Section:GDN 1N PaGe:40 Edition Date:190724 Edition:03 Zone: Sent at 23/7/2019 23:58 cYanmaGentaYellowb
••• The Guardian Wednesday 24 July 2019(^40) Sport
Cycling Tou r de Fra nce
Racing
Battaash the hot
favourite for a
Goodwood triple
Sometimes in horse racing a trainer
just has to stick with what works, even
if logic suggests it should not. That is
the situation in which Charlie Hills
fi nds himself as he prepares to send
Battaash to Glorious Goodwood next
week, where the crack sprinter will try
to become the fi rst horse to win the
King George Stakes three times.
For all his speed Battaash has
so far been unable to win at either
Ascot or York but he is unbeaten in
two visits to Goodwood. Asked what
makes the Sussex track ideal for the
horse, Hills said yesterday: “I don’t
know. I would have thought it would
be the worst place because it’s not the
easiest lead-up.”
This is a reference to Battaash’s now
familiar propensity for worrying his
chance away in the moments before
a race. At Goodwood runners have
to be driven in a horsebox from the
racecourse stables up to the paddock
area and, once the jockey is mounted,
they then face a long walk through a
big crowd to the track.
It is a combination of circumstances
not calculated to suit a nervy animal.
“But he seems to love it there,” Hills
said. “He’s behaved twice there very
well. Maybe the contours of the track
help him. He’s a tremendously fast
horse.”
Battaash is a hot favourite for the
Group Two contest a week on Friday,
with few bookmakers prepared to off er
better than 4-7. They are less worried
about the chance of Hills’s other
big-race contender for Goodwood,
Phoenix Of Spain, a 7-1 shot in the
Sussex Stakes next Wednesday. Those
odds derive from his midfi eld fi nish at
Royal Ascot last month and it seems
punters are more inclined to believe in
that form than his earlier Irish Guineas
success. But Hills can think of a couple
of reasons why that could be a mistake.
“It was horrible conditions for that
race, the ground was getting quite
loose on top. All his best performances
have been on fast ground,” which the
grey is likely to get next week.
Chris Cook
Thomas rides on despite crash
while Ewan enjoys second win
Jeremy Whittle
Nîmes
In a gripping Tour de France luck is
holding for Geraint Thomas. The
Welshman bounced off the baking
French tarmac yet again as heatwave
conditions settled on the peloton
during a rolling loop around Nîmes,
which climaxed in another sprint win
for Caleb Ewan, already a stage winner
in Toulouse.
The latest fall for Thomas in this
year’s race came as he took a right -
hand bend after almost 50 km of racing.
“I just had one hand on the bars and
the gears jumped and jammed and I
got thrown off my bike on a corner,”
he said. “I knew the race wasn’t on,
so I just got back into the group. It’s
just frustrating.”
It was another lucky escape and the
defending champion’s third crash in
this year’s Tour following his heavy
one in the Tour of Switzerland in mid-
June. Once again, as in Brussels and
Saint-Étienne, the Welshman escaped
with only minor cuts and scrapes on
his left side and, after a bike change,
was soon paced back by his Ineos
teammates.
“I just took off an old scar so it was
new skin bleeding,” he said of the cuts
to his left side, adding that his latest
crash was a “freak thing”.
Thomas’ sports director Nicolas
Portal, described the Welshman
as “lucky”. Oddly, though, despite
Thomas clearly being given a replace-
ment machine after the crash, Portal
said: “We didn’t actually talk about it.
We asked him if he wanted to swap his
bike but he said no.” Dylan van Baarle
was also fortunate to escape with an
offi cial warning after the Dutchman
went back down the road to help his
team leader back into the peloton.
But if luck, good and bad, can
infl uence the outcome of this Tour
de France, then it is defi nitely in for
Thomas. Contrast his good fortune
with Jakob Fuglsang, who also crashed
on the first stage in Brussels and
arrived at the fi nish area in N îmes in
fl oods of tears after quitting the race
following an innocuous fall in Uz ès,
30 km from the fi nish.
The Dane, who had been ninth
overall and is the winner this year
of Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the
Critérium du Dauphiné, may not have
challenged for victory in Paris but his
absence from the elite climbing group
in the three Alpine stages to come
will only add further nuance to the
multiple tactical scenarios.
Ewan’s second sprint success, fi ve
days after his fi rst ever Tour win , came
despite himself. “I felt so bad today,”
he said. “The heat really hit me but I
had some extra motivation with the
presence of my wife and my daughter.
It was already such a big dream to win
one stage. Now I ’ve won two, I can’t
believe it.”
