On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 8/1/2003
A Tour for the Ages
|
 Baden Cooke |
 Richard Virenque |
 Denis Menchov |
It was amazing, wasn't it? I am sure I have never seen another stage race with so much high drama, so many surprises, such electric tension...and such a graphic face put on human struggle and suffering. You know the old clich - "on the edge of your seat"? That was me, during many of the miles of the tour...literally up on the edge of my chair, glued to the TV, too strung up to relax.
I recognize that no Tour de France is ever a sure thing for the favorite, but I confess I assumed this year's script would pretty closely mirror those of the previous four Tours. Sure, there would be moments of unexpected excitement, but in the end it would be another royal procession, with the reigning king marching in stately splendor to his fifth title, winning by some comfortable margin accrued over a couple of dominant time trials and a couple of powerful mountain breakaways. Well, yes...in the end, he did win, so no surprise there. But the journey was definitely no preordained, royal procession, and the winning margin was anything but comfortable.
I'm too disorganized to craft this into one, comprehensive account of the event, and besides, you already know what happened. Instead, I hope to grab just a few vignettes from the passing parade and chew on them, one at a time...
Allesandro Petacchi: you have to love this guy! Back at the beginning of the Giro d'Italia, he described himself as "timid." Not a word one associates with the hard men who duke it out in mass field sprints. It certainly is not the word I would choose, but it does illustrate a difference between him and almost all of the other guys who sign on for that perilous duty. What he rarely does is mix it up in the mosh pit with the other sprinters. One day in the Giro he was caught on camera in a little elbow-throwing fracas with another rider, but aside from that one little tiff, in six Giro wins and four Tour wins, he almost always got to the line first without indulging in any pushing or shoving or bully-boy behavior. While the other tough guys were beating up on each other, Petacchi would find a little bit of open road and simply ride away from them all. Lotto-Domo's Directeur Sportif Marc Sergeant commented, "There's nothing to be done about this ‘gentleman sprint' of his."
Ha! I love it! A gentleman sprinter: what a concept! Sergeant almost makes it sound as if Petacchi is not playing fair. In contrast, look at his own sprinter Robbie McEwen (one of the world's most obnoxious little twits) and Baden Cooke at the end of the final stage in Paris. I mean, the road has got to be 50 feet wide, and here these two are, slamming shoulders and elbows into each other, each trying to occupy the same two feet of road! What is it with these guys? Is it like Canadians in hockey...every game a grudge match? Or are they miniature refugees from the World Wrestling Federation? (And while they were slam-dancing their way down the home stretch, someone else was winning the stage.)
It's that tired old, macho, cock-o-the-walk crap that makes Petacchi such a refreshing new breeze in the field sprints. He just lays it down for you on a clean piece of road and says, "Here it is: beat me if you can." And from what we read, he appears to be a gentleman off the bike as well...and very good looking too. I imagine the charming lad from La Spezia will be the new heartthrob of Italy.
Who knows if it would have been different with Mario Cipollini and his Domina Vacanze team in the race? Some folks say that without the overpowering control of Cipo's thundering herd of zebras, the sprints were marginally slower and more chaotic, and that with them, Petacchi wouldn't have had those opportunities to launch his sprints. But they were there in the Giro and Petacchi won six stages to Cipo's two. Ironic though that the reason given for not inviting Cipollini to the tour was that he never finishes...and then the new king of the sprints--Petacchi--bails the first time the road tilts uphill. That's what sprinters do, M. Leblanc...get over it!
Crashes: can you recall a Tour where there were so many crashes, and where the crashes had such an impact on the outcome? From Stage 1 all the way to the final time trial...bikes and bodies were tumbling and crumbling. On that very first stage, 25 riders in a massive jumble: probably no one's fault...just one of those things that happens in the hurly burly of a sprint of nearly 200 riders. Most of those who went down were just unlucky: in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unluckiest of all was our own Levi Leipheimer (of Santa Rosa), out of the event on the first day with what was variously described as a broken pelvis or tailbone. How cruel: all those months of training, working yourself (and your team) up to a perfect pitch of fitness and power...and then, kadooosh! Down the toilet! Would he have made it to the podium? Let's hope he recovers quickly enough to do the Vuelta. He's been on the podium there already...maybe again?
