Cancellara Attacks in Yellow

I am going to be a bit pressed tonight, as I would like to watch most of the Final of Euro 2012, even though I think it is more important for world history for me to write rather than watch. Still, we live with our contradictions and tensions. Most of the race, as a race, was boring. Not much happened. So even though I only watched from 75k remaining, I still managed a couple of emails some tidying up on the computer, while watching the TV. That's what I do, watch the French commentators, Thierry Adam and Laurent Jalabert, on the big screen downstairs with the laptop on my lap. Laptop to chat to my “pals” on the cycling forums, “with” whom I watch the Tour. HD makes the passing countryside look better. You could easily see how rich Belgium once was by the architecture. Lovely chateaux everywhere, or at least in the area. One spectacularly pretty village attracted my attention. It is, apparently, a “city”, by some medieval power politics move. I do know that when Jean-Paul Olivier's distinct voice comes on, I can just listen and watch a helicopter circle over some incredible geography, built or “natural”. Sometimes the camera on the motorcycle turned the camera on the watchers. Some of the spectators were dressed to get on TV. Some dressed that way long before TV. Anyway I like the outrageous, the families, the picnics, the clubs standing on farm machinery. There are quite incredible people on the road, wherever the Tour goes. Why not. It is free. It costs absolutely nothing to see the Tour live, on the day. I forget if they say eleven or fifteen million people see it live every year. That's fifteen million possible nitwits standing in the road with the video or camera in the road, beyond the barriers to get a badly shot unfocussed bunch of bike riders. Why not knock them over and keep filming? Guys like the one who caused a crash today, trying to record the greatest video on earth for his family or Facebook page, should be … badly done by. I love watching the peloton, stop, turn, go fast, dow up, go down. “Decide”. I shall comment a bit later on how the peloton “behaves”. The end result of the long stage was that they nearly all got to the last hill, pretty much at the same time. Two and half, fairly steep kilometres. Nothing happened until the last 1500 metres. Chavanel tried a wee attack, got brought back. Then Fabian Cancellara attacked. Just rode away up a steep hill like he has done on a cobbled flat roads, or once, I remember, on a flat road. That's what he did today. Immediately, only Sagan, the young wonderboy, latched onto his wheel. IN fact Sagan never left that wheel until he came around Fabian at the end, and won the stage. His first stage win on the Tour. Probably not the last. EBH tried to catch those two, reacting a second or two late. After a hard effort, he finally did. EBH was the only other rider who could follow immediately. But EBH is not as good as Sagan or Cancellara. Normally, he will not beat either of them on that finish, much less both of them. I guess we will have a rematch on stage three. The next stage is flat and we will see the flat fast guys out in force. Which will also include Sagan and Fabian (who wants to keep the jersey). EBH will also be there, leading out the slimmed down Cavendish and his opponents. That should be a very good sprint finish. I realised today that the Tour sprint finish is pretty much like the 100 metre sprint in athletics. Sort of. As with the Olympics, everyone who can possibly get an invite will come. If you can, you ride. But the final sprints, the ones that can make the career of a rider, happen maybe eight or nine times during three weeks I heard the French commentators say that Bernard Eisel, Cav's roomate, the long distance pilot for Cav and best team buddy, was NOT on the first draft of the Tour Team. I can't even believe that is possible. Anyway the story says Cav made a fuss and Bernie was back. No idea where the commentators got the story. Probably part of the “destabilise Sky” prejudice that is starting to bother me. More on that later. Still, Sky brags a bit, so people want them to put up or shut up. If Wiggins does not win the Tour, the Sky bubble will deflate. The old cycling hands will rub their hands with glee. The “newest methods”, measurements, data, detailed plans, strict diet, bike design, etc were always suspected by the old guard. Wiggins is the “new guard”. For example, Wiggo is trained by a guy from a swimming background. And he has a rather dry sense of humour. They are just a bit too extreme and anglo-Saxon at Sky. I notice that Mollema and Gesink, the two youngish Dutch riders that are meant to upset things and do really well, finished in the top ten today. I think they must be feeling their oats. There were no time bonuses, so the guys who wanted to win, just wanted to win, no yellow jersey comes with. In my view, it is very cool when the yellow jersey attacks the peloton. That particular kind of attack has photo op and historical meaning. It means that not only does the rider have the yellow jersey, but rather than play safe, they are going to attack to save it. Not just hang on to save it. Panache or what? Even if Sagan, who didn't help out at all, gets the stage. I watched, near the end, as Hincapie