Alex Edmondson resembled Superman as he made a running start to stage 16 of the Tour de France, ditching time trial ceremony to mount his bike and begin the final week of the race in one fluid movement.
Blink and you would have missed Edmondson – who TV crews incorrectly referred to as his dsm-firmenich teammate Sam Welsford – as he skipped the traditional standing start with countdown in Passy for the hurried maneuver that Welsford repeated just moments after.
The confusion didn’t stop there, with another dsm-firmenich teammate, John Degenkolb, who was the next to depart, suffering skin abrasions to his leg after crashing on the first corner, where Nils Eekhoff would later also come down.
Edmondson tried to recover as much time after his miscue on the start line and arrived at the finish in Combloux dripping in sweat from the effort, the hilly terrain of the 22.4km test, and the heat. He ultimately placed 112th, 6:59 slower than the winning time of Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma).
“I would have loved to have given it a red-hot crack but it’s a pretty hilly spot,” Edmondson said.
Moments later Welsford, who went seven seconds quicker than his teammate to slot into 105th, rode up alongside him. The pair, speaking with endearing humility, held court in front of a huddle of journalists, trying to determine what happened at the start and the condition of their teammates who crashed.
“Yeah, what was that about?” Welsford asked Edmondson.
“Mate, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I was 11 [minutes] past [one], and you were 12 past,” Edmondson said of the scheduled departure times.
The 29-year-old was right about that, but the organised chaos of the Tour, after the second rest day, with human foot traffic, cars, bikes, vans and the team bus parked some 2km away meant they were late.
“I think they [officials] were early,” Welsford continued. “I don’t know. I was taking off my ice vest and rolled up and they were like, ‘Go, go’.”
Edmondson added: “It was like cyclo-cross. I had to do a running start.
“I literally was taking the ice vest off and then it was go time. Ran and jumped. It’s not really what you want to do at the Tour de France is it?
“But we didn’t do it on purpose. Let’s hopefully make the time cut.” Which of course they did.
The Tour has been a learning curve for the pair who are Olympic medalists on the track but are making their debut at the race this year.
Welsford has been gunning…
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