Home | Mobile | E-Mail Us | Privacy | Mtn Bike | Ride Director Login | Add Century/Benefit Rides
Home

Adventure Velo


Additional Info

Tour of California Web Site


About Bill
Past Columns

 

Bill  On The Road

 by: Bill Oetinger  6/1/2011

A tale of two tours...one year later

One year ago, I wrote a column on the Giro d’Italia and Tour of California, happening concurrently in the month of May. In that column, I launched into a frothing rant about the mediocrity of the Tour of California; about how it was never going to amount to much or be taken seriously until they offered a legitimate mountain-top finish.

I did make the disclaimer that it was unfair and unrealistic to compare a 21-stage grand tour--with a century’s worth of tradition and gravitas--to an upstart, 8-stage tour off on the far side of the world (not far off for bike-crazy Californians, but a long way from the European heart of the bike-racing world). However, in spite of that, it was possible to compare the two in certain respects, and my personal take-away from the comparison was that the California event had a lot of heavy lifting to do to if it wanted any real street cred in the world of racing.

That was then. One year later, we can look again at both of the events, which have just wrapped up their 2011 editions. And we can revisit the question of how they stack up as bike-racing value. Did they present the riders with real, significant challenges? Were they good races and did they provide us, the bike-racing fans, with good entertainment?

I would be delighted if I thought my rant last year had any effect on the organizers of the Tour of California; that they read it and took my fulminations to heart. I have no idea whether they did any such thing. But I can say my concerns about the race--the lack of a mountain finish chief among them--were shared by many others, including riders such as three-time ToC winner Levi Leipheimer. AEG, the Tour promotors, have been acutely aware of this looming issue, and finally, this year, they did something about it: they included not one but two mountain finishes in the event, one each in Northern and Southern California.

After having ripped them up one side and down the other last year, I want to congratulate them for finally doing what they have needed to do. The results were very gratifying, for the racers, for the fans, and, presumably, for the promoters. It was a great success, and the event is enormously enriched as a result.

The promoters tried for even a bit more challenge with a start at Lake Tahoe, including a moderately challenging climb--Brockway summit--near the end of Stage 1. It wasn’t a mountain-top finish and it wouldn’t have made any important difference in the standings, but it was all moot after the stage was cancelled by a freak, late-season snow storm that made the roads around the lake look like a winter wonderland. Great for late-season skiing, but not so hot for cycling. I hope they’re not discouraged by the nightmare debacle of that cancelled stage, and that they will come back to Tahoe or the high Sierra somewhere else. They say they will. Mid-May is always going to be a bit dicey in the high mountains. It can be that way in the Giro too. But don’t give up! Keep trying for those stages, and we will get in a good one eventually.

On paper, the huge package of climbs to Mount Baldy, outside Claremont (Stage 7), was going to be the decisive stage of the tour. But in fact, the real time differences--the only ones that really mattered--were produced on the much shorter (but steeper) climb of Sierra Road, above San Jose (Stage 4).

Team RadioShack had been saying all along that they were riding the tour with two protected team leaders: Levi Leipheimer and Chris Horner. In spite of that, I think most fans assumed Levi would rise to the top and Chris would settle into his standard role as super-domestique. But it didn’t work out that way. The two of them had their teammates bury themselves on the first steep pitches on Sierra, blowing everyone else off the road, then they took off on their own. But it was Golden Gate BridgeHorner and not Leipheimer who had the legs to take the stage, and he put 1:15 into Levi and at least that much time into everyone else. Game over, pretty much. Levi got 37 seconds back in the Solvang time trial, but that was it. (Horner is no slouch in an ITT. He won the six-stage Vuelta Ciclista al Pais Vasco last year by winning the time trial against a very strong field.)

After that, Baldy was almost an anti-climax. Radio Shack again dominated everyone else in the field, letting their domestiques drive the pace, mile after mile, up into the mountains, shredding the peloton, before Levi and Chris took off alone. (A special salute to RadioShack neo-pro Matt Busche: I had never heard of this young American rider before the Mt Baldy stage, where he destroyed a ton of very good riders while pacing Levi and Chris up to the base of the last climb. Looks like Johann Bruyneel has once again demonstrated his good eye for finding new talent. And now, a few days after the ToC, Busche has just won the US National Championship Road Race, just nipping three-time champ George Hincapie in a two-up sprint. So not only can he climb, he has sprinting legs too. Wow. New kid on the block.) Levi finished off a storybook tour for the team by winning the stage in a side-by-side, hand-in-hand finish with Horner...and with no one else even close.

