Category: Racing

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Tour de France: Stage 18 Lessons

Out of the blogging world all day after seeing the last third of the time trial on the tube. The lessons:

Contador is in an amazing place as a rider. At age 25, he’s already showing himself to be the all-around force Armstrong was when he came back from cancer. Who can stop him? The doping cops. Anyone else? Maybe himself, if he insists on stunts like ignoring his team director and dropping a teammate on a decisive climb. Then again, the apparent me-first bull-headedness — if that’s what it is — is reminiscent of Armstrong’s youthful reputation.

Listen to Armstrong when he says that he doesn’t have what it takes to win the Tour. That’s what he said after Contador rode away on the Verbier climb on Sunday. I haven’t been able to decide whether it’s genuine belief or a ratings-driven need to stay on board the Armstrong train, but it’s been fascinating to watch the various members of the Versus TV team pick Lance to win in the mountains day after day after day. No matter that he hasn’t been close even once, and no matter that Contador has shown himself capable of riding away almost at will–the predictions keep on coming. But for all that, there’s something about watching Armstrong in this Tour that gives him more dimension as a man and racer; and there’s something that makes me realize how amazing his domination of this race for so long really was. I’m actually looking forward to seeing him race again next year.

Other topics that could be spun, perhaps will be some day: Wiggins. The Schlecks. Kloden. Bruyneel. Vinokourov. Splendor and Death at the Tour de France. The Armstrong who rides in our heads.

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Tour de France: Stage 17 Notebook

Your Paul Sherwen Quote of the Day: On Astana’s plans for Andreas Klöden: “Over the last couple of days, it appears they’ve been keeping him in reserve as if they’ve been trying to keep him maybe as a protective dark-horse joker.”

‘Paging Cadel Evans’: He trailed from the very start, dangled off the end of the peloton at the top of the first climb, and finished 29:43 behind the leaders. It’s a performance reminiscent of Greg LeMond’s 1992 Tour campaign, which he abandoned. LeMond announced soon afterward that he was suffering from mitochondrial myopathy, possibly related to his 1987 hunting accident. Evans started raising questions about his own health after losing more than 3 minutes on Stage 16. He reported via Twitter, “I don’t know what is the matter with me at this #tdf, obviously I’m not at my usual level. I’m going to a Doc now :o(.” (Yes, with emoticon.) No word on what the doctor might have told him. On his finish today, Evans writes: “My first gruppetto in the #tdf ever. It was… fun actually. Strange talking to Aussie’s while riding, normally have everything to loose!”

The Ox from Grimstad: Thor Hushovd turned in a stunning ride today. The massive, Norwegian, annoyingly nicknamed “God of Thunder” hauled himself across today’s climbs with enough alacrity to beat Evans across the line. Early on, he stayed close enough to dominated the front to win two intermediate sprints and pick up 12 points in the green jersey sprint competition. His nemesis, Mark Cavendish, was nowhere near the front and took zip today; he now trails Hushovd by 30 points — 230 to 200. While being no match for Cavendish in a two-up sprint, Hushovd looks like he’s locked up the green by having a more effective all-around game.

Liggett & Sherwen, Stained Jerseys, and Biscuits: Watching Thor Hushovd go over the second col of the day ahead of all the climbers:

Phil: This rider is still stinging from the words of Mark Cavendish, saying ‘there will always been a stain on your green jersey because you took if from me on a protest down in Besancon, and I wonder if that’s inspired Thor Hushovd today to go out, beat the climbers, win six points, and probably the green jersey with it.

Paul: You could probably say that he’s taking that green jersey to the laundry, Phil, to get rid of that stain this afternoon, because if he can get himself 12 points on a mountain stage, that really does take the biscuit, because this is a very brave move by a man who probably weighs in 10 or 15 kilos more than the guys in the group behind him, the climbers. He weighs in at 80 kilos … which is … I’m not sure … you can do the calculation … multiply by 2.2.

