Those who make it all the way to the Champs Elysees will have spent 101.4 solitary kilometers on the bike, spread over the Prologue and two individual time trials. In addition, the presence of only two summit finishes means that this year’s tour is not one for the mountain goats, and despite his insistence that he would be coming to the Tour to win, perhaps it is to his benefit that a crash at the Tour de Suisse forced Andy Schleck out of the race. He will have better hopes at La Vuelta, although that’s not all roses as Mr. Contador, the original holder of Andy Schleck’s only Tour victory, will be back from his long vacation in time for another try at his home tour. However, with two of the recent animators of the Tour sitting this one out, we will have to look elsewhere for inspiration, not that it is lacking.
The English Speaking Peoples
Winston Churchill
The history of the English speaking peoples at the Grand Tours has recently been one of success, especially at La Grande Boucle (yes, even if 7 tours are soon stricken from the record books, although Henri Desgrange knows whom you would give them to if they were stripped), however, this year they seem to have risen [ed.: ridden?] to new heights, and the palmarès have not been monopolized by any one of the peoples, but have been claimed by riders flying a variety of colors. In fact, with Alberto Contador still serving his steak related exile from competitive bicycling, one could write a fairly complete preview of the Tour without ever mentioning a non-English speaker (especially if one were an English speaker oneself and was already hobbled with a bias towards the Anglophones in the peloton). To wit, the returning champion is Australian, the main challenger to the title is English, a Canadian is coming off a victory in the Giro looking to do something that hasn’t been done since ‘Il Pirata’, Marco Pantani, and the fading global superpower is appropriately bringing a couple old campaigners for another tilt at le maillot jaune. In addition to the leaders, there are plenty of domestiques, time-trialists, and sprinters hanging around the edges looking for wins here and there, and even one of the few slim hopes the French have for glory, Nicolas Roche, is half-Irish.
As alluded to earlier, the two favorites for the race would have to be the Motherland’s representative, Bradley Wiggins, and the emissary from the antipodes, the defending champion, Cadel Evans. Each has taken very different paths to get here this year, but they are the focus of attention now. Wiggins has basically won everything he has lined up for, winning the one weekers: Paris-Nice, Tour de Romandie, and the Critérium Dauphiné. Evans, in contrast, won the Critérium International, had a DNF at Amstel Gold, and then finished third at the Dauphiné in his preparation for the Tour. They are both well suited to this year’s Tour and while Wiggins has not yet shown he can win a three-week race, as we saw above, he has been impressive since his third last September in the Vuelta. The question for Wiggins seems to be whether he can keep his sterling form all the way through July.
Although, England and Australia are bringing some impressive challengers, it is a Canadian, Ryder Hesjedal, who comes into the Tour having already won a three-weeker on the year, finishing with La Maglia Rosa in Milano. Hesjedal has been saying that he was always planning on doing both races, and while few would give him much chance of replicating a feat that has not been accomplished since the late Marco Pantani did it in 1998, it would be churlish not to note that few of those people would have given Hesjedal much chance to win the Giro in the first place. The former mountain biker will just have to hope that he holds up for the three weeks and that his combination of climbing and TT pays off in the end.
In addition to this power trio, a pair of mature gentlemen from the USA, Levi Leipheimer, leading Omega Pharma-Quickstep, and Chris Horner with TrekNissan, more about which below, could be in the mix as well. Although, Leipheimer is a couple years off his third place finish in the Tour, and was hit by a car during training earlier in the year, he managed a sixth place finish at the Tour of California soon after the crash, and, like many of the Anglophones, is well suited for long stretches on his TT rig.
The English Speaking Peoples, however, are not merely providing the leaders of these teams, Evans, Wiggins, and Hesjedal are all supported by fellow Anglophones. Evans, who lacked help in the high mountains during his triumph last year, is bringing an American, Tejay van Garderen, and a Brit, Stephen Cummings, to act as domestiques in the hills, while the indomitable George Hincapie may not be there in the high mountains, but will act as BMC’s seasoned guide, shepherding the team through the race while he takes in his 17th circuit around France.
Wiggins, for his part, is bringing an Aussie and three-time World Time-Trial Champion, Michael Rogers, and a Brit, Chris Froome, who nearly won the Vuelta last year, when he was riding in support of Wiggins. Froome ended up finishing second at only 13 seconds back, while Wiggins was third at 1’39” in arrears. If Froome or Rogers were on another team they would likely merit consideration as contenders for the podium, if it were not for the strong start Wiggins has had to the season, one might be tempted to suggest that he is only the third best GC hope on his own team. In addition to these GC types, it should be mentioned, that Sky also has a Manxman who has found some success in the bunch gallops to the line.
Finally, riding for Garmin, Hesjedal’s top domestiques are two Americans, Christian Vande Velde (with a high of fifth in the Tour) and Tom Danielson, and an Irishman, Dan Martin. Not only that, but Garmin has a couple time trialists, American Dave Zabriskie and Brit David Millar, to try the hand at the many kilometers of TT, and an American sprinter, Tyler Farrar, to try his hands on the flats. Given the preponderance of English speakers, Garmin should be well suited to this year of the English Speaking Peoples.
The RadioShackLeöpardNissanTrek Debacle
Radioshack has not had the most stellar year to date, and they probably don’t deserve to be mentioned among the contenders at all, but triptychs work better than diptyches, and adding a section in the middle makes this post look less like a battle between the English speakers and the other. Also, frankly, who can resist rubbernecking at healthy sized pile-up on the interstate? Things started looking bad when Fabian Cancellara, the most feared presence at the cobbled classics the past few years, took a tumble in the feed zone and fractured his collarbone. From there, things did not exactly look up, and the preparation for the Giro and the Tour did not go well.
