It's that time of year when the Tour de France comes to close and 90% of American cycling fans think that the cycling season has also ended. This was the first Tour de France since 2006 when I was on a bike everyday that I didn't watch it on a daily basis. This made for interesting following. I'd like to not repeat this in future July's. In no particular order of importance here's what I took away from this year's Tour de France.
- Mark Cavendish gets two goose eggs for points on two sprint stages and still finishes 2nd in the competition? I don't think you'd be crazy to assume that Mark Cavendish has a chance to win EVERY sprinter stage. With a lead out, without a lead out, he obviously just needs 200 meters of clean road and it's over. Obviously sprinting is rough and tumble activity so there's never a guarantee that any sprinter will make into the last 200 meters to actually sprint, but if he's there, he's gonna win. It has to suck to be other sprinters right now. Without a crash you are just racing for 2nd.
- You've got to give it to Thor Hushovd, for a guy who was sprinting about as fast as a Cat 3 he did his best to collect points and build a buffer. But, when you come to the line with more than 5 other sprinters and you lose to all 5 of them every time, you're not going to win that jersey.
- Since I didn't watch the stage yesterday I didn't see the jersey controversy, but I'm going to take the opposite stance that almost everybody else I've read is taking and that is, Why does Lance Armstrong thing he's above the rules that everybody else plays by? If any other team shows up to the tour and decides they're just going to wear different jersey's this day, he'd be the first to say, "well you can't do that." But, that rule doesn't apply to him? I don't care if the jersey's were symbolic of those living with cancer. Aren't all 200 bikes he came to the tour with symbolic of that as well? I understand that Lance came out of retirement to spread the good word of cancer survivor ship and all that jazz and I'm not knocking that mission. But, I also feel like that became a pretty good story line to make up for the lack of wins during this 2nd run at professional cycling. When you're winning a bunch of races you often don't need a constant gimmick to try and over shadow your mediocre results or remind everyone that you're here for some other reason. Lance has stated that he's going to be doing plenty of non bike racing starting now, couldn't he have worn his 28 jersey's then?
- It also drives me nuts that the two guys doing velo center (who are terrible by the way!) Bring back Jason Sumner and Neal Rogers and the old format! Take the time to point out, "Lance isn't happy by the way" as the video shows Lance complaining about being forced to wear the jersey of the sponsor who's actually putting up the funds for him to joy ride around France. Who gives a crap if Lance isn't happy. The story line here should be, "Lance tried to wear a different jersey, but just like you, I and he knows, that's not in the rules."
- Somewhere in the Lance comeback tour I lost interest in the story and only wanted to see results. Obviously that didn't happen. But I also got fed up with the fake rivalry between he and Contador. I also got fed up with all the people asking if Lance was working for Levi once he started giving up massive chunks of time to go for a stage win. Seriously, 90% of RadioShack fans have no clue about bike racing. I know the fairy tale is sweet and all, but come on, Levi lost California when there were other guys in the race who were actually fit. No shot he even sniffs the podium of the Tour de France on a year when there's actually talent there.
- I guess I have to mention the "chain gate" incident. I read from velonews live update "Schleck drops his chain, Contador attacks." But really, that's not what happened. Schleck attacked, Vino and Contador respond, Schleck drops his chain. That's not even close to the same thing. If I'm Contador I'm not sure I stop right there either. Contador wasn't sitting behind Andy both riding piano, Andy's chain falls off and then Contador jumps him. Tons of pro riders backed up to the idea that if you start the attack and have a mechanical, sorry about your luck. Nobody's obligated to wait. Could he have waited, maybe, but he doesn't have to. I think too much was made of this, and most of it was made by the pro-andy and pro-lance and anti-contador factions out there.
- Looks like Contador is fallible. Who would've thought? I'm obviously not training with him daily so I don't know what differences he made to his tour prep this year but he lacked all sorts of snap that we've seen in the past. If going into this tour you had said that Andy would have set a tempo up the Tourmalet that Contador wouldn't be able to attack from, I'd have said you're crazy. Obviously he didn't need all that extra fire power to win so it's sort of a moot point. But, if Andy, or even somebody like Jani Brajovic, is close in the TTs, these races are still up for grabs.
- Some french dude won the KOM. 6 French dudes won stages. And a French guy won the most aggressive rider of the race, which seems like a dumb and impossibly subjective award, especially since the winner, Chavanel, was aggressive early and on the Champs-Elysee. But, you know, if some sponsor wants to put up money for it, no problem. But, with all this french success does that mean the French will have a contender in the near future? I don't think so. As Bob Roll said when I went to hear him speak recently, "the cheese is too soft."
