14 DAY TRIAL // The favorites of Le Tour de France tend not to like cobblestones and this is a stage where they need to try their best to survive, a day when victory does not mean getting first to the line but arriving there without a crash, a puncture, or any other sort of incident.
The fifth stage of Le Tour starts in Ypres and is designed to commemorate some of the battlefields of the First World War.
This means that, around the half-way point of the course, the riders will need to negotiate the treacherous sections that also appear in the famous Paris – Roubaix spring classic.
The cobbled sections might not be very long, but they are filled with danger, and each team will try to put their leaders on the front and keep them protected, which enhances the potential for major crashes.
Support cars, which can offer spare wheels or even entire new bikes, also need to keep a solid distance away, which means technical incidents can have a big effect on the rest of Le Tour de France.
In order to guide my own team through the cobbled roads, I brought two solid classic riders with me, Stjin Devolder and Fabian Cancellara, and I will use them to try and protect Frank Schleck and Kiserlovski during the coming simulated stage.
Depending on the flow of the race, I might actually try and win this one, but the priority is to get with the entire team to the end without losing any sort of time to the other favorites.
The first half of the stage was uneventful, but then a number of riders tried to attack as the cobbles started to appear.
None of the riders were powerful enough to get a big gap, and on the longest section, I launched Cancellara while leaving Devolder to protect my leader, Frank Schleck.
The Swiss rider, who is a specialist in these types of races, managed to quickly establish a difference of more than a minute to the peloton and went to the head of the race.
Unfortunately, cobbles made way for regular paved roadways for the last kilometers, so the peloton managed to come close and Tom Boone won the sprint using his superior speed.
The upside is that Fabian Cancellara is now the Maillot Jaune, the leader of the competition, after five stages.
Take a look at how the cobbled fifth stage of the PCM 2014 simulated race unfolded.
