On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 8/1/2008
Tour de Farce Redux
Last month in the lead-up to the Tour de France, I examined the sorry saga of Team Astana being excluded from the big show. A month later now, I am doing my usual post-Tour rehash of the events from the last three weeks of racing. It is probably unfair to the riders who have been busting their busy little butts over those 21 tough stages to reprise the title Tour de Farce. It's not their fault that the idiots at ASO banned Astana. But I'm sticking with the farcical spin, fair or not, because the impact of ASO's back room politicking still looms over the Tour and will continue to taint the results for as long as anyone recalls the full story.
I didn't watch every stage of the Tour this year. I was on a cyle-tour during the middle week, way off in the back woods of Plumas, Lassen, and Shasta counties, far from TV and wifi and even newspapers. So I missed some stages. I caught up on the details when I got back.
If you followed the Tour, you probably saw more of it on Versus than I did, and you may have even devoured daily reports at VeloNews or CyclingNews. Assuming you did all or at least some of that, this recap won't be an attempt to retell the whole story of the race, but will instead be a browse through the smorgasbörd of Tour tidbits...a bite here, a nibble there... In no particular order of priority, here are a few Monday-morning observations on the Tour of 2008...
• Doping
Operating on the premise that it's best to get the hard, dirty work done first, let's get this funky issue aired out straight off the top and then move on. I don't know why I continue to be astonished--and pissed--at the mainstream media's reporting on doping in bike racing. I should know by now that, in their estimation, cheesy sleaze always sells better than straight-up sports reporting. You've heard this before from me: they don't understand the sport; they don't have any conception of how hard it is or how skilled and fit the athletes are in the pro peloton. They never have understood this and I don't suppose they ever will. It is galling and frustrating though to see the legitimate, and in some cases heroic efforts of good, hard-working riders trumped by a few footnotes about doping.
I'm not saying the use of performance-enhancing drugs in cycling is not a significant issue. This marks the third year in a row that the results have been affected in some way by doping: Landis busted after winning in 2006; Rasmussen tossed out while in the yellow jersey in 2007; and now the 2008 results overlaid by the exclusion of Astana, ostensibly because of the past doping sins of earlier Astana personnel. Through no fault of their own, the current Astana crew--Contador, Leipheimer, Klöden, et al--have been taken out by a bizarre karmic ricochet. And while any astute observer can see this latest chapter really was more about politics than drugs, the specter of drugs lies behind the political chicanery.
So yes, drugs are--still--a thorny problem in bike racing. But the painful irony of it all is that bike racing is doing more to catch and punish dope cheats than any other major sport, and yet because it is catching and punishing its cheats, the blissfully ignorant mainstream media sees only the busts and not the healthful purging of the bad guys. The final headline over the Associated Press story in our local paper read, "Sastre wins doping-marred Tour." Say, what?
Does that sum up this Tour de France for you, the informed bike fan? It certainly doesn't do it for me. But if you're the average sports fan, browsing the headlines over your breakfast Wheaties, your takeaway from that headline and the first paragraphs of the article is that the sport of cycling is a cesspit of dope fiends. It is a cruel and insulting slap in the face to Carlos Sastre and Cadel Evans and all the other superb athletes who are trying so hard not only to win bike races but to do it clean and free of the taint of drug-cheating.
So just how skanky is the cesspit? Who all got caught with their hands in the chemical cookie jar this time? First of all, there were three relative non-entities--Beltran, Dueñas, and Fofonov--two of them popped for EPO and one for the stimulant heptaminol, whatever that is. Then there was the high-profile bust of Ricardo Ricco and the subsequent sacking of his teammate Leonardo Piepoli, both for EPO. The busts of the three footsoldiers should hardly have been news, but the Ricco positive was a pretty big deal. He was second overall at the Giro and had won two stages already at the Tour. Piepoli had won another. (My Italian friend Emilio had commented at the time that their run of victories seemed a little too good to be true.)
