Can Porte drive the Sky train?
That Richie Porte has become Team Sky’s leader by default is an inescapable fact. The untimely departure of defending champion, Chris Froome, wrought by fractures in both hands, has elevated the Tasmanian from super domestique to the rider on whom the hopes of Sir Dave Brailsford are now firmly pinned. Stage eight offered the first opportunity to asses Porte’s capacity to go wheel-to-wheel with the maillot jaune and the pre-race favourite on elevated roads. How did he fare?
Porte has made an excellent start to his new role, exhibiting sufficient racing nous to ride clear of the bunch before the finale of stage seven and find safe harbour on the extreme left of the road before the sprint exploded. Andrew Talansky, who failed to take similarly evasive action and realised too late that he was caught in the maelstrom, might be advised to study Porte’s approach to the same scenario.
On stage eight, he was similarly impressive, remaining stubbornly on the shoulders of Nibali and Contador despite the Spaniard’s accelerations and the Italian’s response to them. As Contador recouped, Porte drew closer to the pair, giving credence to his post-stage comments that on long, dragging gradient where rhythm is key, he will expect to do better still.
Porte as Tour winner still feels like a long shot. He is a fine rider, and was an integral part of Froome’s victory last year, but asking him to become team leader after five stages is a tall order. In addition, his depleted team, with the possible exception of Geraint Thomas, has no one who can support him in the high mountains. Much has been written about Sir Bradley Wiggins’ absence from the Tour, but at this moment, it is the omission of British road race champion, Peter Kennaugh, likely to wrap up overall victory today at the Tour of Austria, that is the more glaring.
We wish Porte luck in his bid to become Team Sky’s third consecutive winner of the Tour de France, but we sense he will need it. At time of writing, he trails Nibali by 1.58 and leads Contador by just 36 seconds. If Contador’s aggression cracks the Italian, it is likely Porte will crack too. And if Nibali holds firm in the mountains, Porte will struggle to take nearly two minutes from him. The penultimate stage time trial offers a rolling parcours, rather than an unbroken, skyward trajectory, such as the Col d’Eze, on which he excelled to win last year’s Paris-Nice.
