Yesterday's Tour de France stage 18 was, for the most part, excellent. Andy Schleck attacked from a long way out, which was bold, and daring, and all of those other adjectives that people are using the describe it. But, what it really was, was necessary. Andy needed to get back a lot of time and so the only way to do that was to go from a long way out. He wasn't going to get back ~3:00 just on the Galibier. I read a funny quote on twitter yesterday in reference to Andy's attack. The scenario is exactly the same except Andy sent teammates up the road and Floyd just went by himself.
I do have a gripe though. I couldn't help but wonder why on the slopes of the Galibier Voeckler and especially his teammate, Rolland, didn't work with Cadel to bring Andy back? I know Cadel was going hard. His tempo shredded those last few guys and the look on Basso's face pretty much showed how hard they were going. But, still, at least Rolland should have pulled through once or twice to give Cadel a tiny bit of a breather. There's only one minor downside for Europecar by helping Cadel in that scenario. Rolland probably doesn't finish the climb with those guys and isn't in the hunt for the white jersey for the best young ride. In my opinion, that's the wrong strategy to employee.
Voeckler, while not a good time trialist, can't really be any worse than Andy or Frank Schleck (I admit I haven't poured over TT results that included all three guys but the Schleck's are notorious for giving back huge chunks of time in TTs so my assumption is that Voeckler could at least limit his loss to them with a cushion). And, if they helped Cadel bring back Andy and Voeckler can stay with him at a steady, turbo diesel pace, he's not really losing any time to Cadel. Europecar's strategy here should have been to keep as big of a cushion as possible to take into the TT on Saturday. Once Contador was popped off that group, there was absolutely no downside to Rolland coming to the front to help ensure the put as much space between them and Contador as possible and close that gap to Andy. Rolland, was the only guy in that group, outside of Frank Schleck, that looked like he could have contributed to the pace making and clearly Frank's not helping in that scenario. Maybe Rolland has a great poker face, but he certainly didn't look to be struggling as much as everybody else. I think their strategy should be to race for the Yellow jersey even if that means risking losing it, rather than for the podium in two categories. Voeckler finishing on the podium in Paris is still not guaranteed so playing a safe card isn't necessarily any better than laying it all on the line. Nobody's going to remember the white jersey winner anyway unless you end up being a real contender in the future. Maybe Rolland is, but I always see the white jersey (and team classification for that matter) as a fun little competition that teams should be excited to win but unless it's your only option, nobody should care about. Especially when caring about that competition interferes with another.
I also realize this is easy to say from the comfort of my couch.
