See Me Squeegee

Alright…now that I have confirmation that I have at least one reader for these weekly TdF recaps, let’s do it!  Everyone else, you’re welcome to join Katie and me in this pen-pal-peloton.  Thoughts on week one:

The Course

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…  The Tour organizers put together an unbelievable course this year – even in just the first week we had great attacks in the Pyrenees, a really cool tour of Corsica with some hills, a Team Time Trial to shake up GC…  And that’s well, well before the Individual Time Trial at Mont Ste. Michel, the double-loop of l’Alp d’Huez, the ride up Ventoux, and the longer-than-usual flat stages between the ITT and the Alps to get from Brittany to the Alps in a few days.  Should be amazing.

But then again…that team bus getting stuck under the finish banner was stolen straight out of George Michael Bluth’s playbook from the new season of Arrested Development.  While none of the major competitors abandoned due to the crashes that ensued, several big names were affected – Contador had to hit the hospital (and hasn’t seemed himself in the mountains), Cavendish was dinged up (and other than his one stage win he’s been noticeably absent on several sprint finishes).  Tricky beginning for sure, and hopefully today’s rest day clears guys up for a great week two and an epic week three.

Jan Bakelants in Yellow

That goofy Belgian was a beneficiary of the scattered finish to stage one, the everyone-gets-the-same-GC-time aftermath, and all that, and spent a couple glorious days in yellow.  The jersey really does give you wings, too – so fun to watch that guy, I think in his first Tour, at the top of the world.  The first week of the Tour is always fun because of the unusual suspects in yellow.  This year’s didn’t disappoint at all.

Tommy Voeckler at it Again

This guy – every damn year he attacks with that same open-mouthed smile and open-jersey pedal dance.  If it’s a mountain stage on Bastille Day he’s attacking, and even if not, he just goes for it.  He’ll never win the polka dot jersey and he can’t time trial to save his life for GC, but he’s one of those fun traditions…he’ll happily attack, happily get caught, earn some respect for France and just add color to the Tour.  Love that guy.

Team Sky at it Again…

Here’s where I may get controversial. How is it that last year Team Sky not only wins yellow but has its top domestique (Chris Froome) look like the best guy in the race *even* while doing so much pacemaking; and then does it again this year only with Froome in yellow and Richie Porte playing the Froome role on the first Pyreneean stage?  More on the post-doping Tour era in a second, but doesn’t this give us a little pause?  What’s Sky doing that the others aren’t?  How can a guy do a ton of uphill pacemaking – at a heavy enough pace that the entire peloton drops off – and then keep up almost that same exact pace, faster than the rest of the field that’s been in his slipstream, to comfortably get second on the day?  It’s insane.  And I’m not even accusing Sky of anything…it’s just one of those lag effects from all the doping lately. You just have to question stuff now, which I think is sad. I hope they’re clean – I like Froome a lot – but with all the emphasis on doping and so many of the old guard guys out there (Schleck, Evans, Contador, Zubeldia) in somewhat of contention but with so much more to lose in terms of lifetime bans and legacy, can these upstarts just afford to risk a little more?  What’s going on?

…But then again maybe not

But then Sky gets outclassed yesterday, leaving Froome to admirably fend for himself against a few attacks while he was isolated.  So what do I know?  Maybe Sky just left it all out there on Pyrenees #1 and didn’t have anything left in this post-dope world.  What remains to be seen, though, is:

Is it World v. Froome?

I mean…the media have already crowned Froome the heir apparent to Wiggins (who…let’s just be honest, was just a far less than charismatic champion, making this Tour much more engaging than last year’s), and now Froome has a comfortable GC lead and pretty clearly the strongest team.  He got attacked a little yesterday but why doesn’t the entire peloton just go after him to shake things up?  Quintana obviously has strong legs based on his attacks Saturday; Contador has to have some kick in him; Schleck should have something; Valverde has a lot to lose right now in second but then again the status quo leaves him still in second; and Evans, Rogers, Kloden, Cunego, Hesjedal…these are all legit names with legit ability and absolutely nothing to lose right now.  Stage wins, fellas.  Polka dot points.  Interest levels.  Let’s go!

And what about this – doesn’t Contador owe Schleck something after 2010?  Remember – Schleck is listed as the TdF champion that year only because Contador was stripped for  doping, but Schleck may have actually beaten Contador had Alberto not attacked when Andy’s chain popped on his attack and Alberto countered.  So he may owe him twice.  Now…Andy doesn’t seem to have GC form thus far, but if he picks it up doesn’t AC owe him some effort?  Or a chance to shake up the GC race and get Sky out of control at least?

I like Froome…but I want some drama here.  Fortunately the final week’s course all but ensures we’ll get it.