Beloki's crash (and Armstrong's save): one of the most amazing moments in the history of cycling, and an image that will make every tour highlight reel ever put together. It points up a facet of bike racing that I think is often overlooked: handling skills. When they began that tricky descent--chasing Vinokourov--Beloki's director told him (over the radio) to let Armstrong take the lead, because he was generally acknowledged to be a better, bolder descender. But for reasons of his own, Beloki forged ahead, on the front, taking chances and pushing the envelope. Then, when he got too deep, too fast into a corner, he overreacted and things got ugly in a hurry. They said the oil in the asphalt was soft and slick in the 100 degree heat, and this caused his wheel to slide out. Well fine...but he knew what the conditions were like. He should have adjusted accordingly. I also wonder whether another, more skillful rider might have saved it, once the rear started to go. I know it can be done, sometimes. It all comes under the heading of handling skills, that least understood of the bike racer's tools. All of the racers in the Tour are good bike handlers, but some are better than others, and it can make a crucial difference. In the case of Leipheimer, you could say bad luck was the prime mover in his crash; in the case of Beloki, it would be superficial and probably inaccurate to attribute his crash to just bad luck.
Tyler Hamilton was another victim of a crash, but what a silk purse he made out of that sow's ear! Injured in the same pile-up on Stage 1 as Leipheimer...two fractures to the right collarbone. At first, we thought he would have to abandon; then he said he would hang around long enough to help his team in the team time trial (Stage 4); then, one day at a time, he decided to see how much pain he could stand, with his shoulder all strapped up. You've all heard the story; seen the grimaces of agony as he stood out of saddle and pulled on the bars. I could not believe it when he not only hung in there on the climbs, but even tried a few attacks! How could he be doing this?
Eventually, he even managed to launch a daring breakaway in the final mountain stage, and he made it work! It's not uncommon for breaks to be allowed to go away when the riders are far down in the overall standings, but it is almost unheard of for someone in the top ten to escape and stay away to take time off the other leaders. It just does not happen...and yet it did. Where was the Euskatel team while he was off the front for 50 miles? You would think, with Mayo and Zubeldia so vulnerable at that point, they would have put the whole team on the front to chase. Didn't happen. Yes, the peloton did pull back enough time that he didn't overtake them in the standings that day, but the time he took off them then allowed him to catch and pass them both in the final time trial, where he put in another gutsy performance, finishing second, just nine seconds out of the lead. After three weeks of gritting his teeth and bearing up under the pain, he ended up fourth overall in the Tour.
You have to wonder how he would have done in good health. You'll recall that last year he finished second overall in the Giro d'Italia after doing the final few days with a broken shoulder. Just once, I would like to see this tough little terrier do a big stage race without being all beat up. At this point though, he gets the award for the most courageous rider of the year.
Armstrong's crash on Luz Ardiden has been replayed and analyzed so many times, there is little I could add, except to note that I nearly fell off my chair when it happened. I like the fact that--with all the air play the moment got, not only on OLN, but on network sportscasts--it showed the world a wonderful example of sportsmanship, when Ulrich and Hamilton kept the lead pack in check until Armstrong and Mayo could rejoin. It was a classy thing to do, but class is a rare commodity in sports these days, so I'm glad "our" sport showed itself so well to the general public.
Ulrich's crash in the final time trial probably did not have that much of an impact on the final GC standings, as Armstrong was matching him, second for second, over the course up to that point, and it seemed extremely unlikely that Ulrich could have pulled back over a minute in the latter half of the course. But the crash may have cost Ulrich the stage win, and it certainly put the final nail in his coffin for the overall win. This little crash brings me back to bike handling skills, and to something else: total race preparation...attention to detail. Ulrich had to push harder if he expected to whittle away Armstrong's lead, but he just didn't have the skills to navigate that course under those conditions: extremely wet and slippery, with numerous roundabouts and corners plastered with super slick rubber crossing stripes. He weighs over 30 pounds more than Armstrong too, and all that mass has to be considered when negotiating those tricky corners.
David Millar (who also crashed in the wet time trial, but incredibly, had enough time in hand to remount and still win the stage) complained that doing all those slick corners in the rain was unfair, and that the organizers were blah blah blah. (Millar has a tendency to rant and pule when things go awry.) Well, hey Dave...deal with it! Bike races are not baseball games. Rain does not cancel. The occasional slick road is just another facet of the challenge presented by a three week race. Anything can happen and probably will.
