Cadel Evans had a terrific Tour de France stage in the Alps last night (our time). He didn’t win the stage. He didn’t gain any time on the two riders a few seconds ahead of him in the overall standings - Frank Schleck and Bernard Kohl - nor did he look like doing so. But, at this point, he’s probably the best-placed to win the Tour. Evans, you see, is not the best climber in the Tour field. Schleck, Kohl, and Carlos Sastre - about 40 seconds behind - are better climbers, particularly in their ability to sprint for a short distance on the climb. Evans can maintain a steady pace equal to them over a long climb, but he struggles to match their acceleration. The other riders and their team managers - particularly team CSC, containing, Schleck, Sastre, and several other expert climbers - try to exploit this chink in Evans’ armour, which they did on Sunday night where he lost a few seconds to Kohl and Schleck. But, over the top of the Cime de la Bonette - the highest through road in Europe - Evans was able to sit comfortably in the middle of a small group containing all those riders. One important rival - Christian Vande Velde - was not, and another rival, Denis Menchov, sat with the leaders pretty much all the way up the hill, only to fall a few seconds behind in the crazy descent down to the finish.
That’s probably not good enough for Schleck, Kohl, and Sastre. They need to beat Evans by a substantial margin over the mountains. On Saturday, the riders will race, one by one, against the clock over a 50-odd kilometre course in a flatter region of France. Evans and Vande Velde are superb time-triallists, as is Menchov. Schleck, Kohl, and Sastre are not quite as good. They’re expected to lose a couple of minutes to Evans in that stage. So they need to gain those couple of minutes in the mountains. They have one more chance, and it’s on the most famous mountain in all of cycling, the Alpe d’Huez.
The Alpe d’Huez is not the toughest climb in cycling. Climb by bike, a website dedicated to the masochism of riding bicycles up mountains, ranks it only 371st amongst the climbs it tabulates. Even considering only roads used in elite road racing, there are much nastier climbs. The Giro D’Italia’s Monte Zoncolan, and the Vuelta Espana’s Alto de El Angliru have sustained, much steeper stretches. But actually timing yourself up a decent climb soon teaches you that while mere mortals might be able to ride up the Alpe d’Huez, the gulf between you and them is truly immense.
A few weeks ago, I rode up the Mount Dandenong Tourist Road from Upper Ferntree Gully (yes, my blog is up and working again…). I made it fine. But I (admittedly, not riding to my absolute limits, and on a much heavier bike), averaged around 8 km/h up the hill. The fast men up the Alpe d’Huez, which is about the same gradient but three times the length, do the climb at around 20 km/h. And, this year, they will do it after already riding 197 kilometres that day, including a 1300-odd metre ascent (that’s the height difference; the peak is at 2645 metres above sea level) over the Col du Galibier, and a 1500 metre ascent over the Col de la Croix de Fer. And they’ve been doing this kind of thing most days for over two weeks.
Yes, if you get an appropriate bike and do some training, you too can ride the Alpe d’Huez. But the pace at which Evans and the other cyclists will ascend the climb, after the punishment they will have already inflicted on themselves, makes their abilities truly other-worldly. So cheer Evans on tonight, and do so with the knowledge that all he needs to do is stay with Schleck, Kohl, Sastre, and Menchov. And that all of them have muscles and cardiovascular systems simply beyond the ken of the rest of us.
Update: Of course, the SBS Tour de France website (which features the work of none other than LP’s Phil Gomes) has detailed standings, stage profiles, reports, and tour blogs. Phil was also kind enough to correct my spelling.
Update 2: the Stelvio Pass is tougher, but mainly because it’s longer than the Alpe d’Huez and roughly as steep.
An awesome stage to watch last night. Seeing Popovych in that leading bunch kind of leads me to believe that silence-lotto actually have a different strategy to CSC: fox them. Popo hasn’t been riding that well so far, but looked so untroubled last night you’d have to think he’s been holding something back. Now that the CSC boys have exhausted themselves trying to bust Cadel, it’ll be interesting to see whether Popo and Cadel have enough legs in them for a bit of turn-about.
Geez Cadel looks awkward climbing though - makes you wonder how he manages to stay with the fancied climbers sometimes.
Yep go cadel! Tonight is the pivotal stage. I doubt he will or can attack on such a hard stage as Alpe D’huez but if he stays with Schleck and Menchov and does a ripper of a time trial we may have the first Australian Tour winner ever.
That poor South African kid though - it must have been heart-breaking for him to watch his bike disappear down the mountain that way. Still - it is a good way to learn to continue to concentrate all the way down a descent.
did you hear Paul Sherwen say he saw someone reach 124 km/h on a tour de france descent once? i’m surprised more dont go over the edge.
merci beaucoups, M. Merkel, pour votre explication
au ‘voir
vive Cadel!
Yep. And who seriously thinks they aren’t all on something? Drug use is endemic in professional cycling.
“Phil was also kind enough to correct my spelling.”
Maybe he could have a whisper to someone at SBS about the pre-Tour slogan “Viva la Tour” then, eh wot? Spanish? French?
I heard Evans say that a motorbike cut across him on the descent and cost him a couple of hundred metres. Hope I got that right. I haven’t been watching but would if I could face the next day.
Aiden - Drug use was endemic in professional cycling. Whilst there have been a few cheats caught this year I think cycling has seriously cleaned up its act. The style of racing now ( ie not going up hill at 35km/h or doing 60 km Time Trials at 55 km’h average) like they did in the 1990s indicates this.
Plus they are the most drug tested athletes in the world. It is very difficult to ride doped now.