skilfully and powerfully overtook half to peloton with Evans in tow. Evans could then finish it off as best he could, which was pretty good. Evans is ready. But what I liked is seeing the 39 year old Hincapie, riding his last Tour, just sweeping past other riders, riding faster, towing his boss up to the best spot. Nice craftsmanship. I would love a video clip of “Hincapie bringing up Evans” on this stage. It would be really pretty to watch. Certainly the few seconds I saw on the box were fantastic. My wife finds the Tour a bit samish at present. I am lucky that she is a bit of semi-serious fan. Until we are further along, going through countryside she likes, she might give it a lesser quality of attention. I think hundreds of thousands of French people must be doing that. Maybe millions, when you think of all the screens. Even I sometimes drift for a bit. It is, after all, in the end, a bunch of guys riding bikes through really nice countryside. We await the feats. Today the lads gave us a few minutes of good racing. I am happy. Looking at the GC after this first stage, other than Cancellara, who will not be in the top ten, nearly all those names could be in the top ten. What I mean is that unless there is some strange break, like Voeckler last year, the GC is already quite respectable. Nearly everyone in the top ten is a possible GC contender. This does not usually happen until after the first mountain stage. However I have no idea what this means, just that is is unusual. End result of the stage? Nothing much changed in the GC, except the exit of a coupleof riders who eventually would have left the top ten any, as it was entirely based on a 6k ride on a flat road in a time trial. We can certainly look forward to the next three stages which should be fascinating, even if nothing really crucial for the GC will happen until the mountains. Although the story of how Fabian kept or didn't keep his yellow jersey should be interesting in itself. Should be a good week actually. Chavanel said Menchov for yellow, and Merckx said Nibali, in an interview on Stade 2, the French Sunday sports show. Until tomorrow.

The Prologue

Prologue Preface. Throughout this blog I assume you can take a look at the results on your own or print them or have them on another window. I have sources listed on the blog. At last. It begins. So what is there to be learned from a prologue, other than the rankings and times of the riders. First of all, for nearly every rider in the peloton the Prologue means virtually nothing. Those who have no chance to win, just ride around fast, faster than anyone you know, faster than you could dream of, even with huge training. But slow, relative to the time triallists and those who are trying to finish in the top ten or twenty. However, overall, the result usually means little. So the rest of this piece will be what we can gather (speculate about) from a short and relatively unimportant time trial. Several riders showed us something pretty positive. Obviously Fabian Cancellara showed us he is back, after heavy injury in April. I think he almost always wins prologues in the Tour. (Look up?) A clear victory by seven seconds over every other rider in the race. You should look at the ranking, the GC. That is a huge margin in a short race where clusters of riders are separated by one second. Sadly, Tony Martin had some kind of technical problems, a puncture, a bike change that gave him a “bad” bike, I don't now yet. The consensus will probably be that with the time loss, Martin would have beaten Bradley Wiggins into third, but not Cancellara. We will never know. Wiggo did well, he managed to gain some seconds on all of his serious opponents for the GC. Without making much deep effort. In addition, Team Sky do not have to ride defending the yellow jersey, they can relax. Cynics say Wiggo would not even have been trying to win, just beat everyone except the winner. Two of the top five are Sky riders. EBH, four seconds slower than Wiggo, leads out Cav. Serious riders on Sky. Chavanel surprised nearly everyone. He is the French time trial champ, but not that many have huge respect for that. Third is brilliant for him. In fact, a great surprise I should think, to nearly everyone. I thought it might be nice for him to wear the yellow jersey. Don't think he has done that before. Looking it up, Isee he had it for two days in 2010, so that's all right then. The young and very much rising American star, Tejay Van Garderen did a terrific ride, but not a surprising one. There are plenty of people who think he might well win the white jersey for the entire Tour, not just today. He can climb. I am a fan of Edvald Boasson Hagen (EBH), so am pleased to see he has arrived in great shape. He will be either “the Sky rider allowed to win a stage with a bit of a hill at the end”, as well as the last guy to lead out Mark Cavendish, who will be trying to win two or three stages in this Tour. We can tell that Philip Gilbert was focussed and would like to win one of the next few stages by enough to take the jersey from Fabian. “All” Gilbert has to do is to try to finish 14 seconds in front of Fabian, and the jersey is his. Assuming nothing else happens and assuming Gilbert can ride up a wee hill at the end of stage one or three, 14 seconds faster