On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 3/1/2008
Tour of California Redux
Sitting here on Monday, the day after the conclusion of the 2008 Tour of California, reflecting on the events of the week just past.
This is the third edition of the stage race; still an infant in the world of professional cycling, and still a provincial event far from the euro-heart of the sport, and further, an early-season race...too early, by some reckoning, to be taken seriously as a top-flight event. And yet it has matured and grown in stature quite impressively over those three years. Levi Leipheimer, the repeat winner this year, said you judge the caliber of the event by the caliber of the competition--who has entered--and by that yardstick, this was a fairly big deal.
On paper at least, this edition of the race had perhaps the best field ever assembled for a race on American soil. The Amgen Tour website featured a long list of current and former world and national champions, winners of major races, and so forth. It was indeed an all-star cast. But as Fabian Cancellara pointed out, some at least of those stars took part more for the early-season training than for the actual prizes on the line. They didn't bring their mid-season form, nor did they put out a mid-season effort. This isn't surprising: no one seriously expects a race in February to be on the same page as a race in mid-summer, or even on a par with a spring classic in March or April. As long as the event is in the winter, it will never escape this bind. More about that later.
But in spite of that seasonal challenge, the event has grown up and is being taken seriously by enough top-level teams and riders that it is a legitimate, respected stage race now. When I wrote about the dream of a Tour of California in this space in March, 2004, I conceded that it would probably never happen. But I was talking then about a full Grand Tour of three weeks in a warm-weather month. As such, I declared the premise an unattainable fantasy, and as such, it still is. But a wedge of real-world possibility has been driven into that fantasy. The organizers are learning to crawl before they try to walk, and to walk before they try to run. They have started with the modest goal of perfecting a good one-week race in a non-prime time month. And with that modest goal in mind, they have succeeded beyond their own or anyone else's wildest expectations.
Those of us who live in the North Bay--the counties north of San Francisco--were of course delighted by almost every aspect of the event. First of all, we got to enjoy the end of Stage 1 and the start of Stage 2, both making use of many of the roads we ride on a daily basis. There is something really wonderful about seeing those famous pros wheeling along on our backyard roads, elevating our little hills and valleys, however briefly, to the status of a Galibier or a Gavia. I was reminded of that very funny promo for the Giro from a few years back--back when the Giro was still on TV--featuring Bob Roll, down on his hands and knees, caressing the asphalt where--right here!--the great Alfredo Binda rode!
I mean, there we were, out on the summit of Coleman Valley Road, just a few miles from home, watching the peloton stream by, and we're seeing not only our favorite homies like Levi and George Hincapie, but Paolo Bettini, Tom Boonen, Oscar Friere, David Millar, Mario Cipollini, for pete's sake! The legendary Lion King, risen from the dead, like Lazarus, only looking way cooler than old Laz ever looked.
Just a few miles from home: the summit on Coleman is about 17 miles from my house, most of them uphill. A group of us gathered at my crib around noon to ride out there for the big show. We left here at 12:12, figuring that gave us two full hours to cover the 17 miles, based on the event's projected arrival time on Coleman Valley Road of between 2:00 and 2:20. We didn't exactly hammer. We had fun dawdling along, checking out the crowds along the roads--folks with barbecues smokin' away in their front yards on a Monday afternoon in February--and yakking with friends we ran into along the way. So no, not much of a hammer ride. It took us until a few minutes before two to get there, which was what we had allowed for. We arrived with about 15 minutes to spare; enough time to hook up with other friends on the summit and plug into the party buzz that was rippling up and down the hill.
Meanwhile, the peloton was on the move. According to the Live Coverage log at CyclingNews, at 12:12, when we hit the road, the boys were passing through Dogtown, a little no-place just north of the Bolinas junction on Hwy 1. That's about 48 miles from the summit of Coleman, where we were to meet them. We, at our lazy pace, covered our 17-mile commute to the summit in just a little less time than it took the racers to cover 48 miles. Yes, we were dawdling, but so, in their own way, were the racers. With the exception of a few riders mixing it up for the intermediate sprints along the way, the pace was piano. But their lazy pace was somewhere between two and three times as fast as our lazy pace. Which is why we ride out to watch them go by.
