Stage 4, Verona – Verona, 33.2 km, TTT

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Roberto Ferrari was supposed to keep himself in line until Stage 5. Stage 5 is leaveing from Modena, which is the birthplace of a slightly more famous⁽¹⁾ Ferrari, Enzo. A sprinter named Ferrari, leaving from the Enzo’s home, perfect. Unfortunately, Robeto showed that while in car racing Enzo might have been right that ‘Any idiot can stop, it takes a genius to go fast,’ in cycling, apparently idiots can go pretty fast as well.

Departing from Modena is still a pretty good place to start a sprinting stage, because aside from Ferrari, which after leaving Modena moved down the road to Maranello, the area  is also home to Italian car makers Maserati and Laborghini, both of which aspire to getting around at a slightly quicker clip than your average Fiat. That is all for Stage 5, though, for now the sprinters will just have to hang on to their pace-lines as the time-trialists crank out the watts.

Wednesday and Stage 4, are for the teams, and it would seem to come down to Taylor Phinney and BMC, Geraint Thomas and Sky at 9 seconds back. We will see how much damage Ferrari did when BMC rides, since as one of their best time-trialists and the pink jersey, Phinney would have been leading the team with plenty of motivation to ride hard were it not for getting banged up. The team trial will also show how seriously Cavendish was injured from getting taken out by Ferrari. Had Cavendish won on Monday he would have been top man on Sky with a chance to go into the lead should Sky take enough time out of BMC, but Roberto Ferrari closed the door on that possibility with his erratic sprinting, and Thomas is sitting closest to Phinney. Garmin is next, with Alex Rasmussen at 13 seconds behind Phinney, and they are known for their time-trial prowess, having won the team trial at the Giro in the first stage of their first grand tour in 2008. It would also be amusing if Garmin managed to put a Danish rider into pink on the stage after the race left Denmark.

The main question on the day will be whether Garmin or Sky can catch BMC, but with 20 seconds of bonus time available to the winner of most stages⁽²⁾, sprinters who get close to the lead might be able to sneak into pink on Thursday when there is another flat stage. Matthew Goss, who decisively won the Ferrari thinned sprint in Stage 3, is currently 23 seconds back, while Tyler Farrar is 28 back . We will see how all the teams work together, although its a good bet that Euskaltel-Euskadi won’t be challenging for the victory.

⁽¹⁾And certainly currently more well-regarded among the peloton

⁽²⁾No time bonuses in the high mountains

Stage 3, Horsens – Horsens, 190.0 km

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Looking at the profile for this stage, one wonders where Jakob Fuglsang learned to go uphill and one is a little suspicious that it is just a reprint of yesterday’s profile. Indeed, Stage 3 is much like stage 2, about 200 flat⁽¹⁾ kilometers through the Danish countryside, starting and finishing in the same place; and one would be foolish to bet on a different result. Well if you want to bet about who finishes third, or fourth, or eight-ninth that might be sporting, but I would not risk a nickel against Cavendish⁽²⁾ and would not be surprised to see Goss on his wheel again.

The thing about sprinters, though, is that they have no choice but to go out there and do it again tomorrow. Not only do they have to show up again, but they have to be confident/delusional enough to think that this time they are going to win, even when the evidence to the disinterested bystander suggests they won’t. They start the day knowing their teams will be working for them and they know that the best case is that they will be faced with the same situation as the day before. The break will be caught and after a long day in the saddle they must command their massive thighs to put out as much power as possible over the final couple hundred meters. Not only must their bodies be ready to do it all again  tomorrow, but the minds of Farrar and Goss (and Soupe?) must face  the same situation for the rest of the Giro (well until the mountains get to steep and they all head back to their training bases), and it doesn’t end there, for they will all come back and do it again at the Tour de France, each day expecting it to be their day, expecting things to break just right. The resiliency is impressive.

