Stages Five to Eight.
Jul. 17th, 2007 01:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelleStages Five to Eight.
I’m a little behind, yeah. I’m not sure how I missed three stages—I thought I’d only been a slacker for two—but there are really only two things you need to know.
Stage Five: 182.5km from Chablis to Autun. A stage featuring several steep climbs, but mostly notable for a horrible crash that beat the living snot out of possibly the most favoured-to-win rider, Alexandre Vinokourov of Team Astana. If you followed the news of all the doping scandals last year, you may remember something called Operacion Puerto, a Spanish Inquisition that implicated many big-name riders in a blood-doping scandal, and led to the retirement of Jan Ullrich in the year everyone was waiting to see how he’d ride without Lance as a foil. One other casualty was Vinokourov. Not named in the investigation at all himself, he was devastated by the implication of so many of his teammates that he was unable to ride.
25km from the end, disaster. A crash took him down excruciatingly hard, shredding his shorts, ripping him open on his right hip, and gashing both elbows. Even those solidly in his camp thought he’d never make it through the day, and at the least would withdraw on Stage Six—how can you get any real sleep if you wake up in pain every time you roll over?
The other important thing at this stage is that we’ve finally started to get into the mountains. When this happens, we’re in a completely different race: one not just of strategy and timing, but of sheer, agonising pain, blinding speed, nauseating risk, and, not for nothing, unbelievably gorgeous scenery. The peloton shatters into leaders and numerous chases as the climbers—riders with a mountain-stage specialty—manage to grind themselves up the steep ascents first while everyone else just tries to hang on and keep up. The advantage of drafting the rider in front of you pretty much vanishes. It’s every man for himself.
As if that weren’t enough, the descents are completely terrifying: often viciously sharp switchbacks followed by long stretches you surely wouldn’t want to even walk down, the riders will often not just sail down them under gravity’s control, but pedal down them to go even faster. And it’s an amazing and nerve-wracking thing to see a rider actually pull himself off his seat and cram himself down onto the crossbar, his nose down behind the handlebars, and the saddle poking him in the butt. It’s a classic downhill skier tuck, and awesomely aerodynamic, but it comes at the expense of most of your control over the bike.
It’s during these dizzying descents that we most often see riders going off the side of the mountain, flipping horrifically over the guard rails, leaving their bikes behind. Often, they can get right back on, but often, they’ve snapped bones. It’s one of the most technical aspects to road racing, and if you’re good at it, you can open up a gap of not just seconds, but minutes.
Stage Six—199.5 km from Semur-en-Auxois to Bourg-en-Bresse— was dominated by English rider Bradley Wiggins of Cofidis, who led all alone from the 2km mark until his inevitable capture a mere 7km from the end. It was a comparatively flat stage, with only two Categorie 4 climbs. It was won by the man they always call “Big” Tom Boonen of Quick-Step. It’s his first stage win since 2005, and he was ecstatic.
Stage Seven, Bourg-en-Bresse to Le Grand Bornand (197.5km), featured the highest point of the Tour so far, and, sadistically, it came at the very end of the stage. Col de la Colombiere, a gorgeous mountain, rises up 1618m of non-stop pain. My legs twitch in fear just thinking about it. It gained additional notoriety by being the site of last year’s Stage 17, where a rider on the now-defunct Phonak team by the name of Floyd Landis made his incredible and now-contested return to yellow. But remarkably, this year, a rider no one’s even thought of went off like a 4th of July firework. Linus (“Leenus”) Gerdemann of T-Mobile—not even the team leader!—shot forward early on, fighting his way up to be the very first over the mountain. (Providing, by the way, a helicopter shot from behind that seemed to frame a dizzying drop into nothingness in the summit gate.) At the end, he’d won himself a virtual wardrobe: the green points jersey, the white jersey of the tour’s best under-25 young rider, and, best of all, the Maillot Jaune. After staggering off his bike and having to be helped into the trailer at the finish, he showed up on the podium looking like he’d just seen G-d, and the All-Creator is a really hot young German chick. His face shone, his grin could be seen from Australia, and he kept shaking his head in disbelief, even kissing the yellow jersey. It really does restore your faith in not just cycling, but the Tour, and even sports in general, to see someone that purely euphoric.