So good handling skills were again very valuable on this most crucial stage, but so also was meticulous attention to detail...something that Armstrong and his team have taken to a level seldom seen before. He had ridden that time trial course earlier in the year. He went over the course--by bike or car...I'm not sure which--the afternoon before the time trial. And he rode it again--in the rain--on the morning before the time trial. So he was pretty well prepped for what he would face. What was Ulrich's preview of the stage? He elected to stay in his hotel room and watch a video of the course that his team had made the day before. Did these two different approaches make a difference in the time trial? You decide...
The Team: last year, Armstrong's US Postal team was frequently referred to as the strongest team ever. This year, they were less dominant in some ways, more dominant in others. Heras was slowed by bronchitis and never was much help for his team leader in the mountains, although Chechu and Triki and George did yeoman duty in that department. Johan Bruyneel's self-described "poker game" of putting Beltran and Rubiera in the breaks on two crucial mountain stages was brilliant strategy, forcing rival teams to take up the work of setting tempo. Where they really impressed was in the time trials. The time they gained over the other teams in the team time trial was all the cushion Lance had between himself and the wolves nipping at his heels for almost the whole tour, until his signature move on Luz Ardiden. Did you happen to notice that there were four Posties in the top ten in the final individual time trial? (Armstrong third, Ekimov, Pena, and Hincapie sixth, seventh, and eighth.) Not suprising they did so well in the team time trial.
Fastest Tour Ever: this tour averaged almost 41 kilometers an hour over its entire distance (25.4 mph). This in spite of the fact that it was generally agreed to be one of the hottest, most exhausting tours ever, with several days in the 100° neighborhood. In the first individual time trial, which was very hot, Armstrong lost 15 pounds. (Where is there 15 pounds to spare on that guy?) Anyway, when was the last time you averaged 25-mph for even a single ride, let alone 20 rides in a row, averaging about 200 K apiece?
Speaking of a fast single ride, that final time trial came within seconds of being the fastest time trial in Tour history, losing out only to Greg Lemond's legendary ride to the maillot jaune on the final day of the 1989 Tour. Millar's winning speed was 33.7 mph, and both Ulrich and Armstrong were ahead of Millar's time splits when Ulrich crashed, at which point Armstrong sat up and started playing it safe, eventually finishing third.
On a dry day, with no crashes, probably all three of them would have eclipsed Lemond's average of 33.9 mph. So too might have Uwe Peschel, who had the fastest split of all at the first time check, but then crashed twice, breaking some ribs and puncturing a lung. It's worth noting too that Lemond's demon time came on a course--from Versailles to Paris--with a slightly downhill profile and over a much shorter distance...about half of what the boys rode this year. It's true they had a tailwind off the ocean this year, but the rain-slick roads must have just about cancelled that out. Any way you slice it, some amazing speed out there on the roads this year.
In Sickness and in Health: did you happen to notice the ordeal of Jens Voigt on Stage 11? It was an otherwise unremarkable stage...a fairly flat run, with just a few rollers along the way. Apparently Voigt had been suffering for several days with assorted ailments. On this day, even though it was the day after a rest day, he just did not have the strength to go on. He drifted off the back, well behind even the other backmarkers, and there he stayed, twisting in the wind, for an hour or more. The moto cameras would go back periodically to check up on him, and we would see this poor soul plugging along at what looked to be about 12-mph...just barely turning the pedals over. He looked the way I look after a comprehensive bonk. (Finally, a Tour rider with whom I could identify!) Eventually, after struggling along for what must have seemed like forever, he had to give up and climb in his team car. I can't ever recall seeing a pro rider go so slowly on a flat road...like a wind-up toy that had wound down.
It would be a better anecdote if I could remember exactly what was ailing him, but I can't. I'm not sure they ever mentioned it. It was just one of those overall, systemic maladies that ambushes racers from time to time...a virus or congestion or some other sapping, wasting illness.