Turning away from the fast men for a minute to consider the pink jersey, Phinney’s defense was a lot more exciting than anticipated when he dropped a chain inside 10 km to go and rapidly shot out the back of the peleton. Fortunately for him, the BMC mechanics got him straightened out and by surfing the caravan and with a couple teammates dropped back to help he safely returned to the peleton. If he can avoid excitement Monday, he is safe for another day at least because Cav is 29 seconds down  and the other sprinters are further back. So, even conceding a reprise of Stage 2’s finish onSstage 3, we will get to team time trial on Wednesday in Verona with Cav 9 seconds back and Alex Rasmussen at 13 back. Rasmussen, however, rides with the Garmin boys, who are known to do a little time-trialing, and certainly showed it with five riders in the top 20 in Stage 1. Phinney’s best hope may be that Sky, and to a lesser extent Garmin, will have the disadvantage that they will have spent two days working hard at the front for their respective sprinters and will have the prospect of more work to come with another flat stage on Thursday. Either way, he should get to take the jersey back to Italy on his back.

Finally, Theo Bos demonstrated another reason that sprinters need resilient outlooks (and bodies), as he went down in the final after touching wheels with his teammate Mark Renshaw who was leading him out. The crash reduced the final sprint to 10 or 15 riders as the rest of the peloton got caught behind the crash. Bos will wait until the morning to see whether he can continue racing, but even if he can race his teammate Mark Renshaw is likely to do the finishing duties, at least for the near future. The sprinters may all soon be together in the gruppetto, but they have some productive, antagonistic suffering ahead before they combine forces merely to survive.

⁽¹⁾Easy for me to say

⁽²⁾Well, I mean obviously I would if the odds were good enough, I’m just saying they’d have to be pretty long before I set any money down

Shawshank in Denmark

On Monday, the peloton is doing another loop, finishing where they started, this time in Horsens, which from the prison’s opening in 1853 until 2006 was home to the Horsens State Prison⁽¹⁾.  Bicycle races and prisons may not seem to have much in common, aside from the occasional drug-user, but in fact both are home to the excitement of the escape, and in both cases the escapees are almost always doomed to failure. The confinement of the peloton and of the walls both generate a spirit of optimism, perhaps because in both cases there is plenty of time and in both cases there is little hope for the majority if the plan is followed. Therefore, we get the breakaway and the excitement of the chase.

On Christmas Eve 1949 at Horsens State Prison the fox had a moment of freedom from the hounds, as Carl August Lorentzen managed to slip the bonds of the nearly 100 year old penitentiary and breath the outside air before his appointed time. As a master safe cracker and lifelong burglar, Lorentzen had devoted his efforts to getting into places he was not supposed to be, and so he was well equipped to leave a place he was supposed to be. His escape began with a tunnel behind a bookcase, allegedly initiated with a tablespoon, and from there he tunneled 18 meters under the prison yard to the basement of an outbuilding. Using a previously constructed set of keys, he escaped to freedom.

In both this case and during his life as a safe-cracker, he seems to have enjoyed the skill of his work as much as its ill gotten gains, for he had been known to leave notes inside safes noting that he had been there to demonstrate his ability while leaving the contents in situ. This, shall we say, spirit of discovery makes one  think that had he been born later, he would have fit in well as a computer hacker. Keeping in mind this mischievous vein it is not entirely surprising that he left a note behind, and that he wrote on it: Hvor der er en vilje er der også en vej, or ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way’.

Since it was Christmas time, he continued his correspondence with the authorities by mailing a card back to the prison wishing them a Merry Christmas. Now at this point you may be thinking that this sounds like a movie you saw once:

However,it would have to be a different kind of movie, because unlike our friend Andy Dufresne, Lorentzen did not leave the frozen Danish countryside for the warmth of the tropics where he could build himself a boat and wait to be met by his friend Red on the beach, and of course he wasn’t innocent. Rather, Lorentzen lasted a scant week on the outside before he was picked up and returned safe and sound to Horsens, where he spent the remainder of his life until he died in 1958 at age 62.

In our Danish version of the Shawshank Redememption, however, we need not end our story there, because after returning to prison he turned his creative mind and skilled hands to creating art work instead of further escape attempts. So we could look upon the redeemed criminal turning his hand to a creatively constructive pursuit instead of a creatively destructive one. Although, knowing our man and considering that chess pieces were among the artwork he created, one wonders whether Red found him a rock hammer and the reformed sinner was really working on another tunnel.

⁽¹⁾It has now been replaced by the Statsfængslet Østjylland, which is also in Horsens. The new prison is currently home to Peter Lundin.