Which brings us to today’s stage: 165km from Le Grand-Bornand to Tignes, and a bewildering disarray of top riders breaking out, falling back, attacking, crashing, bailing, and redeeming. Tragically, it was also it also saw the abandonment of two top-favoured riders. After joining a strong breakaway and riding like a champion—even becoming the virtual race leader for a stretch—14th-placed Australian Michael Rogers, the team leader of T-Mobile, suddenly showed up on camera riding at a snail’s pace, passed by his bewildered teammate, himself blank-eyed and mechanical, obviously overcome by injuries sustained in a two-man crash earlier in the stage. He’d been examined on the fly by the race doctor, who announced on TV he thought Rogers might be able to continue at least to the end of the stage, but that didn’t seem the case. Finally, Rogers pulled over and stopped, right arm hanging limp, his head down on his handlebars. It was awful to see. In no time, his team car caught up with him. Surrounded by support staff, he seemed to freeze, and after a few moments, one of them reached up to remove his helmet. It was over. He was helped into the team car to the supportive applause of the spectators, abandoning the Tour. (Holy cow, he has a blog! http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/sport/michaelrogers/ WOOT!)
Even more dramatically, fellow Aussie Stuart O’Grady of CSC was shown not just getting into a car, but flat out, strapped to a backboard to be airlifted to hospital, complaining of horrendous back pain. A victim of a crash on the same descent that so severely injured Michael Rogers, it’s a horrible break for him in a year that could very well have been his. And rounding out the disastrous day for Australians, champion sprinter Robbie McEwen was eliminated when he failed to complete the stage in the maximum allowed time. While this may sound dreadful, for a sprinter, it’s not the end of the world. T-Mobile rider Mark Cavendish already had a ticket home booked by his team weeks ago—as a sprinter, his job on the team was done, and climbing the mountains would have been an exercise in futility and agony for him. It sounds weird, but that’s cycling.
Perhaps the most spectacular crash took out David Arroyo of Caisse D’epargne. On a hairpin left-hand switchback, he and Michael Rogers both failed to make the turn. It’s not certain who fell first, but with no way to avoid Rogers, Arroyo was thrown both figuratively and literally. His bike hit the guard rail, and he went flying over the handlebars into the dense vegetation of the steep drop on the other side, disappearing from view. But without seeming to miss a beat, he dragged himself up through the brush, righted his bike, threw himself back into the saddle, and took off. Just another day at the office, honey.
But to make a very long entry short-ended, Stage 8 was dominated from the beginning by the Tour’s sole Danish rider, Michael Rasmussen. Noted mainly for his formidable mountain-stage skills, this is his fourth Tour, and he seems to be getting better every year. I first remember “Chicken (thus nicknamed for his distinctively, er, bony physique) from what may have been that first Tour, when he flipped out on a mountain time trial—so that was probably the ’04 Tour. He fell, as so many did, and damaged his bike, and it was all—you’ll forgive—downhill from there. He couldn’t go on on that bike, so his replacement bike was pulled from the team car. That one didn’t seem to be adjusted correctly, so he wanted to go back to his first bike. That one still wasn’t right, so he had to stop again. You get the picture. He plummeted through the standings faster than a rider going off the side of a switchback, completely unable to get his head back in the game.
That, however, was definitely not the Michael Rasmussen of Stage 8 ’07. Fire-tempered, one assumes, his ride was commanding and sure-footed. So much so that he gained not only the stage win, but the Maillot Jaune. Even his post-stage interview was more assured: his English has improved (though being Danish, it was probably never bad to begin with), and accented strongly of England.
But I’ve gone on long enough. Stage 9 begins bright and early on Tuesday after Monday’s rest day. More to come then, and at some point, I’m going to have to cover the other races within the Race: the Polka-Dot jersey, the White jersey, and the Green jersey, in more detail.
Bon soir!
