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Friday, September 29, 2017
From the Archives - Pushing the Envelope
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Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Colorado Mountain Road Test - SRAM eTap Electronic Shifting
Introduction
So, this post will be a bit unusual. I did a Colorado
mountain ride with my friend Pete recently that wasn’t quite epic or disastrous
enough to warrant its own post. (For epic click here; for disastrous click here.) Meanwhile, I’ve long wanted to blog about electronic shifting, but I’m not
sure I care enough about it to devote a whole post to that, either. So here’s a
combo: while telling you about a not-quite-epic ride, I’ll share my firsthand
experience with top-end electronic shifting. If you care about neither, read on
anyway, because I’ll cover food and booze too.
Executive summary
Fun ride, even though my rental bike’s SRAM Red eTap bit the wax tadpole.
Short version
Our pre-ride carbo-load dinner was exquisite. I rented a
very high-end bicycle from a good shop. This bike had electronic shifting,
which I was hoping to have some trouble with so I could bag on it, which I’m
predisposed to do anyway. I did have some trouble, which proves that at least
this brand of top-end electronic shifting is still a pointless expenditure. The
ride was fun, hard, and involved a gorgeous dirt road. It wasn’t that epic,
though, which is my friend Pete’s fault.
Long version
If you know me well, you know I’ll all about fast cars, fly
women, and gold chains. Hmmm. Maybe that’s not quite right. I guess more
accurately I’m all about fast bikes, fine literature, and saving money. And when I go to Boulder, I’m all about
time-honored traditions like eating pasta at The Gondolier and suffering through long bike rides. Here’s my plate at the Gondo:
Look, I know some wiseguy among you is going to say, “Those
noodles are too thick and ropey and don’t appear to be made of semolina flour.”
That may be true, but damn it, that’s not the point. These were good enough for
me as a teenager when I went every week for all-u-can-eat, and they’re good
enough now. Trust me, I know from good pasta.
And look at that beer! Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA, one of my
very favorite beers. (Before I conceived of this post, I snapped this photo for
Beck’sting purposes, to make my pals jealous.)
That’s Pete in the background. He’s my favorite biking pal
because he’s way faster than I am but doesn’t seem to hold it against me. He
also susses out all the cool routes that invariably feature gobs of climbing
and remote dirt roads.
For my rental bike I went to University Bicycles,
affectionately known as UBikes, which is arguably the best shop in Boulder
(though I also like Vecchio’s Bicicletteria quite a lot). Now, you might not
know this, but Boulder is considered a very bike-y place. “Best shop in Boulder”
is kind of like being “best brothel in Amsterdam.” (I’m actually not that wild
about the comparison I just made, but I don’t have time to go fix it.) Anyway,
one cool thing about UBikes is their collection of very cool old bikes like
this one.
When I was 13 my friend Nico (also 13) loaned me, for about
a year, a Cinelli road frame of similar vintage. When I think back to how advanced Nico and I
were, compared to the current crop of ho-hum teens, I start to sound like an
old person.
Last time I rented a bike from UBikes for an epic ride, I
waited too long and got a real pile of crap. This time I planned ahead and, almost two hours before the shop opened,
reserved a Specialized Tarmac via their website. I got to the shop about ten
minutes after they opened and they’d already put on the Look pedals I
requested. As the salesman helped adjust the saddle for me, he sent another guy
upstairs to “get the batteries.” Batteries? Huh? Oh, wow, this bike sported
SRAM eTap electronic shifting! It works like this: there are only two buttons,
one per lever. To get a smaller rear cog you tap the right. For a bigger cog
you tap the left. To change chainrings you tap both buttons at once.
Is electronic shifting cool? No. I can say that now that
I’ve tried it. I have always been tempted to say that without even trying it
(kind of like how I can confidently say heroin isn’t cool even though I haven’t
tried it, either), but until now I figured I better hold my tongue. Now I’ve
tried it and, as I’ll get into later, it’s not foolproof (which of course it
needs to be to have any benefit over traditional shifting).
Empirical arguments aside, I will now walk you through why
electronic shifting is lame in principle. First, let’s ask the question, what
makes a racing bike good? Number one, the bike has got to look cool. Number
two, the bike has to go fast. Let’s evaluate eTap on that basis.
Does it look cool? No. Here’s proof.
That Cinelli I showed you a bit ago? That looked cool. Those SRAM derailleurs? With the big hunks of
plastic-y material sticking off of them? Those don’t look cool. They look
really bad. Now, I know aesthetics are a matter of personal taste, but that
doesn’t mean there’s no right or wrong. If you like the look of these
derailleurs you are either delusional or have no taste, and I no more respect
your opinion than if you said plastic ketchup bottles look better than glass.
Now, speed is another matter. My Giant road bike might not look better than that old Cinelli I had, but overall the Giant is better because it’s faster. That is, the Giant will get me up hills faster, given the same power applied to the pedals, because it’s lighter than the late ‘60s Cinelli. Now, here’s how the whole “is it faster?” question applies to electronic shifting.