We North Bay folks had our local rooting interests as well, starting with our favorite adopted son Levi. He and his wife Odessa Gunn call Santa Rosa home when they're not off in Europe taking care of business or down in the southwest at a training camp. Levi sightings are commonplace on our back roads, but are always a mini-thrill for those of us who cross paths with him. Not too long ago, I was passed by this little guy in a stars-&-stripes jersey with a Discovery logo on the back. For about 1.5 seconds, I said to myself: "What a poser! Who would wear a jersey like that?" And then the penny dropped: oh, right. Perhaps the National Champion might wear a jersey like that!
Levi was riding that day with Scott Nydam of the BMC team. They are regular training buddies when in the area. BMC is based in Santa Rosa and Scott lives in my hometown of Sebastopol. It's a new team, managed by another of our favorite local boys, former pro Gavin Chilcott (one of the nicest and smartest and most interesting guys you'll ever meet).
As much as we root for Levi, we have an equally partisan affection for BMC...for Gavin and Scott and Jackson Stewart of Santa Rosa. These really are our extended family. So it was especially nice to see the BMC boys all over the Tour of California: going off the front on crazy attacks, putting someone in every break, and just generally stirring the pot at every opportunity. It's what you want to do if you're a little team mixing it up with the big international titans. An event like the TofC, with most of the world's cycling press paying attention, is the best shot you'll ever get at letting the world know you're for real. And BMC was on that with a vengeance. Jackson was off the front most of the day on Stage 1--well ahead of the pack over our Col de Coleman--and Scott went on a Jacky Durand-style flier on Stage 2--up Trinity Grade--on his own almost to the finish in Sacramento.
Meanwhile, team leader Alex Moos was hanging in with the big boys every day, ending up in the top ten on GC at the end of the week...the only small team to place a rider in the top ten. And Scott took home the King of the Mountains jersey for the race. For all their busy-bee activity, all week long, the entire team was collectively awarded the Most Aggressive Rider jersey.
So of the five special jerseys awarded at the end of the race, little BMC brought home two of them to Santa Rosa: KOM and Most Aggressive. And of course Levi brought home the big one: the golden jersey of overall winner. Only the sprinters' jersey and Best Young Rider jersey went elsewhere. As for the Best Young Rider, we had our own Steven Cozza of Petaluma in the hunt for that one for quite awhile, and even though he didn't win it, he was all over the race, putting his Team Slipstream livery in the spotlight in break after break. (I wrote about Steven in another column last year: Youth Movement.)
In some subtle but significant ways, this was a different Tour of California from the first two. When I wrote about the first tour in 2006, I listed a few areas where I thought they needed to improve things (a short list of gripes offset by an otherwise enthusiastic review). Most of those problems have been addressed to the best of the abilities of those in charge, and within the context of the race as it is currently embodied. They now have the champagne and podium girls, which were mostly missing the first time around. They did a better job with clock graphics on the time trial, although they could still stand some improvement in that department. The camera work and film editing has improved. It's still not up to Tour de France standards, but it's better than it was.
The biggest challenge I mentioned then was the need for an authentic mountaintop finish. I'm not alone in that yearning for a defining alpine moment. Levi grouses about it constantly. The organizers' dilemma is two-fold on this front: first, they cannot yet afford to place a finish far from an urban center. It's too risky as a business venture. They need to tap into the resources of a city, not only for all the obvious infrastructure demands, but for the fan base as well...the crowds at the bike expo that goes with the race and so forth. We don't have any urban centers perched on the tops of mountains in this region, aside from a few ski resorts in the Sierra, which brings up the other problem: they're hamstrung to a certain degree by that February date. Not only are most of California's best mountaintop finishes buried under snow in the winter, the riders and their teams don't want to be taking on a monster challenge at this time of year, snow or no snow. This is still training season.
