This year's Tour should have been really boring. All of the jerseys winners were set very early in the tour. The top of the GC didn't change after stage 10. The KoM didn't change after Stage 9. The Sprint Jersey didn't change after stage 12. The best young rider didn't change after 13. Most of those competitions weren't even really close after they changed hands the last time.
Sure it was statistically possible for each of these people to lose their jersey up until late in the race, but for the most part that fell under the "anything can happen in the Tour" department (as Tom Boonen and Alessandro Valverde found out).
The pace of the peloton through the first week was amazingly fast. It really didn't slow down that much in the last two weeks. That pretty much eliminated many of the sprint teams from being able to chase down breaks in the last week that would have made the sprint competition more fun to watch.
That said, this was definitely NOT a boring tour by any means. I loved watching how the GC changed between places 3-15. It was cool to see long breakaways succeed. It was amazing to watch how Giuseppe Guerini's (Edit: I always get him mixed up with Gilberto Simoni -- sorry) break succeeded while others were torn apart behind them because of stupid attacks by one rider. It was a great lesson in how to work as a team in a break and what happens when you don't work as a team.
It was great to see Vino attacking at every opportunity. It was FREAKISH to see Kloden and Ullrich being the ones that chased him down time and time again. I've said it a few times already.... I'd have loved to be a fly on the wall during some of the T-Mobile team dinners after those stages.
Rasmussen's time trial was heart breaking. It always hurts to see someone fall apart so completely. He went from 3rd to 7th in the GC on the basis of one ride. He's definitely got some work to do over the next 11 months if he wants to redeem himself. I can't help but feel like he needs to learn how to face adversity and learn how to ride when everything isn't technically perfect. That seemed to hold him back in the time trial, and maybe some in the mountains too. I question whether his refusal to carry water above certain points in the climbs because the weight holds him back might have had something to do with his strength on some of the later climbs in the tour and his resiliancy in the final stages. I have no proof of that, but as this weekend showed me, sometimes you need to dust yourself off, duct tape your saddle to the top of your seatpost, and ride 7 miles back to the car. (That's another story for this blog).
Vino's stage win yesterday was the icing on the cake. What a freakish ride that he did to escape from the pack with less than 2k to go and work together with two others to stay ahead of the field. I can't imagine the amount of effort that it took to hold the pace so high for so long.
The thing that impressed me most was Lance's ride. Lance lost me last year when he let the legal battles with Simeoni influence the way he rode the tour. For some reason that struck me as petty and small. Those are qualities that I hadn't really ever associated with Lance. Though I haven't gone out of my way to bash Lance for that, I did voice my disappointment and didn't count myself as a Lance fan for the last year or so.
What a difference a year makes. Even though there were members of the press that tried bringing up some of these issues, Lance handled things with poise and grace that is truly fitting of a champion of his caliber. He rose above those accusations and in my eyes did what he should have done from the start. He decided to fight those battles in the court rather than in the Tour.
Bravo Lance. You've gone a long way to winning me back as a fan.
Thanks for a great tour y'all. It has been fun sharing it with the folks that I e-mail and talk with. I can't wait for next year. I think the Lance-free tour will be an interesting one. There are so many great riders who will be competing it.
How will the race change after Lance? Are there going to be teams that focus many of their resources soully on the tour? I kind of hope not. Will The Chicken learn how to ride a Time Trial? How will the battle of the old guard (who have been waiting for Lance to retire) battle it out with the new riders (who learned from Lance on their way up)?
Tune in and see. Anyone want to make any early predictions?
Talk to you soon.
Pete
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3 comments:
Thanks Graham.
Ullrich is an interesting guy. He was a really young guy when the Berlin Wall came down. There was a lot of uncertainty and it took a long time for people to get used to newfound freedoms and an open system of government amd society. East Germans had a really tough transition to make. I wonder if that had an affect on Ullrich.
Quite honestly, I think this is the first year that I've really felt like he was ready for the tour and that his heart was completely in it.
I'm not saying that he gave up during the tour or didn't try his hardest. He just didn't seem to have the maturity and heart to put everything into preparing for the tour in early February.
We learned pretty early on that besides natural talent and an unbelievable pain threshhold, one of Lance's biggest advantages over others in the pack was his ability to completely focus on the tour and build his preparations starting in January and February.
There are two guys who were able to do that. Joseba Beloki the year he crashed out, and Tyler Hamilton the year he fractured his collerbone.
Reading the post above gives a good synopsis of my feelings about "what-ifs" in the tour. Those two had the whole preparation thing down right though. They focused on the tour with all thier energy. They had a team that let them do it and supported them with good folks to ride with. They rode with Lance and made him work in the high mountains.
How would Ullrich do if he trained like that? This year we had a taste of it. How different would the race have been if he hadn't crashed into the team car the day before the opening time trial? How about his second crash early in the tour? I know... what-ifs again.
That gives you an idea of the other thing that Lance had going for him. You can prepare like crazy. You can train like mad. You can peak at EXACTLY the right time. But if some freak accident happens, you're not going to do well in the tour.
Now I've read that Tyler's riding style is somewhat to blame for his inability to stay upright on a bike. Beloki could have made a better choice than to have been riding sewups on a day when they KNEW it was hot and there was going to be molten pavement on the road. (If it was his choice to make.) Lance was good enough to identify the where the soft spots in the pavement were and avoid them. Lance has been good to avoid the team car when it comes to a stop. Some of it is preparation. Some of that is focus. Some of it has to be that he's just managed to avoid the silly problems that have plagued his opponents.
How the heck did he hook a musette bag, bail so hard at the bottom of a mountain, and STILL get back up to race so well on the upper mountain???? He even pulled out of his pedal and crotched himself on the stem (who knows what the result of that was for him after surviving cancer and all) and kept it going.
Don't take that as me being negative about Lance at all. He's "the man" when it comes to the tour.
It is a lot of preparation, support, devotion, pain threshhold, maturity, and maybe a little bit of good fortune.
Who knows. Am I way off base?
Now I'm just babbling. Sorry to ramble on.
Pete
Pete, Great write up... it's true, by some standards people see this tour as boring, but right up until Vino won the last stage, i found it to be an exciting race. Of course, i watch every race i can and every minute of them... I guess i'm kind of weird like that. OH just an FYI... your quote
"It was amazing to watch how Gilberto Simoni's break succeeded while others were torn apart behind them because of stupid attacks by one rider"
Simoni did not race in this years tour, he took it off to get ready for the Vuelta.
Idiot me... it was Giuseppe Guerini. I'm sure the Gods of Italian Cycling are going to strike me down for that one. ;)
Thanks for your comments.
Pete
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