Tuesdays With Wilcockson: Wiggo and his Merry Men

Following Team Sky’s collective domination of the climbing stages at the Critérium du Dauphiné this past weekend, comparisons are being made with great teams of the past: the Molteni armada of Eddy Merckx, the La Vie Claire crew of Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond, and the infamous Train Bleu of Lance Armstrong. It’s said that comparisons are odious, but few would deny that the performance of Brad Wiggins and his Sky teammates last Saturday on the mighty Col de Joux-Plane, this Dauphiné’s one truly challenging climb, was nothing less than extraordinary.

The result was that the eight-day Dauphiné ended in a repeat overall victory for Wiggins, with his teammates Mick Rogers (second), Chris Froome (fourth) and Richie Porte (ninth) also finishing top 10. It appears to be a similar result to the 1986 Tour de France, when LeMond was first, Hinault second and their La Vie Claire teammates Andy Hampsten (fourth) and Niki Rüttimann (seventh) also placed top 10. But that result was achieved in a very different manner: Hampsten, Rüttimann and Steve Bauer were LeMond’s only true helpers at that Tour, while Hinault raced an almost separate race, riding against LeMond and supported by the team’s other four (mostly French) domestiques.

As for Merckx and Armstrong, they controlled their teams to act in concert, using their strongest teammates to prepare the ground before making their own moves. In Merckx’s case, those moves sometimes included extraordinary, long solo breakaways, while Armstrong rarely changed his winning formula of making late bursts on mountaintop finishes. The one thing that Armstrong, Merckx, LeMond and Hinault all have in common with Wiggins today is their superiority in time trials. And time trials will play a big role in the upcoming Tour.

However, what Wiggo and his Merry Men did in last week’s Dauphiné was somewhat unusual. They achieved their overall dominance with what amounted to daily team time trials—even up the Joux-Plane! Their having four mean leading an eventual nine-man group to the French mountain’s 5,577-foot summit may have looked like the 2004 Tour hegemony of Armstrong U.S. Postal squad, which had seven men pulling a 22-man peloton up the Col d’Agnes in the Pyrenees; but those Postal riders separately made their strong pulls before dropping back to leave Armstrong alone to battle for victory with Ivan Basso on that stage’s final climb to Plateau de Beille.

The one similar tactic for Sky on the Joux-Plane came from the British team’s Norwegian phenom, Eddy Boasson Hagen, who softened the opposition by setting a fierce tempo in the opening half of the renowned alpine climb, which at almost 12 kilometers long and an average grade approaching 9 percent, is even tougher than L’Alpe d’Huez. The relay was taken up by Sky’s rising Australian star, Porte, who, incredibly, pulled the diminished group for the rest of the 35-minute ascent. All Wiggins had to do was follow with Froome and Rogers.

Other than the non-threatening Colombian climber Nairo Quintana of Movistar, who was “allowed” to sneak ahead (and win the stage), the only riders still with the Sky foursome at the Joux-Plane summit were two team leaders, Cadel Evans of BMC Racing and Jurgen Van Den Broeck of Lotto-Belisol, and three lieutenants, Vasil Kiryienka of Movistar, Pieter Weening of Orica-GreenEdge and Haimar Zubeldia of RadioShack-Nissan-Trek.

Evans, who is still building his form for the Tour, admitted that the climbing pace set by Boasson Hagen and Porte on the Joux-Plane was too constantly strong for him to contemplate making an uphill attack, especially in gusting winds. Evans did use his renowned bike-handling skills to make a downhill attack … but the Aussie seemed to forget that the true descent of the Joux-Plane doesn’t start until a second summit (actually called the Col de Ranfolly), and he wasted energy in a fruitless attack on the two, mainly flat kilometers between the two peaks. So he didn’t finally break through Sky’s impregnable wall until halfway down the 9km descent to the finish in Morzine. If he hadn’t made that initial move Evans, who had placed second four times in four starts at the Dauphiné, would likely have netted enough time to move above Rogers into second overall. Instead, he ended up in third.