I’m a little behind, yeah. I’m not sure how I missed three stages—I thought I’d only been a slacker for two—but there are really only two things you need to know.
Stage Five: 182.5km from Chablis to Autun. A stage featuring several steep climbs, but mostly notable for a horrible crash that beat the living snot out of possibly the most favoured-to-win rider, Alexandre Vinokourov of Team Astana. If you followed the news of all the doping scandals last year, you may remember something called Operacion Puerto, a Spanish Inquisition that implicated many big-name riders in a blood-doping scandal, and led to the retirement of Jan Ullrich in the year everyone was waiting to see how he’d ride without Lance as a foil. One other casualty was Vinokourov. Not named in the investigation at all himself, he was devastated by the implication of so many of his teammates that he was unable to ride.
25km from the end, disaster. A crash took him down excruciatingly hard, shredding his shorts, ripping him open on his right hip, and gashing both elbows. Even those solidly in his camp thought he’d never make it through the day, and at the least would withdraw on Stage Six—how can you get any real sleep if you wake up in pain every time you roll over?
The other important thing at this stage is that we’ve finally started to get into the mountains. When this happens, we’re in a completely different race: one not just of strategy and timing, but of sheer, agonising pain, blinding speed, nauseating risk, and, not for nothing, unbelievably gorgeous scenery. The peloton shatters into leaders and numerous chases as the climbers—riders with a mountain-stage specialty—manage to grind themselves up the steep ascents first while everyone else just tries to hang on and keep up. The advantage of drafting the rider in front of you pretty much vanishes. It’s every man for himself.
As if that weren’t enough, the descents are completely terrifying: often viciously sharp switchbacks followed by long stretches you surely wouldn’t want to even walk down, the riders will often not just sail down them under gravity’s control, but pedal down them to go even faster. And it’s an amazing and nerve-wracking thing to see a rider actually pull himself off his seat and cram himself down onto the crossbar, his nose down behind the handlebars, and the saddle poking him in the butt. It’s a classic downhill skier tuck, and awesomely aerodynamic, but it comes at the expense of most of your control over the bike.
It’s during these dizzying descents that we most often see riders going off the side of the mountain, flipping horrifically over the guard rails, leaving their bikes behind. Often, they can get right back on, but often, they’ve snapped bones. It’s one of the most technical aspects to road racing, and if you’re good at it, you can open up a gap of not just seconds, but minutes.
Stage Six—199.5 km from Semur-en-Auxois to Bourg-en-Bresse— was dominated by English rider Bradley Wiggins of Cofidis, who led all alone from the 2km mark until his inevitable capture a mere 7km from the end. It was a comparatively flat stage, with only two Categorie 4 climbs. It was won by the man they always call “Big” Tom Boonen of Quick-Step. It’s his first stage win since 2005, and he was ecstatic.
Stage Seven, Bourg-en-Bresse to Le Grand Bornand (197.5km), featured the highest point of the Tour so far, and, sadistically, it came at the very end of the stage. Col de la Colombiere, a gorgeous mountain, rises up 1618m of non-stop pain. My legs twitch in fear just thinking about it. It gained additional notoriety by being the site of last year’s Stage 17, where a rider on the now-defunct Phonak team by the name of Floyd Landis made his incredible and now-contested return to yellow. But remarkably, this year, a rider no one’s even thought of went off like a 4th of July firework. Linus (“Leenus”) Gerdemann of T-Mobile—not even the team leader!—shot forward early on, fighting his way up to be the very first over the mountain. (Providing, by the way, a helicopter shot from behind that seemed to frame a dizzying drop into nothingness in the summit gate.) At the end, he’d won himself a virtual wardrobe: the green points jersey, the white jersey of the tour’s best under-25 young rider, and, best of all, the Maillot Jaune. After staggering off his bike and having to be helped into the trailer at the finish, he showed up on the podium looking like he’d just seen G-d, and the All-Creator is a really hot young German chick. His face shone, his grin could be seen from Australia, and he kept shaking his head in disbelief, even kissing the yellow jersey. It really does restore your faith in not just cycling, but the Tour, and even sports in general, to see someone that purely euphoric.
