It is Monday 19th July 2010 and the riders of the Tour de France are in the Pyrenees for the race’s 15th stage – 187.5km from Pamiers to Bagnères-de-Luchon.
On the menu are the climbs of the Portet-d’Aspet and the Port de Balès, the latter a 19km-long monster that tops out just 21km before the finish.
Luxembourg’s Andy Schleck is in great form, riding in yellow and with one stage to his name already after winning in Morzine-Avoriaz eight days ago.
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The Saxo Bank rider assumed the race lead on the following stage when Cadel Evans, struggling with a fractured elbow, lost significant time on a day that took in the Aravis, Saisies and Madeleine climbs.
Schleck has been in yellow ever since, and as he rolls out from Pamiers on this warm and sunny day he has a lead of 31 seconds over 2009 Tour winner Alberto Contador.
Fast-forward some four and a half hours and the race is on the upper slopes of the Port de Balès. Thomas Voeckler, wearing the tricolour jersey as France’s national champion, is head of affairs after riding away from a ten-man break.
He will go on to win the stage with a handsome margin of 1min 20sec, writing another chapter in his own fabulous Tour story. Yet he will soon become a footnote in this particular tale. The important action is behind him.
With 4km to go to the top of the Balès, Schleck is looking terrific. His Saxo Bank team have been toiling hard on this climb and they have done good work, shredding the group of overall contenders.
Now only the top five riders in the race remain together: Schleck, Contador, Samuel Sánchez, Denis Menchov and Jurgen Van den Broeck.
Schleck is fidgety. He feels good and wants to capitalise. He keeps looking back, trying to gauge the condition of the others. Contador sits on the Luxembourger’s wheel, not wanting to play his hand. The games start, the pace drops and soon the hard-won group of five swells again to more than 15.
Finally, Schleck decides it’s time to attack. He pushes harder on his pedals and explodes from the group. This is it, the move his team have been so carefully setting up. Contador is caught napping but quickly stirs, fighting to stay with Schleck.
Then, disaster. Schleck’s left leg jars as the chain on his bike unships. He looks down in disbelief just as Contador rides around the stricken maillot jaune and races into the distance. The Tour leader is left frantically trying to sort his bike out and salvage his jersey.
A modern-era <i>mea culpa</i>
Schleck never got back to Contador. The Spaniard took 39 seconds out of his rival that day and with that took the yellow jersey. Almost immediately the debate raged.
Had Contador broken cycling’s unwritten rules by attacking while the yellow jersey dealt with a mechanical or was it fair game? Contador may well win, some said, but he wouldn’t win well.
‘Chaingate’ divided opinion. Schleck was upset – publicly at least – more at his misfortune than at Contador. ‘Things happen, and everything happens for a reason,’ Schleck said straight after the stage, refusing to rise to reporters asking whether he was angry at his rival.
Instead Schleck chose to remember that during a previous stage Contador had indeed waited, saying, ‘People can say what they want but they also have to realise that Alberto was one of the guys who waited for me in Spa and that was really a great sign of fair play.’
Back at his hotel Contador was reflecting on events, and soon a video appeared online. ‘Right when I attacked Andy had a mechanical on the last climb. The race was in full gear and maybe I made a mistake. I’m sorry,’ Contador said in it, before explaining that at such a time all you think about is riding fast.
‘The kind of thing that happened today is not something I like. It’s not my style and I hope my relationship with Andy will remain as good as before,’ Contador said.
Two more days remained in the Pyrenees, including a summit finish on the Tourmalet. ‘I will ride on the Tourmalet until I fall from my bike,’ Schleck had promised in Bagnères-de-Luchon, and three days later, true to his word, he rode magnificently through the rain and fog to win on the Tourmalet’s summit.
He duelled with Contador all the way, each matching the other, with the Spaniard not contesting the surge to the line. ‘He didn’t sprint to win the stage because I did the most work. I have a lot of respect for that. It shows that he’s a great champion,’ Schleck said afterwards.
In the end Contador’s final margin over Schleck was 39 seconds, exactly the time he had taken on the Chaingate stage. ‘When I was standing on the podium in Paris in 2010 it was probably the podium where I was [most] sad because it was there for me – it was my Tour,’ Schleck reflected in 2019.
‘I saw that year that I was a little bit above Alberto. It was really the only Tour where we competed for victory where I would say I was stronger than him… I went home thinking that this was my Tour, and I should have won it.’
But the 2010 Tour was not quite done. In late September the UCI announced that Contador had tested positive during the race for prohibited drug clenbuterol.
The Spaniard claimed it had come from eating contaminated meat, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport in February 2012 came to a slightly different conclusion.
‘The athlete’s positive test for clenbuterol is more likely to have been caused by the ingestion of a contaminated food supplement than by a blood transfusion or the ingestion of contaminated meat,’ read the verdict.
Yet whatever the source, CAS upheld a two-year ban, which it retrospectively applied. In 2012 Contador’s result was stricken from the record books and Schleck was presented with the jersey and the title.
Yet for him, the moment was gone. ‘Maybe it’s in the books, but for me it’s not a victory,’ Schleck said ahead of the 2012 Tour. ‘Standing in yellow in Paris is how I would have liked it.’
Sadly for him, that would never happen.
Photo: L’Equipe
