On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 8/1/2012
Rule, Britannia!
The 2012 Tour de France is over and done with. 20 stages over three weeks, adding up to 3,479 km (2,157 miles).
I watched every stage, or at least the last half of every stage, usually live, first thing in the morning on the left coast. I read the daily reports and and studied the results. I watched a few interviews and reviewed some of the crucial moments in replay. Now, as the dust settles, it's time to sit back and think about it all; to try and put it in perspective. What just happened?
In simplest terms, it's obvious and simple what happened: Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome, and the Sky steamroller flattened the opposition. Wiggins becomes the first British rider to win the big race, and he did it on a British team. What's more, if Wiggo hadn't won, Froome would have. It was total domination, and it was achieved in an extremely methodical and workmanlike fashion, all smoothly choreographed by team manager Dave Brailsford and Directeur Sportif Sean Yates.
In a way, that's a bit of a good news, bad news deal. If you're a British fan, you're ecstatic. If you're a regular old fan of bike racing, without a rooting interest in any particular country or team or rider, you may not be quite so excited. Sky's mastery of the tour was so complete that there wasn't much suspense or drama. We weren't left breathless by each startling, thrilling development. In fact, it all had a somewhat preordained feel to it, as some of Armstrong's victories did, when his Postal team wore everyone else down so efficiently, then left the boss to finish things off.
Most of the credit for this year's resounding victory belongs to the team and its fine stable of riders...the team leaders and their domestiques, and their behind-the-scenes staff. When Brailsford announced, three years ago, his intention of forming a British team and winning the Tour de France within five years, most racing fans figured that was more bluster than substance. But the team was formed and developed, and it has now delivered on that promise, years ahead of his proposed timeline. All hail the conquering heroes!
It should be noted though that some other factors lined up in their favor this year. The 2012 parcours appeared to be tailor-made for Bradley Wiggins and his team's game plan. His first triumphs in cycling came on the track, primarily in the pursuit discipline (including one team and two individual pursuit Olympic gold medals). Pursuit is essentially time trailing, and few riders out there are better at that than he is. This year’s Tour de France was fat with flat time trials: 101 km of them in total, as compared to 41, 59, 55, and 82 km of ITTs in the previous four years.
And while Wiggins has transcended his track roots to become a good--a very good--climber, no one has ever suggested that he is a brilliant mountain goat, in the mold of an Alberto Contador or Andy Schleck, dancing on the pedals like a little pixie. Last year, in a Vuelta a España with several brutally steep ascents, he was overmatched, at least a little. But this year's TdF course offered up none of those super-steep pitches, in particular, little in the way of brutal mountaintop finishes. There really wasn't a significant hill where he could have been considered at risk.
Once the route was announced last October--as soon as folks got a look at the stages--the London bookmakers installed Wiggins as the odds-on favorite. It was a no-brainer. And this was before he went out and dominated the spring race calendar, winning all three of the one-week stage races he entered: Paris-Nice, Tour of Romandie, and the Dauphiné. In the latter two, he beat defending TdF champion Cadel Evans, although there wasn't much to choose between them. They weren't total smack-downs, but they were wins.
In retrospect, we can see that the Tour was pretty much over as soon as it started. Wiggins finished second by :07 in the prologue to Fabian Cancellara but ahead of all his GC rivals. Then it was just a matter of waiting until the first uphill stage shuffled Cancellara aside and Wiggins took over custody of le maillot jaune. That happened on Stage 7. Then, on Stage 9, Wiggins and Froome simply pounded the snot out of everyone else in the first full time trial. That was a real smack-down!
After that, Sky simply took over in a steady-state display of race management. Sure, there were breaks that got away and stayed away here and there, but not too many and not anyone important. Anytime the roads tilted uphill--all those places where rivals might have hoped to attack and put Wiggins (and Froome) on the defensive--the team put Eddie Boasson Hagen, Richie Porte, and Mick Rogers on the front, cranking out a steady, withering tempo at 450 watts, popping the pretenders off the back of the lead group, one more every few minutes. Evans, Nibali, Van den Broeck, and Van Garderen all tried to attack the Sky train, but their efforts were all neutralized almost immediately. The only finishers in the top 20 who did anything significant in the mountains were Rolland (8th overall), Pinot (10th), Sörensen (14th), and Valverde (20th). All of their splashy deeds came out of breakaways--not head-to-head with the lead pack--and they were allowed that liberty simply because Sky felt they weren't worth worrying about.
Sky's team made it all look easy and almost routine, and therefore rather lacking in flair. Not a lot of panache. But you could almost read the subtext from the Sky principals: “Let Thomas Voeckler and Pierre Rolland and Thibaut Pinot take care of the panache. That's what the French do best. When they're done, we'll still be kicking their asses.”
For whatever it's worth, Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck were both missing this year. I'm not sure their inclusion really would have made much of a difference. Schleck still can't time trial to save his life, and with the long ITTs this year, he would have been at a real disadvantage. And Contador wasn't at his best last year (in the Tour anyway; he did win the Giro). It remains to be seen if he can get back to his best ever again. Anyway, the lack of really challenging mountaintop finishes this year wouldn't have played to their strengths. There are some years you can put an asterisk next to the winner's name because some other hot shot wasn't in the field, but I don't think this is one of those years.