- I know it's easy for me to sit here and be a Monday morning quarterback on Schleck's tactics. Maybe he was already at his limit on the Tourmalet or even other stages, but if I'm him I'd rather attack Contador repeatedly in hopes of gaping for whatever time I can get and run the risk of dropping out of the top 20 than ride a super fast tempo that he's holding on to and assure myself 2nd. I just feel like at that level, 2nd is as good as 15th. You either win or you don't. I can think of another promising stage racer who wouldn't attack when he was young because he was afraid of blowing up and losing his podium spot. That guys wasn't riding in this tour de france because that strategy basically has huge long term negative side effects. That rider, Tom Danielson. Let's hope Andy doesn't turn out like Tommy D in terms of long term racing success.
- If I were Chris Horner I'm on the phone with Johan saying, "Either I lead this thing at next year's tour or I need a release." He finished top 10 at the tour and part of his job was to fetch bottles. If he's not wasting energy going back and forth from the front of the race to the team car and back or chauffeuring a broken Lance up the mountains, he's at least in the group with Sanchez and Menchov. He's the ultimate teammate so he never once complained about doing his job as it was assigned, but seriously, it's got to suck to be the best guy on a team and have your chances of doing your best ride being weighed down with 7 bottles shoved into your jersey.
- I think a lot of Americans who thought that Contador didn't have a strong team learned some new names. I wasn't surprised at all that he had a solid set of climbers to help in the mountains. Daniel Navarro obviously opened some eyes. You don't have to a team of previous podium place holders to ride around france the fastest.
- No positive drug tests in this tdf. Does that mean that riders are clean or the doctors are better? Who really knows, but I guess we have to assume clean. Well, Petacchi seems like he's going to get busted again. You'd think after about the 4th or 5th time his name gets brought up in this stuff he'd have figured out the right amount of inhaler medicine that he can take and still fly under the radar.
- I almost forgot. Congratulations to RadioShack for winning the team classification. You made it such a big priority after realizing you had no shot at the podium with a single rider. Way to stick to the message throughout the race so that everybody was aware of just how important of a goal this was for the team. Oddly enough, I remember a few Postal and Discovery teams that laughed at this competition because it was meaningless. I think you have to notify whoever came in 2nd because I'm not sure they're aware they were racing you.
I guess I'm out of stuff to say. What a pity.
2 comments:
If you missed the final stage, you missed an incredible camera shot showing just how fast Cav is. They had a closed lane for the camera motorcycle which was pacing Hushovd in the final sprint, and in the background, Cav just moves out of frame effortlessly (if you consider 1500W effortlessly). On the aerial, you see he didn’t even have a lead out, it was pretty incredible.
Agree on The Shack jersey stuff. The days of Chippolini racing as Julius Caesar are over. It’s not a fashion contest. In his defense, I didn’t think Lance was too put out by it, but I also thought they never should have tried it to start.
I’ve followed every Tour since 1988 when I learned it existed, catching crappy Saturday recaps on ABC and making fun of Sam Posey with my bro. This was certainly one of the most exciting, definitely more so than the Lance years. I think a great deal of that credit goes to whoever is planning the first weeks – both last year’s and this year’s were exciting, whereas normally they are a snooze-fest.
I thought Schlek put up a great fight, and really didn’t feel he was racing for second. He went with 10k to go, and in the first 5 of that, made many attacks. I think eventually he was worn down and had to settle for the best tempo he could manage. Even Contador was only able to attack once after that, and Andy barely caught his wheel, and that was the last anyone could do. That said, I think he is doomed if he starts a Lux based team with Frank. He has a good thing going with Riis, and I think he is really going to struggle without all the types of support Riis brings.
That said, I am one of the 10% of Americans who knows the season goes on (even if I did call for Basso in 3rd, WTF Ivan!?!). The Tour is normally just the boring period between watching Boonen and Gilbert ter it up in the spring and Cancellara at the Worlds in the fall.
Also, I forgot to note, how much the KOM competition suck? Man, what can they do to make that relevant? I know they changed the scoring a few years ago, but I think they need to put that jersey out of it's misery. It has zero relevance to climbing ability anymore. In fact, it benefits being a bad rider, since only bad riders are allowed up the road to grab points!
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