14 DAY TRIAL // Cycling is a team sport, but there are always a number of riders that are special, leaders of their team, the ones that really count for a specific prize that the team is aiming for and often the strategy, especially that a three-week race like Le Tour is built around them and their needs.
But the situation in a race does not always conform to the ideas that the managers of the teams (be they real or virtual) have before each stage and that's kinda what happened to me after the team time trial, which I managed to win.
Winning felt good, increases the money that sponsors will give me next season and increases the morale of my team, but it also means that Leopard-Trek will now have to work a lot more in order to dictate the pace of the race, reel in breakaways and make sure that Cancellara keeps his jersey for quite some time before losing it on the first big mountain stage, hopefully to Andy Schleck.
In the end Mark Cavendish, also known as The Manx Missile, proved to be too tough to beat in a sprint, mostly because of the excellent lead out train delivered by this team and the effort put in by teammate Matt Goss.
Cancellara still has that nice Yellow Jersey and I think that I have every chance to keep it on until the first rest day without forcing my Leopard-Trek outfit to do too much work.
It all depends on how much the team that focus on sprint finishes, those that happen on flat ground at high speed, will help me bring back the breakaways and how well I can position my team towards the end of stages to keep riders out of trouble.
Here's how the last section of the third stage happened in Pro Cycling Manager 2011 (compare and contrast with how the same kilometers happened in the real life stage today):