In the end, almost the only thing left for the journalists to twitter about was the ginned-up rivalry between Wiggins and Froome. Wiggins was clearly superior in the time trials, putting an even 2:00 into Froome over the three chronos. But Froome appeared to be stronger in the big mountains. He was, however, never let off the team leash. There was that one almost-exciting moment when Froome put the boot in it to gap Nibali and the rest and ended up also gapping his captain. Then we saw him getting the call from Yates: oops…sorry! It was pretty funny. Many people have remarked on the similarity to the tension between Lemond and Hinault in the '85 Tour, when Lemond could clearly have ridden away from an injured, hurting Hinault, but team orders called him back. In broadest outline, it is the same scenario, but the circumstances in '85 added up to a much messier soap opera.
There's no question Froome is an explosive, exciting climber and a great competitor. He's fun to watch, and he'll be even more fun to watch when he's the team leader and not the super-domestique. We might just get to see that at the Vuelta, beginning this month. I believe Froome will be entered as team leader for Sky. What's more, the course is almost a polar opposite of this year's Tour course and will favor Froome: there are no less than ten uphill finishes, beginning as early as Stage 3. Some of those are just short, steep ramps that will be exciting to watch but won't shake up the rankings much. But several of them are long and steep and brutal, including the infamous Bola del Mundo on the penultimate stage. (Read my account of the 2010 Vuelta for a descriptions of this epic climb.) And guess who else will be entered in the Vuelta and eager to do something big: Contador, coming off his suspension and cranky as a bear coming out of hibernation.
In between the Tour and the Vuelta, we have the Olympics. I never make predictions about the Olympic road race. It's too much of a crap shoot…too many variables. But in the time trial, it would be hard to bet against Wiggo and Froomey. Cancellara will be in there with a shout, of course, and Tony Martin--the current World Champion--if he's recovered from his nasty spill early in the Tour. But the Brits look tough. And by the way: if you follow track cycling, you know the British team is pretty much the strongest in the world right now. And who built that team up to its current powerhouse status? Dave Brailsford, before launching Sky Procycling.
Other observations…
• Vincenzo Nibali. In a private, pre-race prediction to a friend, I said Nibali couldn't climb well enough so wouldn't win. That essentially turned out to be true, but I have to concede that he climbed a whole lot better than I expected him to. And he showed a lot of heart. He tried and tried and tried to get a leg up on Wiggins and Froome. He gets an E for effort and a lot of respect and a step on the podium for all his trying.
• It was great to see Tejay Van Garderen coming into his own. He looks like the complete package. He can time trial well and he can climb with the best. Give him a couple of years to figure out how good he can be and then…watch out. His passing of Evans (his own team leader) in the final time trial had a very poignant quality to it. The old cliché "passing of the torch" seems appropriate.
• If you want to talk about what if?, you can think of Ryder Hesjedal, knocked out in a silly crash early in the race. The winner of the recent Giro d'Italia…who knows what he might have done? We might also add Robert Gesink (winner of the Tour of California) and Bauke Mollema to this list of crash victims who might have done big things. We'll never know…
• A big "chapeau!" to Mark Cavendish. If you've read my race musings in the past, you know I've not been a big fan of the pugnacious little Manxman, but this year, I'm changing my tune. Here he was, the World Champion, and he's having to work as a water boy for Wiggins and Froome. I loved those shots of his rainbow stripes jersey stretched out of shape by half a dozen bidons stuffed down his back. To me, that shows a lot of class. In the past, he's had teams built just for him, with powerful lead-out trains. This year…nope. Most of the time he was on his own. But he never complained. And yet he still won three stages! And in case you've forgotten, he is one of the few riders in the Tour who also did the Giro this year…winning three stages there as well. He also crashed hard at least once, but got back up and kept hammering away at it…doing the job he's paid to do.
He did get some help from his teammates occasionally. As odd as it looked for the rainbow stripes to be fetching water, how odd did it also look for the yellow jersey to be leading him out in a sprint? Without a dedicated lead-out train, Wiggins took it upon himself to do what he could for his teammate. And what a lead-out! Geez, that guy can motor! Seeing the yellow jersey right at the front end of a 40-mph field sprint, where mayhem can break loose on any side at any second…that's stand-up team support.
• Speaking of helping a friend, another brownie point for Wiggins on the Day of the Tacks: when no less than 48 tires were flatted by that imbecile dump of carpet tacks, he assumed the role of patron and neutralized the lead pack, just at a point when they might have attacked…this to allow Evans and many others to get back on. That demonstrated the best sporting tradition for which bike racing is known. My personal estimation of Wiggo went up several notches that day.
• Old farts: there were quite a few big-name riders in this year's tour who appear to be nearing the end of their tenure in the pro peloton. Some will be back next year, but others will not. Some of them have been around for so long, they seem like permanent fixtures out there. But they're not. They all retire eventually, so let's salute some of these grizzled old warriors before they ride off into the sunset: George Hincapie, Chris Horner, Jens Voigt, Allesandro Petacchi, Levi Leipheimer, Alexandr Vinokurov, Stuey O'Grady…
Okay…enough. Some people--including me, to some extent--have said this year's Tour lacked pizzazz. Well…get over it! In betwixt and between the dependable, routine dominance of Wiggins and company, there were sparkling moments of interest every day. There were almost 200 riders at the start, and every one of them had a story to tell…a part to play in the drama. We didn't notice all of them, but we noticed--and appreciated--many of them: hard men, doing a very hard job. It's the Greatest Show on Earth.
Now…bring on the Vuelta!
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net