@FDB heh! It fulfills the multicultural charter…..I think. Anyhoo, this cycling fan has had more fun than a barrel of monkeys doing this, ta to SBS for giving me a shot at working on my cycling editing skillz.
Allez Cadel!
Phil, I don’t suppose you can tell SBS that we’d like to see the first hour of the cycling along with the finish? I can never find a decent net video feed for the bits that SBS don’t broadcast and have been relying on the official TdF page for updates. We always miss out on the initial breakaways and especially on last nights stage, seeing how those packs formed initially. Otherwise, it’s been compelling and the SBS TdF site is always good (so kudos!).
@David Rubie,I’m sure they know we want more.
Just a reminder that tonight’s broadcast starts at 9:35.
yea verily are we breaking all our rules by staying up so late, night after night. the Hbomb has never seen so much tv in the morn as her parents try to pull themselves together to start the day proper. tonight we will move one of teh beds into the lounge and sit, drinks in hand, propped up on pillows, far too comfy to be watching this modern form of tourture they call sport.
Onya Cadel
as a footnote, props are due to AIS as they supported Cadel in his desire to be a great mountain biker at a time when that sport was just beginning and there was no clear indication that it would be as big as it is now. several of my mountain biking friends used to talk about this ‘kid, a kid i tell you, he just went straight past me’ who embaressed a few. i’ve wondered if it was him.
The defending champ, Alberto Contador is not riding the Tour de France as his team, Astana, was not invited because they had three riders test positive last year, two of them in the Tour itself (can’t inline this link):
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2008/feb08/feb13news3
Cycling is cleaner than it was 10 years ago, probably as a result of being able to detect EPO doping, but there are definitely riders in this years tour doing performance enhancing substances. I wonder which ones?
Aiden i dunno how you can say there are ‘definitely riders in this years tour doing performance enhancing substances’ given the testing regime these days. How do you know?
See
http://www.smh.com.au/news/tourdefrance/ricco-busted-with-help-of-planted-molecule/2008/07/23/1216492496759.html
So three riders have been kicked out for drugs. This may mean they got them all, or it may mean there are others lurking. But it least they seem to be taking it seriously.
Cows, from your link:
If it is true there is no test for CERA then if it can be sourced from elsewhere (or somehow cleaned of the tracer compound) it can be taken with impunity. This case and history shows that if athletes think they can get away with it some of them will take performance enhancing drugs.
Cows said:
Probabilities. They have already caught some. After one was caught did you think “Phew, they caught the one cheat”? When a second tested positive was it “at last, the only two cheats left are gone, the Tour is clean!”? After the third (and subsequently Saunier Duval quit the race .. draw your own conclusions)? Are you so sure they have got them all? I’m pretty sure they haven’t.
For what it’s worth, I’ve no doubt that there remain significant numbers in the peloton still using performance-enhancing drugs. But the average times up the climbs seem to be going up, not down. Furthermore, there seems to be a bit less of the crazy swings and roundabouts in performance from day to day (most obviously Floyd Landis in 2006, but there were other less outlandish examples). So, yeah, I reckon it’s probably more legit this year than for a while.
Furthermore, the Tour has never been “drug-free”. Back in the earliest days they were using alcohol, cocaine, ether, and even strychnine.
How on earth would alcohol be performance enhancing? Except maybe to dull the terror of a long, fast descent with old tech brakes and tyres I s’pose.
Ether?
WTF?
Dulls the pain, sure. Along with all other senses, replacing them with floaty hallucinations. What could be worse?
Cocaine, sure. If all else fails, you’ll feel like a winner.
Sleepily listening to RN earlier this week, two major accredited labs were sent EPO spiked urine samples, one could ahrdly find any, the other only reported minimal positive results.
Seems to me that EPO is still successfully getting through.
Not that I have the foggiest, or care.
Apparently going along in an ether-induced daze was preferable - and quicker - than reality of the tour. Hard to believe, I know, but that’s what they apparently did according to the all-knowing Wikipedia.
U R DOIN IT RONG.
It’s mostly used to keep feeling like a winner after the winning is done and replaced with that empty feeling. The side effects aren’t much chop for endurance sports.
I’ve never got into the Tour that much before. I guess I lack the patience, and I can seldom get excited about sports unless I have a team or individual to support. And the fact I was born in the same country as someone isn’t enough - the idea that I had to support scum like Greg Norman based on nationality makes me sick.
However, with Evans campaigning for human rights in Tibet, and I understand being progressive on other issues as well I’ve suddenly developed an enthusiasm which is stuffing up my sleeping patterns. Even if I still don’t understand all the tactics.
“The side effects aren’t much chop for endurance sports.”
Uh uh girlfriend. In little weeny doses, no fun at all, it helps deal with thin air real good.
Well, bugger. I was totally wrong. Frickin’ Popovych got paid all that dough to do what exactly? Burn everything up on some misbegotten glory ride.
Unfortunately, Sastre really deserves the win after that climb up Alpe d’Huez - that was magnificent. Sad that Cadel had no answer and had been wrong footed by the Schleck brothers fake attacks. Still, there’s a sliver of hope.
Cadel’s close enough if he’s good enough. Bring on Saturday…
Yeah great ride by Sastre but look at his CSC team. Cadel is doing amazingly well with almost no team - where are they? . It is unheard of to do so well in such a situation. He can still win.
According to the ABC, Evans beat Sastre by 1:16 in the 30 km time trial earlier in this year’s tour. He beat him by 2:33 - nearly a minute more than he needs now - in the equivalent time trial in the 2007 tour to the one coming up on Saturday. Of course, Sastre may be more motivated for this TT than he was in 2007. But Evans has a pretty reasonable chance if you ask me.