The heat is set to continue into stage
17, from Pont du Gard, in the Bouches -
du -Rh ône, to Gap, at the foot of the
Alps, a 200 km haul through the hills
of the Vaucluse and Drôme. With
temperatures again expected as high
as 40 C, teams will be running out of
their drinks supplies mid -stage, as
Portal explained.
“It was very, very hot,” he said of
the stage to Nîmes. “Halfway through,
both cars ran out of drinks. The
commissaires allowed feeding from
the car after 10 km which was the right
thing to do. I guess it was the same for
everybody.”
With the Alps now looming ever
closer, the outcome of the Tour
remains uncertain. “The climbs there
are longer and steeper,” said Egan
Bernal, one of Thomas’s Ineos team-
mate s and tipped by many for fi nal
victory. “They’re more of the Colom-
bian style of climbing. I’m ready and
I feel good. However, we’re in the
third week and anything can happen.
Team Ineos is solid but other teams
will have to handle some responsibili-
ties too.”
While the main contenders are
fretting over losing seconds in the ski
resorts the Mitchelton Scott team of
Simon and Adam Yates are likely to
turn their attention to bagging further
stage wins. “We’re looking good,” their
sports director, Matt White, said, “and
we haven’t fi nished yet.”
Today
Stage 17 200km
Pont du Gard → Gap
Gap
745m
Pont du Gard
88m
Pont du Gard
Gap
Hilly stage
0km 62 104.5 200km
4
Côte de
La Rochette-
du-Buis
756m
4
Côte de
La Rochette-
du-Buis
3
Col de la
Sentinelle
981m
3
Col de la
Sentinelle
S
Vaison-la-
Romaine
208m
S
Vaison-la-
Romaine
KM 0
Orange
Buis-les-
Baronnies
Monêtier
Allemont
Geraint Thomas
Team Ineos
‘The gears jammed
and I got thrown
off on a corner. It’s
just frustrating’
Supporters
take to a
swimming
pool to avoid
the heat as the
peloton passes
by in Nîmes
ANNE-CHRISTINE
POUJOULAT/AFP/
GETTY IMAGES
Nîmes; 177km
1 C Ewan (Aus) Lotto
Soudal 3hr 57min 08sec;
2 E Viviani (It)
Deceuninck-QuickStep;
3 D Groenewegen (Neth)
Jumbo-Visma; 4 P Sagan
(Svk) Bora-Hansgrohe;
5 N Bonifazio (It) Total
Direct Energie;
6 M Matthews (Aus)
Sunweb; 7 M Trentin (It)
Mitchelton-Scott;
8 J Stuyven (Bel) Trek-
Segafredo all same time
General Classification
1 J Alaphilippe (Fr)
Deceuninck-QuickStep
64hr 57min 30sec;
2 G Thomas (GB) Ineos
+1min 35sec;
3 S Kruijswijk (Neth)
Jumbo-Visma +1:47;
4 T Pinot (Fr)
Groupama-FDJ +1:50;
5 E Bernal (Col) Ineos
+2:02; 6 E Buchmann
(Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe
+2:14; 7 M Landa (Sp)
Movistar +4:54
Stage 16
results
Chris Cook’s tips Page 37
Boxing
Dadashev, 28,
dies after fi ght
was stopped
The Russian boxer Maxim Dadashev
has died from injuries he sustained
during a fi ght in the United States on
Friday , according to his trainer, Buddy
McGirt. Dadashev was 28.
“It just makes you realise what type
of sport we’re in ,” McGirt told ESPN.
“He did everything right in training, no
problems, no nothing. My mind is like
really running crazy, right now. Like
what could I have done diff erently?
But at the end of the day, everything
was fi ne [in training]. He seemed OK,
he was ready, but it’s the sport that
we’re in. It just takes one punch.”
Dadashev was placed in a medi-
cally induced coma after his defeat
by Subriel Matias in an IBF junior wel-
terweight title eliminator. Dadashev
underwent surgery at a hospital in
Maryland, for bleeding on the brain. On
Saturday doctors there said the fi ghter
had suff ered severe brain damage and
his death was confi rmed yesterday.
The fight was brutal and was
stopped by McGirt after the 11th round,
when he decided his fi ghter had taken
too much damage. Dadashev shook
his head when McGirt told him he was
stopping the fi ght. Dadashev collapsed
and started vomiting and left the arena
on a stretcher. He was born in St Peters-
burg but was based in California and
was undefeated in 13 fi ghts going into
Friday’s bout. He was married with one
child.
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