Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/24/2009

Each stage in the Tour is designated into one of three types: time trial, plain, and mountain. These types are not just a description of the course, but lets people know how many points are awarded for the winner in points classification. Time trials award 15 points to the winner, with one point awarded to the tenth place finisher. Mountain stages award 25 points to the winner, awarding points all the way down to the 15th place. And Plain, or flat stages, award 35 points to the winner, with points going to all the riders down to the 25th finisher. No points are awarded during a team time trial.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/23/2009

The bikes in a ProTour race have a minimum weight requirement, however the time trial bikes also have certain geometry requirements. In addition to height, angles, and lengths of the tubes which make up the frame, the angle, the length, and the width of the aerobars must also fall within a certain range, and this can impact the posture of the rider, especially the shorter ones. Levi Leipheimer, one of the shortest guys in the peloton, had to change his position on the bike, which was already a modified form of the "Praying Landis," after the UCI determined the hand positions covered the face too much. This would have been true for much taller riders, but didn't make much sense for the 5'6" Leipheimer. But rules are rules, and the bikes are even inspected according to a measurement template right before the riders start down the ramp during the individual time trial.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/22/2009

On a day where Contador solidified his lead over Bradley Wiggins, but his youthful impatience hurt his own teammates' standings in relation to the Schleck brothers, the real story was Thor Hushovd scooping up sprint points by getting over category 1 climbs first to garner a 30 point lead over Mark Cavendish. There is still one more flat stage, but with a category 2 climb only 18 km away from the finish, it doesn't look like a good day for a field sprint to develop. So, if the last stage were to be held tomorrow, and Cavendish did actually want to win the final green jersey, at the very least he would have to win on the Champs-Elysees and Hushovd would have to finish out of 21st place to pick up 31 points over the Norwegian.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/21/2009

Relations between journalists and the top cyclists on the Tour can get a little testy, especially when the pressures of winning begin to collide with dashed expectations. Take the case of poor Carlos Sastre. Who was that? Oh, only last year's Tour de France winner, who got snubbed by the race organizers at the opening stage, and has had a pretty anonymous showing, at least by the number of inches of newspaper print. At the rest day press conferences, his frustration got the better of him, as he complained to the Spanish journalists about their overblown coverage of the perceived rivalry between Lance Armstrong and Sastre's compatriot Albert Contador, and how they haven't been covering his so-far lackluster time gap of 3'52". One Spanish journalist thought that was too rich, and shoved it back in Sastre's face:

“Contador and Armstrong are first and second, so we can’t be too wrong. All we’re not reporting is that you're 11th and you have almost no chance of winning.”

Ouch. Or en Español, se duele.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - Rest Day 2 2009

In the last week of the Tour, we usually have the jerseys and the final contenders shaken out of the 180 original riders. The yellow jersey seems pretty settled with Alberto Contador showing strong kicking legs on Sunday, with now super-domestique Lance Armstrong behind him at 1'37". The white jersey also seems pretty settle with Andy Schleck jumping over Tony Martin rather forcefully on that last climb to Verbier as well. However, there's still one more "honour" to award for the overall classification, and that's the lanterne rouge, the last place guy: Kenny Robert Van Hummel, a Dutchman on Skil-Shimano, who is a mere 3h02'10" behind Alberto Contador.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/19/2009

There are two kinds of strategic stages teams vying for the overall lead in a grand tour plan their three week campaigns around to win it all: time trials and mountaintop finishes. The main reason? There is nowhere to hide your weaknesses. For time trials, the race is against the clock, so there is no protection of a bunch finish or a peloton to block the wind. For mountaintop finishes, there is no descent on the other side to let gravity, who was your enemy on the way up, be your friend on the way down, or any other riders also, to block the wind at high speeds. Only the strongest riders in both disciplines of climbing and time trialing can become a grand tour winner, which is why you will see the most drama and hype built around these kinds of stages during the Tour de France, and also the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta á España.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/18/2009