Image from foredragslisten.dk

Stage 2, Herning – Herning, 206.0 km

With Taylor Phinney showing that his memorization of the sequence of turns paid off by getting into pink, attention turns to the the sprinters, who have three sprint finishes with a flat TTT before we see any mountains. However, before moving along, two things need to be mentioned. First, that the Stage 1 preview should have mentioned Swedish time-trial champion,Gustav Larsson as one of the threats in the starting TT, he ended up finishing 5th. The second is that all prognostications, at least those about short time-trials, should just be made by plagiarizing from Garmin boss Jonathan Vaughters’ Twitter feed, see his Tweet from yesterday (@AlexRazi is Garmin rider Alex Rasmussen who was the third place finisher on the stage, behind Taylor Phinney and Geraint Thomas):

http://twitter.com/#!/Vaughters/status/198466057919401984

Moving on to Stage 2, it’s flat, Mark Cavendish is there, need any more be said? Well, perhaps…otherwise what will fill up the white-space around the pictures. Although the first sentence was flippant about his chances, it must be said that Cavendish has not had the best start to the year, having logged a couple victories and spent some time off for the birth of his daughter. He returned to action at the Tour of Romandie, where getting up and over the Swiss hills proved to be too much for him, so he spent his time in Switzerland being a domestique for Bradley Wiggins, helping to bring back breakaways and whatnot. I did not actually hear of him fetching bottles, but maybe there was some of that as well. Also his focus for the year is later with the Tour, as usual, and the Olympics in London, not as usual. However, given the pancake like profile of the first couple stages in Denmark, and the fact that he has won seven stages of the Giro, one would expect his fellow competitors to follow his wheel until given a reason to do otherwise.

He will be joined in the sprinting lists by a couple of his former HTC-Columbia teammates: Matthew Goss and Mark Renshaw ⁽¹⁾, and the American contender Tyler Farrar from Garmin. Matthew Goss appears to be the biggest threat among them, being a former winner of Milano-San Remo and having a team completely dedicated to stage wins. Most recently he finished with the points jersey at the Tour of Turkey after finishing second on four stages. Seeing that he finished second so many times, one should probably mention the guys who beat him and are saddling up for the Giro. In fact it was, the other former HTC teammate, and current Rabobank rider, Mark Renshaw who beat him on stage 4 in one of the closest finishes ever, and Renshaw’s Dutch teammate Theo Bos, who beat Goss on stage 1. So they are also both contenders to throw a wrench in the Sky and GreenEdge sprint machines.

After the contigent of HTC guys, the other rider bearing mention is Tyler Farrar, who won two stages in 2010, and is still looking to have a breakthrough against Cavendish in the big races. He will be riding for Garmin, who will be split with some riders supporting Hesjedal for the overall and others helping out Farrar. The other factor for Farrar is that his good friend Wouter Weylandt died in a crash at the Giro last year, so it will be an emotional trip for him back to Italy⁽²⁾, however things turn out.

The main question for the sprints is what kind of form Cavendish is on, if he is on then the Manx Missile will always triumph, but spice with some hills and a little off form for Cav and things may start varying from the repetitive onslaught wins that Cavendish often produces at grand tours.

⁽¹⁾He still has Bernie Eisel around from the good old days to lead him out in the sprints

Stage 1, Herning – Herning, 8.7 km

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The first stage of the Giro kicks the race off with what would be called a prologue at the Tour de France, but is just Stage 1 here. It is a basically flat 8.7 km jaunt within north-central Herning, with several sharp corners in the first half, before hitting Dronningens Boulevard and smoothing out considerably for the second half with only one 90 degree right turn before the finish. The stage should be long enough for the time-trial specialists to come to the fore, unlike at Romandie, where Cavendish slotted into third.

As the race starts, let’s begin the preview with the new team GreenEdge, which is in its first grand tour and does not have GC ambitions. They will be focusing on stage wins and will be hoping to get a win early. Their best bet in the opening stage will be Canadian time-trial (and road) champion Svein Tuft. Tuft should have fond memories of the Danes, having won the individual time trial at the 2010 Tour of Denmark and having finished second overall to Jakob Fuglsang. Tuft spent last year with the Canadian continental team SpiderTech, but he is back at the top level spending the end of his somewhat circuitous career with a new team and hoping to have some more success in Europe.