In some of the past doping busts in cycling, we have been left in some doubt as to the reliability of the test results--with the Landis case being perhaps the most notorious of these gray-area mysteries--so that we, the fans, are conflicted in our own judgments about the right and wrong of the issues. We may never know for certain whether the parties involved were truly dirty or were just victims of a cruel twist of fate. But in the Ricco case, the evidence seems solid, especially in light of Piepoli confessing that he was the one who supplied the third-generation EPO to his roommate Ricco.
I confess that, were it not for that bad mainstream press, I would be delighted to see Ricco run out of town on a rail. It's been a long time since we have seen such an obnoxious little jerk on center stage in our sport. The guy really seems to be a punk of the worst sort, and the amazing thing is that he can ride so well with his foot so firmly stuck in his mouth. His assorted utterances during the Giro added up to the very definition of bad sportsmanship and lack of class. I especially liked his sour grapes griping at the end of the Giro that if he had a team as powerful as Astana, it would have been him instead of Contador winning the Giro. In one sentence, he managed not only to insult Contador but to insult his own team as well, meanwhile ignoring the fact that the Astana team arrived at the Giro with one week's notice and zero time to prepare for the event, putting them at a huge disadvantage. He also conveniently overlooked the fact that Contador kicked his punk ass in the final time trial, where powerful team tactics would have been irrelevant.
One crass quote at a time, Ricco has alienated most of his competitors in the peloton and has apparently even turned off the journalists covering the sport. It was reported that when he was led away by the police, even the supposedly neutral press corps booed him. So good riddance to this creepy little twit. We are immensely better off without him. Rooting him out of the sport may have been as painful and ugly as lancing an abcess, but the results will make it worthwhile eventually.
• Predictions
If I were a betting man, I would have lost my shirt on the Tour. Fortunately, I do not bet on bike racing or anything else. Nor did I even make any predictions in print. But in conversations with friends, I did pick my favorite for the overall: Alejandro Valverde. I didn't consider him a lock to win, but I thought he looked as strong as anyone coming into the race, and after his uphill sprint victory on Stage 1, I figured I'd backed the right horse. (I did correctly predict his victory in that first stage. It suited him perfectly.) But he stunk up the joint in the first time trial, finishing 34th and conceding over a minute to Evans in less than 30 K. (After having beaten Evans and a highly motivated Leipheimer in the Dauphiné TT a few weeks before.) Then he crashed rather badly on Stage 10 and that seemed to set him back a bit. While he finished a respectable 9th overall, he was never really a factor after the first week.
He could and did use the crash as an excuse for not doing better, but he was already off the pace before that happened. I have been predicting stage race greatness for Valverde for a couple of years now, but so far, he has not lived up to my expectations. So far, he seems to have become adept at snatching mediocrity from the jaws of greatness.
I did have Evans pegged about right. I figured he would do pretty much what he did, except I, along with everyone else, expected him to be stronger in that final time trial. In fact, I very confidently predicted that he would get past Sastre for the overall. Based on the numbers, it was a no-brainer. Evans beat Sastre by 1:38 in the first time trial (over less than 30 K). So surely he could recoup 1:34 over 53 K in the second TT, right? Who would have bet against that?
But the bare numbers ignore a few intangibles. For one thing, Evans also had a bad crash and rode the second half of the Tour pretty beat up. More importantly, he had to do all the heavy lifting for himself in the mountains--not a single teammate to help him--whereas, in contrast, Sastre's CSC team ran like a well-oiled machine throughout, with Cancellara and O'Grady and those lethal Schleck brothers taking turns pouring a big can of whup-ass over all the other riders.
I never considered Carlos Sastre as a potential winner. Based on his anemic performance in past time trials and his somewhat checkered resumé as a climber, I just didn't give him much credibility. Although he has been a perennial top ten finisher in the Tour, he has never really looked like the complete package before. As noted, he did poorly in that first ITT. In 2007, he was 16th and 26th in the two time trials, losing over seven minutes between them. In the very important final time trial of 2006, he began the day :12 out of first and ended up finishing 20th, dropping all the way to a distant fourth. (When Landis was tossed, he moved back up to third.)
