On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 10/1/2011
New Kids on the Block
Once again this year, I had not planned to write anything about the Vuelta a España, the last and supposedly least of the three Grand Tours. But that was before I watched it; before I got sucked into it. So here I go again, diving into another stage race…
If you ever wanted to explain the magic and allure of bike racing to a non cyclist, you might show them a couple of stages from this year’s Vuelta…Stages 15 and 17. And it's because of those two stages--their last few kilometers--that I felt the need to spill some pixels on the race again this year.
As the last of the three Grand Tours, the Vuelta often gets overlooked a bit in the world of bike racing, at least in recent years. Most of the really big guns have already fired off all their ammo on either the Giro or the Tour. The World Championships are just around the corner and draw off the energy and focus of a few more star riders. So the Vuelta can sometimes seem almost minor league, with B-list rosters from some teams. Casual race fans sometimes take a pass on it.
But for serious fans, there is plenty to enjoy, and the absence of some of the really big names in the sport can be a blessing in disguise, as it allows a new batch of heroes to take center stage. This year was no exception in that department, with a podium made up of three riders who had none of them ever set foot on a Grand Tour podium before, never mind which step.
The organizers did their part too: they usually put together a wonderful parcourse at the Vuelta, even if we may not have heard of some of their cols. This year, they had no less than 11 stages out of 21 that were designated as mountain stages, with eight of them ending in mountaintop finishes. Granted, they weren't all of the sort that would prove to be decisive or important, but the best of them were sensational. There was a short team time trial and only one full individual time trial. Had there been two full ITTs, the results might well have been quite different.
In the end, Spain's Juan José Cobo beat Great Britain's Christopher Froome by a measly 13 seconds. If you're not a hardcore fan of bike racing, you could be forgiven for saying, "Excuse me, who?" I confess both names were only vaguely familiar to me from watching past races, and if I had been picking favorites ahead of time, I would not have chosen either one. I might have picked defending champ Vincenzo Niabli or Igor Anton, who was in the lead last year when he crashed out. But these guys? I knew a grand total of nothing about either of them. But there you go: new faces, new kids on the block. And they weren't the only new kids to make an impression in this race. Bauke Mollema of Holland, who finished fourth, is another new rider to watch.
Cobo's Geox-TMC team was not invited to the Tour de France this year, in spite of having Carlos Sastre and Dennis Menchov as their team leaders. So this was the big event of the year for them. (Geox is a new team--as of last year--created somehow out of the tattered shreds of Saunier-Duval, the disgraced team that was kicked out of the Tour de France in 2008 after the positives for Ricardo Ricco and Leonardo Piepoli. The Tour doesn't like its race mucked up with that kind of scandal and they don't forget. So the current riders, who had nothing to do with those past sins, were made to pay, much as the Astana team of Contador and Leipheimer was made to pay for the sins of Vinokourov and Kashechkin.) Cobo began the Vuelta riding in support of team leader Menchov, winner of two past Vueltas. And Froome began the race riding in support of his Sky team leader Bradley Wiggins. But these things aren't exactly scripted ahead of time, and in the end the support riders came out on top. Wiggins finished third and Menchov finished fifth.
The race didn't start well for either of these teams, as they lost :42 and :43 in the opening team time trial. (Leopard-Trek, with Fabian Cancellara whipping his boys on, finished first.)
Through the first three mountain stages--4, 5, and 8--the three podium boys finished together. They didn't win, but they only lost a few seconds to riders who would eventually be non-factors for the overall. In between these hill climbs, Stage 6 wasn't designated as a mountain stage, but it did contain one modest climb followed by a 10-K descent which flattened out just two kilometers from the finish. Vincenzo Nibali's Liquigas team really attacked this descent and put a gap into the peloton, with only a few riders able to hang on near them. One of them was Cobo, who picked up six seconds on Froome and Wiggins. It didn't seem all that important at the time, but as we saw at the Tour de France, these little handfuls of seconds can add up, and descending well--and paying attention all the time--can pay off. With the one second deficit he had after the team time trial, he was now five seconds ahead of Froome and Wiggins.
On Stage 9, finishing atop la Covatilla, Froome drove the pace hard, then Wiggins took over, and eventually bright young climber Daniel Martin of Ireland (another new kid…Nicholas Roche's cousin and Steven Roche's nephew) jumped clear to win by a few seconds, followed by Mollema, while Cobo, Wiggins, and Froome came in right on their heels. Cobo was third, one second ahead of Wiggins and four seconds ahead of Froome. But there are time bonuses for first through third at the Vuelta, and so he gained another eight seconds over each of them…12 seconds total over Froome. That put him 17 seconds ahead of Froome. This is another case of paying attention. Once over the final summit, there was a downhill sprint of a hundred yards to the line. Cobo, Wiggins, and Froome could all have come in side by side, pretty much. But Cobo made that extra little kick and scooped up the 8-second bonus for third, ahead of the two Sky boys.
