Tour de France 2012

[Insula Dei]

This thread being prompted by Andy Schleck's lamentably awful performance in the Dauphiné Liberé these days.

So who will be following this? I assume our French members at least will, and Hughento also watches the Tour, if my memory isn't playing a trick on me. Anyone else into cycling.

Personally I fear we've got a rather boring edition coming our way with Contador being absent (, which is an outrage), and the Schlecks seemingly about to completely bomb in the only competition in a year they actually attempt to win. So what are we left with? Some unexciting Anglophone Time Trial specialists who will most likely just spend the entire Tour sitting in the wheel of the actual climbers and then divide the spoils among one another (Wiggins, Evans, and Hesjedal just won the Giro), the same climbers who theoretically ought to be able to compete for the yellow, yet whom we all know lack either the guts or the potential to get rid of Evans and Wiggins (Sastre, the Schlecks, Samuel Sanchez, Basso, Cunego,...), and a couple of even more boring former lieutenants which we are now supposed to think 'shadow favourites' (Leipheimer, in a way Vandenbroeck, possibly Popovych, though I heavily respect Popo).

Don't get me wrong: I was totally cool with Evans not winding up the Jan Ullrich to Contador's Armstrong, but Evans winning the Tour shouldn't become a tradition. Still, if I were forced to pick between him and Wiggins, I know what poison to pick.

There's always hope, though. Let's not forget about 2003 when Joseba Beloki and that very same Ullrich almost managed to overturn the result everyone had sort-of-already decided would be the final outcome. (Still get a little sad when I remember that infamous accident on the descent towards Gap ) We could perhaps see the manifestation of some new great talents. What's Nibali capable of? What's up with that Tom Danielson fellow who somehow managed to get 9th last year? There are Rolland, Taaramae and Vanendert to think of.

And then there's Vinokourov. God only knows what he could show us. (And God only knows how clean he is, but only a bore cares about stuff like that when Vino seems like one of our few good chances at an exciting tour.)

Despite all that here's my pessimistic prognosis:

1.Evans
2.Wiggins
3.Who knows?

[Insula Dei]

An entertaining, arrogant non-cheater would be best. Even if that means he cannot possibly win the tour.
Eh. That's the type of people the French have settled for for ages.

But as long as the sport is so geared towards a single event with athletes not competing at all for most of the year, the battle to get drugfree people into the top five will remain hilariously chimaeric and utterly impossible to achieve. And that realization is largely why I copped out of watching entirely, some years ago now.

Well, not all of the sport is geared towards this one competition. It's just that it's the only one that gets a lot of attention outside of the sport's core area.I for one just finished watching a disappointing Giro (Sorry, Hatman) and remember some phenomenal spring classics and a devastating Vuelta last autumn.

I suppose there aren't much more than 10-15 riders who are focussed entirely on the Tour, and even those aren't all as pathetically obsessed with it as the Schlecks, who really only ride one and a half race a year (, and they tend to fail miserably in Liege-Bastogne-Liege.)

[Insula Dei]

Well, the Dauphine ended unspectacularly, but good to see two Aussies on the podium.

Sky is looking incredibly strong, certainly the strongest team, although between Evans and Wiggins are individual riders, I don't know who I'd give the edge to.

I'm thinking this might be a very, very good year for the Australians, hopefully a yellow jersey and a yellow medal a bit later on

No. Cavendish is supposed to win in London, you see?

[Insula Dei]

Surprised nobody has noted Andy Schleck's announcement he'd pass on the Tour with a fractured sacrum yet. Frank was allright in Switzerland, though.

[Insula Dei]

Sooo,...

Why not wager a minor prognosis (using the 'star system' rather than the 'predicted top 10' system)?

*****
Cadel Evans

****
Bradley Wiggins

***
Fränk Schleck, Levi Leipheimer, Vincenzo Nibali

**
Samuel Sanchez, Luis Leon Sanchez, Jurgen van den Broeck, Alexandre Vinokourov, Alejandro Valverde

*
Nicholas Roche, Romain Feillu, Thomas Voeckler, Ryder Hesjedal, Dennis Menchov


Yes, I'm weeping inside as I type this.

[Insula Dei]

Horrible, horrible,...

Predictably horrible, but still,...

Wiggins is the personification of everything that's wrong with cycling today: don't lose any time in the mountains and finish the job against the clock. The ASO needs to realize that in an era where even the very greatest struggle to get more than 45 seconds over their direct competitors, it's just moronic to have a 100 kilometres of flat time trials. Next year they need to cut that number at least in half and make at least 20 kilometres of it an up-hill time trial. Have them all climb the Mont Ventoux against the clock! (But alas, it looks likely we're in for that even bigger abomination: the team time trial.)

Froome is antipathetic and should have dropped Wiggins the first time he got the chance. Nothing wrong with some intra-team rivalry. It's the stuff of legends after all. Nibali, whom I like a great deal, sadly was unable to bring about an offensive alliance with van den Broeck in the Pyrennees, but it's not like Jurgen is such an offensive rider to begin with. Zubeldia is a name that is perhaps a little bit too light to be worthy of a Tour top 5, but hey, good on him.

Of the Schleck case one can only say that back in the '90s riders who doped themselves at least made sure they delivered spectacle when it came to it. If the Schlecks really have been messing around the last few years (as seems slightly possible) they are really the sportive equivalent of cancer. Bjarne Riis in 1996 may not have been able to bend his fingers, but at least one wasn't bored to death watching him ride up an Alp.

O tempora, o mores, etc.

[Insula Dei]

The Tour de France is something I would enjoy following if I hadn't the certainty that every rider in the top 10 is uber-doped.

Cycling is one of the sports with the strictest controls on athletes and, as evidenced by the rather unspectacular character of the sport in the last few years, has been toroughly cleaned out since the depths of the 1990s.

Of course there's still some messing around, but I think the sport has never been cleaner. In the '50s and '60s amphetamines were universally present in a way EPO never really was.*

*: Which partly explains why EPO was such a treason to the core of the sport. The stuff could make any loser into a champion. Amphetamines just made sure that the best riders were able to keep up their efforts just that little longer; they didn't fundamentally alter the dynamic of a race.