(The SRAM Red eTap rear derailleur weighs 239 grams; the
SRAM Red traditional weighs 178 grams. The levers weigh about the same between
the two types. Etc.)
I guess it could be argued that eTap is better because it’s more
foolproof and/or more pleasurable to use. I’ll get to that later.
Just in case you give a shit, here’s the bike I rented.
Great bike. It rode really well … stiff, comfortable, handled
well. My only complaint is that it seemed a bit heavier than my Giant. Hmm, I
wonder why.
The saddle was pretty comfortable too, which was a relief.
You just never know with a rental bike.
I have to question Specialized’s normally spot-on branding
here, though. I mean, Toupé? Are you kidding me? Look, marketing guys: since you evidently didn’t grasp
this, “Toupé” is one letter away from, and pronounced exactly the same as,
toupée, the artificial hairpiece that insecure men wear, which is a front-runner for
the most embarrassing product a man could buy. There’s a reason slapstick
comedies so often feature a man’s humiliation at having his toupée blow away or getting it snatched off his
head. Given the prevalence of baldness amoung MAMILs (hardly the most glamorous ambassadors of the sport), this is astonishingly
reckless branding. If they came out with a women’s version, would they call it
the Merkin?
Since I seem to be finding fault with everything, I might as
well complain that the helmet UBikes loaned me didn’t have a vent setup that
gave me any way to stash my sunglasses. This really surprised me, since every
helmet I’ve had in the last 20 years has had sunglasses-friendly vents. But
thanks to the Toupé saddle, problem solved!
I finally understand why so many modern saddles have that
giant hole in them. (By the way, the above picture provides the only photo
evidence that I was actually on this ride. Look closely and you can almost tell
what club I ride for.)
But enough about the gear and culture. It’s time to hit the
open road! Here’s where we rode, starting from Pete’s house in Golden.
The reason this ride was so short is that although Pete and
I both had the day off, he had a noon conference call. I already gave him a
hard time about this, but you should pile on. E-mail me your scathing
gibes and I’ll pass them along.
We started out by riding up Lookout Road, featured in the US Pro Challenge and, more recently, Phil Gaimon’s successful bid for the new Strava record. We didn’t end up going as fast as Phil. I guess we forgot to hammer.
Oh well. We ride Lookout in less than twice Phil’s time, which isn’t bad.
If you’re looking for an open road, Colorado is a good place
to start.
I don’t have a whole lot of photos of this ride because I
forgot to bring my camera. Fortunately—check this out!—my phone has a camera
built in! That sure came in handy.
There was a wonderful section of brand-new bike path for a
ways. Then, after another climb, I helped Pete get a new personal record on the
Floyd Hill descent. (Actually, we weren’t even thinking about trying to go
fast, much less doing anything on Strava. And lest you think we’re daredevils,
this was only good for 144th place.)
Alongside the road were some buffalo, or “buffler” in mountain-man
parlance. I’m sure these creatures are more majestic when they’re not all
fenced in.
The pedaling was hard. After Lookout we braved another
Category 2 climb a bit over 7 miles long, taking us to about 8,700 feet above
sea level. That may not sound like
much, but I donated blood recently. Also, I’m not very strong to begin with.
Okay, let’s get back to that shifting. First impression?
Kind of nifty. It didn’t take long to get used to it (though a couple times,
near intersections, I tapped the wrong button.) Once I got used to it, and the
novelty wore off, I realized it’s not as fun as traditional shifting. I enjoy
mechanisms. After all, we’re messing about with PCs, tablets, phones, and other
electronic interfaces all day long. As more and more technologies are designed
to be idiot-proof and as automated as possible, what’s left for us to do? I
miss the stick shift on my old Volvo. Driving a stick is more fun than letting the car decide when to shift. (And
operating the clutch of my old car was more fun than using Geartronic, the
so-called “manumatic” transmission of my current Volvo.)
What’s wrong with today’s wealthy cyclists that they don’t
want cable-type shifters, especially considering how good they’ve gotten? Why
do all these dentists and stockbrokers enjoy being coddled with pushbuttons?
So much for eTap being more fun. So does it shift faster?
No. Rear shifting has been practically instantaneous for many years so there is
scant room for improvement there. And when shifting the front with eTap,
there’s a tiny delay when you tap both buttons before you hear this little
whirring noise and the motorized front derailleur moves the chain. Granted,
this delay is unimportant; the main factor in response time was never in the
lever to begin with—it’s dragging that chain up to the big
ring, or nudging it to the little one without letting it fall. The SRAM red
front derailleur does just fine, but no better than high-end cable-type front
derailleurs.
The last chance for eTap to prove itself superior would be
in the “foolproof” department. This is hard to test, of course. I will concede that cable-type front shifting
isn’t perfect; everybody throws his chain once in a while. That being said, one
ride on eTap without a missed front shift wouldn’t mean anything. I might go
weeks or months, maybe a year or more, without my bike’s front derailleur
screwing up. So my only hope for hitting the trifecta—ugly, heavy, non-foolproof—would
be eTap happening to screw up within the narrow timespan of my four-hour ride.