 Apres-Dope

So Contador was the last of the stripped titles; 2011 Cadel Evans got his and 2012 Bradley Wiggins won.  And both were pretty boring champions – partially because some of the top would-be contenders were suspended for drugs, partially because they were both style-less guys (Contador has swagger on the pedals; Armstrong had swagger on the pedals; they stood up, rocked the bike, danced a little, attacked ferociously.  Wiggins and Evans just sit and grind…not nearly as stylish).  And partially because we had been spoiled by the doped-up attacks and solos.  Floyd Landis might as well have been Amy Winehouse he was so drugged up, but that one epic day he had was so much fun to watch.  Contador and Armstrong were Motley Crue in their “we’re on the same team but we’re juiced up on so much natural and synthetic testosterone that we’ll duke it out” Astana phase.  And it was fun.  But now?

Evans is a shade of himself only two years after winning it all.  Wiggins is gone.  Schleck is, at least in name (he doesn’t even consider himself the ’10 champ since he didn’t wear yellow into Paris), a defending champ but even at a still-young age he doesn’t seem to have the kick anymore. Clean-tador is a lot less dynamic than Contador.  It may just be that the Tour needs another couple years to fully erase the names and shadows of the dope era, but at least right now the lack of consistent contenders is a little disappointing.  At least for week one – but let’s see if Contador summons the magic, if Quintana and Movistar get organized, if the field attacks.  This Tour has a ton of potential and maybe this rush to all new blood – both literally and figuratively – happens quickly enough to make the last week one of the all-time greats.

In the meantime, this week I’m keeping my eye on:

• How much pacemaking does Sky have to do in the middle stages, and how well do they respond to the task?
• Does Cavendish live up to his comments today and make the green jersey a real competition?
• Does Voeckler go crazy on Ventoux on Bastille Day this coming Sunday (I may wake up at 3:30am to watch live, I’m that psyched…that’s the stage I attended in 2009 when Armstrong, Contador, and the Schleck brothers ascended in the lead together)
• Does Wednesday’s Time Trial shake up GC?  Do any of the mountain contenders – the Movistar guys, Quintana and Valverde, perhaps – surprise us with a TT that keeps the pressure on Sky and Froome?
• How much of a toll do the long Thursday-Sunday stages that lead to Ventoux take?  The Ventoux stage itself is almost 150 miles with that insane climb at the end.  Should be a punishing week with plenty of opportunities for things to get interesting…and that’s even before we see our first Alp!

 

Vive le Tour…

 

At first it seemed strange to write my thoughts on Week One of the Tour de France, because how many readers will care? But then again…how many readers do I really have? And of that group…Katie, Chad, Markus, Aunt Mary Anne…you guys care.  And Mom will forward it to Dad who cares but he probably won’t read.  So there you go.  This month’s feature: TdF commentary.  You’re welcome, both-or-all of you who read this!

So before I even start with my thoughts on Week One, let me do an intro.  Why should you care about the Tour?  Why now, even after 8 years of American back-to-backishness has been erased, Armstrong-to-Landis, for doping?  Why now, when the GC (general classification, the individual championship) is either a foregone conclusion for Chris Froome or a battle among lesser-knowns?  Why when the only two “name” Americans have all but been eliminated – Christian Vandevelde on a flight back to the States after a crash; Tejay Vangarderen following up a white jersey (“best young rider”) championship last year with some big-time struggles on the first Pyrenean stage?

Well, how about the word Pyrenean, for starters?  Here’s why the Tour matters, now more than ever and, in this humble blogger’s opinion, right up there with March Madness and college football and the NFL.

It’s a tour of France

And that’s more than just a first-semester translation…it really is an epic tour.  This year’s installment – the 100th – started on Corsica, progressed along the Riviera, headed into the Pyrenees, will head through Brittany past some amazing landmarks that include Mont Ste. Michel (which incidentally I know nothing about but I’ve seen photos and I’m thrilled to see it on TV), through the Loire Valley into Provence, into the Alps, and back through Paris.  Forget the Travel Channel, the History Channel, the Food Network, or any combination thereof…the Tour de France combines all of it along with sporting drama and adventure inspiration.  It’s amazing the things you learn – about the history of Corsica as a possession of multiple empires, the Roman ruins that extend well into Central France, the areas that the Allies managed to secure during WWII, the cuisine in Basque country vs. that of the Alps vs. that of the famous wine regions.