But the Dauphiné is not the Tour, and Evans and his BMC team will be at a much higher level in July. As for Wiggins, who’s mimicking Merckx (and Elvis!) with his quirky sideburns, the Brit and his Merry Men know that some of them will also be working hard for teammate Mark Cavendish at the Tour. But with the world champ, on a sugarless diet, on course for losing 10 pounds of body fat before the 2012 Tour de France starts in Liège on June 30, maybe the sprinter will be light enough to work for Wiggo in the climbing stages after he picks up a batch of stage wins in the first half of the Tour!

Another difference between the Dauphiné and the Tour is that most of the likely Tour contenders were either not at their best in the Dauphiné or racing this week’s Tour of Switzerland. Of course, Saturday’s climb of the Joux-Plane was a disaster for potential contenders Vincenzo Nibali of Liquigas-Cannondale (nine minutes lost), Denis Menchov of Katusha and Samuel Sanchez of Euskaltel-Euskadi (both 13 minutes back) … and RadioShack’s Andy Schleck, who didn’t even get that far, abandoning the Dauphiné on the stage’s first climb because of the injuries sustained in his time-trial crash last Thursday.

There have so far been mixed results in Switzerland for RadioShack’s other Tour contender, Fränk Schleck, Movistar’ leader Alejandro Valverde and two other likely Tour contenders, Levi Leipheimer of Omega-Quick Step and Robert Gesink of Rabobank. But by the end of the Swiss race—finishing with a full mountain stage next Sunday — all of those riders look likely to be on the same upward path as Evans.

If the Tour de France were starting right now instead of June 30, everyone would be predicting a race dominated by Team Sky and an overall victory for Wiggins. But as the Tour has seen countless times, crashes and sickness often ruin the hopes of favorites, as happened last year with Wiggins, Leipheimer and Gesink. And the true contenders rarely come to the top until the third and final week, as could be the case this year, with Evans, the Schlecks, and perhaps Giro d’Italia winner Ryder Hesjedal of Garmin-Barracuda, challenging Wiggo and his Merry Men.

 

Follow John on Twitter: @johnwilcockson

Image: Fotoreporter Sirotti

Taking Shape

In one of the bigger surprises of the week, the UCI announced that it had approved the extension of Astana’s ProTour license. The announcement puts to rest any speculation about whether Alberto Contador would remain with the Kazakh-registered formation for 2010.

On the heels of the announcement, 2006 Tour de France winner Oscar Pereiro revealed that he will finish his career riding in support of Alberto Contador. He signed a one-year contract contingent upon Astana being approved for the ProTour.

But the news doesn’t end there. Haimar Zubeldia pulled the ripcord and announced he will join Johan Bruyneel at Radio Shack. As one of the pivotal riders caught in the Armstrong/Contador pachinko, Zubeldia sidestepped the controversy when he spoke to l’Equipe.

“When I moved from Euskaltel to Astana, I signed for the team of Johan Bruyneel. Now everyone in this group has joined a new team; that’s why Radio Shack has been my priority.”

Of his choice to follow Bruyneel he said the choice was an entirely personal one based on his needs as a rider. “After a year of working with him, I can confirm the image I had of him. He is a great leader with such a very good view of the race…. I had to choose the best for me.”

The loss of Zubeldia and the gain of Pereiro essentially sums zero. Contador needed to bolster his Tour team by keeping Zubeldia and adding someone of Pereiro’s talent—or better. The only other recent signee the team has announced recently is Mirko Selvaggi.

Astana management complained that the UCI had given the team more stringent requirements than other ProTour teams when it required additional bank guarantees. And while requested bank guarantee was unusual, it was made it response to the team’s financial woes this spring. Interestingly, despite Astana’s complaints, it seems the team has received special treatment. The team still has only 21 riders and shouldn’t, technically, be eligible for the ProTour.