His climbing in the past had often been done in the service of a team leader, most notably Ivan Basso, so perhaps we never saw him at his best, completely off the leash. Finally, this year, he entered the tour in the role of a potential team leader. But he--and team director Bjarne Riis--cleverely kept him low-profile for all of the tour leading up to L'Alpe du Huez. Frank Schleck was on point for CSC, often in the maillot jaune, while Sastre appeared to be comfortable in his traditional role as super domestique. When Sastre attacked on L'Alpe, you figured one of those guys--Evans, Menchov, Vande Velde, somebody--would counter. But every time any of them so much as blinked, one of the Schleck boys would be on them like a cheap suit. It was a fascinating exercise in team tactics, and you had to feel sorry for Evans in particular, all alone and struggling along, trying to make something happen. But I have to say: a true champion would have made something happen there; would have attacked and kept at it, all the way up the hill, even with Andy Schleck chewing on his left ankle and Frank Schleck chewing on his right.
Give the CSC-Saxo Bank team--and Riis and Sastre--credit for a brilliant game plan. Their management of stage race strategy was so masterful that it all seemed rather boring, harkening back to one of the US Postal juggernauts of the Armstrong era. The only surprise was that Sastre would perform so well and Evans so poorly in the final time trial. (Hard to say Evans performed poorly when he did beat Sastre in the TT, but just like Evans and Contador last year, Sastre rode last and had all the time splits in front of him and knew just how much he could concede and still come out on top. He knew what he had to do and he did it.)
I also would never have predicted such a good showing by Christian Vande Velde. Like Sastre, he has been a high-level lieutenant on a powerful team--Postal-Disco--for many years. Finally, with his transfer to Garmin-Chipotle, at the age of 32, he has been given the opportunity to spread his wings as a team leader. Considering that he'd never been in this position before and that his team is a non-Pro Tour squad, and rather new at the game at this level, he did much better than most people expected. And remember that he was coming off a full Giro as well, including having worn the maglia rosa for one day.
His climbing was good, if not great, and his time-trialing was well above average. He finished fifth overall at 3:05. In the tantalizing world of what-if, he might have done much better. He too had a crash, and it cost him at least two minutes. It was on the big climb-and-descent over Bonette on Stage 16. He had lost about 30 seconds to his main rivals over the summit, which he may or may not have been able to make up on the long descent to Jausiers. But in the process of trying to make it up, he crashed, and the time lost in getting back on the bike left him 2:32 adrift of the other leaders at the finish. Without the two minutes lost on the crash, his final GC time would have been 1:05, good enough for third place. Had he managed to bridge back up and recover the full 2:32, he might have finished the tour at :33...a close second.
But hey...crashes, or their counterpoint, good handling skills, are part and parcel of what makes a tour winner. (Just ask Joseba Beloki or Jan Ulrich.) Almost all of the top contenders crashed at some point during the tour. Evans, Valverde, Menchov, Vande Velde, Pereiro, Cunego... Sastre was one of the few who did not.
• Tour vs Giro
In light of the fact that Contador won the Giro but was denied the opportunity to defend his title at the Tour, much has been made of the assertion that the Giro was the real Tour this year; that is, the biggest, baddest bike race of the year. (Or as one ad campaign has it: "Pink is the new yellow!") It's an interesting argument, fodder for endless arguments among the tifosi. To add fuel to the fire, I will make a note of their respective attributes here.
Both had 21 stages.
The Tour was 3559 K (2207 miles).
The Giro was 3407 K (2112 miles).
Neither had a prologue this year.
The Tour had two time trials of 29.5 and 53 K.
The Giro had four time trials: a team time trial of 23.6 K; a mountain time trial of 12.8 K; two conventional time trials of 39.4 and 28.5 K, the latter of which came on the final stage of the Giro.
Minus the time trials, the Tour had 19 stages averaging 183 K apiece (113 miles).
Minus its four time trials, the Giro had 17 stages averaging 194 K apiece (120 miles).
And while the final stage of the tour is, for the most part, a relaxed promenade into Paris, the final Giro stage was that last, all important ITT.
Both events had six stages that might be described as mountain stages, and in both cases, four each were mountaintop finishes. In each race, the first of the mountaintop finishes was a rather small, relatively insignificant ascent, early in the event: Stage 6 of the Tour to Super Besse; Stage 7 of the Giro to Pescocostanzo.
