Bad Days Happen

There's no worse sight in cycling than watching a group of riders leave you behind on a long climb. When it happens, either because you ran out of fuel or just couldn't hold the pace, there's nothing you can do about it. It's like a slow and painful death. You see and know exactly what's happening and what the end result is going to be, and all you really want is for it to be over. It's hard to stay focused on the competition; you just want to get to the finish line so you don't have to pedal anymore. But if you're racing the Tour de France you have to get up and do it all again tomorrow, and for Floyd Landis, that means putting today behind him and focusing on the opportunities ahead.

If Landis needs an example of a rider who suffered through a bad day and then rebounded to have a pretty good race, he needs to look no further than Levi Leipheimer. The Gerolsteiner leader lost more than six minutes in the Stage 7 individual time trial, for no particular reason at all. He just had a bad day. When the race hit the mountains, however, there was Leipheimer in the front group on the climbs, even challenging for the stage win atop Pla-de-Beret in Stage 11. Today, in Stage 16, he made a bid to regain even more of the time he lost by launching a solo attack on the Col de la Croix de Fer. His chances for wearing the yellow jersey may have evaporated more than a week ago, but that doesn't mean you stop racing.

Landis's body will recover from today, whether he ran out of energy or just had bad legs. It's his head that he needs to watch out for. On the climbs to Pla-de-Beret and Alp d'Huez, there was an unmistakable confidence in his riding. He wasn't too concerned that he was isolated from his teammates while T-Mobile, Rabobank, and others had more than one rider in the lead group. He calmly accelerated to close gaps while others were visibly struggling to do the same. He was in control. When you lose that control and that confidence, it can be difficult to get back.

The key, for any rider who has an unexpected bad day in competition, is to remember that you're the same rider who performed so well so many times before. A bad day needs to be seen as an isolated incident. You need to examine it and try to figure out how and why it happened, learn from it, and then put it behind you. Elite athletes are able to do this, and it's part of what separates champions from pack fodder. Single bad events don't impact a champion's confidence in his ability to win or at least perform at the top of his game.

Relieved of the pressure of carrying the yellow jersey, and perhaps even the expectation of being a podium contender, Floyd Landis might well be reborn tomorrow during Stage 17. He's still a strong rider who has shown himself capable of climbing away from everyone in this year's race. Given a night to eat, drink, rest, and reflect, he can recover from today's bad day and have a great ride to Morzine tomorrow.

Leadership Has Its Privileges

This has been a tough year for the water-carriers in the Tour de France. Temperatures soaring into the 90s, coupled with very aggressive racing, have meant a lot of trips back to the team cars for water bottles. The trip to the car is the easy part; you just stop pedaling. Taking the bottles back up to your teammates, however, is a whole lot trickier.

When the peloton is riding as one large group, the race comissaire won't allow team cars to pass his vehicle and drive up alongside the riders. If they want something from the car, like food, water or clothing, they have to drop back and get it themselves. The team domestiques are the sherpas of professional cycling, undertaking the journey back and forth to the team car several times every day. And when you go back to the car for water, you don't just pick up one or two bottles; you load up with as many as you can stuff in and under your jersey. Getting back to the field with eight or nine heavy water bottles in your jersey is hard, but it takes less energy and time than trying to make three trips.

It's important to think ahead when planning a trip back to the team car. You want to go back when the peloton is going slow, not when the whole field is strung out in a long line chasing down an attack. If there is a significant climb coming up, you also want to make sure you have enough time to get back to the field and distribute bottles or clothing to your teammates before the road tilts toward the sky. Riding while loaded with bottles is bad enough, climbing a mountain loaded with bottles is sheer misery.

Many times, the man handing things to his rider manages to give him a little illegal help as well. When handing a water bottle to a rider, the person in the car grasps the bottle by the side and holds it upright, with the lid facing the sky. The holder's hand is on the side of the bottle facing the back end of the car, leaving room for the rider to grab the forward-facing side of the bottle. As the rider grasps the bottle, the holder maintains his grip on it and hits the car's accelerator. This is known as a hand-sling. Both the car and the rider gain speed, and the rider gets a little head start back to the peloton. If the car doesn't have room to accelerate because there's a car ahead of it, the rider will just push against the bottle against the holder's hand to gain a little momentum.

Hand-slings are technically against the rules, but the race judges understand there is a difference between a domestique receiving a momentary hand-sling to get back to the peloton with bottles, and a rider trying to get back to the field by hanging on to a water bottle for 30 seconds while his team manager accelerates to 50 mph. It's kind of like speeding in a car. Technically, five miles over the limit warrants a ticket, but officials are usually willing to look the other way because the extent of the offense is minor. On the other hand, when you abuse their leniency by driving 50 in a 25 zone, you're going to get in trouble.

