Blazin' Saddles: Drucker too swift for Ben on the Mall but Yates motors to San Sebastian success
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Updated 03/08/2015 at 22:28 GMT
Eurosport’s cycling blogger extraordinaire Blazin’ Saddles reflects on the weekend’s cycling, including a mixed weekend for British riders.
Adam Yates wins Clasica de San Sebastian
Image credit: Imago
A mixed weekend for British riders saw Adam Yates seal the biggest win of his career in controversial circumstances in the Basque Country before a fit-again Ben Swift missed out in the Prudential RideLondon Surrey Classic.
Yates had not enjoyed much luck in the Basque Country prior to Saturday's Clásica San Sebastián, with the dreaded combination of crashes and illnesses ending his chances in last year's event as well as the previous two Tours of the Basque Country.
But fate shone favourably on the 22-year-old Briton on Saturday, instead dealing a dud hand to baby-boomer Greg Van Avermaet after the Belgian was taken out by a race motorbike near the summit of the final climb, allowing his supposedly faraway pursuer Yates to solo to victory.
Not that Yates knew it.
Such was the confusion - owing to a break down of radio communications with his Orica-GreenEdge car - that Yates crossed the line unsure of whether or not he had won. It wasn't until he'd verified the result via good old fashioned sign language moments later that he could punch the air in celebration in what must have been the most bizarre finish to a race in recent years.
"I won, but I didn't know I had won. I spoke on the radio to my sport director but because of the crowds the radio was too quiet," Yates admitted afterwards.
"On the final climb there was a breakaway still up the road. Then there was a lot of carnage, there was a crash with a motorbike, and so I just went full gas. At the time I didn't know if I had reached the lead or not."
BMC's Philippe Gilbert won the sprint for second place but his team were left to rue the incident between Van Avermaet and the motorcycle - and are now threatening legal action.
The recent Tour de France stage winner was understandably the most angry of protagonists in this odd succession of events, claiming he had been denied a clear win by the incompetence of the race organisers who - in a sternly-worded statement released by BMC later - were, along with the UCI, "negligent in providing a safe racing environment".
With his bike frame broken after the collision, Van Avermaet was unable to finish the race despite holding a "big gap" over his pursuers, including Yates. Van Avcrmaet's sports director Yvon Ledanois was also quick to echo his rider and BMC owner Jim Ochowitz's conviction that their team had been "robbed" of the win "in a scandalous fashion".
"We are not at all happy with this," Ledanois said. "Greg had a good gap. If this does not happen, he wins the race and Philippe finishes second."
Yet it was this steadfast conviction that he was going to win the race in the first place which saw many people lose a little sympathy for Van Avermaet.
Indeed, it was this perceived lack of respect by Van Avermaet that forced Yates's brother Simon to leap to his twin's defence with a Tweet that was later shared by Adam.
The pot was stirred even further when Ireland's Dan Martin of Cannondale-Garmin stepped in with his view on the incident...
And indeed, once the dust had settled on the whole debacle, Van Avermaet himself took to Twitter to congratulate Yates for his victory and put the whole debate to bed.
In the time in which it took GVA to swallow his pride - and to be fair, who can blame him for losing his rag after being mowed down by a motorcycle during a pro bike race? - the sun shone on London as the Prudential RideLondon Surrey Classic returned to the capital for a third year.
Unlike the Biblical downpours that marred last year's race, the weather was pretty much perfect as 26,000 amateur riders - including yours truly, Mr Blazin' Saddles - tackled the 100-mile amateur race in and out of Surrey ahead of the men's professional sportive.
There may have been 100% less rain that the year before, but the sun did not shine on Britain's Ben Swift for a second year in succession, the 27-year-old finishing third on the Mall a year after being denied by fellow Sheffield rider Adam Blythe.
With two riders in the decisive break, the LottoNL-Jumbo team held a numerical advantage and almost saw Sep Vanmarcke deliver the win after an audacious move inside the final 15km. But the Belgian was reeled in on the Embankment after Swift led the chase.
"I had to go really hard in the last few kilometres and I started to cramp up a little bit from the effort of chasing," said Swift, back in the peloton after breaking his shoulder in the Tour de Yorkshire in early May.
"I had three months out of competition so this is a really nice way to come back to racing and get a good result straight away. It was good to be on the podium. Even though I'd have loved to have won, I'm really, really happy."
Victory went to BMC's Jean-Pierre Drucker, the 28-year-old Luxembourgish journeyman who finished 6th in this year's Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne and 20th in last year's Paris-Roubaix.
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Luxembourg cyclist Jean-Pierre 'Jempy' Drucker riding for BMC Racing celebrates after crossing the finish line to win the Ride London - Surrey Classic road cycle race in central London on August 2, 2015
Image credit: AFP
Known as 'Jempy' by his friends, the bearded Drucker soared from Swift's back wheel to outkick 22-year-old Dutchman Mike Teunissen of LottoNL-Jumbo and take his first ever professional win - and end BMC's topsy-turvy weekend on a high.
"I'm a fast guy and so I was pretty confident," Drucker said. "I watched Ben Swift because he was nervous and wanted to do something here. I focused on him and his wheel. It ended up good for me. I'm a sprinter who loves a pretty hard race, so we tried to make it a hard race. It was perfect for us."
Things were less perfect for defending champion Blythe, however. Twelve months ago, the 25-year-old NFTO rider out-sprinted Swift for a win which became his ticket back into the WorldTour with Orica-GreenEdge.
But illness made the defence of his title slightly tricky - and this was capped off by being jilted at the airport for his return flight home...
The biggest winner of the weekend's celebration of cycling in London was the splendid weather which saw almost 100,000 people take to their bikes in Saturday's family-oriented FreeCycle around central London and Sunday's Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 100 event.
Where last year's pro event saw the famous red asphalt of the Mall covered in standing water, the likes of Drucker, Teunissen and Swift this year carved their way through a thin sprinkling of early autumn leaves - remarkable, given October's season-ending Il Lombardia one-day classic is still two months away.
The men's pro race - which featured Mark Cavendish (Etixx-QuickStep) and the apparently-no-longer-road-retired Bradley Wiggins (Team Wiggins) - was preceded by a women's circuit race on Saturday, won by Italy's Barbara Guarischi.
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British cyclist Bradley Wiggins (R) rides the roads of Surrey during the Ride London - Surrey Classic road cycle race in central London on August 2, 2015
Image credit: AFP
Besides the sad death of a 55-year-old cyclist who suffered a cardiac arrest on the route's infamous Leith Hill near Dorking in Surrey, the mass-participation sportive - which was held on roads closed to other traffic - was a great success. Much of this was thanks to the weather.
While the event's director was close to cancelling last year's event (instead reducing the course by 14 miles to take out the climb to Box Hill and the subsequent slippery descent), Hugh Brasher this year said the conditions "could hardly be better".
On a personal note, your faithful cycling blogger failed to hit his target time of five hours by a matter of two minutes - the exact time taken to fill his water bottle up at one of the numerous food hubs.
So the hot weather had something to answer for, after all...
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