About 2/3 of the way into the ride, all the planets lined
up. Pete and I reached a point where a steep downhill led right into a steep
climb, and I wanted to keep as much momentum as possible. This meant
big-ringing it until the very last second and then going for the little
chainring. What a perfect testing ground for electronic shifting! You can see
where we were, about 43 miles into the ride:
I bombed the downhill (leaving a bit of a gap between me and
Pete so maybe I could surge by him triumphantly) and tapped the two buttons at
just the right moment. And guess what? The fricking chain fell off! And here’s
the really weird part: it came off the right
side, as if it had overshot the big ring (which it had already been in)
instead of the little one. WTF!?
Now, a defender of this eTap technology might be tempted to
blame the rider. But that’s silly; there should be no way to get it to mis-shift. But wait, you might say, what if I had
accidentally hit the two buttons twice instead of once? Well, I suppose it’s possible I did that, but electronics
should be “smart” enough to handle this
kind of user error. That is, the system should ignore a second click if it
comes a fraction of a second after the first one, since obviously nobody would
want to shift onto the small chainring and right back to the large. Besides, I’m
not a klutz—on an old Schwinn I had with no front derailleur (it had broken off) I used to shift by hand—so I’m
99.9% sure I tapped those buttons just once.
I will continue to play the devil’s advocate and entertain
the possibility that the derailleur was poorly adjusted. But remember, this was
a ~$6000 rental bike that gets tuned up after every ride. It was built and
maintained by arguably the top bike shop in a bicycle mecca. If UBikes can’t
get it right, clearly the tolerances of this system are too tight—i.e., it’s
literally too high-maintenance—to be practical. I for one would not want to own
a bike with such finicky shifting (if adjustment is indeed the problem).
Pete, looking back and seeing that I’d thrown my chain,
said, “See you back in Golden,” and rode off. Now, when you throw you chain off
the big ring on cable-type drivetrains, it’s easy enough to get it back going
again—you click the little lever on the left side to move the front derailleur left,
then lift up the back of the bike so the rear wheel is off the ground,
give the cranks a turn or two, and you’re back in business. It is the same process every time so you do it without having to really think. But what would I do
here? I had no idea why the bike had mis-shifted, and therefore no idea what
chainring the front derailleur thought it
was in. I had to look closely at the derailleur before double-tapping again, so the failure of eTap was compounded.
In the final analysis, eTap absolutely does not shift faster, nor is it easier or more
enjoyable to shift, nor is it (more) foolproof. To my great delight, electronic
shifting turns out to be even shittier than I’d imagined.
To those of you who shelled out a lot of money for
electronic shifting: don’t feel bad. I’m not trying to bag on you. It’s your
bike and your business and you can still feel good about choosing electronic,
and I would never expect you to second-guess your choice based on my brief experience
with it. But your derailleurs are butt-ugly and your bike is heavy.
Our third major climb, Douglas Mountain Drive, is a Category
2, mostly dirt, with an average pitch of 9%. Very scenic as well.
Some of the sights were more amusing than beautiful. For
example, this one:
What’s amusing about that, you ask? Well, look a little
closer:
There are grills on both the upper and lower decks! Why
would that be? Maybe it’s in case members of the family can’t get along. “Just
for that, I’m going to barbecue tonight, and you’re not invited!” / “Okay, fine, I’ll go downstairs and have my own barbecue! I don’t need you!”
What a glorious early evening climb this was. Being dirt,
and steep, it didn’t let us climb out of the saddle much. We settled in for
some really nice suffering and an even nicer view.
Of course I couldn’t snap any more photos once the descending
began. With the exception of a mile-long climb I don’t even remember, it was all
downhill, for 15 miles, back to Pete’s place. Fittingly, my tale ends as it
began: with a beer.
--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--
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Labels:
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Saturday, September 9, 2017
Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2017 Vuelta a España Stage 20
Introduction
If you don’t have the time or inclination to watch the
Vuelta a España live, but are tired of typical recaps such as tongue-biting
professionals write, perhaps you’ll welcome the opportunity to laugh at an
account by an amateur whose cynicism about this supposedly clean sport
sometimes creates a bias. Today I give a biased blow-by-blow of the
all-important Stage 20 of this Vuelta, which is surely the hardest stage of all
and will decide the overall winner ahead of tomorrow’s boring, flat sprinters’
stage.
2017 Vuelta a España
Stage 20 – Corvera de Asturias to Alto de l’Angliru
I’m not going to waste your time … we join the action of the
final climb of the Vuelta, the Angliru, a 12km monster, beyond category. Sure, there has been plenty of action already
today but it hasn’t amounted to anything.
What you may have missed over the last few days—as I had—are
two important developments. First, in a
40km time trial, race leader Christopher Froome (Team Sky) took a minute out of
Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida) who sits 2nd overall on GC. This put Froomestrong, who dopes (yes, he
does, anybody can see it) in the overall lead by a seemingly insurmountable 2
minutes. But then, in a subsequent mountain stage, Nibali and the Spanish champ
Alberto Contador (Trek-Segafredo) managed to drop Punky Froomester and take
like a minute out of him. This almost never happens so I really wish I’d
watched.