Phil: I will, yeah, when I’ve got time. It’s a lot.

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Tour de France: Rest Day Notebook

Your Phil Liggett Quote of the Day: Uttered during Sunday evening’s recap show in an otherwise entertaining mini-segment on the Italian TdF champ Gino Bartali. Phil needed to explain why Bartali’s two Tour championships occurred 10 years apart. This is what came out: “It was done either side of World War Two. And of course World War Two spoilt many, many millions of people’s lives.”

Memo to Versus sound mixers: Here’s a trend. Versus is using that newfangled “rock and roll” music as soundtrack for some of its rider profiles. Sweet. But it’s mixing the music so loud in some of the segments that you can barely hear what the “actuality”–the person talking–is saying. I don’t think this is strictly a matter of having fogey ears.

Versus ratings: After three years of doping scandals, Lance-less pelotons, and sagging ratings, Versus is seeing a big bump in viewership this year. During the first 10 stages of this year’s Tour, the live morning telecasts have jumped from 270,400 viewers to 479,800 viewers. As MediaPost notes, the ratings are also substantially higher than they were during Armstrong’s last Tour, in 2005.

Enraha! After his show of strength on the Verbier climb that ended Stage 15, Garmin’s Bradley Wiggins got lots of attention. He talked almost manically about his “day by day” focus. The rhythm of “day by day,” the accent, the vehemence: it was all very familiar. It came to me: Wiggins was channeling Scott, the crazed driving instructor in “Happy Go Lucky.” Scott has nicknamed the rear-view mirror “Enraha” as an arcane mnemonic device. His reminders to use–“Enraha! Enraha! Enraha!–are grating in the extreme. (And for the record, here’s part of what Wiggins said: “I never think too far ahead. Eveyone keeps talking to me about what’s ahead, what’s ahead. That doesn’t help my concentration. No, I go day by day. i’ve trained myself mentally as well as physically, and i go day by day, that’s what we do. How can you think three days ahead when you’ve got two days before that? That’s how you crack. That’s how you cock things up. So, day by day.”

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Tour de France Stage 14: Idiot non Savant

The delightful aspect of today’s stage: George Hincapie, in his fourteenth Tour, coming within a whisker of taking the yellow jersey. If you weren’t keeping score at home: At the end, the peloton brought back Hincapie’s breakaway just enough to deny him the maillot jaune (or MJ, as I’m seeing it tweeted). A slightly less delightful aspect of the stage: the post-finish recriminations about what various teams should have done, or shouldn’t have, to allow Hincapie, one of the class acts in pro cycling, to keep the prize. Some accuse Astana and the Armstrong/Bruyneel brain trust of setting a pace at mid-stage designed to keep HIncapie within reach. Some accuse Garmin-Slipstream of chasing aggressively late in the stage, providing the peloton with the impetus that allowed Rinaldo Nocentini (Ag2R) to keep the yellow jersey.

To which we say: Please. It’s a race. A wise man–or a man at any rate–once said, “No gifts.” If there’s one guy in the entire peloton who understands what that means, it’s Hincapie himself.

And, if there’s one man who doesn’t understand that, it’s Phil Liggett. When Versus joined the stage live, with a little more than 100 kilometers to go, The Bebington Blatherer first noted the surprise of the day: that Hincapie was close to being the race leader on the road. Then he noted with shock and clucking disapproval that Hincapie’s old friend, Lance Armstrong, had ordered Astana to bring back the breakaway. He said this not once, but twice. He ignored the fact the time gap was hardly changing. He ignored the absence of any sign that Astana was putting out an effort. He ignored the time gap as it began to grow, a sure sign that no chase was under way. He ignored the fact that Johan Bruyneel, not Armstrong, would be the one to order any move. And he ignored the fact that just about any apparent move in the peloton 100 kilometers from the finish was not likely to have much significance.

