Friday Group Ride #63
A year ago, I was as against race radios in the pro peloton as a French television executive. To me, the saddest moment in any race is that moment, within sight of the finish line, when the poor bastards who have been fighting into the wind all day long, their jerseys unzipped to the waist, salt caking at the corners of the their mouths, get swallowed up by the chasing horde, a pack of cackling hyenas who have spent the previous hours calculating with their director the exact amount of effort it might take to ruin the breakaway’s day.
It is not by any particular guile that this moment is effected. It is merely a matter of having your DS tell you what the time gap is and then ratcheting up the speed on your on-board cyclocomputer to the exact number which will cause the train from Clarksville to overtake the train from Cityville. It’s a math problem more than a race.
And yet, even without radios and computers, this is a fairly standard scene in bike racing. It is the cruelty of the catch, which makes the joy of the successful breakaway such honey-sweet nectar. How much effect the radio has on these outcomes is the subject of no small debate.
Regardless, this week UCI president Pat McQuaid made it entirely clear that the international governing body would press forward with a plan to phase out radios, the latest bout of brinksmanship in a conflict with the team’s union, the AIGCP, who wish the retain the use of the ear piece in all pro races. The AIGCP represents of the Pro and ProContinental Teams, not, just to be clear, the riders themselves.
And now I must confess that, having read a fairly compelling missive on the subject from AIGCP head Jonathan Vaughters, as well as a passionate defense of the technology by Jens Voigt, I find myself in a much more ambivalent place as regards radios.
I have not fully abandoned the notion that races would be better without them, but nor do I feel best qualified to tell the riders what will or won’t make them more safe. They don’t ride down to my office and throw things at me while I type, why should I, in my capacity as a fan, deign to tell them the best way to do their jobs? It is less about whether or not radios have a place in cycling than it is about how those decisions get made. Who makes them? Who has a voice and who doesn’t?
This week’s Group Ride asks the question: Given recent developments in the debate over race radios, are you for or against, and why?
Image: John Pierce, Photosport International
Friday Group Ride #61
Klöden leads Armstrong on the climb to Bagneres du Luchon
The professional racing season is underway in Europe. The pro peloton are all racing to the sun in France or from sea to sea in Italy, and there are finally more articles about actual racing than about the Contador case. At last, Paul Sherwen and Bob Roll are doing their best to enliven the first few hours of television coverage, when the peloton’s main business is riding through gray-ish tan villages, hucking empty water bottles at small pockets of people just out of the café for a few minutes.
And while certain bits of the story are running to script the racing has already offered up some surprises.
For me, the biggest has perhaps been the riding of Thomas de Gendt at Paris-Nice. The Vacansoleil rider came out of nowhere to win Stage 1, engineering his win from a three-man breakaway with Jeremy Roy and Jens Voigt. The Belgian then kept the jersey through the Stage 2 sprint, but lost it on Stage 3 by just two seconds. Not content with his performance up to that point, de Gendt found his way into another successful breakaway and pulled the golden fleece on again. Not a threat for the overall, de Gendt has still been able to light up the race with the sort of smart and swashbuckling riding every fan likes to see.
Of course, another big surprise was Andreas Klöden’s win on Stage 5, out sprinting Sammy Sanchez of all people. In doing so, he put enough time into de Gendt to take the leader’s jersey as well. Klöden won this race 11 years ago, but did ANYONE mention his name in any of their previews as a possible overall winner? Answer: no.
This is not to focus all our attention on the Paris-Nice. At Tirreno-Adriatico, the sprinters are all tuning up for Milan-San Remo. After the opening Team Time Trial (TTT), won, shockingly by Team Rabobank, Tyler Farrar took a win in Stage 2, and then JJ Haedo took Stage 3, just denying Farrar the double. Of course, the name missing here is Mark Cavendish, who has finished well down the order on both sprint stages.
This week’s Group Ride asks the question: What has been the biggest surprise of the week for you, and why?
