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So, Tour de France 2010. Where do we start?
The history? The rules? The controversies?
No, while these are all important things that we will definitely get to. They would be the wrong place to start. The right place to start would be with a weedy looking man named Alberto Contador.
Photograph: Lionel Cironneau/AP
Contador is without a doubt the best Grand Tour rider alive today, he is one of only a handful of riders to have won all three grand tours (tour de France, Vuelta a Espana, and the Giro d’Italia) and he is the clear favourite to win this years Tour! Contador won last years tour in impressive form, making even the great Lance Armstrong look old and weak. When Contador rides his fans affectionately call him ‘el pistolero’ (the gunner), for he is as fast as a bullet and his signature celebration is to shoot imaginary pistols into the air as he crosses the line. When I first heard that he was called el pistolero I guessed from my limited knowledge of Spanish that it had something to do with car pistons, as his legs are more mechanical then human when he is racing up a mountain. When Contador races he looks like the bad guy from terminator 2! You know, the guy made out of liquid metal that just won’t die! Even when Arnold Schwarzenegger freezes him with liquid nitrogen and then shoots him into a thousand little pieces he still manages to re form and chase John and Sarah Connor, humanities only hope! 
The only way to kill him is to throw him into a vault of liquid hot magma and destroy his Cybernet chip. We can change tomorrow, today!
But I digress. Back to Contador.
Contador won in 2007 and then was not allowed to compete in the 2008 tour for his alleged involvement in the controversial Operacion Puerto doping scandal that have plagued other cyclists like Vinokourov and recently Valverde.
That angered Contador.
And so he did what most good emos do and he repressed his anger, allowing it to boil up nice and strong and then giving it one outlet: no, not rock music and eye liner, but an uncompromising desire to win!
Photo: Fotoreporter Sirotti
And that is exactly what he did, he went out and convincingly won the 2008 Giro and Vuelta. Then he set his eyes squarely on the 2009 Tour de France. He would go into the race as the clear favourite, everyone would have their eyes on him and in this race he would have his redemption!
Then Lance Armstrong decided to come out of retirement, and worse, ride in Contador’s team! If there is one thing that is going to steal a pre race favourite’s thunder, it is Lance Armstrong coming out of retirement to race again!
Now at this point it is important to note that Contador is pretty arrogant, thus Armstrong’s return sparked an fascinating rivalry between the two riders that came to a crescendo in the mountains of France in the 2009 tour! Contador won of course, Armstrong was just not strong enough to keep up with him, but as soon as the riders entered Paris their true feelings towards each other came out into the light of day.Contador snubbed his team (and especially Armstrong) by stating that he did it all by himself, a pretty arrogant comment considering that riding a grand tour is team sport!
Then he said this:
Photo: JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images
“He’s (Armstrong) a great rider and he did a great Tour. Another thing is on a personal level, where I have never admired him and never will.”
Armstrong came back on Twitter and said:
“Hey pistolero, there is no ‘I’ in ‘team’. what did I say in March? Lots to learn. Restated.”
and then:
“Seeing these comments from AC (Alberto Contador). If I were him I’d drop this drivel and start thanking his team. w/o them, he doesn’t win, a champion is also measured on how much he respect his teammates and opponents.”
Anyway, Contador is definitely the man to beat this year and he knows it. The Question is: can anyone beat him?
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Friends, it is with a heavy heart that I write this post. You may remember from my previous post that I was fairly confident that Cadel Evans would be standing in a pink jersey in Verona, the triumphant victor of the Giro d’Italia! It turns out however that I was mostly wrong.
Mostly?
Photo: AP
Yes, mostly. For you see that I stated that it would be down to three cyclists, Evans, Sastre and an Italian guy called Ivan Basso. Now that the dice has been cast, the journey completed and the final result revealed we can see that I was slightly correct. Ivan Basso, Italian Liquigas cyclist was crowned with the glory.
Sigh. Evans, will he forever be the bridesmaid? Will he ever win a grand tour?
It is not fair to be too critical of Evans though, he attacked consistently and didn’t sit back like so many other cyclists can do. He showed that he has the strength and mind to stay with the best of them but he can’t do it alone. You may then ask, “Well what was the main difference between Evans and Basso?” Their teams. BMC is just not in the same league as Liquigas. But BMC is young and inexperienced, they will lean and grow from this Tour and will only get stronger.
Photo: AFP
And so another grand tour opportunity has slipped through Evans’ fingers, but he does not leave the Giro empty handed, sure he didn’t win the Pink Jersey but he does leave with the red points jersey allocated to the person who accumulates the most points (won at stage intervals and finishes). This will hopefully soften the disappointment, but not by much.
