Ciaran Power – “Hard”

Tomorrow, the Linda McCartney Pro Cycling Team face the first major time-trial of the season, a 26km race against the watch at Ascoli Piceno in the 5th stage of Tirreno – Adriatico.

Without a specialist “tester” in their ranks here, the focus will be on Pascal Richard and Max Sciandri as they attempt to protect their good overall placings.

“I’m not looking for a win here,” explained team manager Sean Yates, himself a winner of the Tour de France’s long time-trial in 1988. “As long as Pascal finishes in the top 50 and is still within sight of the overall, I’ll be satisfied. The task for the other guys is to get round and save themselves for the hard stages still to come.”

Pascal and Max will both be mounted on their time-trial bikes for the first time. The frames are the aerodynamic profile Principia TT28s, made especially in the team’s yellow colours. The VisionTech carbon-fibre handlebar set-up is the same as Lance Armstrong used to win each of last year’s Tour de France time-trials.

Today, Pascal was on his custom white Olympic Champion’s Principia for the road stage from Isernia to Luco Dei Marsi. After once again skirting the British war graves at Montecassino, the race headed high into the snow capped mountains before descending to Luco Dei Marsi, nestling in a bowl with the jagged peaks on all sides. Despite the long climb up, the race finished with four laps of an 11km circuit, giving the sprinters another chance to practice their craft. First in the dash was Germany’s Erik Zabel, proving that he will be ready to add to his two Milan-San Remo crowns when the “Primavera” takes place in a couple of weeks time.

“It was so hard on that climb today!” gasped Ciaran Power as all the team managed to finish comfortably in the bunch. “It shows what a hard race this is, because they were going completely eyeballs-out up that mountain, but still nobody gets dropped! In the other races we’ve been doing, the field would have been split to smithereens.” Mapei’s Michele Bartoli, his troublesome knee covered in more strapping than an Egyptian mummy, found the strength to stretch the field, but not enough to break it.

And perhaps the mummy’s curse has affected Sean Yates, who casually remarked to the mechanic as the climb began, “We haven’t had a puncture in the whole race, have we?” Within five minutes he was gunning the Renault’s engine to regain his allotted spot in the convoy, having stopped to service two victims of the stony mountain roads.

All the team followed Sean Yates’s instructions to look after their leaders and not waste too much energy. When the race was trundling along the valleys at a perambulatory pace earlier in the day, the manager had called to his charges over their tiny radio transmitters: “Enjoy it while you can boys!”