So they haven't yet come up with a true mountaintop finish, but this year, they did about as much as they could do to address the issue by making Stage 3 a true mountain stage with the addition of the ascent of the eastern face of Mt Hamilton. Anyone who has done that climb can tell you it's deserving of its out-of-category rating. It's a world-class ascent. That climb alone wouldn't have been decisive though, especially with the long run-out to San Jose after it. Quite a few riders were still bunched together over the summit, many of them not considered true climbers: Hincapie, Cancellara, even Oscar Friere. But packaging Hamilton back-to-back with the already notorious Sierra Road was a serious double whammy, and it did the trick. Only Levi and Robert Gesink of Rabobank (the eventual Best Young Rider) were left at the front at the top of Sierra. They still had to ride down the hill and all that long way into San Jose--like coming off the Galibier and having to haul ass all the way to Briançon--but they did it. Putting Hamilton first didn't destroy the group, but it did enough damage to enough lungs and legs to make Sierra a more decisive col than it had been in the previous two races. And then the race and the chase to San Jose was great drama, with the two boys off the front literally frothing at the mouth in an effort to hold onto their hard-won gains while being hotly pursued by a who's who of demon chasers: Millar, Cancellara, Zabriskie, Larsson (all of them either national or world champion time trialists). When you can stay ahead of a freight train like that, by god, you deserve every second you can squeeze out of the deal.
And while mentioning all those TT stalwarts, let's tip the hat to Levi for solidifying his lead in the all-important chrono in Solvang, where he again took the world's very best time trial riders to the woodshed. He did the same thing on the same course last year, but this year he was even more dominant. Check the time gaps in the ITT results if you're in any doubt about this. Right now, he has to be the best TT rider in the ranks.
And as Levi pointed out again and again, his Astana team is probably the best stage race team in the world right now. They've got all the weapons.
The other big climbs that they introduced were hardly important at all. As we saw on the final day, the climbs over Mill Creek summit and Upper Big Tujunga Canyon were non-events. (We rode that same route on a club tour in 2006, and I can tell you they're not that tough.) They were too easy and too far from the finish in Pasadena. What did make a difference were those little leg-breaking bumps on the five circuits around Pasadena at the end.
One final note about mountaintop finishes: a climb of the stature of Mt Hamilton (or Diablo) could be very decisive if it were the finish and not just a set-up on the way to the finish. The Levi's of this world would attack hard early and put a serious hurt on the pretenders. As it was run this year, so far from the end, Levi simply let Chechu Rubiera set a hard but sustainable tempo up and over the summit, saving the real fireworks for Sierra.
Probably the biggest difference this year was the weather. With the exception of one fairly brief shower in Big Sur last year, the first two runnings of this stage race had enjoyed weather that was off-the-chart spectacular; much better than anyone had any right to expect in February. This year the law of averages caught up with them. The week before the event was lovely, with sunny days in the 70's. So too is this week after the event. Couldn't be any nicer. (In fact, I'm going riding this afternoon.) But Murphy's Law came home to roost during the race, with rain off and on all week. Stage 4 through Big Sur and down the central coast to SLO was about as nasty as it could be. Seven hours of unrelieved misery for the riders; soaked to the skin and chilled to the bone, with a battering head and cross wind the entire time. Levi said it was one of the three worst days he's ever spent on the bike. (I wonder what the other two were.) Stage 2 had more rain than sun, and the final stage, although it got over the 5000' Mill Creek summit in the dry, was drenched for all the final miles into and around supposedly sunny Pasadena.
And then there was that ugly winter flu bug that made its way through the peloton. Between the nasty weather and the nasty virus, the attrition rate was terrible. Only 77 out of 132 finished the race. There's nothing the promoters can do about the weather, and very little they can do about a flu pandemic. That's just what is, at least--again--in the context of a winter time slot.
