On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 8/1/2011
Yell for Cadel
A couple of years ago I organized a small tour through the French Alps. While climbing the south face of Col du Galibier, we rode over and read over the old graffiti scrawled on the pavement…those exhortations from fans for their bike race heroes.
One bit of graffito stuck in my memory, and as it happens, one of the people in my group took a photo of it, which I have retrieved from my files to share with you. It says, “YELL FOR CADEL.”
My guess is that paint would have been put down for Stage 17 of the 2008 Tour, which climbed the south side of Galibier, doubled back over Croix de Fer, and finished atop l’Alpe d’Huez. That was the day Carlos Sastre rode away from Evans and everyone else on the final climb to lock up le maillot jaune.
Those yelling for Cadel in 2008 were disappointed with his oh-so-close second place that year, but they will be cheering deliriously now that he has finally gotten the so-close monkey off his back. Second by a scant :23 in 2007, second by :58 in 2008, then very forgettable 30th and 26th places the past two years… It must have seemed to many, and maybe even to Evans himself, that his career was in its twilight; that his best days were behind him. In fact, his career may be approaching its twilight. At 34, he is the oldest Tour winner in many a year. But there is still plenty of life in those legs and lungs and in that big heart. There was nothing flukey or sideways about his victory. Evans and his BMC team managed the entire race to perfection, never missing a trick when it was there for the taking. He is a very worthy winner.
The shorthand version of history will tell us that Evans won the 2011 Tour de France by clobbering the Schleck brothers in the time trial. He needed :57 to overtake Andy for first and he beat him by 2:31. Way more than enough. But I want to remember the longer story of the Tour: where Evans took those assorted tricks and kept the gap close enough to be manageable in that one and only ITT. Let’s look back at the various points along the way where Evans took time off his rivals, or else gave up time only grudgingly…
Stage 1: Ever the opportunist, Evans chased Phillipe Gilbert on the uphill sprint finish, crossing the line in second and taking :03 out of both Andy and Frank Schleck, as well as everyone else. Defending champ Alberto Contador and Sammy Sanchez got held up behind the first two crashes of this crash-filled first week and lost 1:17 to Evans.
Stage 2: Evans’ BMC team finished a close second in the team time trial. That didn’t gain him any time over the Schlecks, whose team was just a fraction of a second slower, but it did gain him :24 more seconds over Contador, :35 over Jurgen Van Den Broeck, and a whopping 1:18 over Sanchez.
Stage 4: Anytime you have the word “Mur” in the name of a stage finish--as in this stage: Mur de Bretagne--you know you’re going to have a short but steep wall to deal with right at the end. And such was the case on this exciting day, with a 2-km finishing climb that topped out at over 10%. It looked tailor-made for Gilbert, but Contador launched the first serious attack and then stalled out. When the gradient eased just a bit at the end, Evans came around him and kept digging, right to the line. Contador came back at him, and it ended up in a photo finish. But Evans was the winner, and he took another :08 out of Andy Schleck in the process.
You can begin to see a pattern here. Evans came to the tour in great shape. (He won the one-week Tirreno-Adriatico Tour in mid-March and the Tour de Romandie in late April, and he was second at the Dauphiné in mid-June.) In the TdF, he was paying attention all the time, always making sure he was in the right place, staying away from trouble but close to any opportunity that might arise. And when those opportunities did arise, he was jumping all over them.
Stage 8: This was the first “mountaintop finish” of the Tour (to Super Besse), although it hardly merits that distinction, in my opinion. It’s only slightly more of an uphill finish than the Mur on Stage 4, and in fact produced fewer gaps among the leaders than that stage. There were no time gaps at all amongst all the major players, who all finished in a bunch sprint. The only reason I mention the stage at all is because Evans was very animated in the last kilometer. Several of the other big guns took fliers over that distance, and he covered every move and then threw down one of his own, finishing at the front of the bunch, with all his rivals behind him. Evans has not been noted as a wild attacker in the past. He more often reacts to the attacks of others. But in this case, he was flexing his muscles in front of his adversaries, as if to say, “Boys, if you want this, you’re going to have to take it away from me.” It really struck me as a new Cadel Evans…a much more assertive rider, and with the legs to back it up.
Stage 12: On the first really big mountaintop stage, finishing at Luz Ardiden, Sammy Sanchez got away for the victory, with Frank Schleck putting in several digs off the front of the much diminished leaders’ group in the final two kilometers. Eventually, the elder Schleck gained :20 over a group containing Evans, Basso, Cunego, and Andy Schleck. But Contador and Voeckler were both dropped near the end and lost a few more seconds. Evans did a good chunk of the work in driving the pace at the end to limit the losses to Sanchez and Frank Schleck.
