Window for success slowly shutting but proving to be the driving force for Richie Porte
LEADING Tour de France contender Richie Porte has given himself a two-year window to achieve a lifelong ambition and finish on the podium on the biggest bike race on the planet.
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LEADING Tour de France contender Richie Porte has given himself a two-year window to achieve a lifelong ambition and finish on the podium on the biggest bike race on the planet.
On the eve of the 2018 edition — where the BMC star will again start among the favourites for the title — the 33-year-old knows the window to taste success is slowly closing.
But it is this fact which is fuelling the drive for the new the dad after multiple heartbreaks.
Last year it was the horrifying 72km/h crash on the Mont du Chat descent that left him with a fractured pelvis and broken collar bone. A year earlier, where he eventually finished a career-best fifth, a freak puncture on stage 2 cost him any genuine chance at winning.
But coming off the best result of his career with his Tour de Suisse triumph last month, Porte is primed for an all-out assault.
“One hundred per cent, I have got two more years to try and nail it down, I’m 33 now, I think come next year that window is closing,” Porte told the Mercury from BMC’s final training camp.
“But it is not just about winning the tour, even to be on the podium there is a massive thing.
“It does motivate me to have a great tour this year.”
It has been a much different build up for the Tasmanian this year, with the recent birth of son Luca with wife Gemma altering much of his early season racing.
Coming down with the flu in February also forced Porte to spend some time off his bike, but he looks back in hindsight and believes it could be a blessing in disguise for the gruelling three weeks which await.
However he dismisses any suggestions he peaked too soon in 2017 after a blistering start which resulted in overall victories at the Tour Down Under and Tour of Romandie, claiming the queen stage at Paris-Nice, and finishing runner-up at the Criterium du Dauphine.
Porte is often in peak condition at the beginning of every new year — mainly due to the power of work he does back in his home state.
“Going in last year I was one of the odds-on favourites, this year has been a lot slower build up for me which was by design, by the team and my coach,” he said.
“It does feel a bit more low-key this year but winning Tour de Suisse just shows we are where we need to be going into the Tour.
“I enjoy being in Tassie and I find it one of the best places to train. It is just easy to be ready in January when you have come from a European winter.
“I’ve enjoyed winning Tour Down Under and stages there and also being good in the early part of the season.
“Paris-Nice, Catalunya, they are some of the biggest one-week stage races going around. If you win those and the Tour doesn’t quite go to plan, it’s still not a lost season.
“But obviously the Tour is the biggest race we have and the one you really want to be flying in, but I don’t think it is a bad thing to win those races.”
As has been well documented, the first week of the Tour has the potential to blow the race apart, none more so than the cobbled stage 9 which has all of the general classification riders on edge.
Porte will be joined by Paris-Roubaix champion Greg Van Avermaet, veteran Aussie classics specialist Simon Gerrans, New Zealand’s time-trial specialist Patrick Bevin and Swiss duo Michael Schar and Stefan Kung to assist him into the Alps and Pyrenees, before Tejay van Garderen and Damiano Caruso will be called into action up the climbs.
“The first nine days this year, there is really quite a lot of dangerous stages where you can easily lose time.
“There is like a Paris-Roubeax stage, stage nine, that’s crazy. We have done cobbles before in the Tour de France but not like this.
“For me, that is the biggest stress going into that first week.
“From stage 10 is when the proper Tour starts, we are in the Alps and then we go across to the Pyrenees.
“I’m more looking forward to getting through the first nine stages and then it is a bit more business as usual.”
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