George Hincapie missed out on the yellow jersey at the end of today's stage by only 5 seconds, so, of course, there was a lot of finger pointing about which teams did what to make the peloton ride so fast to catch him. Incidentally, Hincapie holds the American record for most appearances at the Tour de France, riding in his 14th, which is the same number as four other Frenchman, active rider Christophe Moreau, perennial bridesmaid Raymond Poulidor, pre-modern era Jules Deloffre, and André Darrigade, who rode during the Jacque Anquetil years, and one German Eric Zabel, who just retired last year. There are quite a few Belgians who have ridden 15, and one Dutch, but the record, at 16, is held by another Dutchman Joop Zoetemelk, who last rode in 1986.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/17/2009

Soigneur - taken from the French word for "therapist," a soigneur is any assistant on a pro cycling team who looks after the health of the riders. Their duties include massage and physical therapy, food and liquids preparation and delivery, and transportation.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/16/2009

A few days ago, I wrote about the 10 km rule of thumb for successful breakaways, but there is actually a simple algebraic calculation that lets team directors know when to whip up the peloton to catch those breaks. If you watch any of the English language coverage of the Tour de France, you may hear Paul Sherwen say he's consulted his race computer and figures the break will survive by such and such seconds. How does he do it? Easy: he takes the speed of the break (as measured by the motorcycles pacing them) at one of the kilometer markers, waits for the peloton to pass the same marker, notes their speed (again, as measured from some pace vehicle) and notes the time gap. Distance divided by speed equals time, so he just figures the time for both the break and peloton from their respective speeds, and adds the time gap to the peloton. If the peloton's time is bigger than the break, the escape succeeds, and the sprinters swallow their frustration. The 10 km mark is used mainly for ease of calculation (gotta love those metric units), and it's close enough to the finish that the main group is usually serious about organizing a field sprint by that time. If no team is serious, then the break can get away, and even increase their lead, like on today's stage when Nicki Sorensen broke out of the 7 man break, and got his first stage victory in 4 years.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/15/2009

The route of the Tour de France differs each year, but we know that certain regions are always included, such as the mountains of the Alps and the Pyrenees and the last stage always on the Champs-Elysees in Paris. What's also different each year is that the route circumnavigates France clockwise and counter-clockwise on alternate years. This year is an odd year, so the overall route goes clockwise.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/14/2009

Race Bible - The package given to each rider which details each of the stages in the Tour, shows not just the profile and length, but also provides maps of each of the little towns the route goes through, so the riders can anticipate any tricky turns. Sometimes the Race Bible does not match exactly the conditions of the actual race, as today's stage into Issoudun demonstrated. Several riders complained that the course actually dipped upwards 600 to 700 meters from the finish instead of the 100 meters laid out by the race bible. Also, both Thor Hushovd and Tyler Farrar were surprised by a couple of the turns being harder than the map. However, Columbia-HTC sent a couple of riders out there before the race to let their lead-out men know which turns to look out for, which helped Mark Cavendish get his 3rd Tour victory this year.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - Rest Day 1 2009

After about a week of cycling during a Grand Tour, the riders get to take the day off. But it's not just lounging in french cafes, or, if you happen to be an overall contender, enduring the same questions in a handful of languages at the pool press conference. The cyclists will still ride one to two hours to keep the blood flowing into their overused leg muscles. That's about 25 to 50 miles on a "rest" day.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/12/2009

One of the terms used to define a role a cyclist has on a team during a stage race is domestique. From the french for house servant, a domestique wears many hats as he rides in service of his team leader. From carrying six, seven, or more water bottles from the team car, through the peloton, back up to his teammates, to escaping in a breakaway up a mountain stage in case his captain becomes part of a select group climbing for victory, a domestique has to be strong, attentive, and be a skillful bike handler. The template for a domestique would be George Hincapie, who rode for Lance Armstrong during his 7 Tour victories, or Jens Voigt, nicknamed the Boeing, who are strong classics riders or one week stage race victors, who come to the tour for their team's glory instead of their own.