The result is that, going into today, Froome still has like
a minute on Nibali, but now seems on the back foot. Maybe Nibali and Contador
will tag-team this so Contador can get a stage win (about all he can hope for, being
way back on GC) and Nibali can pull off the GC victory. I for one would love to
see it. Not that Contador is clean or anything, but for some reason he’s my
favorite doper of the modern era. I guess this is because Contador has style,
doesn’t look bad on the bike, and loses a lot. I’m mainly sore at Froome
because he’s a ghastly gaunt ungainly guy, and he and his team make the sport
boring by being too dominant.
Hmm, it looks like Condator isn’t even in the lead group. So
he’s not necessarily going to end his career with a grand tour stage win. Oh
well.
Now here’s something interesting. Team Sunweb is working really
hard on the front, which duty is normally left for Team Sky. What’s Sunweb’s purpose?
The announcer says, “Blah blah blah Kelderman blah blah podium blah blah blah.”
It’s hard to hear because I’m on the back patio of a coffee shop with a bunch
of people who are having really interesting conversations. It’s also hard to
see my screen because it’s a sunny morning. Also, my brother Max is like this
incredible magnet who draws all his friends to the table, so I get introduced
to each of them in turn. Then I feel I should apologize in advance for being a
dick by tuning them out in favor of my laptop. Why do I do this? Why would I
rather write this silly report than socialize with cool people? I don’t know. I
just can’t help it.
Sunweb actually has several guys on the front. They look
pretty badass. This team seemed to bob up out of nowhere this year—I first
encountered them in the Giro d’Italia—and I guess I’ll have to read up on them
at some point.
Looks like Contador is like 54 seconds behind somebody.
Maybe 54 seconds behind the GC group? Or a breakaway? I’m starting to think
he’s ahead of the GC group. So, 54 seconds isn’t a ton, with 10km to go, but
I’m wondering why nobody is talking about (or showing) Nibali. I mean, he’s the
guy who has a chance in the GC. Who cares about a stage win, in this
GC-deciding stage?
I was really groggy before and now I’ve had a cup of strong,
black coffee. I don’t brew it this strong at home. I’m starting to tremble, and
I think I’m at risk of having to run to the loo. I might miss an all-important
attack! Maybe I should seek sponsorship from the good folks over at Depends.
All they’re talking about is if Contador can catch up! Who cares!? He can’t overtake Froome in the
GC, so he’s dead to me!
I can see Froome (you could recognize his gawky, poor form
from space) tucked in there behind Sunweb and Sky.
Contador is with an Orica-Scott rider, Yates (which of the Yates
brothers I don’t know or care) and some guy named Mas. Mas used to have a
longer name, but he cut it down to save weight.
You know how modern action and horror movies have that
shaky-camera, cinema verité thing going? I’m hoping the lack of detail and
precision in this coverage is creating the same effect. Is it working? Are you on
the edge of your seat, creeped out by a general sense of bewilderment?
The big Sunweb guy is still forcing the pace. You can see
that Froome is struggling because his neck is all bent. I wonder … does his
head always dip to the right, or does it sometimes go left? His entire body is
rigid. I guess it’s possible that he’s not a doper, but an actual automaton
with a hyper-alloy combat chassis, like The Terminator.
I guess they’re just showing the Contador drama because the
pace is too high in the lead group for Nibali (or anyone) to attack. The
cameramen have probably stopped bothering to check very often because they know
how this thing works.
Some Sky guy just took off his jacket and threw it on the
road, but my brother, looking over my shoulder, couldn’t see very well and
said, “Wait, did he just wipe his ass with a spectator’s flag?” I confirmed
this, just to keep him entertained.
I missed a couple of kilometers just now because I got
caught up in a conversation. Let me figure out what I missed. Looks like Sky is
still on the front, no change. Surprise, surprise. I would just love to see
Nibali launch some blistering attack and just obliterate this GC group. Maybe
his victory salute would be flipping the bird with both hands, or maybe some cool
Italian equivalent of that.
Looks like Contador’s in a small group of guys that is like
40 seconds behind. Actually, wait! I think they’re actually ahead! Probably
they were behind some nobody, whom they’ve overhauled and left behind. Look,
I’m really sorry for how screwed up this coverage is. I thought it would be
fun, that you’d feel like you were watching from a sports bar, but of course
that’s absurd.
Nibali’s team has taken up the lead of the GC group. It
seems like pedaling hard on the front could never work against Sky, though.
Maybe they should take Nibali off the back a bit, and then give him like a full
lead-out sprint so that when they come past the front of the group they’re
going like twice as fast. And then the domestiques could all crash in the road
to create a physical barrier, to slow down the chase. I mean, how is going hard
at the front going to soften up Sky? Sky was on the front breaking the wind,
and now they’re getting a draft! How does this leading thing help?
