Biased Blow-By-Blow - Il Lombardia 2017

Introduction

Il Lombardia is the last big classic on the World Tour calendar. I’ve never bothered to watch it before, despite its being one of the “Monuments”—a word the press came up with when they decided “classic” just wasn’t impressive enough. Remember when “the media” was called “the press”? Those were the days.

Il Lombardia used to be called Giro de Lombardia, which made sense. But then the organizers changed it to Il Lombardia, so they could laugh at the stupid American journalists who call it “The Il Lombardia,” which is as bad as “the L’Alpe D’Huez.” Which is as bad as “TCBY Yogurt” and “ATM machine.”

Anyway, this race is a big deal. And I’m going to report it as I see fit, which means pulling no punches when an obviously lubed rider (e.g., a Team Sky rider) does something “not natural.” That’s where the “biased” bit comes in. Because I’m biased against dopers. I can’t help it. It’s just how I was raised.

Il Lomardia – Bergamo to Como, Italy – October 6, 2017

As I join the action, Manchester United is doing a great job of moving the ball up and down the gridiron.

Wait, something’s wrong. That doesn’t look at all like cycling. And yet it’s somehow familiar. Oh, yeah! It’s that other sport, football! Something is wrong with my live Internet feed … as usual. But good news: I just found another one, which is blurry and grainy and in French, but it’ll do for now. I gather that as I join the action, there’s a breakaway of nobodies with a decent gap over the peloton. The climbing is just beginning in earnest.

It’s just so blurry, I can’t even tell how far from the finish they are. I think it’s 50 kilometers.

OMG! Laurens de Plus  (Quick-Step Floors), one of the breakaway riders, has gone over a guardrail! You see that shiny thing at the top of this photo? That’s his fricking bike!

They’re showing an instant replay and my screen just froze, so I’m poised on the Print Screen button so if it un-freezes I can get a better shot. Here you go:

Is it okay to be wowed by this kind of terrible accident? Should I be looking away? Perhaps, but in fairness, I was also captivated when watching an ER doctor put a foot-long drill bit right through my fricking tibia a few years back. My wife was there and she also found it fascinating. Obviously I’d feel terrible if the guy died or something, especially if by “the guy” I mean myself. Though usually nobody dies from having a hole drilled in his leg, nor from going over a guardrail on a bike.

Okay, I have a clearer feed now but it’s still in French. Not that French is bad or anything. It’s not you, French language—it’s me. I studied and studied that language and I still can’t understand shit.

So it looks like 38 km to go, and the lead rider is Mickael Cherel (AG2R La Mondiale). He’s got like a minute—but over whom, I can’t tell.

An ambulance is tending to de Plus. And now Cherel begins the next climb.

Back in the chase, we’ve got a very dangerous duo: Philippe Gilbert (Quick-Step Floors) and Alessandro De Marchi (BMC Racing Team).

De Marchi is a pretty cool name—I mean, the guy just sounds fast—and of course Gilbert was a major favorite for this race going in. Look at these guys! They’re haulin’ ass!

Okay, I don’t know what the hell this ad is for. Actually, I don’t think it’s even an ad, but a hostile takeover of my video feed by … what? What in the hell am I looking it? Appears to be some kind of pressure cooker. Maybe it’s a special device for sterilizing old, clenbuterol-laden Spanish beef that spent too long in a cooler on its way across Europe?

And now, a tour of a sausage factory, as though anybody ever wanted to see that. It’s easy to see where Roger Waters came up with the conveyor-belt student march scene in “Pink Floyd The Wall”:

What the hell is this? Is Tiz-Cycling doing an infomercial? Or were they hijacked by some macabre factory food channel? This whole Internet coverage thing is such bullshit. You know who ruined it? Those Fubo bastards. Once they came out with their paid service, steephill.tv stopped providing links to free coverage. Fubo must have paid them off. You know what? I refuse to pay for Fubo. They’re banned for life. I’d rather start covering some stupid American “sport,” like video gaming or online poker.

