The Tour de France, and it’s cousins in Spain (Vuelta) and Italy (Giro) are maybe the most complex single sporting events on the planet. Each has at least 5 recognized overall categories of competition, in addition to about 20 individual day races which can be won separately. Twenty or more teams of 9 riders each mass together on the rides, each aiming to project individual cyclists into winning rides. The tactics at any given moment can be mind boggling, even for people who are experienced followers of the sport.
Like many Tour watchers, I started by following the overall individual race – the General Classification. That’s the prize that Lance Armstrong won year after year. The general rule of thumb to succeed in the GC is to combine the skills of climbing and time trialing, along with an ability to focus daily for 4-6 hours on avoiding mistakes and mechanical complications. It took me about five years to appreciate and understand this single element of bicycle “stage racing”, to where I could follow and become as excited about the competition as I could about, say, an NBA season.
Anyway, this year’s tour featured two riders who ended up being quite evenly matched – Andy Schleck from Luxembourg, and Spain’s Alberto Contador. Schleck, of course, is a hero par excellence in his little duchy, while Contador must contend with the FIFA World Cup winners, Wimbledon Champ R. Nadal, and even the F1 auto racing champ. In addition, Contador earned villain stripes last year at the tour among many American fans in his intra-team duel with golden boy Armstrong. He comes across as whiny, a bit egotistical, and foreign, English not being a strong language for him.
Schleck’s culture almost forces diplomacy – how else do you survive centuries as an independent state surrounded by France, Germany, etc? He’s young, tall, lean, blond, cute (dig those buck teeth!) with a sly sense of humor to leaven his steely winner’s drive. And he rides for a team brimming with cycling’s equivalent of glamour boys – the all powerful world and Olympic time trial champ Fabian Cancellara and manic hard man Jens Voigt. And, he has an older brother on the same team he both idolizes and tries to pulverize on the road.
One little thing separates Schleck and Contador – Alberto took the time and made the effort about 3 years ago to become a superb time trialist, a discipline which is as much about technique and will as it is about cycling strength. Andy has relied, up till now, on his cobra-like quickness climbing steep and high mountains.
Out of the 21 daily races in this year’s Tour, nine were slotted as being meaningful for winning the overall GC: two time trials of about 5 and 30 miles; a day in Belgium and northern France which included a number of sections on cobblestone pavement; and six days in the mountains, including four which finished at the top of a climb, and another two with hard climbs near the finish.
Usually in the tour, the eventual winner will be faster, in the aggregate, than his nearest competitor by 1 to 7 minutes; twice in the last 4 years, though, the winning margin has been less than 40 seconds, something which had happened only twice before.
Last year, Schleck finished second to Contador by a substantial margin, mostly because of the time he lost in the TTs; for example, in the final TT, he was nearly two minutes slower than Contador. This year, the pattern seemed destined to repeat, as Schleck lost over 40 seconds in the “Prologue”, basically a short time trial of about 5 miles. That did not bode well for Andy.
Four days later on the cobbles, he followed those strong men on his team, leaving his other competitors a minute or more behind literally in a cloud of dust. This was in essence a team time trial, showing of the value of a well balanced and seasoned supporting cast to a GC hopeful.
The first uphill finish ended in a draw, all the GC men finishing together. The next day, Schleck put in a little charge right at the end to win the stage and gain 10 more seconds on Contador. He was now 41 seconds ahead of the Spaniard.
The following race (Stage 9), although not an uphill finish, nonetheless solidified that pair at the top of the leader-board, as they worked together to outdistance all their other competition by 1 to 2 minutes.
Stage 12 had a funky little uphill finish, short but incredibly steep, flattening out for the last mile onto an airstrip. As the group of climbers began to pass the straggling remnants of some breakaway riders who had been in the lead, Contador used the confusion, sort of like following a pulling guard in football or using a pick in basketball to sneak ahead of Schleck by a couple of wheel lengths before Andy could catch his wheel. Ten seconds back to Contador.
Stage 14, another uphill finish, again saw the two finish together, with a small group of seven racers who established themselves as the cream of the crop in this year’s race.
The next day, which finished in a downhill sprint shortly after an awesomely long uphill slog, proved decisive. Just as Schleck was putting on what appeared to be a winning move, flying away from Contador and the small group of climbers still with them, his chain became disengaged from his gear. Usually, a rider is able to quickly get the teeth re-engaged without getting off, but in this case, Schleck had to stop, and for 20 agonizing seconds, re-position the chain so he could pedal. Contador and the 3rd and 4th placed riders, following Schleck’s attack, kept going while he struggled on the side of the road. He was not able to regain that group. 39 seconds lost by Schleck, who lost his overall lead at that point to Contador by 8 seconds.
Two days later, on an awesomely epic day in the gloom up to the highest point they would ride, the top of the Col de Tourmelet, Schleck and Contador rode away from everyone else, but could not separate themselves from each other. Incredibly,after six hard days total climbing over 20 more more passes, over 1000 kilometers, they finished dead even in the mountain stages, apart from that one mechanical problem for Schleck.
Most observers assumed at this point the race was over, that Contador would once again reign supreme in the TT. But Andy had one last surprise – for an hour, they dueled on the road, separated by about a mile. In the end, Schleck lost another 31 seconds, and the Tour by those very 39 seconds during which he had to stop, fix his chain, and try to catch back up to the riders who passed him by.
Contador has now won three Tours, his first and third by a grand total of less than 70 seconds. He is gritty, thorough, and devoted to the details of climbing, time trialing, and race strategy. In a race so close, there are so many “what ifs”. What if Andy’s brother, Frank, had not crashed in the cobbles on day 4, dropping out of the race with a collar bone broken in three places? His skills in the mountains as an ally to Andy might have been the difference. What if Lance Armstrong had not given up his race – he was actually ahead of both at the time – on the day he fell at least three times while Schleck pressed on to win the day? What if Schleck’s chain had not fallen off? What if he’d been able to follow Contador up to the airstrip, instead of getting trapped in the riders from the breakaway suddenly appearing and separating the two leaders?
Luckily, they do the race every year, and it will be gripping to watch a rising talent like Schleck, 3 years younger than Alberto, try to improve his TT ability to maybe produce a different outcome in 2011.