To give Phil his due, though: with a nudge from Paul Sherwen, he did change his tune when the gap grew to seven minutes, then eight. Soon, he started waxing poetic about what life would be like when Hincapie had the yellow jersey. Teammate Mark Cavendish would be appreciative, Phil predicted: “George Hincapie is usually Mark’s roommate in the hotels, and George looks after Mark, it’s like a dad looking after his son. And he’ll be only too happy if he’s looking at a yellow jersey at the end of the bed of his mate, George Hincapie, tonight. It will be a very successful and a very nice feeling.”

Oh, Phil. Goofy. Prolix. Tireless. Not often with it. How can we not love you? How can we not be exasperated?

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Crime+Fashion=Fashion Crime

Dedicated to bringing our dozens of readers only the highest-quality deep insights into the workings of the Tour de France (or TOURdafrance, as Frankie Andreu likes to say), we turn now to podium fashions. Specifically, the migraine-inducing outfits sported by the models condemned to presenting the daily trophy knick-knacks to the leader of the King of the Mountain competition. As the whole world knows, the KOM leader wears a red-on-white polka-dot jersey. Here’s renowned Tour non-winner Michael Rasmussen, without the jersey …

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… and with it:

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We’d start our fashion advice to Michael with an urgent plea for god’s sake keep your shirt on. But he’s not the focus of today’s essay. No, it’s the apparition below we want to address.

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Yes, the model is comely as all get out. She almost pulls it off, even with the thing that’s been stuck to her head. But in the world of high cycling fashion, as in the world of cycling, almost doesn’t cut it. Why? Let’s face it, outside a measles ward or a drunken company picnic, polka dots are always a tough look to carry off. But even if the mass of red spots doesn’t put you off, the lady cummerbund tied in a flouncy red bow and the parachute-style skirt should. Maybe you can only appreciate this work of fashion after seeing the podium models trying to manage it in a 20 mph wind. After watching the presentations this year, we theorize that the women presenting the King of the Mountain tchotchkes are guilty of something–maybe shop-lifting from Carrefour, the store chain that sponsors the KOM competition–and this is their punishment.

[Note: All three pictures here were uncredited and are used without permission. In order from top to bottom, they were found here, here, and here.]

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Tour de France: Stage 7

Without being excessively Twitterish, I’ll just say this about Stage 7: Check out the course profiles. A lot will be decided, and a lot will change. (Steephill.tv’s Google map of the stage makes that finishing road look like a tiny, little twisting thing.)

Here’s the course profile. (I wonder how Mark Cavendish will like the stage.)

stage7profile.gif

Below: The final 10 kilometers.

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Tour de France: Timing Rules

More on the timing rules:The previous post raised the question of how Armstrong was placed second overall after Cancellara. The answer, suggested by commenter Paul (from the Netherlands) and confirmed on Bicycle.net (here) is that the judges go back to the results of the first individual time trial (Stage 1, which was not a prologue because it was longer than 8 kilometers). As Bicycle.net explains it:

In the event two riders tie for first place in the race for the yellow jersey, their times in the race’s two individual time trials would prove crucial. In such an event the fractions of seconds from the individual time trials – which are usually rounded up to the nearest second – are employed by race officials and added to the riders’ overall time to separate them.

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Team Time Trial: Rules, Please

Watching Stage 4, the team time trial, the Versus coverage focused mostly where it always does: on road mishaps, on any and all drama involving American riders, and on the clock. That’s fine as far as it goes. But the result of the stage–with race leader Fabian Cancellara and Lance Armstrong ending in a dead heat for their total time–begged an explanation of how the heck the officials would break the tie.

There was mention of a “countback,” but no one ever said what that was, who did it, or how it worked. And I have to say, still not having done any homework on it, that I still don’t understand how Cancellara and not Armstrong wound up wearing the yellow jersey after the stage.