Though Evans didn’t win it was still the best grand tour result Australia has ever had with all three minor jerseys being taken by Aussies! Evans won the red points jersey, Matthew Lloyd was the king of the mountains and young gun Richie Porte took out the best young rider jersey. If Evans had won it would have been a clean sweep!
It may have even resulted to international cycling getting a 5 second mention on a major network. Maybe even a spot on channel ten’s Rugby League Tonight… ah, I mean Sports Tonight.
Photo: S Sutherland
This will make the Tour more interesting though. Basso has shown that he is now a real contender and he knows it! He won’t be riding in the Tour for the scenery. He stated:
“Winning this pink jersey has given me back my confidence, and my ambition. I’ll go to the Tour with humility, but, with a solid team behind me, with belief that I can compete with the best.”
Though I don’t get the feeling he has thought much about it, considering that he also said:
“I haven’t even looked at the race route, but that’s the first thing I will do when I get home on Monday.”
Good plan, Ivan, good plan. If you’ve googled your name and are reading this post then you probably want to check out this entry:
A Beginners Guide to le Tour de France: the 2010 Route
Well the next truly major event is the Tour. All roads lead to Rome but all cyclists ride to Paris! We are only 31 days away from the start and so I will now turn my attention back to the beginners guide to the Tour series. I will report some old stuff as well as some new stuff so watch this space.
In other news some stuff happened with Alejandro Valverde. One of the guys I said would be good to keep your eyes on. But 1 admission of being wrong will suffice for today.
Well it is hard to believe that we are 17 days in on the Giro! 15 stages and 2 rest days. It has been a Tour dominated by Australian cyclists who have consistently been wining stages and riding in the pink. Of course while stage wins are nice they are far from the ultimate glory of winning the whole race!
See the question at this point in any race is the same: who will be the ultimate winner when the final kilometre has been pedalled? Who will be crowned with, accolades, glory and lucrative media rights?
Well as we head into the last week of cycling my money is all on one particular Australian to do it.
Photo: AFP/Getty
33 year old Cadel Lee Evans!
The upcoming stages are almost made for him, two individual time trials as well as two very long gruelling mountainous stages. If Cadel’s stage 7 win showed anything it is that he can be dangerous when the road starts to get steep. He is currently 4:43 behind the leader, but that kind of time can disappear in seconds with a well timed breakaway or a heart breaking (and peloton breaking) climb. From where I am sitting Cadel’s main rivals will most likely be Spaniard Carlos Sastre (2008 TdF winner) and Italian Ivan Basso (2006 Giro winner). I think Australian Richard Porte won’t have the legs to stay where he is in second place on the mountains, having said that though his sixth place in the opening time trial shows that he will be a potential danger in the two upcoming time trials, either way he will certainly go home happy with his amazing result!
Photo: AP
Cadel is an excellent time trial cyclist. If he wasn’t he wouldn’t be wearing the rainbow jersey. He can get in a good position, set a cracking rhythm and just keep at it till he crosses the finish line. He finished only 2 seconds off Bradley Wiggins in the opening time trial this year and Sastre and Basso weren’t even in the top 10. Time trials are always fun and always eventful. One only has to think of the final time trial last year where winner Denis Menchov crashed out just before the finish line, a mere kilometre from the end of the whole Giro! Thankfully a quick bike change limited time loss to only 24 seconds, which kept in the overall lead and the eventual champion.
Picture by Peter de Voecht
Cadel is also a great mountain climber and the last week of the Giro will be a feast for good mountain climbers. He is physically built for the mountains and can tolerate the pain for long periods of time. However we all remember what happened in 2008 climbing the Alpe d’Huez when Evans lost over 2 minutes (and eventually the whole Tour de France) to Carlos Sastre. Though I don’t think Sastre is as strong these days as he was two years ago and I think the opposite is true for Cadel. With the penultimate stage including 5 big mountains to climb we could see the winner emerge and that winner could be Aussie Cadel. If not then on the next day he can do his magic in the time trial
Either way I just simply want Cadel to win. He deserves a grand tour victory! He has consistently been hampered by bad luck over the past few years. Cadel is the ride who can make you sit back and wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t had so many mechanical difficulties during the Vuelta or such a poor divisive team during the last few Tours. Just wonder…
Well hopefully a 2010 Giro win will stock that fire of wonder, answer his harshest critics and help cycling become more popular in Australia!
Go Cadel, Go!
Photo: AFP
Well Australia is continuing to make its mark on professional cycling. It is only stage nine of the Giro and we already have three Australian stage wins plus one of those Aussies, Cadel Evans, in a close second! Matthew Goss rode over the line this morning in first place to claim his first ever grand tour stage win. While earlier in the tour another Matthew, Matthew Lloyd and of course Cadel Evans also secured impressive stage wins.