It will be especially difficult for the team to recruit riders in December, and there is a cutoff date for transfers that is rapidly approaching. If they enter the season with only 21 riders, each rider will have to race more frequently to fulfill the squad requirements for ProTour events and this will increase fatigue and the possibility of injury as the Tour approaches. For the sake of fireworks at le Grand Boucle, let’s hope they find some more strong riders.

The Astana Roster to date:

Assan Bazayev

Alberto Contador

David De la Fuente

Valeriy Dmitriyev

Alexsandre Diachenko

Enrico Gasparotto

Andriy Grivko

Jesus Hernandez

Maxim Iglinskiy

Roman Kireyev

Berik Kupeshov

Daniel Navarro

Benjamin Noval

Oscar Pereiro

Bolat Raimbekov

Sergey Renev

Mirko Selvaggi

Gorazd Stangelj

Paolo Tiralongo

Alexandre Vinokourov

Andrey Zeits

Image: John Pierce, Photosport International

*Updated*: Unfinished Business

This week Specialized Bicycles announced that they had signed Alberto Contador to a personal sponsorship contract for their bicycles. Contador in turn announced that he had come to an agreement with Astana to serve out the final year of his contract.

Whew, that’s over, isn’t it?

No, not really.

First, Contador’s contract with Specialized is significant and merits a look. In the modern history of road racing, a move of this sort is highly unusual, if not outright historic. Greg LeMond and Eddy Merckx had enough power that in negotiating a team contract they could stipulate the team would ride their bicycles. This is, however, the first time in the modern era that a rider has signed a personal contract ahead of his team, thus virtually ensuring that his team will be strong-armed into riding the same bikes.

It’s a fascinating fresh take on the carrot-and-stick approach, at least for the bike industry. It also hints at the possibility that Astana are not easy to negotiate with or even to determine who to negotiate with. This move could conceivably be less expensive than sponsoring Astana outright, but it has an additional value to Specialized: It makes Contador less portable. Obviously, there’s no way Garmin-Slipstream would allow Contador to ride a Specialized bike if they were to sign him. Ditto for Caisse d’Epargne. By offering Contador the lion’s share of what would otherwise go to the team, Specialized does Astana a service in helping to keep Contador tied to the team. There’s an obvious value in that.

Interestingly, the Belgian newspaper Sporza.be reports that Patrick Lefevre spilled the beans. After an unusually cordial letter announcing the end of the relationship, Lefevre revealed that Specialized was hoping to use their sponsorship of Contador to help lure him to Quick Step. When Contador accepted the offer and then announced his decision to stay with Astana, Lefevre said he realized that he and Specialized “no longer shared the same vision.”

Cynically, one could say that Contador took the money and ran. The more generous view is that he didn’t ignore the script, but rather, the man who expressed concerns about having the very best in equipment to race on seized on an opportunity to race some on a brand he believed to be superior.

Contador isn’t a done deal for either Specialized or Astana, though. There’s this clause in his contract that Astana must maintain its ProTour license or he climbs in the escape pod. As I’ve reported before, one requirement of the ProTour council is that all ProTour teams must have a minimum complement of 25 riders.

It is November 20 and Astana has 20 riders and one—Haimar Zubledia—is still trying to leave.

The Astana Roster to date:

Assan Bazayev

Alberto Contador

David De la Fuente

Valeriy Dmitriyev

Alexsandre Diachenko

Enrico Gasparotto

Andriy Grivko

Jesus Hernandez

Maxim Iglinskiy

Roman Kireyev

Berik Kupeshov

Daniel Navarro

Benjamin Noval

Bolat Raimbekov

Sergey Renev

Gorazd Stangelj

Paolo Tiralongo

Alexandre Vinokourov

Andrey Zeits

Haimar Zubeldia

Image: John Pierce, Photosport International