Le Tour

by dr ngo

What's the sound of a powerful cycle crossing the mountains?

Froome, Froome.

Today the 100th Tour de France ended, and once again I was pleased to have watched most of it, despite all its heritage of drug scandals (So Long, Lance, it's been weird to know ya) and lack of real suspense about the “winner” over the last week or so. Chris Froome was a deserving winner: he was strong when he needed to be, he appears to be clean AND a nice guy (So Long, Lance), and many of us thought he might even have won last year had he not subordinated himself to his teammate (and eventual champion) Bradley Wiggins. Moreover, Alberto Contador fell off the “podium” on the last climb, good news for those of us who dislike arrogant drug cheats (So Long, Lance).

But the Tour is more than that, and its singularity (as a TV event) deserves distinct consideration, beyond the general “Why I Watch Sports” post that I keep thinking about writing but haven't yet.

For a start, it's Scenery Porn. Not just the natural splendors of seacoast and Alps – which the Tour of California can nearly match – but all the chateaux and picturesque rural villages along the way: you'd never know France had experienced an Industrial Revolution. And then, just when you think you've seen it all, you look up from an otherwise fairly undistinguished “sprint stage” and there's Mont San Michel!! (My junior year of college I had a tourist poster of MSM on the wall of my dorm room: I love that sight.) Not to mention a finish up and down the Champs-Élysées, which is far lovelier than the streets of Los Angeles, my home town, where the ToCal goes. Plus excited fans in costume running recklessly onto the course near every mountain summit, adding considerably to the peril of the riders and the color, both literal and figurative, of the spectacle.

Yet even as sport the Tour stands alone, in my estimation. (Some of what I have to say is also applicable to the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a Espana, but we don't get those on our TV – although I've seen them in the past – and most of what they do the Tour does better.) When I referred to the “winner” in the second paragraph, I put the term in quotation marks not because there's any question mark over Froome's victory, but because there are so many winners. Of nearly 200 riders who start the race, only about ten are serious contenders for the top prize, with perhaps another score having dreams of a podium finish, but everyone there has (1) a chance to “win” something coupled with (2) the necessity to get up every day and put in mile upon mile upon mile at high speed – you are eliminated if you finish too far back – just to keep competing. 3400 kilometers, a minimum of 83 hours of hard cycling, never a respite except for two designated “rest days.” These guys are tough.

Some are there hoping to win single stages – a new champion every day! - or even to lead the entire race to that point and thus don the maillot jaune. Some are there to compete for the green jersey, given (in effect) to the most aggressive and consistent sprinter. Some are trying to be the King of the Mountains, in the polka dot jersey; it's an honor to look like a clown, apparently. It's as if there were many contestants in Miss America whose only ambition was to win Miss Congeniality or the talent competition. And most of the cyclists are just domestiques – literally “servants” - whose victory is likely to consist entirely in the assistance they give to their team leader; think left tackles who achieve near-invisible greatness by protecting their quarterback's blind side. A case could be made that the “most valuable player” of this year's tour was the Tasmanian Richie Porte, who led Froome to the final stretch of almost every stage, yet never finished better than second in any stage himself. Perhaps next year he will supplant Froome at the top, as Froome supplanted the absent Wiggins, whom he had “served” in 2012?

Ah yes, the Tasmanian competing for a British team, just as the indomitable German Jens Voigt (“Shut up, legs!”) and Luxemburgian (Luxemburgher?) Andy Schleck do for an American team, and the top Spaniards for Russian (Katusha) and Danish (Saxo-Tinkoff) teams and the great young Colombian climber Nairo Quintana for a Spanish team and the sprinting Manxman Mark Cavendish for a Belgian team . . . If you favor internationalism, here it is in action; if you have nationalist tendencies, there's always someone to root for, or against. (And I haven't even mentioned team standings.)

All of this complexity unfolds at the height of summer, showing up in the USA every morning for three weeks in glorious technicolor. Get up, turn on the Tour, have breakfast, read the paper, and watch fierce competition in front of a ridiculously scenic backdrop. Neatly finished for the day before lunch. What's not to like?

Comments

[crash]

"he appears to be clean"

Perhaps I am jaded, but I am unsure what being clean "looks like." In the past there were people I thought were clean (for various reasons), but I was mistaken in pretty much all cases.

Right now one thing that might make me think a rider is clean is seeing climbing stats that are worse than those of the past dopers. Not sure what this would look like though. Wattage? Alpe h'Huez time? Even these stats would seem to have a lot of variability (e.g. how hot was it, what did the previous stage look like, was it the second big climb of the day, etc.)

Agree on the scenery though.

[dr ngo]

I agree in general about "appears to be," but in this case Froome is not - as Armstrong was - surrounded by suspicious individuals (including those with the suspicious jawline of a George Hincapie) nor followed, so far as I know, by rumors of drug-taking (even though Lance fended these off for many years by passing every test they could concoct - his chemists were simply better!). They say he has also submitted performance details that would seem to refute a marked, and therefore suspicious, recent improvement; I'm not quite sure what these would be or how the analysis would work, however.

All this being said, I've been burned before and am reconciled to the possibility of being burned again.

[Nigel]

Froome is clean - at least I'd put money on his being so that I would not have put on 'so long, Lance'. His (relative) frailty on the last few stages does not give the appearance of someone doping.

I was most impressed by Cavendish, who was clearly out of sorts on the Tour, and still managed a couple of stage wins.

Predictions... Froome will be back in yellow next year, with a more together Sky team (no team car breakdowns, for example, and fewer crashes), though Quintana will be serious opposition... and Cavendish will overwhelm the Germans on stage wins.

[dr ngo]

But will Wiggins be back? And what will that mean in terms of Sky strategy?

And - perhaps most important - how much Scenery Porn is there in Yorkshire, where the Tour begins??

[Nigel]

Wiggins ought to be fit next year and will more than likely be back. I don't think any other team will match his salary, so Sky will find a way to use him, and if anyone can manage the egos involved, then they can.
Porte will probably get his chance in Italy next year - keeping him happy in 2015 might be quite another matter.

Stage 1 through the Yorkshire Dales is rather splendid; stage 2 a little ore industrial, but parts of the old mill towns are not unattractive.
Just pray for good weather.

[liberal japonicus]

These guys are tough.

I'm just dredging up a memory, wasn't there a guy last year who had a spill, broke his collarbone and still kept racing. I also remember the odd fact that he was using a mouthguard to keep himself from grinding this teeth down and he had to use a new mouthguard each day. Jeez.

[dr ngo]

This year Jean Claude Peraud rode on broken collarbone until near the end of the time trial he had a sickening fall on that very shoulder. In 2003 Tyler Hamilton cracked his collarbone on the first stage, rode three more weeks to finish the Tour. In 2011 Johny Hoogerland was knocked by a car (!) into a barbed wire fence while traveling at full speed, and finished. Yeah . . . tough.

(Just google "Tour de France injuries" for many more cases, with details and, in some cases, photographs)