Oh no! My feed has frozen! And it was working so well! Maybe
Sky management is on to me! Or maybe I’m delusional about anybody, even you,
noticing or caring what I have to say!
So Sunweb is chasing to protect Kelderman’s podium spot,
apparently. And Contador wants a stage win. And Bahrain-Merida is training for
next season by working really hard.
Woah, Contador seems to be dropped! Soler, I think, has
dropped him! It’s only 5km to go and Bahrain-Merida is still grinding away on
the front. Nibali is doing nothing. He’s just a passenger. He must have used up
all his strength earlier in the week. This GC group is small, with Tiger Woods,
Poels, Zakarin, Kruijswijk, and some other bike racers. Wait, not Tiger Woods.
Just Woods, whoever that is. Mr. Woods.
So Contador has 55 seconds on the GC group , and might even
be leading the race. This would be more exciting if I actually knew. I refuse
to say he’s dancing on the pedals like the announcer just said. That is so hackneyed. Contador is prancing on the pedals. His feet are
spinning beautiful pirouettes. He’s boinging on the bike. He’s pogo-ing. He’s
pistoning. He’s pedaling.
Okay, a vaguely familiar tall guy on that one team is
attacking the GC group. If this attack comes to anything I’ll figure out who he
is.
Contador is just macking
it on the front! Let’s just say he is in
the lead, and not worry about what happened to Soler. For the ageing champ in
his last grand tour to be solo off the front, in his homeland, makes a good
narrative and might even be true. In fact, with the doping problem so totally
unresolved in this sport, making shit up seems as reasonable as reporting only
what is truly believed.
So, here’s what’s happening. Contador is in the lead! It’s
not a fairy tale, like the announcer is saying; I mean, that would imply this
is just too good to be true. But is it?
I mean, it’s not like Contador never wins. And it’s not like a GC hopeful who
has a bad day early and is no longer a GC threat couldn’t just save up some
energy and then count on the GC guys to let him go. Is that really too good to
be true? No, actually, it’s not uncommon!
Hey, guess what? I just noticed the caption says “Cabeza!” No,
that’s not Spanish for “caboose,” it means “head,” as in the beef brains you
can get on your burrito at a really authentic taqueria. Mystery solved! This is
the head of the race! Contador truly is off the front! It’s a fairy tale
romance!
There’s that big guy again! It’s Steven Kruijswijk! Of Lotto
NL – Jumbo! This is really exciting as evidenced by all my exclamation points!
I almost never use exclamation points unless I’m really excited, or have had
too much strong coffee! This is crazy! I’m sweating like a pig! I’m sweating
more than these bikers! Man this grade is steep!
And Contador is practically weaving!
He’s got 58 seconds and 3.5km to go. Maybe he’ll pull it
off. Behind, Kruisjwijk is plowing on, with a somewhat decent lead on the guys
behind him. Where is this guy on GC? I can’t remember. I guess he either stands
to climb onto the podium for the GC, or fall off it. Maybe he’s trying to take
time out of Kelderman? I’m sorry. It’s been a hard week. I probably should have
just slept in this morning.
There’s this teammate of Nibali’s who is super strong and has
been on the front for ages and ages upon ages. His expression never changes. I
think he’s one of these guinea pigs for the new alternative to doping, which is
to surgically destroy certain parts of the brain as a way to shut down
inhibitory nerve centers. This allows the athlete to literally push past the
normal limitations that the brain imposes by prioritizing its own oxygen supply.
Note: I totally just made this up and there’s not a scrap of truth to it (that
I know of).
It’s under 3km to go and Nibali still hasn’t attacked. His
mother and I are really disappointed. If he is the father of a small child,
perhaps later today that child will start crying and say, “Daddy, you never win!” That happened to me once.
True story.
Wow, the security on this course is terrible. Nobody will
get out of Contador’s way. Assuming most of these are Spanish fans, don’t they
understand they could ruin the big fairy tale? Is that any tale to tell their
grandkids? “Our national hero, Alberto Contador, was on his way to a glorious victory
on the hardest mountain stage of his final grand tour, right here on home soil,
but I got in his way and he crashed into me and lost. That’s how I got this big
scar on my face. Not from the crash, mind you, but the hoodlum fans afterward.
I guess I should have stayed out of the way. Tee-hee!”
Kruijswijk is riding really well. I’m still not sure what
he’ll have to show for it other than knowing he’s a badass. That must feel
really good, thinking, “Those Sky guys are lubed to the gills, but I’m still
breaking their legs! Look how fast I’m going! How did I ever get this fast?
This is amazing! Outta my way, motherfrockles!”
Krijswijkiny! (To coin a new exclamation.) Look at this
crowd!
Uh oh, my brother Max is telling a really funny story and
I’m getting distracted! He’s talking about something I actually care about! My
concentration is shot!
And now my Internet feed has evaporated! Again! I’m really
sorry!
Oh no! One of Froomie’s teammates seems to be dragging him
away from the rest of the GC group! It’s curtains for Nibali! I guess he was
tilting at windmills all along. How Spanish of him.