Not impressed?  I wouldn’t have been, but even a dude living here in the shadow of the Hollywood sign has to be amazed by the cinematography. This is a global event, covered by NBC in the States, Sky in Britain, Eurosport in much of Europe, etc.  They spare no expense with aerial footage of mountains, Rick Steeves quality travelogues of the small towns the Tour rolls through, adventure camera work down daring descents of steep, dramatic Alps.  The Tour is a triumph of photojournalism, and it gives you incredible access to one of the most beautiful and historic regions of the world.  For that alone it’s probably worth having on the in background while you Tweet or Instagram on your phone.  But wait, there’s more…

It’s an International Delight for the Senses

I’m biased; I’ve been there.  But you should love the Tour for the same reasons you love the Olympics or the World Cup.  People from around the world gather, waving colorful flags from their countries and states, and even cooler they do it from nationalities and districts you didn’t even know existed.  Catalonian Spain, the city of Luxembourg, the island of Corsica, the Island of Man…there are flags and chants and customs that show up all over the place to match the pageantry of the classics – your French flags, your Union Jacks, your Stars and Stripes, your off-kilter-lower-case-Ts from Scandinavia…  The Tour is one of the few free events of its level – to watch the Tour you just have to show up…although for the best stages you should show up days in advance to stake out a spot for your camper (or in my case, your rented Opal furnished with four boxes of granola bars and two cases of Vittel).  At every mountain stage there’s an unofficial area called “Dutch Corner” which typically sets up a week before the stage and which serves until the day after the race as the party zone – just show up, look friendly, and someone with consecutive matching vowels somewhere in their name (Koenraad von Oosterbaan, perhaps) will hand you a Heineken, raise his along while his mates do the same, and warn you that you’d better drink it fast.

For the TV viewer it’s a look at what’s great about humanity – people from around the world (yeah, mostly Europe but don’t forget your Aussies, your Kazakhs, the fact that a Columbian guy almost won yesterday, and the presence of quite a few North Americans) gathering in support somewhat of their home country but mostly of dedication, achievement, and camaraderie.  When cyclists get within 2-3 kilometers (mile, mile and a half) of the summit of a climb, the wall of humanity they pass through is incredible – costumes, flags, shirtlessness (and these are mainly Euros…it’s attractive shirtlessness, not NASCAR shirtlessness!).  The Tour is the Olympics without the overpriced corporate sponsor seats; it’s open to the public for anyone who cares enough to go and packs enough to drink.  And for those of us who don’t pack enough to drink, there’s Dutch Corner and some friendly British neighbors.

But why do the sports matter?  Why watch someone ride a bike when your kid can  ride a bike?  Well, there’s…

Many Events Among One

Here’s what ESPN-based America doesn’t get, what I didn’t get until fairly recently.  The Tour de France is about much more than the winner – or what we call “the winner”, the winner of GC.  Yes, it’s a three-week race in which the winner sometimes wins by only a minute.  And many days the standings don’t change at all.  And much of the time it doesn’t look like the potential winner isn’t really trying to win.  But there are reasons. So many wonderful reasons.  Here’s how it goes:

• Riders are exponentially more efficient when they’re riding behind – “in the slipstream of” – another rider.  It’s physics – when the guy in front of you clears the static air in front of you, you’re riding in essentially a vacuum, using significantly less energy.  It’s been said that it’s 30% less, 40% less energy.  Whatever it is, it’s noticeable.  I ride – when I’m behind someone after I’ve been pushing air for miles, there are times when I’m going 2-3 miles an hour faster and it doesn’t feel like I’m pedaling at all.  Aerodynamics are huge, which leads to:
• It’s a team game.  Because of the above, if you have a guy who’s one of the 5-6 guys who really *should* contend for the TdF title, you save his energy.  Someone has to cut through the wind – the aerodynamics only work when someone is doing that up front physics work.  And so every team has most its riders designated as “domestiques”, riders whose job it is to take the wind for the team leaders.  Which may seem like you’re letting the leaders coast, but it makes the strategy fascinating. Because domestiques get tired too, and they’re by nature not the best riders so their usefulness is limited.  and these races are always 100+ miles each day with wind, hills, and elements to contend with.  And what gets really interesting with this strategy is:
• GC (General Classification) riders tend to only attack when there’s a chance to get away from other GC contenders.  On flat stages with no major change in difficulty – either from a turn into devastating headwind or from an uphill tick that makes the ride that much tougher – there’s not much chance to get away, so the GC contenders and their domestiques are content to roll the status quo.  But…guys who won’t necessarily win the *race* might want to win the *stage*, and they have a lot to go for.  So they attack.  And when they take off, sprinting from the front of the group, someone has to chase.  But no team wants to waste its domestiques’ energy on a fool’s errand while the other teams rest for a big mountain day.  So the breakaways tend to get away until the main contenders calculate that they need to get serious.  It’s economics – I don’t care if Jibronie X is 3 minutes ahead…but I care if he’s 10 minutes away…that’s my breaking point and as soon as he hits that I have to take the lead to chase him down.  Which makes *every* stage interesting because *every* team is doing that calculus.  Including…
• The points competitions.  We all know the GC championship, the famous one won by Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong (but maybe not Lance Armstrong if you’re reading a recently-published World Almanac if they still sell those) (but, seriously, Lance Armstrong…we all saw it and everyone else in contention in those races has already been excommunicated for doping, too, but whatever).  But the Tour is more the Olympics, entire, than the Olympic 100 meters.  There are several champions, it’s just that one championship tends to reign a little more supreme.  But there are several other winners, including:
• The Green Jersey, given to the winner in “sprint points”.  Every flat stage has at least one “intermediate” sprint along the route, at which point the first 10*  riders to cross a certain line win points, and has about twice as many points given to the first 10* riders (in descending order – 1st gets 30, 2nd gets 27, etc.) to finish. (*and let’s just say 10…it could be something different but for the sake of explanation…let’s say 10).  Sprinters tend not to be great GC riders – their legs are too bulky, their bodies too heavy to get over the mountains as quickly.  But they’re amazing at diving away from the pack in the last 200-400 meters.  So their teams often take up chase in flat stages to get them to the front to have a great chance at winning the stage.
• The Poka-Dot Jersey, given to the “King of the Mountains”.  Like the sprint competition, on mountain stages there are points awarded to the first 10* riders to summit each “categorized” climb.  Mountains are put in the categories based on how steep/important they are, and points are awarded proportionally.  So while the GC contenders need to climb well, particularly on climbs before the end of a stage, KOM riders have more incentive to attack and burn energy – they can rack up points early in a 3-4 climb stage and not care about finish time whereas finish time is *all* the GC guys care about.
• The White Jersey, given to the “best young rider” (riders under 24) on GC time, which gives other riders a vested interest in attacking or defending.
• Cash prizes, for things like “first rider to the highest point on this year’s tour” give riders an interest in attacking.
• Stage wins – the winner of each day’s stage is honored, wins money, etc., meaning that even if eking out a 1-second victory is meaningless in the final results, it’s meaningful for many.
• The “incumbent’ Yellow Jersey.  The leader of the GC at the end of each day gets to wear yellow at the beginning of the next, a huge honor and a big prize, meaning that each day he and his team have a responsibility to “defend” the yellow jersey by trying to stay in first.

 

• All of this gives each stage flavor.  The GC riders have a wholly different goal from the other competition riders, and each contender – for green, yellow, polka-dot, white, stage – has a team trying to work for him.  Attacks are the name of the game – when a KOM contender attacks the field to get a head start on a mountain, the GC teams have to determine whether it’s worth chasing him to stay on his wheel.  Remember, if they stay on his wheel he works 50% harder and they get a free ride, so to speak, at his pace…but the minute he gets a 3-4 bike length lead (which isn’t that hard given the element of surprise over that long a day) they have to extend themselves trying to catch up, which is energy they may need later.  Particularly if…another GC contender “sends” his teammate on an attack, knowing that if his teammate gets away, that’s good news for the team; and if the opponent wastes energy chasing him down, that’s also good news.

 

Which just all goes to show –  every stage has something.  On flat stages, the sprint teams want to get their riders toward the finish line at the front of the field to sprint it out for the day’s title and the Green points, but they can’t chase down every attack immediately.  So there’s almost always a mad dash to the finish – the handful of “breakaway” riders, exhausted from not getting nearly the wind-shield ride that the big group got all day, trying like crazy to summon the energy to stay seconds ahead of the hard-charging sprint teams who hope they calculated right when they decided it was “go time” to chase and make up lost time on the field (remember – no team wants to lead the way and waste that energy, so they almost always wait until their “economic” breaking point to decide they have to do it).  And in the mountains, GC guys try to attack KOM guys try to attack, and virtually everyone is gambling that they have enough to stay away or that the other guy they’re letting get away doesn’t have it.  Plus, for every uphill that isn’t a “summit finish”, there’s a daredevil downhill at 60+ mph.

 

So why should you care about the Tour de France?  Because it’s an event unlike any other, but one that includes all that makes sports great.  Teamwork, international pageantry, multiple events in one, a beautiful and historic tour of an exotic land.  And it’s inspirational – yeah, there were once drugs and there are probably still drugs, but only because these guys are constantly pushing the limits of what’s humanly possible.  Recreational cyclists gear up for “century rides”, 100-mile Saturdays that take around 6 hours, multiple refill-the-water-bottle stops, etc.  These guys go over 100 EVERY DAY for three weeks, and they throw in the biggest mountains in France to spice things up.  The event is a triumph of international brotherhood, an Olympian meeting of the world for a greater cause.  But the race itself is a triumph of humanity, overcoming our limits and pushing them higher and higher.  There’s nothing like the Tour de France, and regardless of who’s winning or who’s competing, it’s worth watching.

Vive le Tour.