than Cancellara. Anyway, something to watch in stage 1 and 3, will Fabian get dropped by Gilbert, or EBH for that matter. Ebh can certainly go up those tiny hills at the end faster than Fabian, so could be interesting.. Then there is Menchov, Denis, the aging Russian, who although good at time trialling never should be finishing ahead of Cadel Evans and many of the 190 others he beat. We can guess that he might be serious about doing well, and in pretty good shape. He is a bit of surprise entry into the top ten. He should be really pleased. We will wait until the third week to know. Cadel Evans, Ryder Hesjedal and Vicenzo Nibali all are grouped not all that far behind Wiggins. They all lost ten seconds, but also gave some notice they are fit and ready for serious action. You could say that it might be a slight morale blow to get beaten by Bradley, but I doubt it. They would all use every excuse to say the differences is not great (it isn't) and the third week is where it matters (they are right). So they won't be bothered. I noticed that in 18th,19th and 21st place were Jens Voigt, Andreas Kloden and George Hincapie, separated by nothing. George is about to retire, having ridden more Tours de France than any human being in history. Seventeen. Voigt has “only” ridden fifteen. Kloden, with only ten Tours seems a young fellow. They are actually 40, 39 and 35. They have no reason to try really hard in a prologue. All of them have other interests and work to do much later. Jens and George have utterly no chance to get any glory or special jerseys. But they actually must have tried really hard and trained really well and be very good, because they beat nearly everyone in the entire peloton. Bravo. I have liked the style and behaviour (mostly) of all of them for years. Not Kloden so much. Various outside contenders, Bauke Mollema, Christian Van de Velde, Jerome Coppel, Robert Gesink did well enough. Ten seconds faster and they would be really happy. In any case, only Coppel need be disturbed at all, as he purports to be a good man for the ITT. The results from here on in are usually irrelevant to final events, where minutes instead of seven seconds will separate riders. Since you might follow this story for three weeks, I pretend you will, you should get used to the sound of the names. My wife can learn the names, but it does take repetition. Any of these four could be in the top ten. Only Gesink should be upset if he finishes outside the top ten, but the others would be quite delighted. None of them will win, although maybe they might go for the mountains prize. At 41st and 43rd we have, ironically, Mark Cavendish and Andre Greipel. These guys are two of the top five sprinters on earth. They should not really be that good at time trials. They are not THAT good, but better than more than 79 % of the peloton. It happens often enough that riders like Thor Hushovd, a powerful sprinter, can do well in short prologues. Nevertheless it is noteworthy that both those guys, who probably will be in the top five in every sprint stage (ish) are dong a decent TT. Can't wait for the flat stages. The funny thing is that the guy who separates the two sprinters is Jean Christophe Peraud. A former time trial champion, and another outsider for GC glory. Go figure. Tony Martin (current world Time Trial Champion) finished two seconds in front of Peter Sagan, even though Martin had to change his bike twice. This means that Sagan is either not very ready, or that somehow among all the things he can do, he really can't do short flat time trials. Since most people think he is going to win many stages of the Tour, it is nice to know he has a weakness. The Slovak who rides for the Italian Liquigas team, is 22. Probably the most obvious wunderkind of the last decade. He will enter our chronicle many times. Further down the list, 19 seconds behind Wiggo and 26 behind Fabian, lies David Zabriskie, in his Captain America Champion time trial outfit, being beaten by sprinters. I say nothing about it, I just noticed. Was he trying? Did he slip on a corner? No idea. But time trial champions do not usually finish behind sprinters. Jurgen Van Den Broek and Levi Leipheimer each lost 21 seconds on Wiggo. No big deal, but not a great idea so early on. Each of those riders is meant to make it to the Top Ten, Levi happy if he does, and Jurgen VDB more or less expected to. Mind you, Frank Schleck is 31 seconds behind Wiggo already. However, to be honest, I have no idea what these results might mean. Other than Frank can't time trial, which we already knew. These guys are not going to show a thing until the road goes up. What does the prologue mean for this? Who knows? The truth of the matter is the one slightly off day in the mountains will erase any gaps anyway. In addition, I could have wondered why Samuel Sanchez, a potential podium finisher, NOT known for doing a horrible time trial, did such a horrible time trial, 40 seconds down on Fabian. I guess he is going for the mountains jersey instead of GC. On the other hand he is only 23 seconds behind Evans, so big deal. There are riders I have not mentioned, Valverde, Kruijswijk, Danielson, Scarponi. Now I have. On to the real racing. I should be able to write less once something happens. The prologue is simply that.