The yellow jersey's domestiques have one thing in their favor when it comes to dropping back to the team car: it's the first one in line. The team cars are assigned positions in the caravan based on their highest placed rider in the overall classification. With their rider in the yellow jersey, the leader's car gets the advantage of being the closest car to the back of the peloton. It's just one more reason it's good to have a rider high up in the overall classification at the Tour de France.

Clockwise or Counter-clockwise

There's No Easy Way Around France.

People often ask me whether the Tour de France is "easier" when it goes clockwise (Alps first) or counterclockwise (Pyrenees first), but unfortunately there are simply too many factors involved for there to be a simple answer to that question.

This year, the Alps are going to be very hard because there are three back-to-back mountain stages, and they're piled up in the third week of the race. The Pyrenees can be harder than the Alps, but this year there were only two days in the this mountain range and Stage 10 was almost a non-event because there was no reason for the big hitters to swing for the fences.

Stage 11 was a terribly hard day, but it's followed by two transitional stages and a rest day, which will give riders who struggled today a chance to recover. Another hard mountain stage tomorrow would have given riders like Landis and Menchov opportunities to keep applying pressure to rivals who are obviously on the ropes already.

The two mountain ranges also have different features that make them better or worse for certain riders. The climbs in the Alps reach higher altitudes, and some riders perform better than others once they get above about 5500 feet in elevation. Everyone's performance suffers at high altitude, but some suffer more than others. Lance Armstrong was one athlete who was able to perform very near his best at altitude, meaning his ability to produce high power didn't diminish as he neared the summits of Alpine climbs.

The climbs in the Pyrenees tend to be shorter and steeper, and much more undulating, than the climbs in the Alps, which tend to be longer, more gradual, and more steady. There are exceptions to the rules, but the Pyrenees often suit the explosive climbers who can take advantage of the changes in pitch, whereas the climbers who excel by setting and maintaining a steady, blistering pace often prefer the Alps.

Of course, when it comes right down to it, the best answer to the question of whether the Tour de France is easier or harder when it goes clockwise or counterclockwise is that the riders make the race, not the course. Take Stage 10 for instance. If the peloton and team leaders had chosen to race aggressively all day yesterday, that could have been a massively difficult stage. They didn't, so it wasn't. Today's course had the potential to be very difficult, and the aggressive tempo set by first T-Mobile and then Rabobank at the front made it live up to its potential.

Even rolling stages like tomorrow can be very difficult if the racers choose to ride aggressively. More than likely, there will be a long breakaway that gets chased down tomorrow afternoon, but with so many tired riders in the pack now, there's no telling whether the sprinters' teams will have enough collective power to catch a strong breakaway group. A lot will depend on how many riders are in the breakaway. A group of 10 or more stands a good chance, and at least four stand a good chance of making it to the finish. If the group starts with only five, though, they'll almost certain to get caught by the sprinters.

Nothing Wrong With Dominating Performances

I've been reading a lot of reports saying that this year's race will be exciting because Lance Armstrong's ruthless dominance of the event is over. But these columnists seem to lack a sense of history. Lance wasn't the first person to rule the Tour de France for several years, nor will he be the last, and looked at from another angle, dominant athletes provide an opportunity to witness human performance at its peak.

Before Lance, there was Miguel Indurain. From 1991 to 1995, the Spaniard became the first rider to win the race five times in a row. He was such a strong time trial rider that he could take two to three minutes out of specialists against the clock and every other yellow jersey contender. And while he didn't have Lance Armstrong's explosive power in the mountains, he was a strong climber and a smart tactician; he used the time trials to build huge leads and then rode consistently in the mountains to defend the yellow jersey.

Before Indurain, there was Bernard Hinault. The French champion won the Tour five times in the early 1980s, and during his reign he was definitely The Boss in the peloton. I remember racing against him; he was extraordinarily aggressive, attacking off the front whenever possible. His tenacious racing style even earned him an applicable nickname: The Badger. Ironically, Hinault's aggression was eventually his undoing.

In 1986, he was leading the race, despite having promised to help his teammate, American Greg LeMond, win his first Tour de France. Hinault saw the opportunity to become the first man to win the Tour six times, and he took it. Feeling super-confident, he attacked early on in a key mountain stage to put the final nail in LeMond's coffin and secure his sixth yellow jersey. The plan backfired when Hinault slowed dramatically late in the stage and he was caught by LeMond's group before the final climb. By the finish line, the young American had taken control of the race, and ended the era of Hinault's domination at the Tour de France.