On today's stage Jens Voigt broke away on the first climb, and stayed away until the peloton caught him on the above category climb up the Col du Tourmalet. As he shot through the back of the peloton, he scooped up 5 water bottles from the team car, and sprinted back up through the peloton to hand out the bottles to the Schleck brothers and their designated team companions. Speaking of wearing many hats, Voigt is also the riders' representive for their union.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/11/2009

The rivalry between overall contenders Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong brings back memories of the split between Jan Ullrich and Alexander Vinokourov of T-Mobile back in 2005. Discovery Channel, Armstrong's team at the time, exploited their lack of cohesion, forcing Vinokourov to attack his own teammates on many stages, as the rest of T-Mobile had to protect Ullrich's standings. Ullrich finished third that year, behind Armstrong in his seventh Tour victory and Ivan Basso. Vinokourov finished 5th. This year's intra-team tension has a common denominator with 2005's T-Mobile: Andreas Kloeden. I imagine him thinking to himself that he didn't sign on for this crap, again. We can only hope that he does not also repeat his bad luck on that team, when he had to withdraw with a broken wrist.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/10/2009

The first real climbing stage in the Tour shook up the standings, as another Frenchman won a stage, and the first Italian in 9 years pulled on the yellow jersey. Rinaldo Nocentini of AG2R is not a climber, so his scant six second lead over Alberto Contador and eight second lead over Lance Armstrong doesn't mean much for the overall picture.

Nocentini has a Pasadena connection, as he won Stage 7 in the 2009 Tour of California in a breakaway sprint at the finish of the circuits around the Rose Bowl.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/9/2009

I wrote a little bit on the earpiece communications ban before the Tour began, so a followup question to the ban would be, when were earpieces first used in the Tour and by whom? The year was 1991, by, naturally, the American-based Motorola team.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/8/2009

Little Tommy Voeckler, the french breakaway artist on Team BBox, got his first stage victory in a Tour de France, by, of course, breaking away from the six man break that had led the race from kilometer zero. Voeckler chose wisely to attack the other five men when they were within 5 km to the finish. Voeckler is famous in France for holding the yellow jersey for ten days in his first ever Tour five years ago, valiantly holding off Lance Armstrong on the eleventh day before cracking on one of the climbs. Typical french cycling during the last ten years: grand gestures which ultimately end in failure.

What was odd about the breakaway failing today, although the first two finishers were members of the original break (Voeckler and Ignatiev), was that the break satisfied the flat stage breakaway rule of thumb: if your lead is more than a minute at the ten km mark, you will beat the peloton by about a second. In fact, the break kept the minute mark up until the 5 km mark, when they all starting attacking each other. That may have happened since Voeckler and Ignatiev noticed the other guys had nothing left after almost 200 km of blustery crosswinds. Those same crosswinds fractured the peloton several times before the other sprinter teams gave up on letting Columbia set the pace and decided to do some work, getting the main group to the line only 7 seconds behind Voeckler. Their efforts were in vain, since Cavendish, the green jersey holder, got third place and 26 points to keep a commanding lead over the other sprinters.

Michael Jackson Weird Connection

I just thought of this today, as the media around Los Angeles melt down covering his burial. Jackson's autopsy is not yet complete because of the large number of toxicology tests yet to be performed, which means Jackson is missing something as he is laid to rest today: his brain. So, the weird connection I made was that Jackson played the Scarecrow in The Wiz, the R&B version of The Wizard of Oz, who was looking for a brain. I guess that didn't work out afterall. Hmm.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/7/2009

The team time trial was back in the Tour de France, just in time to greet the last winner of the TTT, a Johan Bruyneel managed team with Lance Armstrong on it. Same result too, as Team Astana handily beat the second place Garmin-Slipstream by 18 seconds. Rules in the past limited the time damage over the field by designating time gaps based on a team's placement at the end of the day, ten seconds per placement starting at +20 to the first 15, and +5 for the remainders. The only teams who got their actual time were the eventual winners and any team finishing within 20 seconds of that winning time. So, if your team finished dead last, the most time your first five finishers would have lost would be about 3 minutes. Anyone not finishing in the bunch got their actual finishing time. The actual team times awarded were also based on any time gaps smaller than the ten second or 5 second increments, depending on how close one team's finishing time was to the team immediately above it in the rankings. This year, in keeping with the no time bonuses rule, your team time is what your fifth finisher gets today (dropped riders still got their actual finishing times). For the weaker teams, this was bad news, as the last place team, Skil-Shimano, finished 5'23" back of Astana. Also, overall contenders Cadel Evans and Denis Menchov will have to make some heroic efforts in the mountains to make up the 2'59" and 3'52" they've lost to Armstrong and the Astana boys.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/6/2009

It seems like I'm talking about jerseys a lot during this first week of the Tour, so how about I write about why the jerseys have those colors. Why yellow, green, polka dot, and white? Well, the yellow jersey was given that color because L'Auto, the creator of the Tour, printed its editions on yellow paper. The green jersey, introduced in 1953, had its color chosen by the first sponsor of the sprint competition: a lawnmower manufacturer who chose green for grass. The KOM jersey had a similar history, as its first sponsor in 1975 was a chocolate company who wanted the jersey to match the packaging of a new product they were trying to sell.

