Revealed: What triggered Richie Porte’s Tour de France downfall
RICHIE Porte has revealed a simple bump in the road sparked the chain of events that cruelly ended his hopes of a Tour de France victory.
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RICHIE Porte has revealed a simple bump in the road sparked the chain of events that cruelly ended his Tour de France.
Porte, 33, was again among the favourites for the world’s biggest bike race before suffering a broken collarbone in a big crash less than 10km into stage nine from Arras to Roubaix.
It was the same stage that 12 months earlier marked the Australian’s horrific smash which fractured his pelvis and put him in a wheelchair for a month.
While last year’s crash took place on a treacherous, high-speed mountain descent, Porte was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time this year.
“The first guy down was (Michael) Valgren. Obviously there’s no way he intended for anything like that to happen, but he basically hit a bump which ‘G’ (eventual winner Geraint Thomas) and ‘Froomey’ (Chris Froome) told me afterwards they hit as well and nearly stacked,” Porte told the Herald Sun.
“But when (Valgren) hit it, he went to pedal again and his chain was off and it just flicked him straight over the handlebars.
“There was nothing I could have done about it. I didn’t even know anything was up until I was on the ground.”
The resulting pileup forced Porte, Spaniard Jose Rojas and, eventually, Belgian Jens Keukeliere out of the race through injury.
Valgren, a Danish rider who trains with Porte in Monaco, called the stricken Aussie the next day to issue a tearful apology.
Stage nine and its 15 sectors of cobblestones spread over 21km on the way to Roubaix had been hyped up in the weeks and months before the Tour.
By the time the peloton took to the start line they had been whipped into a jittery frenzy. Porte’s crash happened well before the bunch even reached the first cobbled sector.
“The bunch was so stressed that day. Even in the neutral zone you could just feel the stress within the bunch,” Porte said.
“I guess in a stage like that, those cobbles, it had been built up and up and it was just like a pressure cooker.”
Speaking outside the team bus before the start of stage, Porte was calm.
“It’s one of the crucial stages. Today will tell a lot. Hopefully I get through unscathed,” he said.
He told the Herald Sun: “On the day I was fine. I was ready and I guess you get yourself into that battle mode don’t you?
“When you’re sat on the bus thinking about it, it’s probably more stressful than when you actually get on the bike.
“I find that with the Tour. Everything is made out to be more than it needs to be.”
Originally published as Revealed: What triggered Richie Porte’s Tour de France downfall
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