Whether the event remains in its winter time slot is a matter of great conjecture in the cycling world. Now that the event has some street cred on the world stage, one hears rumors about an expanded race, with more stages and with a better, warmer date later in the year. I've even heard a suggestion that we create a de facto Tour of America by splicing together the Tours of California, Missouri, and Georgia. It's an intriguing notion. But when would you schedule it? All the good dates are taken by the three Grand Tours and a host of other established events. Only the month of August leaps off the calendar as having any window of opportunity where major events are a bit thin on the schedule (at least in non-Olympic years). But how are you going to induce euro-pro teams of the best caliber to fly across the Atlantic between the Tour de France and the Vuelta? The riders need a break and so do the team budgets. It's a very tough nut to crack.
The race faces an uncertain future in more respects than just when it will be run in the years ahead. You don't need me to tell you that these are tricky times for bike racing in particular, and for the world in general. Bike racing has been especially hard hit by all of its well-publicized dirty laundry, but beyond that, the country is in a recession and money is tight everywhere. The State of California is in a wicked budget squeeze and so too are most of the counties and municipalities where the Tour of California plies its craft. Don't expect any financial assistance from that quarter. The title sponsor Amgen had a contract to bankroll the event for its first three years. That contract is now over. Whether they will renew that support in the years ahead is not known right now. In our little local corner of the race, the City of Santa Rosa is cutting back its financial support for the event in the face of its own budget challenges, and civic boosters--not to mention cycling fans--are scrambling to offset the shortfall with private-sector contributions. The same penny-pinching struggles are going to be repeated all up and down the state over the coming months.
Well! That's the way it is in our world right now. Nothing is certain, especially not for fledgling bike races. We will hope for the best. If fan enthusiasm counts for anything, we've done what we can: nearly two million of us were out there somewhere along the state's highways and byways, in sun and rain, cheering on our road warriors, ringing our cow bells and acting like kids.
There were other uncertain, unsettled issues lurking just offstage at the race this year, playing as a sort of background music for the triumph of Levi and Astana. This would be the non-invites of the Astana team to all of the events put on by RCS and ASO, that is to say the Giro and Tour, Paris-Roubaix, Milano-San Remo, Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico, Fleche Wallone, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, etc. If you follow cycling at all, you will have already heard all about this.
This is the latest sorry chapter in the never-ending feud between the owners of the major cycling races and the UCI, the sport's governing body. Ever since the UCI introduced its ProTour format in 2004, the promoters have been fighting it, feeling it deprives them of their autonomy. ASO, owner of the Tour, RCS, owner of the Giro, and Unipublic, owner of the Vuelta, have used every imaginable tactic to undermine the authority of the UCI in this squalid squabble. This is the domain of lawyers and bureaucrats, and the convoluted, byzantine twists and turns of the saga are almost beyond belief. I've done some research on this, trying to puzzle out the right and wrong of it. I've sifted through four years' worth of press releases, news stories, interviews, ad nauseum. It's about as messy and ugly as it can be...a nightmare.
It's not about cycling or sportsmanship or fair play; it's not really even about money. And it's definitely not about doping, in spite of what you may read. It's about power. Who has the control...who's in charge.
What it boils down to
is this: who gets to choose the teams that participate in a race:
the race organizers or the governing body?
Both sides essentially agree that the bulk of the field should
come from an established roster of top-flight teams. But the
sticking point--what all the mud-wrasslin' is about--is
how many wild-card entries can there be, in addition to the established
roster of top teams? The event owners want more leeway to choose
a larger number of these wild cards. The UCI wants more mandatory
invites for its roster of top teams, leaving less wiggle room
for the promoters. It seems like a small thing to be quibbling
over--one or two entries--unless you happen to be one of the
teams that's being used as a pawn in this little turf war.
Last year the Unibet team was the pawn in the game. I'm
not going to go into the silly reasons why they got caught in
the taffy pull, but they did. The reasons don't really
matter, anyway. They were trumped up, fabricated horseshit, frankly.
