yet.
The decision was made to cancel the Rafting section and to MTB the entire distance, 190 km’s. This decision could have quite an impact on the final outcome at the front of the race. Ertips and VSD would have preferred not to cancel the rafting as they are both very strong on the water, but Montrail will be very happy as they are awesome bikers.
For the Saab Salomon team, it could go either way. In theory it should be to their advantage as they would normally prefer to be on dry land, but with Jim complaining of being sore on his bike, a few hours sitting in the raft may have come as a welcome respite. It’s not clear exactly which bit of Jim is sore, if it’s his ankle then that’s not so good, saddle sore would be less significant I think.
One interesting point is that Jim is riding a hard-tail, while Ben and Pete are on full suspension bikes. Helen too is on a hard-tail, but with the amount of biking that she does it shouldn’t make too much difference. For Jim, long periods in the saddle could prove pretty punishing; perhaps they will make the decision for Jim and Pete to swap bikes in order to give Jim a softer and more forgiving ride.
The teams at the front have obviously been moving very strongly over the last 24 hours, but it’s difficult to know what their sleep strategy has been and what their overall race plan is. It is possible that the four of them racing together for nearly the whole race will have made them push too hard in the early stages, or perhaps being together is what will keep them going and maintain the advantage over the following teams, both are possible.
It looks to me that Ben, Jim, Pete and Helen are playing it fairly cool for the time being. Again, we don’t know how much sleep they’ve had compared with the front teams, but they hadn’t intended to push too hard early on, I think they will bide their time and see how things pan out. Of course the danger is to let the front teams get too far away, leaving too much work to catch them up.
SleepMonsters