Coming into the Tour, RadioShack appears to be sticking with its post Contador modus operandi (and, incidentally, a favorite strategy of the Daniel Snyder led Potomac Area Indigenous Persons of the National Football League) and trotting out a variety of excellent stage racers, who are all a little past their prime. Now with the addition of Leöpard they get to combine this with the Luxembourger strategy of running out a Schleck brother, who while more than up to the challenge in the mountains, will flounder in the time trials, a particularly hopeless idea this year, when there are lots of time trial miles and no team time-trials for Spartacus to pull everyone along.
However, what is exciting is not the strategy, but how they got there this year. First, the Schleck brothers, who have had a less than distinguished campaign so far, with Andy dropping out of a variety of spring classics and then turning in a disappointing race at the Dauphiné before a crash during a windy TT that will keep him out of the Tour altogether. Fränk on the other hand turned in some decent results at the spring classics before being called on to replace Jakob Fuglsang as the team leader at the Giro. There he got into various spats and then was forced to withdraw after taking a tumble on his shoulder. After both these abandons, Johan Bruyneel apparently decided that the Schleck brothers joined forces with him not for his experience in winning a grand tour, but so that he could air the team’s dirty laundry in public. In the end, while supposedly not there as team leader, Fränk will be wearing a number ending in 1 and we shall see how he does in the mountains.
After Schleck, RadioShack is coming with Andreas Klöden and Chris Horner, both of whom would have been real threats a few years ago. However, it has been quite some time since Klöden had his best results, including a couple second place finishes at the Tour in 2004 and 2006, and while Horner has not yet been betraying his age the past few years with success at the Tour of California and the Tour of the Basque Country, he is approaching 41. Horner, also had to take a week off after California because of back trouble, which led to additional drama being aired in public. Because of this time off, Horner was not ready to race the Tour de Suisse or the Dauphiné, one of which was supposedly required to qualify for the NissanTrek Tour team. Horner was thus left off the shortlist for the Tour, only to be included after Andy Schleck went down with injury, and as appropriate for a car wreck, all of these twists and turns played out in public, including a tweet from his fellow oldster Klöden to the effect that Horner shouldn’t race since he hadn’t been participating with the team in Europe and Horner’s feeling that he hadn’t been treated fairly by the team or by Bruyneel. All in all, team dinners should be fun, especially if the Directeur Sportif is around to preside.
The final amusing thing about this whole sad spectacle, is that there best young rider Jakob Fuglsang is being left off the team. After being injured and missing a chance to be the captain at the Giro, Fuglsang had been counting on a Tour slot, and keeping with the team ethos, publicly expressed displeasure at being left off. Presumably, we will all have the excitement of watching him race the younger Schleck and Contador in Spain in September.
The Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Perhaps this would have been a better title for the previous section, given the discord within the team, but given that we started with riders divided by a common language, let’s finish by uniting those who speak different tongues under a single heading. To start with Italian, the best bet among the non-English speakers is likely Vincenzo Nibali, who has Giro d’Italia champion and former Tour contender, Ivan Basso riding in support. Nibali won the Vuelta in 2010, and has had a solid season so far, winning a stage and the overall at Tirreno-Adriatico, and finishing second to Maxim Iglinsky at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Given his past performance, having finished 7th (including second at the Giro last year) or better at each of the Grand Tours over the previous three years, he will certainly be competitive and it will be exciting to see whether he can put it all together and contend for the top step in Paris.
After the Italians, the low countries have a pair of contenders in the Belgian Jurgen van den Broeck and the Dutchman Robert Gesink. Gesink is coming off a victory in the Tour of California where his climbing proved to be too much for Dave Zabriskie’s time trialling. Gesink lost 39 seconds to Zabriskie on a relatively short course on stage 5 at California, which is not auspicious for the Tour, but it should be noted that Gesink was fourth on the stage and finished close to everyone other than Captain America. However, despite this respectable showing, it is likely that there is too much time-trialing for him to really excel. In contrast, van den Broeck is a former U-23 time-trial World Champion and in his last full trip around France (in 2010, he crashed out in 2011) he finished fourth. If he can minimize his losses to Wiggins in the time-trials he may prove to be a serious challenger.
To continue our grab bag, let’s move to the French whose best bet is probably Pierre Rolland, who did such stellar work in support of Thomas Voeckler last year. Rolland seemed to be a stronger rider, although Voeckler did the maillot jaune proud as he always does, and it will be interesting to see how the dynamics on Europcar work out and whether they think they have a chance of pushing Rolland high up the standings.
Finally, with Contador out, Spanish hopes are resting on Sammy Sánchez, who has been up near the front at both the Tour and the Vuelta, although he has not managed to find the top step yet. Given his success at three week stage races he is clearly a contender, the chance as it is with many riders is whether he can keep it together and whether this particular course will suit him. Finally, we would be remiss if Denis Menchov were neglected. Although he did not have his best year last year, 7th at the Giro and 5th at the Vuelta (ah, to be in the realm where that is an off year), he has twice won the Vuelta, once won the Giro, and finished second at the Tour as recently as 2010. The main question is whether last year was just an aberration (although in both tours he finished strong after riding himself out of contention early), or whether it was a sign of decline. He certainly has the strength both in the TT and the mountains to finish close to the top, as long as he avoids having any disastrous days.
Those seem to be the best bets, but they have just kicked off three weeks of racing in Liège and who knows who may emerge, crash out, or blow up in the mountains in the coming weeks. Hopefully, there are enough mountains to keep things exciting and keep le contre la montre from being the sole decider. Enjoy.
Quotidian Velocipede 