Was it great racing and good entertainment? It certainly was great racing for Chris and Levi and the RadioShack juggernaut. All hail the conquering heroes! But once those champs got on top of the competition--on Sierra Road and again on Baldy--there wasn’t a lot of real drama...not much suspense nor any scrapping and clawing over a handful of precious seconds. The RadioShack train just blew the competition away.

It’s not the promoter’s fault this time if the drama was lacking. They did their part, providing authentic, legitimate hill finishes. And it’s certainly not the fault of Horner or Leipheimer. They did their part too. But it was disappointing that the rest of the field seemed so overmatched. We figured Andy Schleck was going to be a factor, even though he did a lot of sandbagging ahead of time about not being in great shape. As others have pointed out on many a club ride, it’s not sandbagging if it’s true, and in Schleck’s case, it appears to be exactly accurate: he was not in great shape, and if he doesn’t find some better form before the Tour de France, he’ll be a non-factor there as well.

Garmin-Cervelo brought what appeared to be a well-stacked team, with Tom Danielson, Christian Vande Veld, Dave Zabriskie, and Ryder Hesjedal, and they did put three riders in the top ten. But none of them was really a threat for the overall. The announcers and journalists kept trying to convince us that they were a legitimate second front to RadioShack and that they could upset the Shack’s plans, sooner or later. But it was just a lot of noise. They were never really on the same page with Horner and Leipheimer.

One of the nicest developments among the leaders--or at least contenders--was the emergence of Teejay Van Garderen of HTC-Highroad. This bright young American finished fifth overall and won the Best Young Rider competition. Another new kid on the block. (Remember last year, when he finished a very good third overall at the Dauphiné? And do you recall which nice old veteran rider helped to pace him to the finish on l’Alpe du Huez, even though he was on a different team? Chris Horner...always a nice guy.)

So anyway, despite the lack of edge-of-our-seats suspense, it was a good race. And it was a vast improvement as a significant, meaningful race because of the hill finishes. Three cheers for AEG for finally stepping up to the plate and getting it right. Can’t wait to see what they’ll have for us next year. And above all, three cheers for Chris Horner, who turns 40 later this summer. He has been around so long and has done so many good things, you’d think he should be off the bike and riding around in a team car, working as a DS. But nope: he’s still drilling it. And, as ever, he’s still smiling and having more fun with it than any two other riders. Did you see his post-race interviews with Bob Roll? The guy is a great interview...a real character. We need a few more like him.

ContadorIn some ways, the Giro suffered this year from the same lack of suspense that made the Tour of California a bit of a yawn. If I had to sum up the Giro in one headline, it would be: Over After Etna. That would be the first mountain-top finish of the Giro, on the slopes of the still bubbling volcano in Sicily...only Stage 9 and a long way from the supposedly decisive stages in the really big mountains, later in the race. Alberto Contador attacked on the final climb and danced away from everyone else, putting 50 seconds into all his rivals. As had been the case on Sierra Road at the Tour of California, you could say at that point: game over. Or at least you could with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, looking back at the full grand tour. Contador never put a foot wrong throughout, and after Etna, everyone else was just scrambling around under the table, searching for whatever crumbs he might have left behind.

On the next hill finish--Stage 13 to Grossglockner in Austria--Contador allowed Jose Rujano to win the stage, but put another minute-and-a-half into all the other hopefuls. On Stage 14--up the fearsome Zoncolan--Igor Anton won, 33 seconds ahead of Contador, but Contador was again ahead of all his rivals, putting at least a few more seconds into each of them. (I had been predicting big things for Anton, maybe even the maglia rosa, but aside from this stirring win, he was a non-factor.)

Anton’s Euskaltel teammate Mikel Nieve was allowed enough room to win the Stage 15 mountain-top finish, but Contador again finished ahead of everyone who mattered, adding to his lead. Stage 16 was an uphill time trial, and no one was going to finish ahead of Contador on this one. He padded his lead over all the other riders once again, by at least half a minute and in many cases a good bit more. On the next mountain finish--Stage 19 to Macugnaga--he easily reeled in former Astana teammate Paolo Tiralongo, who had attacked some way out from the finish. When he chased down Tiralongo, he dropped all the other GC contenders. Then he graciously pulled Tiarlongo the last kilometer and handed him the victory, meanwhile padding his lead over everyone else a bit more.