And if you want to talk about domination, look no further than Eddy Merckx. The greatest cyclist of all time won all four jersey competitions in the 1969 Tour de France. He won the sprinters' green point jersey, the climbers' polka dot jersey, the overall winner's yellow jersey, and the combined jersey (which they don't award anymore). No other rider has even come close to repeating that feat. And Merckx not only dominated the Tour de France; he earned the nickname "The Cannibal" because he devoured the competition in races from the beginning of the season to the end. In his prime, he was unstoppable.

I disagree with the implication that the presence of a dominant rider makes racing dull. The Tour de France is bigger than any one rider, and there is drama every day, no matter how big the yellow jersey's lead. Personally, I enjoy seeing an athlete or team rise above the competition and push the limits of human performance. I was fortunate enough to ride with one dominating force in cycling during my career, learn by watching another during my first few years as a coach, and then play a role in the latest dominator's performances. I agree that the 2006 Tour de France is going to be an exciting race because there isn't a clear-cut favorite, but I also know that there's another dominator on the rise. I don't know who it will be, but there are several young racers with the potential to grow into the role in the coming years. And if history serves as a guide, the next great champion will be lauded as he rises and then criticized for succeeding, just like his predecessors.

Time Trial to Bring Big Changes to Jerseys and Strategies

The pressure of wearing the world championship jersey may not have slowed Tom Boonen down during the first half of the 2006 season, but the added weight of the Tour de France yellow jersey seems to have finally grounded Tornado Tom. Of course, there may be nothing wrong with Boonen except that Australian Robbie McEwen came to the Tour with a much stronger finishing kick, but the fact remains that today’s stage was the Belgian champion’s last chance to win a stage wearing the yellow jersey. No one understands the pros and cons of having a rider in the yellow jersey more than Discovery Channel director Johan Bruyneel, and when I spoke to him this morning, he had an interesting take on the coming days of this year’s race.

With a 52-kilometer individual time trial coming up tomorrow, Boonen is going to be relieved of the responsibility of carrying the yellow jersey, and it’s anyone’s guess as to who will be wearing it next. While it’s possible that George Hincapie could retake the race lead tomorrow, strong time trialists like Floyd Landis (Phonak), Levi Leipheimer (Gerolsteiner), Dave Zabriskie (CSC), Michael Rogers and Sergei Gonchar of T-Mobile, Cadel Evans (Davitamon-Lotto), and David Millar (Saunier Duval) all have a legitimate shot at the jersey as well.

Landis has been riding like he sees himself as the primary contender for the yellow jersey by keeping his team around him and near the front of the peloton. It’s not a surprise; he learned how to ride like a contender when he was setting pace for Lance Armstrong earlier in his career. It’s a strategy that works, and with Landis’s proven ability against the clock, he has every reason to see himself as a yellow jersey contender and ride like one.

When I was talking with Johan today, though, he pointed out that all the teams need to think about the stages coming up after the time trial. After the rest day, Stages 8 and 9 are both relatively flat transitional stage leading to the first mountain stages in the Pyrenees. With the peloton generally feeling like this is anyone’s race to win, men in the top 20 overall after the time trial are likely to try their luck in breakaways. This will force the team holding the yellow jersey to chase, or at least set the pace at the front in order to limit the time lost. Bruyneel, who could be sitting pretty with up to four riders in the top 20 tomorrow afternoon, is confident his Discovery Channel team will be in a good position to apply pressure to the yellow jersey, or defend it if necessary.

When the race finally does make it to the mountains, Bruyneel believes it will be crucial to have as many riders as possible with a team leader late in the stage. There are a few stages where the distance between major climbs, and/or the distance from the summit of the final climb to the finish, is quite long. It’s in these areas where having four to five strong teammates can be the key to either defending the yellow jersey or wearing down the rider who’s wearing it. The Discovery Channel’s potential strength may come in the form of being able to send Hincapie, Paolo Savoldelli, Yaroslav Popovych, Jose Azevedo, or Jose Luis Rubiera up the road in repeated moves. Each one could be close enough to the yellow jersey that he has to be chased down, and there’s only so many times the man in the yellow jersey will be up to the task.

Bruyneel and the team have been careful to keep saying they have no designated leader yet, and it may well work to their advantage to keep it that way for a while. In past years, it worked to the team’s advantage to have just one leader in Lance Armstrong. Other teams that came to the Tour with more than one potential winner, like T-Mobile did with Jan Ullrich and Alexander Vinokourov, struggled because riders were dividing their efforts between their personal goals and their duties for the team. I don’t think that’s the case with Discovery Channel because, as a team, they understand that in the somewhat strange environment of this year’s Tour de France, not having a designated leader may be the strategic advantage that allows someone in a Discovery Channel uniform to continue the tradition of riding into Paris in yellow.

Coming soon

I'll be posting some commentary twice a week here as we get deeper into the 2006 Tour de France. Stay tuned!