My point in mentioning this sad little sidebar at all is to note how close all of the riders in the pro peloton are to this sort of meltdown, all the time. Armstrong was weakened by diarrhoea and tummy upset through the first week of the Tour. Ulrich had a fever during the Alpine stages. Heras had bronchitis. Simoni had something...who knows what? Etc, literally ad nauseum. The thing is, these guys are like thoroughbreds or maybe like extremely finely tuned racing cars...brilliant performers, but ultimately very fragile. They have honed their fitness to a razor's edge, but in the process, they have abused their bodies in dozens of ways...so they end up riding a thin line between being as fit as a human can be, and tumbling over the edge into total physical breakdown. A long season of training and racing will put you perpetually right at that edge; a three-week stage race will often send you over the edge. Staying healthy through a long Tour, or surviving being sick, is another factor we often overlook in understanding who wins, who finishes in the pack, or who, like Jens Voigt, leaves it all on some obscure road on the way to Toulouse.
OLN: hooray for OLN and satellite dishes! I watched CBS's network hour of the final day of the tour, and it reminded me of the bad old days of race coverage when ABC or CBS would have these itty bitty snippets of the Tour, and of their total time devoted to the event, about half would go to Sam Posey or Pierre Salinger waxing poetic about the wines of Burgundy or some damn thing.
How far we have come, thanks to the Outdoor Life Network. And thanks to Phil and Paul and Bob. My schedule allowed me to watch every stage in real time, starting at 5:00 or 6:00 AM on the left coast and running until breakfast time. The ads for bull riding and bull running and so forth do get a little old, but if that's what they need to do to host all those hours of coverage, hey, I can live with it. (My solution: the mute button and a book to read during commercials.)
Phil and Paul are great...as good as any sportscasters in any sport at elucidating what the event is all about, and at bringing the excitement--their own excitement--home to us. They do have the classic Englishman's propensity for mangling the pronunciation of furrin names, sometimes to a hilarious degree. Paul is especially good (or bad) at this. In one short stretch he referred to Jacob Piil as Pill, Peel, and finally Pile, not to mention a couple of stabs at pronouncing the Danish "Jacob." In one, two-sentence exchange, Phil referred to Garzelli as STEPH-ano, and Paul answered right back with Steph-ANNO. (Phil has it right, as he usually does, although he too is not immune to the malaprop: he persisted in calling Juan Mercado "MERK-adoe" for most of one stage.)
And I wish I had a dollar for every time Paul says, "Unbelievable!" And another dollar for every time Bob Roll tents his fingers. In three weeks, I'd bank enough dough to pay for air fare to next year's Tour.
During the Giro, Phil, Paul, and Bob were all together on the play-by-play, and I think most die-hard fans agree that was the better arrangement than what was attempted for the Tour. Some smart folks decided the Tour needed to pull in a more mainstream audience, so they teamed Bob up with the mainstream, non-cycling intermediary...the blonde and lovely Kirsten...to provide explanations and back-stories for the more arcane aspects of the race. I do understand OLN's desire to package the sport for an uninitiated, mainstream audience, and so I can live with the Kirsten and Bob interludes. They didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, but they may have done so for others who were just tuning in to bike racing. Come to think of it though, I want another dollar for every time Kirsten said, "Break it down for me here, Bob!"
All minor quibbles aside, this coverage represented hog heaven for bike maniacs, and probably a breakthrough look at the world of bike racing for a lot of new fans.
And what an eye-popping look it was. What a race! Thank you to all the riders who worked so hard this past July, and thank you to OLN for letting us enjoy it all from the comfort of our sofas.
Top 15 Places
1 ARMSTRONG Lance USA USP in 83h 41' 12"2 ULLRICH Jan GER TBI at 01' 01"
3 VINOKOUROV Alexandre KAZ TEL at 04' 14"
4 HAMILTON Tyler USA CSC at 06' 17"
5 ZUBELDIA Haimar ESP EUS at 06' 51"
6 MAYO Iban ESP EUS at 07' 06"
7 BASSO Ivan ITA FAS at 10' 12"
8 MOREAU Christophe FRA C.A at 12' 28"
9 SASTRE Carlos ESP CSC at 18' 49"
10 MANCEBO Francisco ESP BAN at 19' 15"
11 MENCHOV Denis RUS BAN at 19' 44"
12 TOTSCHNIG Georg AUT GST at 21' 32"
13 LÃœTTENBERGER Peter AUT CSC at 22' 16"
14 BELTRAN Manuel ESP USP at 23' 03"
15 LELLI Massimiliano ITA COF at 24' 00"
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net