CYCLING:THOMAS VOECKLER takes the yellow jersey into the Alps today, and every cycling fan in France is praying he can somehow keep it on his shoulders for another six days. That would make him the first home-grown rider to win the Tour since Bernard Hinault 26 years ago, thus ending an experience every bit as agonising as Britain's 75-year wait for a men's singles champion at Wimbledon.

“I have not the slightest chance,” Voeckler himself said on the eve of yesterday’s rest day, after being zipped into the jersey for the seventh evening in a row. “Zero per cent. But I will fight, for sure.”

The 32-year-old leader of the humble Europcar team has been playing down his chances ever since a bold and sustained attack during stage nine, from Issoire to Saint-Flour, took him to the top of the general classification. He would be bound to lose the leadership in the Pyrenees, he claimed, because he was not a specialist climber.

Instead he defended the jersey with style and spirit, countering attacks from the Schleck brothers, Ivan Basso and Cadel Evans on the giant climbs to Luz-Ardiden and the Plateau de Beille.

Voeckler has been this way before. He made his name in 2004, aged only 24, by holding the overall leadership for 10 days, keeping Lance Armstrong at bay in the Pyrenees before succumbing in the Alps. And that memory, according to David Millar, the experienced Garmin-Cervelo rider, may be persuading observers to underrate his chances now.

“There are preconceptions because he’s already lost the yellow jersey in the mountains,” Millar said yesterday. “But if it was any other rider who had done what he has just done in those two stages, defending the yellow jersey with strength in the highest mountains, you would say, ‘This guy can win the Tour’.

“It’s one of those classic sporting moments where we are basing an assessment of his future performance on his past results, when actually he seems to be doing something that merits more respect. Don’t forget he was attacking in the first week. He wasn’t saving energy. The day he took the yellow jersey he was attacking off the front and the other big guys were just sitting in. He is not going to weaken now. If you are defending like that on stage 14 and 15, it means you are going to keep it up until the end. Now it is up to everyone else to shake him.”

Voeckler’s team, known until last year as Bbox Bouygues Telecom, have possibly the smallest budget of any of this year’s Tour outfits. After relegation from the ProTour series they now compete in Europe’s second division events, and owe their presence in the Tour de France to a wild-card system that favours home-owned teams.

But Voeckler has been superbly supported by his colleagues, notably the 24-year-old Pierre Rolland, who was once feted, like so many young French riders, as the great white hope. Rolland faded badly after his early success, but he was at his leader’s side on every major climb last week.

Voeckler is what the world of French cycling calls a baroudeur, which translates as someone who is not scared of a fight. He was born in Alsace but moved at the age of seven to Martinique, where his father pursued a love of yacht racing until he was lost at sea. Thomas was 17, and already competing on a bike, when the family returned to France.

Competing, like many French riders, against dopers from other nations, Voeckler needed to make dramatic gestures to grab attention.

“A lot of his early career was based on the fact that he couldn’t compete with the big guys because they were ‘prepared’ (doped),” Millar said.

“So he had to create a market for himself: cinematic, emotional, over the top, a lot of working the cameras, tongue out, trying too hard to make people love him. But now he is older and wiser, he has got a stronger body, and it is a more level playing field.”

It is no accident, Millar says, that the top riders are grouped together going into the last week of the Tour, or that the speed of the leading riders is going down from the days of the “two-speed Tours”.

Voeckler, and his closest rivals, for instance, took almost three and a half minutes longer to climb to the Plateau de Beille on Saturday than Marco Pantani took 13 years ago.

“There is no doubt that it’s cleaner,” Millar said.

“The highest guys are at a similar level because there are no big secrets out there. Once you have the 20 best in the world all eating the same thing, drinking the same thing and doing the same recovery, they are going to perform at a similar level and it is going to become very tactical. And tactically, Voeckler is very clever.

“A lot can happen in the Alps, but I would put him on the podium at the moment, for sure. He is an incredible bike rider and I hope this Tour de France will give him the respect that he does deserve.”

Guardian Service