Another North American rider who deserves mention is Taylor Phinney from BMC, the 2010 under 23 World Time-Trial Champion, who has had some success in prologues in the past. The Italian speaking Phinney is focusing on the stage and mentioned his preparation on Twitter the other day:

http://twitter.com/#!/taylorphinney/status/198056450424180739

In addition to these riders, there are couple riders coming out of the Tour of Romandie who deserve mention. Stef Clement of Rabobank and Alex Rasmussen of Garmin finished 8th and 10th respectively in the prologue at Romandie and since the prologue was only 3.34 km, they should both benefit from a longer distance here at the Giro. Finally, all the riders mentioned so far are starting near the end of the day, if one were looking for an earlier pace-setter, one could do worse than Jack Bobridge, who, in addition to his exploits on the track, is the current Aussie national champion and preceded Phinney as under 23 time trial world champion, winning in 2009.

Ørnen fra Herning

The 2012 Giro d’Italia starts in the Danish city of Herning, with both of the first two stages starting and finishing there. The decision to start the Giro so far from Italy sets up the unusual situation of a day off and a long transfer after only three days of racing.⁽¹⁾ In addition to being the furthest north a grand tour has started, there are surely as many interesting things about Herning as there are about any other 50,000 person metro area, but if the topic is bicycle racing then there is really only one thing worth mentioning. Herning is the the birthplace of 1996 Tour de France Champion and current manager of Saxo Bank, erstwhile home of beef-eating Alberto Contador⁽²⁾, the Ørnen fra Herning, Bjarne Riis.

Early in his career, the Eagle from Herning rode with Stystème U and helped Laurent Fignon win the 1989 Giro d’Italia. That Giro was also where Riis won his first professional race by taking the Ninth Stage, so not entirely inappropriate that the Giro should visit his hometown. Fignon had won the Tour de France in 1983 and 84, but his most notable Tour finish was a second place finish and was the same year as his lone victory in the Giro. In 1989,  the most exciting finish in the Tour resulted when Fignon lost the yellow jersey on the last day of the race finishing eight seconds arrears, after ceding 58 seconds to Greg Lemond⁽³⁾ on the final stage of the Tour, a 24.5 km time-trial into Paris.

After helping Fignon, Riis showed real promise in 1993, by finishing fifth in the Tour. He then followed this up with a third place finish in 1995, which facilitated his transfer to the fledgling Deutsche Telekom team, which he would help start on the road to being a powerhouse. The acquisition was justified when he broke through in 1996 with overall victory in the Tour, ending Miguel Indurain’s run of five consecutive victories. Again, however,  a second place was perhaps more notable as his 23 year old teammate, Jan Ullrich, finished less than two minutes behind. The following year Riis had success in the Ardennes, winning Amstel Gold and returned to the Tour looking to defend his title. However, by then Ullrich, who seemed destined for many climbs to the top of the podium in Paris, won the race by nine minutes over Richard Virenque.

For me, however, the indelible image of the 97 Tour is not Ullrich, Virenque and Pantani on the podium⁽⁴⁾, but rather the moment when the frustration boiled over for Riis on the final time trial, a moment that I believe proved to be a rare breakthrough for cycling on SportsCenter before the reign of Lance began.

Riis is done in by his machine, after having his brief run at the top ended by the precocious youngster. One wonders how he feels looking back on it now, knowing the frustration and troubles that Ullrich would soon experience.

Ten years after his problems with the bike, after the many twists and turns in the careers of Ullrich and the other members of the 1997 Tour podium, and after revelations by other members of those great Telekom teams that they had been doping, Riis admitted that he had also doped and did so when he won the Tour. His interactions with doping and cycling did not end when he stopped riding, as a director he was employing the great Ivan Basso and Alberto Contador when they were each suspended for doping.

In may be easy to be critical of Riis, but he seems to tie together and exemplify the recent history of cycling, riding for Fignon, ending Indurain’s run of victories, stepping aside (albeit not terribly gracefully) for Ullrich, and now standing beside Contador. The history may not be all that pretty, but the Ørnen fra Herning raced hard and still competes hard, that is cycling as it is, not as one would wish it to be and Herning is as good a place as any to reflect on cycling, and on its darkside.

⁽¹⁾The transfer would have been a lot worse, though, if the organizers had gone through with their crazy promotional scheme of starting the whole thing in Washington, D.C.