Stage 14: On the last big day in the Pyrenees, finishing atop Plateau de Beille, new kid Jelle Vanendert took out the win. Behind him, Sammy Sanchez again attacked and took second, gaining a few seconds over the other top-ten contenders. Andy Schleck attacked repeatedly from as far out as 10 km. It looked as if he might gain substantial time, but Evans clawed back after each attack, dragging a few others with him--Basso, Contador, Voeckler, Frank Schleck--and in the end, Andy only gained two seconds.
Stage 16: This stage through Provence, ending with a tricky descent into the city of Gap, didn’t look like anything important…on paper. But students of the TdF will recall that this same descent was the scene of the now legendary Beloki crash, where Armstrong took to the farm field for a bit of ‘cross riding to save his tour. Instead of high heat and melting pavement, which led to that crash, this year the riders had to negotiate the slinky turns on slick pavement, as the tour suffered through another day of rain.
Behind the remnants of a breakaway, Contador attacked on the last climb--Col de Manse--and only Evans and Sanchez went with him. They only had a handful of seconds over the rest of the leaders at the summit, but the real story on this stage unfolds on that dicey descent to Gap. Contador and Sanchez are both considered superb descenders, but on a wet, treacherous, twisting road, Evans simply rode them both off his wheel. Each time the camera came back to them, the gap was a little bit bigger, and when they got onto the flats leading into Gap, Evans kept the hammer down and wedged the gap open a bit more. In the end, he only gained three seconds on Contador and Sanchez, but while they were blitzing the descent, the rest of the favorites were mincing their way down the mountain with less skill or more prudence, with the result that Evans ended up gaining :21 on Frank Schleck and Thomas Voeckler, :54 on Basso, and 1:09 on Andy Schleck. It was one of the most exciting bits of balls-to-the-wall racing in the entire tour, and it drove home the point that winning a grand tour means being an all-rounder, with the full complement of skills, including being able to descend with the best of them, even in the worst conditions.
Stage 17: An almost carbon copy of the previous day’s finish: a final, relatively moderate climb followed by a very technical and dangerous descent. And again, Contador and Sanchez attacked over the top and then attacked again on the nasty descent. But there were two crucial differences between this stage and the preceding one: first of all, the roads were dry; second, Evans wasn’t in the attack with Contador and Sanchez, as he had been the previous day. The dry roads allowed most of the leaders to stay together on the descent--even the timid Schlecks--and with the Evans horsepower transferred from the attack to the pursuit, it ended up that Contador and Sanchez gained absolutely nothing, as the rest of the leaders reeled them in just before the finish line. Among the leaders, the only ones to miss out were Voeckler and Basso, who lost :26 on the descent. Voeckler is another rider who is said to be a very good descender, but I have to wonder. Bold yes, but do his skills match his courage? This wasn’t the only day we saw him screw up a corner or two on a descent. On this stage, his two gaffes cost him.
Stage 18: Celebrating the centennial of Alpine Tour stages, the organizers put together two final days in the mountains that were a murderers’ row of daunting challenges, beginning with this stage featuring Col d’Angel, Col d’Izoard, and a finish atop Col du Galibier, approached from its theoretically easier south face, by way of the long, gentle gradient of Col du Lauteret.
At this point, the picture was becoming fairly clear as to who was who among the leaders and what any of them would need to do to take control of the race. Voeckler still led, Evans was a close second, the two Schlecks were not far behind, and Sanchez, Contador, Cunego, and Basso were all within striking distance, still with at least a moderately plausible shot at victory. But these last two days in the hills had to be considered in the context of the time trial on Stage 20. Evans and Contador are known to be excellent against the clock, while the Schlecks, and Cunego are not. Sanchez, Basso, and Voeckler might fall somewhere in between. What it boiled down to was that those without the ITT chops were going to have to do something big on one or both of these two big days in the Alps, while those with the ITT strengths could afford to play it safe, at least a bit.
So, predictably, Andy Schleck launched a bold attack halfway up the brutal Izoard. (We did most of these climbs on our little tour in 2009, and in my report on that tour in this space, I noted that izoard was the hardest climb we did.) He danced away on the climb, then did a decent descent to Briançcon, where he picked up teammate Maxime Monfort out of a shredded breakaway.
To appreciate what happened on the final miles of this stage, you have to understand how Lauteret and Galibier combine to make one big climb. After a short, steep pitch right in the city of Briançon--it looks like a typical San Francisco street--Lauteret settles into a long, lazy grade that any moderate rider could do without too much trouble: 2800’ in 17 miles. It’s only a col at all if you continue west and descend toward Bourg d’Oisins. But if you turn right at the summit, you get onto the Galibier road, which climbs another 1900’ in 5 miles. This is a more serious ascent, with most of it quite steep and some of it borderline brutal. On a typical day, such as the day we did it, the long Lauteret grade makes the whole challenge quite manageable. But this TdF day was not typical. Aside from the obvious fact that they were racing (rather than noodling along the way we do), the joker in the deck was a stiff headwind blowing straight down the entire Lauteret grade.