1. Mark Cavendish’s failure to win yet at Tirreno-Adriatico.
2. Andreas Klöden’s win at Paris-Nice.
3. Thomas de Gendt (who?) in the yellow jersey at Paris-Nice.
4. Team Rabobank’s TTT win at Tirreno-Adriatico.
Image: John Pierce, Photosport International
Friday Group Ride #44
I really hope that Bryan Nygaard, Kim Andersen and the Schleck Brothers just never announce a sponsor for their new team, so that we can go on calling it The Luxembourg Project indefinitely. Projects are neat. Think of some of history’s great projects, the Hoover Dam, the Pyramids at Giza, the Alan Parsons.
Calling themselves The Luxembourg Project also leaves open all sorts of options for businesses other than a pro-racing team. They could open a chain of restaurants specializing in Luxembourgish food. They could start a hip-hop record label featuring only Luxembourgish MCs. The sky is the limit, no pun intended.
And so now, as they complete their takeover of Bjarne Riis’ Saxo roster, and add various and sundry others to their squad, the time has come to ask a slightly more serious question about the team with no name, namely (see what I did there?) what are their goals? What are they after that they needed to leave the icy flatlands of Denmark for the rainy, cold flatlands of Luxembourg?
They’ll have the Schlecks to sprinkle over the three Grand Tour podiums, and presumably they’ll have Fabian Cancellara to break Tom Boonen’s spirit wherever the indomitable Swiss chooses to ride against the…um, domitable Belgian. They’ve also got Jakob Fuglsang, Stuart O’Grady, Jens Voigt and Dominic Klemme (also Saxo), Linus Gerdemann and Fabian Wegman (Milram), the Italian sprinter Daniele Bennati (Liquigas-Doimo), Brice Feillu (Vacansoleil), Maxime Monfort (HTC-Columbia), Joost Posthuma (Rabobank) and Robert Wagner (Skil-Shimano).
They’re stacked. They are the Pamela Anderson of pro cycling.
So this week’s Group Ride is: What will constitute success for TLP? Do they have to win a grand tour? Do they need to win more than one classic? Will it be enough to simply accumulate a number of wins equal to those of all their riders’ wins from last season? Or do they just have to win more than Team Sky did in its inaugural season?
What will it take?
Image: John Pierce, Photosport International
Inspirations
My riding is pretty routine. If I’m honest, I am more commuter (Cat II) than anything else. Two small children, a marriage, a day job, etc., eat away at ride time until there’s little left but the 45 minutes back and forth to the office.
They are 45 good minutes.
Most days I ride an ancient, steel Moser, a beast of a bike by modern standards. It has a shortish top tube that yields a strangely upright riding position. This is a bike made to commemorate the Italian’s capture of the hour record (51.151 km) in 1984, though it rides a lot more like a classics bike. When I’m riding it, I envision Francesco in his brutish posture, hands on the hoods, torso bobbing, mud spattered, his boxer’s face contorted into a grimace. I am only half the man on the bike (perhaps just a third), but the bike fills me with that crazy hero-worshipping desire to go fast.
When it rains, I’m Jens Voigt. Like everyone’s favorite breakaway artist, I love the rain. I run hot, so the minute the wet stuff starts to fall, I get a burst of energy that causes me to take turns much faster than prudence dictates. I imagine I’m out on a breakaway. I peek back over my shoulder, as if there is some marauding peloton ready to swallow me up. Mostly there are just cars and buses, occasionally a college kid on a crappy mountain bike.
I am no kind of sprinter, but a yellow light is an invitation beyond my capacity to resist. There is, after all, a stage win at stake. I channel Sean Kelly, not a pure sprinter, but a combative one, an opportunist, the sort of guy who wouldn’t shirk the responsibility of making a traffic light if it was at all possible.
When I was a kid, one of my heroes was Evel Knievel, swashbuckling super hero on a Harley. Quite why he took to jumping his bike over cars and buses I don’t know, but I do know that my eight-year-old self always imagined himself a BMX riding equivalent. I have a long history of Walter Mitty-style day dreaming.