⁽²⁾If the cycling thing doesn’t work out for him, perhaps he can get a job guarding the ravens in the Tower

⁽³⁾And his cutting edge aero-bars

⁽⁴⁾Clearly not the cleanest time in the history of cycling, although hard to know whether it was worse than the rest

Giro d’Italia, GC preview

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The appropriate place to begin a preview is with last year’s winner, however, as is frequently the case, this year’s Giro will not have anyone trying to retain the title. Well, more accurately the gentleman who was standing on the top step of the podium at the end of the race last year, will not be around. Occasionally at the Giro the problem is that the winner has decided to move on to bigger and better things and skip the Giro to focus on the Tour de France. That likely would have happened this year, but other events intervened, namely last year’s winner had a now infamous steak during the Tour de France and won’t be back until the Vuelta. That steak and the subsequent striking through of Contador’s name on the finishing lists, means that in retrospect Michele Scarponi, who has previously served a suspension for his involvement in Operación Puerto, was in fact last year’s winner, so in a way we do have a defending champion, even if it wasn’t actually on the road and Scarponi never wore the pink jersey. He comes to Denmark as Lampre’s leader, but not their only threat for the overall as they are bringing another former winner to the race, Damiano Cunego, who won in 2004 at only 22 years old. Il Piccolo Principe followed that up by winning the best young rider jersey at the Tour in 2006, but in recent years he has had more success poaching stages and during one-day races, winning Amstel Gold in 2008. There is some hope, though, that he may redeem some of his early promise in the three week format since he finished sixth at the Tour last year.

It’s not only Lampre, though, who is coming with a former champion, Liquigas, who secured second (originally third) place with Vincenzo Nibali last year⁽¹⁾, is being led by Ivan Basso. Basso won in 2006 and 2010, and like Scarponi he also served a suspension (in between his two wins) for his connection to Operación Puerto. That takes care of the main Italian contenders, and in a departure from some Italian heavy years, leaves a surprisingly multinational contingent of contenders. To begin with, although Nibali won’t be there, John Gadret, Joaquim Rodríguez, and Roman Kreuziger, the 3rd, 4th and 5th place (originally 4th, 5th…you get the point) finishers from last year are all back to improve on their results.

Gadret, who is perhaps best known for his success in cyclocross⁽²⁾, had his best result on the road with the third in the Giro. Rodríguez has been all over the leader boards of the Grand Tours recently, finishing in the top ten at all three in the past few years. With a best finish of 4th at last year’s Giro and at the 2010 Vuelta, he is looking to finally get on the podium⁽³⁾. He has already had a good start to the year, winning Flèche Wallonne and finishing second at the Vuelta Ciclista al País Vasco. Kreuziger is back after winning the best young rider classification last year and at only 25 it will be exciting to see whether he can build on that result.

RadioShackTrekNissan was hoping to bring their own young rider, 27 year old Jakob Fuglsang, to build on his 11th place finish at the Vuelta last year, but a knee injury that surfaced during the Tour de Romandie has him out of the race , and instead Andy Schleck’s chief domestique/brother, Fränk, is stepping into the breach. Fränk was originally preparing to ride the Tour de France and is hoping that the easy first week will allow him to work himself into form to be ready for the climbs of the final week.

To finish off, two other team leaders deserve a mention⁽⁴⁾, Ryder Hesjedal from Garmin and Mikel Nieve, from Euskaltel-Euskadi. Hesjedal will be supported by Peter Stetina and Christian Vandevelde, and will be working to improve on his best Grand Tour showing, a 6th at the 2010 Tour de France. Nieve, who like Fuglsang is 27, will be looking to improve on his 10th place finishes at the Giro and Vuelta last year. We shall see whether the narrow, steep roads of Italy leave one of these contenders on top at the end or whether someone else emerges.

⁽¹⁾He is following his success at the Giro with a run at the Tour, and will be leading Liquigas there

⁽²⁾Being French national champion in 2005 and 2007, well, he’s known for cyclocross and for the public spat he had with Nicolas Roche when Gadret refused to give his wheel to his team leader, Roche, during the 2010 Tour de France. One would have thought that would have made things a little awkward on the team, but they’re both still riding for AG2R, even if they don’t hang out together a lot.

⁽³⁾Although with some more doping convictions, he may find that he has already been on the podium…

⁽⁴⁾Well at least notable to an English speaking writer with a soft spot for the orange clad Basques who are always nosing around the front when the road turns up.