The white jersey, for the young riders' competition, was originally awarded as the prize for the combined classification competition, which awarded points for how well a rider is placed in the general, points, and KOM classifications. The Tour does not have this competition anymore, but the Vuelta still does, which still awards a white jersey for it. In 1975, the white jersey was changed to honor the best young rider in the general classification.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/5/2009

Yesterday, I wrote a little bit about the different jerseys in the Tour, and who gets to wear them at the start of Stage 2. However, missing from the discussion was who gets to wear any of the jerseys on the first stage, or the prologue. Tradition at the Tour has been that last year's winner gets to wear the yellow jersey during the first stage. But yesterday, Carlos Sastre, who wore number 1 and started last at the time trial, both events subject to Sastre being last year's winner, wore his regular time trial kit. It seems it was just a little bit more disrespect heaped on to the unassuming Spaniard: the Tour organizers refused to let him wear yellow.

As the VeloNews article explains, the previous Tour winner wearing yellow on the following year's first day is only a tradition, not a rule. However, it has been a tradition for almost 40 years. That makes it almost a rule, but not really. Paraphrasing from the VeloNews story again, the "rule" has not been followed since Lance Armstrong retired after winning his 7th consecutive Tour in 2005. There was no returning champion in 2006, the real winner of 2006 had not been decided yet because of Floyd Landis' doping violation so Oscar Pereiro couldn't wear it, and Alberto Contador was excluded from the 2008 tour. So, the organizers decided to do away with the tradition. But here's your tidbit: the tour organizers agree with Lance Armstrong's feelings on the matter. When Lance began the 2003 Tour, beginning his quest to equal Miguel Indurain's 5 consecutive Tour victories, he refused to wear the yellow time trial kit in honor of the Tour's centenary, saying "I prefer the right to earn it." So, even though Lance is responsible for the missing yellow jersey in 2006, and doping scandals abducted it in the succeeding years, Lance actually threw a wrench in the works of the tradition a few years before then, not only in 2003, but beginning in 2000, when he returned to France defend his first Tour victory in 1999. In reality, 2009 marks the tenth year since a yellow jersey has been worn at the first stage individual time trial.

Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/4/2009

This year's Tour de France leads off with a time trial, but instead of a prologue, the race in Monaco serves as Stage 1. Fabian Cancellara, again, showed his absolute dominance in the Individual Time Trial, beating runner-up Alberto Contador by about 18 seconds. Contador leading Astana's big four over the 15.5 km course is a story in itself, besting Kloeden by 4 seconds, Leipheimer by 12 seconds, and Armstrong by 22 seconds.

Because Cancellara won the first stage, that means that he not only wears the overall leader's yellow jersey, but also the sprinters' green jersey for tomorrow's stage. Obviously, one man can't wear all those jerseys at once, so the second place rider in the overall gets to wear the green jersey. There's actually a hierarchy in the jerseys on who gets what, if the overall leader owns all of them at the same time, which can happen in the first week of the Tour: yellow, green, polka-dot (for the mountains leader), and white (for the best young rider under 26). What's funny about today's time trial, is that there was actually a categorized climb at the midway checkpoint, so whoever got there first is the King of the Mountains right now. At the checkpoint, Cancellara didn't even place in the top ten, well behind Contador, Columbia-HTC's Tony Martin, and Garmin-Slipstream's Bradley Wiggins. The jersey oweners after stage 1 are as follows: yellow and green - Fabian Cancellara; polka-dot - Alberto Contador; white - Roman Krueziger. Normally the green jersey would go to Contador to wear tomorrow, but since he was the outright winner of the KOM points, he has to wear that, so the green jersey goes to the third place finisher, Bradley Wiggins.