This is what I love about stage racing: the little things. Between the six seconds gained on the Stage 6 descent and the eight second bonus for third here--two little things--Cobo had almost exactly the amount of seconds that equal his final margin of victory. Lance Armstrong's old line about every second counting may seem trite until you see it in action on these otherwise unimportant stages.
Next up was the one individual time trial on Stage 10. New time trial world champ Tony Martin killed the rest of the field, just as he did in the ITT at the TdF. Behind him, among the GC contenders, Wiggins--the British time trial champ and second behind Martin at the world championships--was expected to be the best. But his teammate Froome upstaged him, finishing second to Martin but :23 ahead of Wiggins (and also ahead of such ITT stalwarts as Fabian Cancellara, 4th, and Taylor Phinney, 5th). That put Froome--excuse me who?--in the leader's jersey, which he of course said he was just keeping warm for his team leader. Meanwhile, Cobo, not thought of as a great time trialer, lost 2:04 to Froome and ended up in 8th place, 1:47 in arrears. At that point, midway through the race, not too many people were paying attention to Cobo.
After the first rest day, the hills kept coming at them on Stage 11, finishing atop Montaña Manzaneda. Behind the shattered remnants of a breakaway, Wiggins and Cobo came in together with most of the other GC favorites. However, Froome was not with them. After working his fanny off for Wiggins earlier in the stage, he cracked a bit in the final kilometers and lost :27 seconds to his chief rivals. He did indeed hand the leader's jersey to his teammate Wiggins. At this point, it was Wiggins first, Froome second at :07, defending champ Nibali third at :11, and Cobo still in 8th at 1:27.
On Stage 13, the next mountain finish, behind another breakaway of unimportant riders, all the GC men came in together, so no change. But that was the last day for status quo. Stage 14 finished with a long, hard climb to a new summit for the Vuelta: La Farrapona. (Never heard of it? Nor have I, but it was a magnificent ascent through beautiful scenery on silk-smooth pavement…and a really tough test.) Geox pulled off the ideal ploy of getting domestique David De La Fuente into a two-man break with Rein Taaramae, a minute or two up the road on the last climb. Then, just under the 4-K banner, Cobo rather quietly slipped off the front of the very small lead group. No leaping out of the saddle; no throwing the bike around. He just went up the road. Froome and Wiggins watched him go and kept riding tempo. They weren't exactly dawdling. Their tempo was hot enough to be kicking Nibali and several other contenders right out the back of the GC group. But while Nibali and company were going off the back, Cobo was quietly, smoothly going off the front, soon to catch up to his lieutenant, De La Fuente, who had let Taaramae go away for the win while he waited for Cobo to come up to him. De La Fuente buried himself for about two K to pull Cobo along, then Cobo finished it off, taking the 12 bonus seconds for second place, while De La Fuente mopped up the bonus seconds for third (depriving anyone else of getting them). It was all very neatly done, with no fuss or bother. Cobo got 20 seconds on the road and the additional 12 bonus seconds to whittle his deficit to Wiggins down to just :55.
Mind you, this was all the day before the queen stage of the Vuelta: the finish atop Angliru, commonly considered to be the steepest, nastiest, most-feared climb in all of professional cycling. Other riders might have thought it was prudent to keep things safe and simple on this day, saving a little for the next day. But Cobo hazarded a modest move that netted him :32, chipping away at the Sky boys' advantage, a few seconds at a time.
If you don't watch any of the rest of the stage finishes on this year's Vuelta, you ought to watch this one. The final 10 K are available at steephill.tv. You know about steephill.tv, right? I've been urging you to pick up your feeds for races here for years. I know some cable or dish carriers might have had the Vuelta as part of their offerings, but for most of us, steephill is our window on the world of bike racing, including the Vuelta. You can watch the races live for the full impact, but if you can't find time for that, they have the highlights available on replay, as least as long as the Eurosport feeds remain active.
VaE - Stage 15 - Final Climb by CVChannel2
I've watched the Angliru finish three or four times now, and I never tire of it. It's the ultimate face off between Cobo and Wiggins and Froome, and of course all the other poor bastards who have to claw their miserable way up those pitches of up to 23%. TV coverage almost always makes steep climbs look flatter than they really are, but these walls do look brutal, and in case you're in any doubt about them, they provide a nice little graphic on the corner of the screen telling us just how steep it is right now…19%…21%…etc. And the crowds. Oh my lord, the crazy crowds. It's…well, you simply have to watch it. It's what makes bike racing unlike any other spectator sport. There is nothing like it at all…amazing…insane. It was so steep and so congested with lunatic fans that two camera motos fell over, one of which thereby lost us our video feed and deprived us of some of the most interesting footage of the final few kilometers. But we still got an eyeful…an awful eyeful.