Which brings us to today’s stage: 165km from Le Grand-Bornand to Tignes, and a bewildering disarray of top riders breaking out, falling back, attacking, crashing, bailing, and redeeming. Tragically, it was also it also saw the abandonment of two top-favoured riders. After joining a strong breakaway and riding like a champion—even becoming the virtual race leader for a stretch—14th-placed Australian Michael Rogers, the team leader of T-Mobile, suddenly showed up on camera riding at a snail’s pace, passed by his bewildered teammate, himself blank-eyed and mechanical, obviously overcome by injuries sustained in a two-man crash earlier in the stage. He’d been examined on the fly by the race doctor, who announced on TV he thought Rogers might be able to continue at least to the end of the stage, but that didn’t seem the case. Finally, Rogers pulled over and stopped, right arm hanging limp, his head down on his handlebars. It was awful to see. In no time, his team car caught up with him. Surrounded by support staff, he seemed to freeze, and after a few moments, one of them reached up to remove his helmet. It was over. He was helped into the team car to the supportive applause of the spectators, abandoning the Tour. (Holy cow, he has a blog! http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/sport/michaelrogers/ WOOT!)
Even more dramatically, fellow Aussie Stuart O’Grady of CSC was shown not just getting into a car, but flat out, strapped to a backboard to be airlifted to hospital, complaining of horrendous back pain. A victim of a crash on the same descent that so severely injured Michael Rogers, it’s a horrible break for him in a year that could very well have been his. And rounding out the disastrous day for Australians, champion sprinter Robbie McEwen was eliminated when he failed to complete the stage in the maximum allowed time. While this may sound dreadful, for a sprinter, it’s not the end of the world. T-Mobile rider Mark Cavendish already had a ticket home booked by his team weeks ago—as a sprinter, his job on the team was done, and climbing the mountains would have been an exercise in futility and agony for him. It sounds weird, but that’s cycling.
Perhaps the most spectacular crash took out David Arroyo of Caisse D’epargne. On a hairpin left-hand switchback, he and Michael Rogers both failed to make the turn. It’s not certain who fell first, but with no way to avoid Rogers, Arroyo was thrown both figuratively and literally. His bike hit the guard rail, and he went flying over the handlebars into the dense vegetation of the steep drop on the other side, disappearing from view. But without seeming to miss a beat, he dragged himself up through the brush, righted his bike, threw himself back into the saddle, and took off. Just another day at the office, honey.
But to make a very long entry short-ended, Stage 8 was dominated from the beginning by the Tour’s sole Danish rider, Michael Rasmussen. Noted mainly for his formidable mountain-stage skills, this is his fourth Tour, and he seems to be getting better every year. I first remember “Chicken (thus nicknamed for his distinctively, er, bony physique) from what may have been that first Tour, when he flipped out on a mountain time trial—so that was probably the ’04 Tour. He fell, as so many did, and damaged his bike, and it was all—you’ll forgive—downhill from there. He couldn’t go on on that bike, so his replacement bike was pulled from the team car. That one didn’t seem to be adjusted correctly, so he wanted to go back to his first bike. That one still wasn’t right, so he had to stop again. You get the picture. He plummeted through the standings faster than a rider going off the side of a switchback, completely unable to get his head back in the game.
That, however, was definitely not the Michael Rasmussen of Stage 8 ’07. Fire-tempered, one assumes, his ride was commanding and sure-footed. So much so that he gained not only the stage win, but the Maillot Jaune. Even his post-stage interview was more assured: his English has improved (though being Danish, it was probably never bad to begin with), and accented strongly of England.
But I’ve gone on long enough. Stage 9 begins bright and early on Tuesday after Monday’s rest day. More to come then, and at some point, I’m going to have to cover the other races within the Race: the Polka-Dot jersey, the White jersey, and the Green jersey, in more detail.
Bon soir!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 03:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 04:13 pm (UTC):blink:
seriously? the *french* actually *allow* a polka-dot jersey?
sacre bleu!!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-17 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-19 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-19 03:49 pm (UTC)