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| Not to be sniffed at |
Looking down the start sheet in Denmark three weeks ago, as the pundits picked out the GC contenders, it is fair to say that few of them would have given number 212 more than a cursory glance. And yet, as De Gendt rode majestically along the valley and up the Passo di Stelvio on stage 20, his gap back to Hesjedal, Rodriguez and co. holding at over 5 minutes, some were even talking of a final day challenge for the overall title.
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| Ryder Hesjedal desperately trying to close the gap |
Ultimately, it wasn’t to be. Eurosport viewers had been treated to an hour and a half of the doom-monger, Sean Kelly promising that De Gendt would lose large chunks of time in the final few kilometres. All minds rewinded to Andy Schleck’s 60 km attack over the Col d’Izoard in last year’s Tour de France, remembering how the Luxembourger lost a massive 45 seconds of his lead to Cadel Evans in the final kilometre of the Col du Galibier. However, there was no collapse of this nature from the Belgian. Yes, he lost time, but not in the way that most would have expected. Instead, over the course of the final 10 km of the Stelvio, De Gendt lost just a minute and a half to second place, despite the concerted efforts of powerful rides by the Garmin Barracuda duo of Hesjedal and Vande Velde and last ditch attacks by Scarponi and Rodriguez.
However, the true showing of De Gendt as true contender for future Grand Tours came not on the Stelvio but in the next day’s time trial around the streets of Milan. A superb fifth place secured third in the general classification. Time trials in the final days of a three week tour are usually where the often inconclusive time gaps between the leaders from the mountain stages are moulded to give us the final results. Often the final winner of grand tours are able to secure top ten placings in these tests against the clock, showing superb powers of recovery to challenge the time trial specialists, who would have been taking it ‘easy’ in previous days to target that stage. Recent examples are Contador’s ‘third place’ in the final stage of last year’s Giro and victory in the stage 18 time trial of the 2009 Tour, beating Cancellara, and Evans’ second place in last year’s time trial around Grenoble in the Tour, narrowly missing out on the stage win to Tony Martin. With his fifth place finish, De Gendt beat a number of very fine time trialists such as teammate Gustav Eric Larsson, Svein Tuft and Adriano Malori, a true sign of a Grand Tour contender.
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| 1978 retro: the last Belgian Grand Tour winner |
But where has this hope for a first Belgian Grand Tour victor since Johan de Muynck and a possible heir to Merckx emerged from?
While many future GC contenders spend their U23 years racking up the victories and contesting the Tour de l’Avenir, De Gendt enjoyed a fairly unremarkable espoir career, the highlights being a stage win in the 2007 Thuringen Rundfahrt and overall victory in the Triptyque des Monts et Chateaux.
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| De Gendt and Boasson Hagen at the 2009 Tour of Britain |
However, for British fans at least, it was the 2009 Tour of Britain where the young Belgian, then riding for Topsport Vlaanderen first began to make an impression, going on the attack day after day to claim the sprint and mountain classifications. Previous winners of these awards were Mark Cavendish and Edvald Boasson Hagen, and Andy Schleck and Danilo di Luca respectively, so certainly nothing to be sniffed at.
2010 again saw some respectable results such as second in Brabantse Pijl and third overall in the Ster Elektrotoer, but riding for a Pro Continental team, opportunities to ride against the best cyclists in the world were few and far between.
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| A new, lean De Gendt takes stage 1 of Paris-Nice |
However, 2011 saw not only a contract from Vacansoleil, now a Pro Tour team, but a huge loss of weight which saw a great improvement in his climbing abilities. Having struggled with his weight in previous years, De Gendt, who described sausages and salami as his greatest weakness, went on strict diet to lose 4 kilograms in six weeks at the start of the year. What followed was a superb Paris-Nice, claiming a stage and wearing the yellow jersey for three stages, and victory in a mountain stage of the Tour de Suisse in which he held off Andy Schleck on the final climb after a long breakaway.
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| A superb 5th place on Alpe d’Huez |
While many riders can lose to enable them to compete in the shorter week long tours, to have the power of recovery to compete over three weeks is another matter. In many ways, the 2011 Tour foreshadowed De Gendt’s performance in the final two days of the Giro. Fifth in the stage up to Alpe d’Huez and third in the Grenoble time trial proved that the Belgian had the stamina to compete in the final week of a Grand Tour. However, these performances came after losing more than 35 minutes to the leaders in the previous two stages, hardly challenging for the victory. This is where De Gendt’s Giro performance represents a significant improvement. In the previous two mountain stages, De Gendt limited his losses to around a minute and a half in both cases.
The ability to compete day after day over three weeks is something which only comes to all but the most gifted riders with maturity and experience. Now, at the age of 25, it seems that De Gendt is gaining both of these. Whether he will be able to challenge for even greater wins in the future now that he is destined to be a marked man in the biggest of races remains to be seen, but with the clear ability to challenge in both the mountains and against the clock, it seems that whenever the name ‘Thomas De Gendt’ appears on the start list, all will pay attention.
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