The monster pitches thinned the front group down to just five riders: Wiggins and Froome from Sky, Cobo and Menchov from Geox, and another young climbing phenom, Wout Poels. At about 6 K to go, just as the climb hit its really brutal, really steep pitches, Cobo went off the front again. I hesitate to say that he attacked, because, again, he made it look so simple and low-key. He just upped his tempo a little bit and the others could not follow. Then, as he rode on alone through the manic crowd, he looked as if he were just tootling along on a tourist ride, only at a blistering tempo up a 20% wall. Meanwhile, behind him, Froome and Wiggins appeared to be dying a thousand deaths. First Froome seemed to crack, only to recover a little. Then Wiggins cracked and stayed cracked. Both seemed to be doing track stands on the steepest sections. They were totally maxxed out…and going nowhere.
In the end, Froome had to leave his broken team leader behind and set off after Cobo on his own. He at least had some legs left to chase, whereas Wiggins was totally toast. Poels took second, and wily old Menchov snuck in just a bike length ahead of Froom, cruelly snatching away the eight seconds the Sky rider would have had for third place. Well of course: that was the Geox plan all along. Froome was fourth at :48 and Wiggins was a whipped fifth at 1:21. That left the overall with Cobo first, Froome second at :22 and Wiggins third at :51.
What a race! Wow! Most folks assumed it was game over at that point. And that was in fact the correct assumption, as it turned out. But Froome didn't just give up and go away. No, there was still one more mountain-top finish to be contested: the short but steep climb to Peña Cabarga on Stage 17. At 6 K, it is a short climb, but the steepness made up for that, to some degree. And the riders didn't even need the whole hill to make it interesting.
After a dozen different hopefuls took fliers on the lower slopes, Cobo finally came to the front and appeared to assume control with two K remaining and the gradient at around 18%. But then, out of nowhere, Froome launched a crazy attack, simply thrashing his bike up the hill as if he had bees in his shorts. Cobo responded and got on his wheel…for awhile…but then he was dropped! Off the back! The guy who had looked so smooth on the prior mountain stages all of a sudden looked vulnerable. Could he lose it all in the last kilometer of the last mountain-top finish? Froome was hammering his brains out, turning himself inside out in an agony of anaerobic torture, while Cobo slumped over, seemingly spent. But wait…Cobo, looking like Nibali clawing back Mosquera last year, slowly, slowly reeled in Froome. Finally, with just a few meters to go, he caught back on and passed him. Now, surely, game over? No! Froome dug deep one last time and launched himself back around Cobo and threw his bike across the line just a few yards ahead. Froome gained one second on the road and the net gain in bonus seconds added another eight, so Cobo's overall lead was down to just :13.
It was glorious racing, a true mano-a-mano slug fest. One announcer said it was simply the most exciting bike racing he had ever seen. This is the other stage I hope you will watch…the final four K or so. Anyone you want to convince about the excitement of bike racing? Show them the Angliru finish and this finish. If they don't get it, there's no hope for them.
And that's how it remained over the final days. Nothing else happened to change the final outcome. Froome's final challenge came up just those few seconds short. But he won a lot of new fans for his never-say-die effort. And Cobo, for his part, won an equal amount of admiration for his gritty defense in those final, painful seconds. Both men have nothing to be ashamed of…nothing to regret. They left it all out there on the road. What a grand spectacle. If you can find any better bike racing out there, please let me know because I want to watch it.
So, going forward into 2012, who will the team leader be at Geox? Cobo or Menchov? Who will the team leader be at Sky? Froome or Wiggins? Will they be able to repeat these performances in other races? Will Bauke Mollema and Wout Poels and Daniel Martin become big names in bike racing? Who knows? We've had the mega-merger of RadioShack and Leopard-Trek, which precipitated the move of Levi to Omega-Pharma-Quick Step (along with TT tornado Tony Martin). Classics master Phillipe Gilbert and 2011 World Champ Thor Hushovd join Tour de France Champ Cadel Evans at Santa Rosa-based BMC (which some people are saying now means, "Buy More Cyclists"). Don't you love it that the best team in the pro peloton…in the world…is based in Santa Rosa?
The World Championships are now in the record books. The season is drawing to a close. Only "the race of the falling leaves" remains: the Giro di Lombardia. It has been a good year. Interesting, worthy winners in many a great race, and hardly a whiff of a doping scandal anywhere. (Of course, we still have the long-delayed, long-awaited final chapter in the Contador CAS hearing…but aside from that…) All in all, I reckon it a very good year.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net