Each stage race had a minor mountain stage with smaller climbs: Stage 9 of the Tour with two Cat 1 climbs and Stage 11 of the Giro in Marco Pantani's old backyard near Cessena.
The Tour's mountain stage without a mountaintop finish was Stage 16, crossing Lombarde and Bonette. The comparable stage on the Giro was 20, with the Gavia and Mortirolo.
The Tour's three big mountaintop finishes were Stage 10, finishing at Hautacam, preceded by the Tourmalet; Stage 15, finishing at Prato Nevoso, preceded by Agnello; Stage 17, L'Alpe du Huez, preceded by Galibier and Croix de Fer.
The Giro's three big mountaintop finishes were Stage 14, finishing at Alpe di Pampeago, preceded by Manghen; Stage 15, finishing--for the first time ever--atop Marmolada, preceded by Pordoi, San Pelligrino, Giau, Falzarego, and another, smaller col; Stage 19, finishing at Monte Pora, preceded by Vivione and Presolana.
If you don't know your cols, those might all be just a lot of funny place names. But if you do know them or have at least studied the profiles, it's interesting to try and take the measure of one big stage against another. One has to consider context too: their relative placement in the entire stage race; the weather, etc. All in all, it's tough to say the collected climbs of one stage race were harder than the other. It's weird in fact how closely they parallel one another.
The added weight of time trials in the Giro is the decider for me, especially that wicked-sick uphill, unpaved chug to Plan de Corones, and also the final ITT on the last day (as opposed to the final Tour stage, where the riders were strolling along, drinking champagne and goofing around).
So I give the nod to the Giro this year, if only by a little.
Of course, the caliber of the competition is the real key, and there the debate is rekindled with a whole different set of parameters. Evans' Silence-Lotto team and Sastre's CSC team both sent decidedly second-string teams to the Giro, whereas Astana brought all of its top guns. But they didn't have a Tour de France on the horizon. For them, the Giro most definitely was the Tour.
• Meanwhile...
So while the Astana boys were not competing at the Tour, they were scraping around, looking for other races wherever they could find them. (Recall my list of their stage race successes from earlier in the year, as noted in last month's column.) They sent their B-team to the seven-stage Tour of Austria (July 6-13): with no major team leaders on the roster, Vladimir Gusev finished second overall at :39, Janez Brajkovic was seventh, and Astana won the team prize. Half a world away in Bend, Oregon, Levi Leipheimer won the six-stage Cascade Classic (July 9-13). He sealed the deal in the time trial, which followed a 15-mile up-&-back route. He gained all the time he needed to secure the GC victory in the 7.5-mile uphill, then cruised on back down the hill. Then his "team" defended his lead for the rest of the stages. Why is "team" in quotes? Because the entire Astana team for the race--facing off against all of the best full squads in the United States--consisted of just Levi and Bend native Chris Horner. That's it: two guys against the peloton. But he won. Afterward, he pointed out that Lance Armstrong had once won the Cascade Classic and then had won the first of his Tour de France titles the following year.
Miscellaneous tidbit: at the same time, another half a world away, Tyler Hamilton (remember him?) of Rock Racing was winning the ten-stage Tour of Qinghai Lake in China (July 11-20).
• At the end of the day...
You've already heard my rant about politics and posturing robbing the Astanas of their shot at the Tour, and robbing the fans of an opportunity to see the best riders going head to head. So I won't beat that old dog too much more. But I can't help wondering what Levi or Alberto would have done in the time trials and on the big mountain stages. I find it hard to believe they would have allowed Bjarne's boys to bamboozle them they way they did Evans and the other wannabes. Full marks to Sastre and CSC, but still, I come away from the Tour feeling like I have an itch that didn't get properly scratched; that we were deprived of the full measure of what we should have, could have witnessed.
Well, so be it. Contador and Leipheimer and Bruyneel all say they've moved on. So should we. In the near term, we can look forward to some interesting adventures at the Olympics; then the Vuelta, with a seriously motivated Contador on tap, facing off against a newly dominant Sastre; and then the Worlds. The Tour? For better or worse, it's over. We're moving on.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net