Andy Schleck was fortunate to pick up his teammate Monfort for this section. He put him on the front to bust into that brick wall headwind for as long as the domestique could manage. Halfway up the hill, Monfort was fried, and Andy had to get out there in the wind and do the hard slogging on his own. Meanwhile, back in the leaders’ group, Evans had pulled together a couple of his teammates and had made repeated attempts to get some of the others to lend a hand in the pursuit. His efforts met with little success. You would have thought some of the other leader-wannabes would contribute to the chase, but they were all either unable or unwilling to do so. Evans burned through his teammates at about the same point on the long, headwind run where Andy had used up his one helper, and from there on, all the way to the summit, Evans took on the task of pulling back Andy all by himself. When Andy turned onto the Galibier climb, he had a lead of over four minutes, but he was starting to tire a bit…starting to look a bit like Raggedy Andy. Okay, he was still going uphill like a rocket, compared to how we mere mortals would do it, but in fact, if you looked at the numbers, he was losing time to Evans and the pilot fish glued to Evans’ wheel.
In the end, his over-four-minute lead was cut in half by the finish. Evans clawed back two minutes over the final five miles…almost a half-minute per mile. So while Andy was off the front, basking in the glory, the fastest man up the Galibier was really Cadel Evans. His steady, grueling, grinding tempo took its toll on the other favorites who were trying to stay on his wheel. Even though they had not contributed one bit to the work of either busting into the headwind on Lauteret or taking any pulls on the Galibier, they were still put into difficulty by his pace. First to pop off the back of the leaders’ group was Sanchez (who lost 2:27 to Evans), then Contador (who lost 1:35), then Cunego… Only Basso, Frank Schleck, and the tenacious Voeckler were left within shouting distance of Evans at the summit. So, while the glory may have belonged to Andy Schleck, the real winner was Evans, who limited his losses to both of the Schlecks, knowing he probably had them covered in the ITT, and at the same time he gapped the better time trailers, Sanchez and Contador.
Stage 19: The final mountain stage turned out to be something of an anti-climax, once the dust had settled. It looked, at various points, as if it might be really important. Contador, smarting from all of his accumulated set-backs, determined to salvage his pride and so launched a blistering attack very early on, midway up the Télégraphe. Andy Schleck was the only one to actually stay with him--for various reasons--and for awhile there, it looked like this attack might really amount to something. But a determined and well-calculated chase by Evans and Sanchez and the rest eventually brought all the leaders back together just before the final climb to l’Alpe d’Huez.
Contador launched another bold attack on this famous climb, and once again, it looked like the real deal. But once again, Contador fizzled out. Whether it was his dinged up knee still bothering him or whether it was the rigors of riding the Giro that had his legs a little heavy, he just wasn’t the same dancing-on-the-pedals maestro we have come to know so well. Behind his dramatic adventure, Evans and the two Schlecks marked each other and eventually came in with the same time. Contador and Sanchez both gained a few seconds on this bunch, but it was a small fraction of what they had lost the day before, so they remained too far adrift to be serious contenders for the final GC. The big loser on the day was Voeckler, who finally faded and gave up the yellow jersey.
So, going into the 42.5-km ITT, Evans trailed Andy by :57 and Frank by :04. Most observers felt it was a done deal that he would gain enough time to get ahead of both of them, barring some disaster like a crash or a mechanical. But it is worth noting that Evans had been in this same situation before, in that 2008 Tour, where he conceded time to Carlos Sastre on l’Alpe d’Huez, but most people felt he would still recoup the 1:34 deficit in the final time trial. Sastre was considered as lame a time-trialer as either of the Schlecks. Evans had beaten him by 1:38 in another ITT of less than 30-km earlier in the same Tour, so surely he could take 1:34 out of him in a distance of 53-km. But he didn’t. For whatever reason, he only beat Sastre by :29 that day and lost the Tour as a result. Evans had crashed badly midway through that Tour and had ridden the rest of the way in pain and not at his best, so that may be some of the explanation. For whatever it’s worth, he still clobbered the Schlecks that day, beating Andy by 1:57 and Frank by 3:33…fairly similar to the gaps in this year’s race against the clock.
It’s also worth noting that this was the only ITT in this year’s Tour. There was no Prologue ITT and no other ITT anywhere in the whole affair. That would seem to work in favor of the Schlecks and against the boys who can hammer the chronos. But Evans overcame that theoretical disadvantage as well.