So here’s what’s happening in the race. I lost over 10 kilometers during my side trip to the underworld of meat, and now that I’m back (well, okay, temporarily back—I got about five seconds of coverage before my screen froze again) I’ve learned that Cherel has been caught by Gilbert, De Marchi, and Pello Bilbao (Astana Pro Team), who kind of came out of nowhere. This break could really get somewhere.

Some good news I gleaned from one of these little sidebar chats (that for now are substituting for any actual footage): de Plus, the rider who went over the guardrail, is not badly injured and is alert and chatting with his Quick-Step staff. Whew!

Okay, ten minutes of Internet struggle later, the race is down to 17 kilometers, and Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) is somehow now in the lead. And now Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida), a former winner of this race, is catching him!

See that stupid yellow bar blocking the screen? I can’t get rid of it! I click the X and all it does is take me to a new page that attempts to install a virus on my PC. Curses!

Rigoberto Uran Uran (Cannondale-Drapac) is leading the chase. He’s been on the podium three times in this race and has had good form lately. Not sure what the gap is. Nibali and Pinot are bombing the descent. Nibali is a great descender; Pinot normally sucks. But Pinot seems to be doing a pretty decent job today. Wait, no, I take it back. In the span of a huge screen-blocking ad that took 25 seconds to go away, Nibali dropped Pinot.

Okay, I have a new, super-grainy feed now but at least it’s in English and there’s no ad at the moment. There are just under 10 km to go and Pinot is totally isolated. Uran looks like he’s dropped the chase group!

Nibali has 9 seconds on Pinot and 45 on the next chase, which is Uran and now some Sky guy. It’s now 7.5 km to go and there’s at least one more climb. Pinot doesn’t look so good … there’s just something lackluster about his chase. Or am I projecting?

Nibali looks rock solid. I wonder if this race feels scripted to him … this is just like his victory on the same course in 2015.

The Sky guy has dropped Uran Uran. And the commentators have dropped one of the Urans. Everybody used to call him Uran Uran, and now it’s just Uran. Maybe he lopped one Uran off himself, to save weight. Seems to be working out for him. Maybe next season his name will just be Ur.

Nibali is on the last climb. If he does a good job here he should be able to hold his lead on the final descent and the bit of flat run-in to the line.

Okay, Uran has definitely been dropped.

Looks like Nairo Quintana (Movistar Team) is leading the chase—but what’s this? Fabio Aru (Astana Pro Team) drills it and Quintana is going backwards!

Pinot is way behind now, like 38 seconds. He’ll get scooped up by the peloton for sure. And sure enough, here comes Julian Alaphilippe (Quick-Step Floors), blowing by him.

Nibali has only 3.7 km to go and he’s still looking good. But Alaphilippe is solo, and is bombing the descent!

I’m not sure if it’s Alaphillipe or Gilbert, actually. Those guys are dressing alike lately. Maybe both riders are solo. Maybe Alaphilippe is closest to Nibali and now Gilbert is coming up from behind. But I don’t think it matters because Nibali is under the 1 km banner!

I keep checking cycling.today to see if they’ve fired up their live stream, but I guess somebody called in sick. For the first half hour I was checking, it was a countdown to their footage, but when it reached zero it just started counting up. So here’s what I get instead of live cycling action—a little ticker, just to rub it in how long they’ve been blowing it:

Nibali has got this race in the bag. Whoah, he’s flipping off the crowd! No he isn’t. He was just waving. This feed is so grainy. And now he’s doing something really weird, which makes this the strangest victory salute ever: he’s trying to suck his nipple! Oh, wait, he was just talking into his radio or something. Never mind. And here’s his victory salute.

Some guys are sprinting in for the minor places. They don’t actually care and neither do I. My inability to get good, clear, consistent footage was just way too distracting and I never really got into this race. Stupid fricking sport. You know what? I think I’m done with this blow-by-blow tradition, and with trying to watch bike races at all. If I followed something like American football, I wouldn’t be nine hours behind, and I could watch it live in a sports bar in the evening, on a big flat screen, in the company of fellow Americans who would yell at the screen and thump me on the back and gloat with me (provided we were rooting for the same team) and we’d be drinking good, watery American non-craft beer and it would just be so fun. Instead I’ve got like fifteen screens open and I’m just fighting to see something, like a little kid stuck behind a bunch of grownups at a parade.

