HOT SEAT

Cycling Plus rides shotgun with Team ArkéaSamsic in the Copenhagen Grand Départ and discovers what a tightrope walk a Tour de France time trial really is

- John Whitney

As shields from the pouring rain went, the passenger seat of the car of Yvon Ledanois - directeur sportif with the Arkéa-Samsic pro team - took some beating. It certainly bested the assorted brollies, capes and human-sized carrier bags that Copenhagen's public had necessarily donned amid apocalyptic conditions, as the Tour de France finally, belatedly, visited their city, two years after it was supposed to. Unless you're the host of a Gore-Tex symposium, no event organiser pictures such scenes when they think of their event taking place. Mind you, the Danes are a hardy people and weren't about to let a bit of rain put a dampener on their once-in-a-generation party.

To this party Cycling Plus had been invited by Arkéa-Samsic bike supplier Canyon, into the team's pit area throughout the opening stage time trial, and to sit in their team car during the race. Canyon is an enthusiastic sponsor of men's professional cycling, providing bikes to two other teams in this race, Movistar and Alpecin-Deceuninck; Arkéa-Samsic is a French World Tour team based in Brittany, notably home to Breton darling and 2017 King of the Mountains Warren Barguil, 2018 British National Champion Connor Swift and three-time Tour de France podium Nairo Quintana. And it would be the latter who I would be following in the car, as the Colombian attempted to walk the tightrope around this 13.2km city centre course, on one hand trying to limit his losses to a number of more talented rivals in this discipline, and on the other, of not crashing out of the race before it had really begun.