Zakarin has dropped Kelderman … I guess he has a shot at the
podium now? Remind me not to tune out of the Vuelta for days at a time and then
not do my homework before presuming to explain a bike race to you people.
Less than 1km to go, and here’s what the race looks like:
I take it back, it’s 1.2 km to go.
Here’s Froomie’s teammate practically dropping him.
Oh no, Froome is only 30 seconds behind Contador!
Contador is dying! But the road flattens out a bit. I think
he’ll be able to hold off Froomestrong.
Froome is clearly not as strong as his teammate. I should
really learn this teammate’s name. And forget Froome’s.
And here’s the final moment of drama!
My online correspondent keeps telling me to buy the CBS
Sports channel. But that coverage is commentated by a couple of drunken Aussies,
always rambling about throwing a couple more shrimp on the barbee. I really
like Sean Kelly’s commentary, which consists mainly of saying, “Yes.”
My correspondent says, “No, they’re not drunk … they’ve only
had seven beers!” (Full disclosure: I’ve never heard these Aussies and have no
credible reason to assume they’re drunks. But they’re not Sean Kelly.)
Hey, look, my feed is back!
Looks like I missed the grand finale. Oh well. Let’s assume
that Contador won, and that Nibali didn’t take a minute out of Froome in the
last kilometer. Okay, here’s the instant replay.
I give Contador a lot of credit for not doing that stupid
“pistolero” victory salute where he pantomimes shooting a handgun. I got really
tired of that act back when Contador was winning a lot.
Froome comes in third. He had some help.
His teammate helped too, of course, but by “help” I was of
course talking about whatever high-test PEDs seem to enable him to crush
everybody despite having all the finesse and grace of a child’s crayon drawing.
Of a zombie.
I’m not going to bother with the podiums or interviews or
making fun of Juan Antonio Flecha. Let’s just assume he’s wearing a
Pepto-Bismol colored shirt and saying, “Contador won because he rode faster,
which seems to happen a lot in this sport.”
Note: I will be crowdsourcing the funds needed to buy the
CBS channel, or Fubio, or whatever the hell that stupid new extortion network
is that has smothered all the good free feeds. Yes, of course I’m joking! I
would never ask for money. This blog will always be free, and I hope you
appreciate that, even if you get what you pay for.
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Sunday, September 3, 2017
Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2017 Vuelta a España Stage 15
Introduction
Why watch the Vuelta a España? Good question. It’s the least
prestigious of the grand tours, not even a little brother but more like the
Cousin Oliver of the Tour de France. On the other hand, the Tour is usually
pretty boring thanks to Chris Froome and his US Postal team. Oops, did I say US
Postal? I meant Sky. Same diff. The Vuelta can actually be considerably more
exciting than the Tour, particularly when the Tour riders are too tired to dominate.
Well, this year Froome isn’t too tired for anything, and already
has the race pretty much locked up. The only hope for a close contest is if
something dramatic happens, like he crashes and forgets to bring his bike along
when he chases back on. Whatever happens today, I’ll be reporting it candidly,
without pulling any punches or leaving any accusation, fair or not, unhurled.
2017 Vuelta a España
Stage 15 – Alcala la Real to Sierra Nevada
Common wisdom is that this race’s final summit, Sierra
Nevada, is named after the famous mountain range in California. What a typically
ignorant assumption. Of course it’s named after the brewery in Chico (slogan: “Marinating
college kids’ livers since 1979!).
Today’s route is brutal. It’s only 129 kilometers (80
miles), but goes over the 1st category Alto de Hazallanas, does a long descent,
then finishes atop the beyond-category Sierra Nevada. Look:
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Chris Froome won it. There, I
said it,” says the Eurosport announcer annoyingly. Look pal, it’s bad enough
that the result is practically predetermined … do you have to rub it in?
As I join the action, we’ve got about 70 kilometers to go,
or more accurately the racers do. There’s a breakaway a couple minutes of the
road. It’s so cute how they pretend they have a chance of staying away! Or
perhaps they’re just cynically grabbing some airtime.
This climb is 7km at 15%! Wow! These guys are just dying, their upper
bodies seesawing like crazy, all form just plain gone! There are pitches of
over 20% here.
There’s some Cofidis guy leading the race.
He’s somehow suddenly got 1:12 over the shrapnel of the
breakaway, which of course has detonated. This is Stéphane Rossetto, who looks
pretty good for a guy who’s completely doomed. I hope I look that good when I’m doomed. Of course, maybe I’m doomed
already and just don’t know it. Maybe Rossetto doesn’t know it either. Naw, he
knows it.
Maybe Rossetto didn’t read the race bible, and thinks this
is the final climb? I raced with a guy once who mistook the final prime for the
finish, and threw his arms up in the air. Okay, it was me. In my defense, the
race organizers didn’t know that you’re not supposed to have a prime on the
penultimate lap. Or maybe they read that in the rules but didn’t know what “penultimate”
meant. They probably thought it had something to do with Bic.
Back in the peloton, Team Sky is swarming on the front making
sure everything stays boring.