Speaking of parades, here’s a true story. I was with my family at the Christmas tree lighting-up ceremony in Ashland, Oregon many years ago and Santa was standing on this balcony officiating, and he was completely drunk! Slurring his words, poor motor control—I actually thought (and half-hoped) he would fall off the balcony. So, needless to say it, was the best civic event ever in Ashland. Fast-forward a few years and I’m there at the ceremony again, this time with my brother and his family, and we’re all super-excited because hey, drunk Santa! But there’s no Santa this time, just a stupid parade, and it’s lamest parade in history. Each float looks like it was thrown together in about five minutes, and the music is coming from a single weak battery-powered boom box. Somebody is throwing candy, but such a paltry amount that it’s causing small children to fistfight in the gutters. As we leave, cold and dejected, and begin the long walk to the van, my four-year-old niece says, “Well, that parade pretty much sucked.” My brother glares at me, and I glare at my older daughter. There’s no question where my niece has picked up this new expression. My daughter looks back sheepishly and says, “Sorry Dad.”

So, yeah. That Lombardia pretty much sucked. Here’s the top ten. Like I care.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--

For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2017 Tour de France Stage 12

Introduction

The Tour de France can be hard to watch. It’s usually pretty boring because, being the most important stage race on the calendar, it draws out the best dopers, which for the most part are on Team Sky. The way Sky dominates this race, it’s a bit like if the Chicago Cubs were up against a minor league team for the World Series. Worst of all, the announcers have to play along like this is legit and say nice things about everybody.  Well, as you can see, this blog is different.  Being an unpaid nobody, I can gnash my terrible teeth and roar my terrible roar as I see fit, which might just breathe some life into my coverage.

Today my blow-by-blow report covers a pivotal mountain stage of this year’s Tour.  Since this is the first Tour stage I’m covering, I’ll also catch you up on what’s been going on since July 1 when the race started.

2017 Tour de France Stage 12 – Pau to Peyragudes

As I join the action, the riders are on the penultimate climb, the aptly named Porte de Balles.  I think that’s the name, anyway … kind of blurry.  It’s a huis categorie climb (i.e., it could beat up your dad’s climb).  The peloton has got 44 kilometers to go. There’s a breakaway of eleven unimportant riders 4:23 ahead.

A couple of other nobodies attacks.  They’re Fortuneo-Vital Concept teammates Maxime Bouet and Brice Feillu. I guess I’ve heard of Feillu.  Kind of a strange story how he got his first name:  it was a typo.  It was supposed to be Bruce, but you know “i” is an adjacent key.

So here’s what’s going on in this year’s Tour so far.  There are only two time trials in this edition, and they’re pretty short ones at that.  Team Sky’s Geraint Thomas won the first one, which was the prologue, and kept the yellow jersey until his teammate Chris Froome took it from him on Stage 5, the first mountaintop finish of the race.  Fabio Aru (Astana Pro Team) won that stage, taking 20 seconds out of Froome.  (Thomas crashed out of the Tour a few days later.)  After a couple more mountain stages, Froome retains the lead but has only 18 seconds on Aru on the GC.  Looks like a close race, eh?

No, not really.  Aru lost 40 seconds to Froome in that measly 14-kilometer time trial, so the Italian climber will have to take at least two minutes out of Froome over the remaining four mountain stages if he wants a shot at winning the GC.  I suppose two minutes is possible, but Aru has finished the Tour just once in four tries, and was only 13th place last year.  Meanwhile, the rider currently third on GC, Romain Bardet, is 51 seconds back on GC and lost 39 seconds in the first TT, so he’d need to be like 2½ minutes ahead of Froome before the final TT.  If Froome were a normal rider, all too human and subject to bad days and so forth, that wouldn’t be insurmountable.  But Froome isn’t normal, obviously.  Anyway, of the guys who beat Froome in the opening TT, the closest on GC is Stefan Krug (Team BMC), who’s over an hour down, in 100th place overall.  ‘Nuff said.