The event owners seized on a spurious technicality and used that
to jerk the UCI around, to thumb their noses at the rules-makers
and say: "Up yours, pal! We can do what we want and you
can't stop us!"
This year, it's the Astana team caught in the middle of
the muddle. Once again, the ostensible reasons for excluding
them are nonsensical and illogical and inconsistent. But the
owners don't really care. They feel they hold all the best
cards, and they're calling the UCI's bluff.
It's weird: in sifting through the old news stories on the internet, I found myself with a serious case of deja vu. I had been reading a piece about the Unibet wrangle in 2007, with everything coming to a boiling point in the lead-up to Paris-Nice in early March. Then I flipped back to today's latest news stories, and I thought I was reading the exact same article...because here we are, one year later, and the same damn bureaucrats are locked in the same damn pissing match as they were last year, with everything coming to a boiling point in the lead-up to Paris-Nice. They had a whole year to sort this out, and not one friggin' thing has changed, except for the teams caught in the middle and the riders whose careers hang in the balance while the pointy-headed suits try to strangle each other with red tape.
I'm no great
fan of monolithic, authoritarian agencies breathing down one's
neck and telling one what to do all
the time, and that's how some people see the UCI in this
case. But for now at least, I have to say I support the UCI's
position and deplore the infantile grandstanding of the event
owners.
I can't believe anyone could be as stupid as Patrice Clerc
(head of ASO) and Christian Prudhomme (head of the Tour de
France) have been in this latest round of the battle. They
have prevented
Alberto Contador and Levi Leipheimer from defending their
placings at the Tour this year (those placings being first
and third).
Contador is also the defending champion at Paris-Nice and
has been denied an opportunity to defend that title as well.
And
their teammate Andreas Kloden has been denied the opportunity
to defend his championship at Tirreno-Adriatico. (That's
the work of RCS boss Angelo Zomegnan, the Italian co-conspirator
in this collusion.)
What's stupid about it is that they have painted themselves
into a corner where there is no possible way to come out of it
looking like a winner. If they succeed in their intention to
exclude the Astana team--arguably, the best team in the world--from
all those important events, then they're going to look
like scoundrels and villains and total boneheads in the eyes
of most cycling fans (who want to see the best racers in the
best races). And if the UCI does manage to find some legal remedy
that forces them to back down, then they're going to be
utterly humiliated for all the world to see and to jeer at. What
kind of a dope would crawl out onto a high branch like that and
then proceed to saw it off? Words like hubris and folly come
to mind.
Then again, how about Pat McQuaid (head of the UCI)? He has now
thrown down an ultimatum ahead of Paris-Nice that is stupid to
the point of being suicidal. He's gone all-in with a weak
hand, and as happened last year in the Unibet stand-off, ASO
is going to call and he's going to fold. At least it looks
that way now. And as long as we're handing out stupidissimo
awards, you have to question the wisdom of Johann Bruyneel getting
into bed with the money men from Astana, and of Levi and Alberto
and the rest of them following Johann blindly into that minefield
(to mix my metaphors). We understand that sponsor money is hard
to come by these days, but this looked like a Faustian bargain
right from the get-go. Jeez, what a mess!
This one is far from over, and it's probably going to get
worse before it gets better. I'm pretty much disgusted
with the whole sorry circus, and depressed at the prospect of
being unable to escape from this endless cat fight. The only
way to avoid it would be to swear off bike racing as a spectator
sport, and I'm not quite ready to do that yet. But if these
miserable clowns don't sort themselves out soon, I may
have to consider it.
But enough about these slimy weasels. It's springtime,
and that's the season for optimism, so let's be positive:
let's hope that these pompous, petty pinheads of polemics
all crawl back under their rocks and leave the races to be sorted
out by the racers. And while we're looking forward to that
brighter day, we can also look backward, savoring our pleasant
memories of the Tour of California...an excellent little race
that was decided on the road instead of in a courtroom.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net