The peloton is getting stretched out and frayed and won’t be
long for this race. It’s been a brutal Vuelta and I’m sure everybody is tired.
Since the coverage is suspended right now for a bunch of ads, I’ll fill you in
on what’s been going on. Froome immediately showed his dominance on the first
mountain stage, took the leader’s jersey, and has been strangling the race ever
since. Nobody else has a chance, so the rest of the peloton is just showing up
and collecting their paycheck. The most exciting part so far has been Froome
crashing twice the other day. The second crash, on a descent, was weird … I watched
it again and again, mystified. What happened? It wasn’t like he overcooked a
curve, or hit a patch of something slippery, or anything like that. It looks
like he just literally fell off his bike.
Really weird. Here’s a snapshot, or you can watch it here (watch from about 21 seconds in).
Froome is pretty far back in the pack right now. He has so
many teammates in this group he’s flanked on either side, despite nothing but Sky guys on the front.
The Eurosport commentator thinks Froome doesn’t look so
good, on the basis of him standing, then sitting, etc. This means nothing, of
course. And Froome looks awful all the time anyway. Now Sean Kelly (the other
commentator) points out that Froome is eating a gel. “If you can eat a gel on a
climb like this, you can’t be hurting too
bad,” he says. He must really hate this other commentator. Perhaps it’s
mutual. Or who knows, maybe the first guy deliberately says stupid stuff, just
to act like a foil, a straight man.
Oh, I forgot to mention, Alberto Contador (Trek-Segafredo)
is riding his last grand tour (possibly his last race?) and has been riding
really well, except for one early disastrous day when he supposedly had the
flu. So he’s got no prayer in this race other than to put on a good show here
and there.
They’re 2.4km from the summit. There’s a chase group with
Romain Bardet (AG2R La Mondiale) and Steven Kruijswijk (Lotto NL – Jumbo) and a
couple others.
See those two white dots in the middle? That’s how my feed
shows me it’s frozen, as if I couldn’t tell.
Bardet had a great Tour de France, but has been nowhere in
this Vuelta. How could he, though? How could anybody? How is it that Froome
magically has great form? All good questions.
Wow, this road is really narrow, and in really shape. I’d love
to ride it somebody, perhaps by myself I can go as slowly as I need to.
Could Tejay van Gardaren (BMC Racing Team) win a stage this
year? Well, certainly no GC teams would chase him down. That’s a polite way of
saying he’s not in contention. He was, for a while there, until suddenly he
wasn’t.
Some guy named Sander Armee (pronounced are-MAY) is leading
the climb, having dropped the other breakaway riders. Armee is on Lotto Soudal. I don’t know what happened to Rose or Rosa or
Rosie or whatever that other guy was called. Armee must have a really ugly face,
because the cameramen refuse to show it. Either that or the motorcycle can’t
manage to pass him.
Back in the peloton, Sky still has things well in hand.
Everybody is over the summit now, and then they’ll descend for
about 25km (~15 miles) before the final climb, which is a beast of about 28km
(~17 miles).
Froome is up toward the front of the peloton for the
descent, so that if he inexplicably falls off his bike again, at least he’ll
take down some of the other contenders with him. Okay, that was a cheap shot.
He’s actually a very good descender. Mostly.
Rossetto has just been passed by the 4-man chase group.
Okay, here’s a head-shot of Armee. Turns out he’s a real
looker.
The other two in the chase group are Nelson Oliveira (Movistar
Team) and Adam Yates (Orica-Scott). Not that it matters. The peloton isn’t far
behind these guys and on the final climb, when the GC guys hit the gas, that
gap will vanish.
So, I’m keeping a close eye on Vincenzo Nibali
(Bahrain-Merida). He skipped the Tour de France this year, after failing to win
the Giro d’Italia, so in theory he should be fresher than Froomestrong. Nibali sits
second on the GC, just 55 seconds behind. Nobody else has a prayer. Nibali did
outsprint Froome for third recently, picking up a 4-second time bonus.
Astana has been on the front a fair bit today, which is kind
of weird. Their highest-placed guy, Fabio Aru, is down in sixth, over 3 minutes
down. So I guess their strategy is to wear down Team Sky, including Froome, so
they can launch Aru on the final climb and he can take like 4 minutes? Good
luck with that, guys.
The chase group have hit the final climb and now they saw
off Oliveira and Rossetto. They’re bearing down on Armee. He’s got 30km to go,
all of it uphill.
The racers are about 20 minutes ahead of schedule. Kelly
says it’s because the breakaway took so long to form. I think it’s because the
producer of the coverage has a party to get to or something, and gave strict
orders to wrap up early. It’s like that pro wrestling match where the producer
needed to be somewhere, gave the command, and the winning wrestler didn’t even
bother to take off his jacket before getting into the ring. What, you’ve never
watched pro wrestling? Don’t give me that.
It’s still Astana on the front. I really don’t get that.
And now the chasers have reeled in Armee.
Kruijswijk is looking really good in the breakaway. I am
totally going to use his name next time I play Hangman. You know who used to be
really good at Hangman? My kids. I could never guess their words when they were
younger, because they couldn’t spell. It’s really hard to guess a misspelled
word. Now they can spell better and have lost their edge.