It’s embarrassing to admit that, at 38, I am pretending to be a retired Italian cyclist for nearly an hour-and-a-half every day, except, of course, for the times I’m pretending to be a German hammer or a red-white-and-blue clad daredevil.
The truth is I have no real interest in commuting by bicycle. Commuting is mundane. It lacks sex appeal.
I would much rather turn the hill (steep bump really) that leads to my house into the Poggio, the Tourmalet or the Gavia Pass. I greatly prefer to imagine the straight, wide road that carries me down to the river is actually the run-in to the Velodrome in Roubaix. I ride the wheels of unwitting fellow commuters as though we’re running a team time trial. I take my pulls very seriously, even though, mostly, they just drift off the back, uninterested in whatever game I’m playing.
What I do, riding back and forth, back and forth, every day, all year, in all weather, year after year, is hard. In many ways, I think the commuter is more noble than the pro racer. We do what we do with no hoopla. There is no finish line to cross. Ours is a stage race with an infinite number of stages.
In order to keep going, I take my inspiration wherever I can get it. I glance down at the decals on my old, steel beast, and I ride a little harder. Francesco wouldn’t let me ride his bike any other way.
Image: John Pierce, Photosport International
Friday Group Ride #32
It’s early yet. There is still plenty of time in Grande Boucle 2010 for a violent plot twist and/or turn. Tours de France (see how easy it is to pluralize that?) are pretty much plot twist machines. You just start one up and out come the thrills.
And so, even though it’s early, this week’s Ride is about the Tour that was. This Ride has got to last us all through the weekend and into next week, by which time we’ll have the benefit of about ten minutes of hind sight.
Clearly, this race will be remembered as the one where Lance Armstrong went out with a whimper, rather than a bang, the one where Andy Scheck tried hard, but couldn’t quite ride Alberto Contador off his wheel. We’ll remember Fränk Schleck down on the pavé. We’ll remember everybody and their brother down on the Stockeu. We’ll remember the World Champ riding into Paris with a broken elbow and scores of riders (ok, a few) going home with broken wrists. Mark Cavendish? Poor form, his lead, lead out man expelled, and he still took four stages. Old man Petacchi in green. Chaingate. So many stories here.
Will this be the year that Tour organizers realized their route was causing just that little bit too much pain and suffering? Or is 2010 the year that heralds the return to grand tour as survival race, the way Henri Desgranges envisioned it? Will this be Jens Voigt’s last Tour de France? Egads!
Wrap it up for us, people. Who was the biggest surprise? Who was the biggest loser? What was the best story? What will you remember?
Image: John Pierce, Photosport International
Friday Group Ride #20
The Spring Classics season is over. And now that I’m done crying in my espresso over it. It’s time to shift the mental gears for Grand Tour time. Ignore that grinding sound. My mechanic said it would work itself out, eventually.
And so, let’s take the Group Ride away from race predictions. Who really feels predictively competitive about the Tour of Romandie?
No. This week, in the aftermath of Alexander Vinokourov’s win at Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Mark Cavendish’s profane victory salute in Romandie, I’m thinking about character. I am looking at today’s pro peloton and wondering who the real good guys are. Who, amongst our champions, has the character to go along with his victories? Who has the poise? Who has the class?
Of course, we’ve always had our villains, and I believe they’re a necessary part of the equation. They bring brashness and audacity (Cavendish). They play as foils (Vinokourov) to the good, clean talents pedaling for glory. The bad are often more entertaining than the good, and we all like to be entertained.
What I want to know this week is who you admire? Who will be remembered, not just for their palmarés, but also for the manner in which those victories were won?
My mind goes immediately to a rider like Jens Voigt, the breakaway artist loyal to his team, who suffers with a smile on his face, who makes the hardest parts of bike racing look like fun and respects the riders around him for their power, intelligence and effort.
Then there’s Phillipe Gilbert, outspoken about clean racing, a hard rider on a weak team, an intelligent and humble champion, who can beat stronger riders with his mind, rather than his radio.
There are other worthy riders, of course, but I’ll let you name them.
Image: John Pierce, Photosp0rt International
