Mavic Trans-Provence Day 1: Rochebrune to Clamensane

Seventy-one riders started the first day of the Mavic Trans-Provence on Sunday, and all seventy-one finished, with last year’s winner Jérôme Clementz leading at the end of the day after winning the final special stage and taking second in the first two.

Here’s the day’s video:

It was a relatively relaxed start to the week with a later kick-off than normal at 8.30 am. The riders tackled three special stages and around 45km of riding.

After an uplift out of the valley, pedalling proper started with the now legendary first climb to the first special stage. The climb looks like an innocuous enough fire road. It gains height steadily to log 600 metres of ascent and tops out at around the 2000 metre mark. It’s certainly a wake up to the system.

Stage one has been modified from last year and organisers omitted the lung-busting ‘carry or push’ section, instead choosing to shorten the stage. Old hands at the event are disappointed that the newcomers don’t have to suffer in the same way.

It still started on slightly uphill singletrack before plunging into a leaf and wood-littered chute that started steeply and only continued to steepen as it made its way down hill. A real case of do or don’t and make a choice at the beginning! Dismounts can and do end badly here. This is the special stage where round-the-world record holder Mike Hall broke his ribs. Commitment is the key.

A short liaison stage led riders to a brand new special stage two for 2012, which started with steep switchbacks and ended in singletrack that crisscrossed a stream. There were a number of crashes including Geoff Kabush using his face as a rudimentary brake! While there were no serious, the alarming view of Anka Martin riding into the feed station bleeding from around her eye after getting caught with a branch was reminder of how a small thing can potentially end your race. This is a race that has a long way to unwind

At the feed station, Fox were turning around some very quick rebuilds of forks for competitors, while Mavic neutral support were busy repairing drivetrains and bleeding brakes as well as dealing with any wheel problems a rider might have regardless of brand.

Mavic’s large yellow truck and its household name status in France brought out some of the local villages more colourful characters mostly to have a nose around. A man on a chopper motorbike in leather chaps turned up, then later appeared trying to chance his arm and get a free repair of some seriously vintage mountain bikes.

What happens when you leave a feed station at the Mavic Trans-Provence? Well, it normally involves something steep and not in the direction that most people prefer. This feed station was no different. The second part of the day started with a big fire road climb that finished the climbing for the day and led to the final special stage.

Open woodland singletrack gave way to more leaf-filled gullies before driving steeply down the side of the mountain in increasingly tightening switchbacks. It fired the riders out over a muddy stream and with the last blip of a timing chip against the timing balise day one was over for another year.

Tomorrow sees the first wave of riders leaving at 7am for arguably the toughest day of the event.

Pre-race gallery

 Results