14 DAY TRIAL // This is the first real big test of the 2014 edition of Le Tour de France, and my biggest fear is that my team has simply used too much energy already and that in the end we might lose a lot of time when compared to favorites like Contador from Saxo and Froome from Sky.
The course is rather short, with only 160 kilometers into which the organizers at the ASO have managed to cram no less than seven climbs, one of which is well known to the peloton and fans as La Planche des Belles Filles.
Its last climbing section has a gradient of 20 percent, which can test even the best of mountain goats, and it comes after a series of other tough tests.
This is the kind of stage where one of the big favorites can attack and take two minutes on his competitors, but given that we have not yet had our rest day, it’s more likely, in the real world, for general classification contenders to save their gunpowder and mark each other.
In Pro Cycling Manager 2014, I will also try and play defensively, especially given that my leaders are somewhat weak already, and I will wait and see how the various teams approach the stage before committing to a long-term assault or trying to limit my losses.
I put my weakest riders on the front, trying to make sure that all the attacks are somewhat controlled, while making efforts to protect my best two mountain specialists, Schleck and Kiserlovski.
This worked well, even if all the rivals chose to attack at one point or another, but I constantly lost riders, who after burning up their energy dropped back to some of the groups that were forming behind the main peloton.
In the final 30 kilometers even former Yellow Jersey holder Fabian Cancellara was forced to use up his energy in order to hunt down escape groups, and on the final climb, I sent Frank up the road, who managed to catch up to the powerful team leaders who had previously attacked and even overtook some of them.
Kiserlovski also performed well, even after doing a lot of protection work, and I managed to make sure I limited my losses, even though I probably could have done even better if I had not used my energy in a futile attack.
Contador managed to take the stage and is leading Le Tour de France ahead of the much needed first rest day.