Armee has blown and is going backwards. So has one of the
Astana guys who pointlessly did so much work earlier. There’s probably a story
behind that. “Chernetski, I don’t like you,” directeur sportif Alexandre
Vinokourov must have said before the race. “I want you on the front today,
setting the tempo until you blow. Do it or you’re fired.”
Contador attacks!
Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana) is with him! It’s an
all-or-nothing Hail Mary type move! Of course it’s doomed, but I love the idea
of a bold move like the days of yore before race radios turned the sport into
Moneyball.
At the front, Bardet and Yates have dropped the other two.
So, Lopez is 3:48 down on GC, in 10th. Who knows, maybe Astana
has been working on the front to set him up (not Aru). But Sky doesn’t look rattled and they’ve still got plenty of guys.
Yates has now dropped Bardet. I guess he sees no point in
having a breakaway companion, since the whole rest of the stage is uphill and
there probably isn’t that much benefit from drafting. Besides, Yates must figure
this is a shot in the dark anyway, with only a couple of minutes on the peloton
and 25km more to race.
The peloton has under 30 riders in it, and five of them are
Sky. No other team is this well represented, as usual.
Did you know that when Will Smith played Muhammad Ali, he
had his ears pinned so they wouldn’t stick out so much? Maybe they could do
that with Froome’s elbows. Just a suggestion.
Lopez and Contador are 45 seconds behind Yates. “He’s
suffering majorly,” Kelly says of—who? Yates, Lopez, or Contador? But does it
matter? Kelly says this about everybody. It’s just filler. It would be fun to
be at a dinner party with Kelly. Asked a difficult question by his
mother-in-law, he’d say, “He’s suffering majorly,” just to buy some time,
before answering her actual question: “I can’t remember for sure but I think
we have a Roth IRA.”
Contador and Lopez catch Bardet. He looks pretty blown, but
manages to latch on. And now the peloton is catching up to Armee.
Yates is doing really well, having increased his lead to 50
seconds. Maybe he has a side bet going with somebody about how long he can stay
in the lead. Maybe side bets are how these non-Sky riders motivate themselves
given that all traditional goals are hopeless to achieve.
Bardet is now leading Contador and Lopez. Who knows, maybe
he sat up a bit after Yates dropped him, so he’d have somebody to work with.
Perhaps Yates is an introvert and Bardet is an extrovert. I’ll bet that’s it.
So: Yates is riding a
Scott bicycle, and in my last race I also rode a Scott bicycle. Coincidence? Yes.
After a commercial intermission, Yates’s lead has gone up to
1:05. Pretty impressive, really.
Perhaps Lopez is just getting ready to set up Aru later. It
doesn’t look like the long-bomb move is going to achieve a whole lot, because the gap to the
GC group is not really going up much. Lopez is virtually ahead of Aru on GC at the
moment, but Aru is the team leader. I’d rather see Lopez do well today, myself.
That’s because Aru is basically wearing tube socks, which is a fashion trend I’m
really getting sick of. And anyone who beats the odds by depriving Froome of a
stage win on a mountaintop finish is a hero to me.
Contador, Lopez, and Bardet have caught Kruijswijk.
The GC group is down to about 20 riders, and Sky still has
4.
Nibali attacks!
With 12km to go, he better have good legs. I would love to
see Nibali spank Froome, frankly, ever since that 2015 Tour stage when Nibali
soloed to victory and Froome cried foul like a little bitch.
Wow, Yates’s lead is up to 1:17.
Nibali has 20 seconds on the Froome group. Of course,
whatever time he might manage to take today won’t guarantee him anything … there’s
a 40km time trial coming, which clearly favors Froome who is an eerily fast
time trialist.
Well, in the time I took to type that, Nibali got caught by
the GC group. Man, what a waste of keystrokes.
Yates is still looking really good, and with 10km to go,
maybe he’s got a chance!
Man, what an animal! Yates is climbing this bad boy in the
big ring!
Froome looks as bad as ever.
With 8km to go, Yates’s lead is starting to drop. He’s at
just over a minute now (on the chase group) and he looks a bit saggy. Perhaps
if the four chasers catch him, Contador can get a stage win. That would be a
nice consolation prize since his GC hopes were dashed so early.
Thomas de Gendt (Lotto Soudal) is somewhere between groups,
having attacked yet again. I haven’t reported on it thus far because he tries
to solo in every race he does and it never comes to anything. Why does he do
it? Nobody knows. At least, no spectator knows. Maybe the other racers know.
Maybe they tease him and he can’t stand to be in their company.
Lopez is really driving the pace of the chase group. The gap
is down to 57 seconds. And suddenly Kruijswijk has been shelled! Both Contador
and Bardet are out of the saddle to keep up with Lopez! Now they settle in.
And Lopez goes again and drops Contador, then Bardet!
Here is the stage result.
And here’s the new GC. Sure enough, Zakarin has made the (virtual) podium.
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