In the final uphill finish--Finestre-Sestriere on Stage 20--he merely sat in with his so-called rivals and let them hammer on each other while he covered their moves. And on the last day, he locked it up with a solid ITT through the streets of Milano. No he didn’t win it, although he was ahead at the first of two time checks. But after demonstrating that he could have won it, he eased off a bit at the end, carefully negotiating several tricky turns on cobbled streets, waving to the crowd, and just enjoying the moment. Even with that relaxed promenade for the last few kilometers, he still finished third and put over a minute into any and all of the other GC faves, extending his lead yet again.

His final margin of victory for the Giro was a comfortable 6:10 over Michele Scarponi and 6:56 over Vicenzo Nibali (the winner of last year’s Vuelta). Not even close. Contador never missed a trick, widening his lead at almost every possible opportunity. It was total domination from start to finish. And honestly, it never looked as if he were really extending himself. He was off on his own little planet, well above everyone else.

Now we have to wait...and wait and wait...to see if the Court of Arbitration for Sport will buy his tainted beef defense. If they don’t, he really will be off on his own planet, stripped of this win, last year’s Tour win, and loads of other, minor triumphs.

But I don’t want to get into that aspect of the sport today. I’m not going there. For now, I just want to be a dumb fan, accepting and enjoying the racing at face value. And in that respect, I have to confess that the Giro and Tour of California both suffered--slightly--from the dominance of one team over all the others. (“Team” might not be the right word in the Giro, however. Contador of course made the obligatory bow to his teammates while accepting the GC laurels, but I can’t recall seeing any of his Saxo Bank teammates around him ever. I’m sure they did yeoman work in keeping breakaways under control and bringing him up to the base of the mountains in good shape, but once the stages hit the prime time of the big climbs, he was a team of one, as far as I could tell.)

Just as with the Tour of California, it’s not the promoter’s fault if the Giro lacked drama. Angelo Zomegnan put together a stunningly impressive parcourse. How many mountain-top finishes was that? Six? That was a feast for bike fans. (Technically, there were at least a couple more mountain or uphill finishes, but they weren’t steep enough or long enough to be significant.) And you can’t blame Contador for being so darn good (unless you think he was juiced). No...it was just a dominant performance from a great rider. And that sometimes ends up being not all that exciting.

But never mind! I’ll take it! I’ll take both tours and say thank you to all involved: promotors, workers, teams and riders. We couldn’t have asked for much more. Saturday, May 21 was about as good as it gets for a fan of bike racing: in the morning, we got to watch the Giro racers grappling their way up the insane Zoncolan; then, in the afternoon, we were treated to the Tour of California chugging up Glendora Ridge and Mount Baldy, with our homeboy Levi taking out the stage win.

Bottom line: both events were terrific, even though the suspense was a bit missing. The routes were excellent and the winners were worthy. Nothing flukey or artificial about the victories.

In my opinion, the Giro route was at least as challenging and fascinating as that which the riders will encounter at le Tour in July. High marks for that.

The California race is not in that league--not yet, anyway--but for what it is, it did well. My personal wish list for the Tour of California is that it add a few days and eventually expand beyond the borders of the Golden State with stages in Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona. The organizers finally got past the risk of putting a stage finish out in the middle of nowhere--at the top of Sierra and up at the old Baldy ski resort--so let’s encourage them to do more of that, with stages further north in California to begin with, then off into adjacent states. Make it a real tour of the western United States.

I heard an English announcer on one of the Giro feeds mildly disparaging the Tour of California by noting that a tour of “one state” does not add up to a national tour. Maybe not, but bear in mind that California is considerably larger than the entire country of Italy, and with bits of the adjacent states thrown in, it would cover more area than the countries of France or Spain, and with a vast, colorfully diverse landscape available for stages. It still seems like an impossible pipe dream to imagine a full-blown, three-week stage race in (and near) California, but what the heck...go ahead and dream, and keep encouraging the ToC promoters to do the same.

Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net



Rides
View All

Century's
View All

Links
Commercial
Bike Sites
Teams

Other
Advertise
Archive
Privacy
Bike Reviews

Bill
All Columns
About Bill

Bloom
All Columns
Blog

About Naomi

© BikeCal.com 2023