I’m no statistician or nothin’, but the gap between Armstrong’s Astana team and Cancellara’s Saxo Bank squad was reported at 40.11seconds. Just to be clear, that means Astana’s team time, the time awarded to Armstrong, was 40.11 seconds faster than Saxo Bank’s. Going into the stage, Cancellara was 40 seconds ahead of Armstrong. Not 40.2 or 40.99–just 40. So if Armstrong was 40.11 seconds faster than Cancellara … isn’t his total time for the race so far .11 seconds better than Cancellara’s.

Well, no, if you believe what you saw during the post-stage podium presentation. No gripe from me–I think Cancellara is swell, and Ben Stiller looked cute playing the role of ugly podium girl (the actual podium girl was a knockout if I may say so). So all I’m asking from the genius broadcasters of the stage is to explain this to your public. That’s all. And if anyone understands the timing issue and how it was resolved, please tell us.

Another matter the Versus boys didn’t get around to explaining on the live broadcast this morning was how riders who get dropped during the team event are timed. Do they get the same time as the rest of the team? That was an especially important issue for Garmin-Slipstream, which had four riders go off the back during the TTT.

Luckily, the official Tour website has something to say on this:

“… The time recorded for a team will be the time of the fifth rider. For those riders who are left behind during the team time-trial stage, their own time (real time) will be applied and taken into account for the individual general standings. The organisers have decided to go for a relatively short stage (39 km) around Montpellier to limit the consequences of the cancellation of this “comprehensive insurance.”

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Cavendish: On-Bike Fisticuffs

Earlier today, Mark Cavendish twittered this re: the end of yesterday’s stage (he was using Columbia teammate Mark Renshaw’s account):

Yesterday with 3km to go, Piet Rooijakkers (skil shimano) kidney punched me. Is he a:stupid b:crazy c:disrespectful d:all of the above? Cav

OK–what’s all that about? Maybe a little more than Cavendish let on. Here’s what The Guardian says:

Starting in Monaco, the stage was run in heat that touched 40 degrees and raised temperatures in the peloton, too. As the teams started to wind up for a hectic finish, the combustible Cavendish became embroiled with another rider. In his account, given at the post-race press conference, the guilty man was Kenny van Hummel, a Dutch rider with the Skil-Shimano team.

“He took his hands off the bars and hit me,” Cavendish said. “I was pretty annoyed about that. It’s disrespectful.”

According to the Skil-Shimano team the rider was Piet Rooijakkers, another Dutchman who had been barged and could not help touching Cavendish. When Cavendish allegedly reacted by tugging the Skil rider’s shirt, Rooijakkers lashed out.

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Tour de France Riders Who Twitter

A brief list, along with number of followers. Some Tour and cycling notables below the race group. Send me more if you have ’em.

Name (Team) Twitter handle (linked) Followers
Lance Armstrong (Astana) lancearmstrong 1.27 million
Levi Leipheimer (Astana) LeviLeipheimer 45,913
George Hincapie (Columbia-HTC) ghincapie 28,654
David Zabriskie (Garmin) dzabriskie 17,158
Christian Vande Velde (Garmin) ChristianVDV 15,738
Mick Rogers (Astana) mickrogers 12,582
Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) CadelOfficial 8,863
Mark Renshaw (Columbia-HTC) markrenshaw1 4,208
Steven de Jongh (Quickstep) stevendejongh 2,616
Bradley Wiggins (Garmin) bradwiggins 1,627
Brett Lancaster (Cervelo) bdlancaster 1,286

And other notables:

Johan Bruyneel (Astana director) johanbruyneel 26,647
Greg Henderson (Columbia-HTC) Greghenderson1 960
Chris Horner (Astana) hornerakg 12,133
Robbie Ventura (Versus TV commentator) RobbieVentura 1,885
Robbie McEwen (Katusha) mcwewenrobbie 13,616
Jonathan Vaughters (Garmin director) Vaughters 1,684
Phil Liggett (Versus TV) PhilLiggett 9,348
Chris Boardman (retired fast guy) Chris_Boardman 1,341
Floyd Landis (one-time ’06 Tour winner) TheRealFloydL 6,126