The weather has been nothing short of dramatic in this years Giro, with rain and fog turning the riders into not much more than mud wrestlers on bikes as they push through the elements to glory. This last stage saw riders pushing through deep puddles, spraying spectators as they flew past. As I write this I am looking out the window at a rainy day in Sydney knowing that I will soon jump on the bike to head home! But as I think of it I start to think of one of my favourite cycling stories, it is one that I set in the Giro and set in awful weather!
Photo: Darcy Kiefel
It was 1988 and Andy Hampsten was a young American riding in the Giro. It was a star studded Giro with riders such as Hinault, LeMond and Moser, plus it was snowing, really snowing! The race directors had shortened the stage because of the adverse weather and most of the riders were too nervous to ride fast and attack. In these conditions cyclists huddle very close together in the peloton, as penguins do in Antarctica. One would do his duty of bearing the icy cold on the outside before he could move into the warmer centre of the peloton. Cycling was more about surviving against the elements than racing each other. Unofficial truces were being bargained when suddenly Hampsten attacked. Initially no one took up the chase, maybe they thought he was too far down the rankings to be a threat, maybe the thought he wouldn’t make it very far by himself on a solo attack in the Italian mountains in a blizzard! Whatever reason, Hampsten surprised the group and opened up an impressive lead. And then he continued, and continued. It was so cold that Hampsten was not naturally producing enough heat, his team manager passed him a woollen hat to wear. Naturally Hampsten wanted to get as much excess water out of his hair as he could before he put it on so he ran his hands through his hair and a massive snowball rolled out of his hair and down his back!
Oh by the way, I forgot to mention that this was all being done on dirt, well mud by that stage. Most of the road had not been paved and was simply a one lane dirt road snaking its way up the mountain.
The comes the descent. Going up a mountain in the snow is pretty bad, but descending down a muddy, slippery, snowy mountain as fast as you can is just downright suicidal.
But this is a Grand tour, and this is what you need to win.
For the descent Hampsten put on every warm thing he could get his freezing hands on! But clothing can only do so much when you’re flying. It was so cold that day that Hampsten could only use one gear on his descent. Why? The others were frozen! There was another rider who had attempted a breakaway, Vandevelde who at this point had stopped at a refuge. He just couldn’t get back on his bike for 40 minutes and ended up falling far behind the peloton.
Hampsten finished the stage and was presented the pink leader’s jersey for his efforts! He went on to become the first ever non European to win the Giro! Let’s hope another non European wins the Giro this year.
I am sure that Evans will have had that story bounding in his head as he has been riding through the wind and the rain this year.
Well the Giro is under way and there has been no shortage of excitement in the opening three stages. Most notably of course was Australian cyclist Cadel Evans riding into the leader’s jersey on the second stage. Evans who is the current world champion is certainly one of the favourites to win the Giro and I am sure was happy to exchange the rainbow jersey for the pink. Evans has twice come second in the Tour de France, third in the Vuelta and of course earlier this year won the Fleche-Wallonne. I have no doubt that he has his eyes set to win a Grand Tour and this is the one he is going for.
During stage 3 however a nasty crash and his chain coming adrift 9km from the finish has meant that the Maglia Rosa (pink leader’s jersey) is no resting on the shoulders of Kazakh rider Alexandre (Vino) Vinokourov. Vonokourov is the reason the Astana team was created, he was a promising young rider who most people thought could be the next Indurain or even Armstrong. But of course in 2007, after a disastrous start to the Tour, Vinokourov stunned the world by winning the individual time trial a whole minute and 14 seconds faster than Cadel Evans.
Amazing! Almost unbelievable!
The next day he failed a doping test. He had cheated.
Consequently Astana withdrew from the Tour in disgrace. Vinokourov received a one year ban from professional cycling by the Kazakh Cycling Federation (which was a very light punishment considering that the standard punishment is a two year ban!). The UCI considered trying to extend the ban to the minimum two years by taking the Kazakh Cycling Federation to the court of Arbitration for Sport, however 6 months later in December 2007, Vinokourov retired from professional cycling. The UCI didn’t see the point if he was retiring.
Vinokourov, however, didn’t stay retired. Maybe he had ‘Armstrong fever’ after seeing Lance come back into the sport, maybe he wanted to clear his name. Either way he is back and has won a string of races since returning in August 2009, including the prestigious Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
Vinokourov will be hungry to win the Giro as he will be expected to support Contador in this years Tour. (Although people who cheat are rarely good team players).
Anyway the Giro will be a good tour. I’m looking forward to seeing what Evans can do and what Vinokourov will try to do. A little bit of a competition is starting to form between themalready. As Vinokourov said yesterday after winning the Maglia Rosa: “I wasn’t going for the pink jersey … but I am happy Evans has lost it”
What a stupid cheating loser!