So in the end, Evans won, thanks to his far superior time trial. But let’s go back and sum up the other seconds gained and lost along the way and put that ITT in perspective. Andy finished ahead of Cadel on two stages, gaining 2:17 (most of it on the Galibier). Cadel finished ahead of Andy three times--not counting the ITT--gaining a total of 1:20. Subtracting one from the other, we end up with a :57 advantage for Andy. That wasn’t nearly enough of a cushion going into the ITT. However, think back to Andy’s big win on Galibier and consider the two minutes that Evans doggedly clawed back over the final five miles. Had he not done that, Schleck’s cushion would have been more like three minutes, and that would have been enough to see him in yellow in Paris. So for me, the real tipping point of the 2011 Tour was the Galibier climb, where Cadel Evans took two minutes out of Andy Schleck. The record books will show that Andy took 2:15 off Cadel for the stage, but the story between the lines will be how Cadel saved his Tour by reducing the deficit from over four minutes to over two minutes with that pit bull chase up the Galibier. It wasn’t pretty, but it certainly was gritty.
Under the heading of what might have been, we have to reflect upon all the riders who crashed out of this year’s tour, especially several who had aspirations for top ten finishes, or even a step on the podium: Vinokourov, Van Den Broeck, Wiggins, Horner, Klöden, Leipheimer…
There is an old motor sports saying: to finish first, first you must finish. It’s true in cycling as well. A good part of any grand tour victory involves staying away from trouble, and if you followed this TdF, you know trouble was out there in spades, waiting to take riders out. The butcher’s bill after the first week was appalling…
Jurgen Van de Walle: shoulder injury
Janez Brajkovic: broken collarbone
Ivan Velasco: broken collarbone
Remi Pauriol: broken collarbone
Tom Boonen: shoulder injury
Bradley Wiggins: broken collarbone
Chris Horner: concussion
Benat Intxausti: fractured elbow
Juan Manuel Garate: arm and hip injuries
Amets Txurruka: broken collarbone
Jurgen Van Den Broeck: broken shoulder blade, three broken ribs, collapsed lung
Frederik Willems: broken collarbone
Dave Zabriskie: broken wrist
Alexandre Vinokourov: broken femur
It makes football look like badminton. And those are just the riders who had to abandon immediately. Many others crashed and either continued, hobbled by their injuries, or abandoned at a later date. Contador crashed at least twice and dinged up a knee. Rabobank’s team leader Robert Gesink crashed and was gimpy for the duration.
And what about the mighty Team RadioShack? They must have fancied their chances at the start, after Horner and Leipheimer finished one-two at the Tour of California, Leipheimer won the Tour de Suisse, and Andreas Klöden and Horner finished one-two at the Vuelta al Pais Vasco. But in a few days, all of their team leaders were hors de combat or nearly so. Klöden crashed hard repeatedly and finally had to abandon. Leipheimer crashed three times in two days and although he made it all the way to Paris, he was never the same after the crashes.
Through all the carnage, Cadel Evans managed to avoid any mishaps. He had some close calls and scary moments, but remained healthy and unhurt, and he didn’t lose any time at any of the crash sites. You can call that good luck, but it’s luck founded on Evans and his whole team staying awake and well-positioned at all times. BMC was one of only seven teams with all nine riders still on the road at the end.
Speaking of the team, we would be remiss in reviewing this Tour if we failed to tip the hat to BMC Racing. As I have noted elsewhere, the team is based in our hometown of Santa Rosa, California. The General Manager and CEO of the organization is Gavin Chilcott, a former pro and a Santa Rosa native, and a friend to many of us in the local bike community. Yes, Evans is from Australia and the team sponsor is from Switzerland, and only two of their TdF riders are American, but we still feel a local rooting angle for the team.
It was just a few years ago that Chilcott put together the proposal for this new team. They started out small, but within just a year or two, they were flirting with the big time. Then Chilcott started signing some big names: George Hincapie, Allesandro Ballan, and, best of all, Cadel Evans. You kind of had to wonder what these guys were thinking, hitching their wagons to this little minor-league team. Well, guess what? BMC is not minor league anymore. Cadel has been World Champion and now Tour de France champion, and BMC is the team these days. And Chilcott is not resting on his laurels: rumor has it that Phillipe Gilbert is days away from announcing that he will be joining BMC for 2012, and other big names might sign on too. Who would have thunk it?
Aside from that local angle, I am well pleased to see Cadel Evans win, based on his own merits as a rider and as a gentleman. I’ve watched him race for ten years now, and he has suffered so much adversity and bad luck over that span…has come so close so often. It’s nice to see his hard work finally bear fruit. I’ve seen any number of interviews with him over the years, including the official one this year after the decisive time trial. He appears to be a genuine good guy…a decent person you would like to get to know personally. I was impressed to see that he could and did respond in French to questions in that language. What it all adds up to is a ringing refutation of the old bromide about nice guys finishing last. This time, a very nice guy finished first.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net