It’s 38 kilometers to go, with the breakaway’s gap down to 3:17.  The GC group is starting to pick it up and riders are going off the back so fast it’s like they’re being clotheslined.  I saw a guy actually get clotheslined once while riding a motor scooter.  It was brutal, and he had this big red welt on this throat, like a grisly red line, for like a week. I know that has nothing to do with this bike race but it’s a lot more interesting than what I’m seeing on my screen, which is Sky predictably swarming the front, all in yellow helmets, while the Astana team, supporting Aru, lurks just behind them.

Froome’s closest rival ought to be Richie Porte (BMC Racing Team), who brought some serious high-test lube to the Criterium du Dauphiné a few weeks back.  How doped was this guy?  Well, consider that although he’s a pocket climber (i.e., 5 feet 8 inches, 137 pounds, rides a 48cm bike for crissakes), he handily won the Dauphiné time trial, beating not only Froome but Tony Martin (Team Katusha-Alpecin), the reigning time trial world champion.  When a climber wins a major TT against top riders, I get suspicious.  The surface area to mass ratio of a climber just isn’t suited to cutting through the wind in a fast TT.  Size does matter ... why do you think sprinters can’t climb?  (And what other little climber dudes have won major TTs?  Alberto Contador, Levi Leipheimer, and Tyler Hamilton, all known dopers.) Anyway, I feel like a dick bringing up Porte’s probable doping, because sadly, the Aussie is out of this Tour after a terrible high-speed crash on Sunday. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, of course. Also, Porte would have made this a much more exciting race, and I’d rather have seen him win than Froome.  Oh well.

Oddly, Feuillu has dropped his teammate, Bouet. Why would he do that?  This is probably a coincidence, but Bouet now has a dark stripe up the back of his white shorts. What’s that all about? I don’t see a stripe on anybody else’s shorts and the road isn’t wet or anything. Maybe he shat himself! I know it’s not nice to cast aspersions like that, but then again, the dude is wearing white cycling shorts.  I think he’s got it coming, and his whole team as well.

It’s 6 km to the summit of this climb and still no attacks in the GC group.  Maybe nobody wants to get a lead before the final descent—given what happened to poor Porte—and are waiting for the last climb.

Thomas De Gendt (Lotto Soudal) attacks the breakaway!  He has a beard.  Not many racers do. Will this help or hurt his chances?  I’m not sure but in the Eurosport post-stage review with Juan Antonio Flecha we’re bound to find out how De Gendt’s beard played in to the ultimate stage result.

So, to continue my review of the rest of the Tour so far, the green jersey competition is pretty much doomed to be a yawner this year.  Marcel Kittel (Quick-Step Floors) has virtually no competition, having won five stages so far.  Two of his main rivals are out.  Peter Sagan (Hora-Hansgrohe) was disqualified for crashing Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data) in stage 4.  Cav, meanwhile, was too badly injured to continue this Tour.  Besides Kittel, the only sprinter who has won a stage this year was Arnaud Démare (FDJ), who—amazingly—was cut from the race for losing too  much time on Sunday’s mountain stage.

Why “amazingly”?  Because Démare is a great climber!  He’s that one-in-a-million sprinter who can climb like the dickens!  In fact, he holds the Strava record for the famous Poggio climb in the Milan-San Remo road race!  Okay, I’m bullshitting you here.  Not about Démare’s Strava record for the Poggio, which he actually did get, but about him being able to climb.  He won last year’s Milan-San Remo because he blatantly cheated, hanging on to his team car all the way up the Poggio.  Read all about it here! So yeah, I was stoked to see Démare fall behind in the points competition and then be sent home for missing the time cut.  What a douchebag.

The peloton continues to thin out as Sky chases.  The gap is down to 2:41 (though I can’t tell if that’s to De Gendt or the rest of the break).  Bouet has been absorbed and Feuillu will be soon.

Stephen Cummings (Dimension Data) has attacked out of the breakaway and caught De Gendt.  I didn’t see it happen … he either faked out the cameraman, or me, or both.  He’s a sneaky little bastard!  Interesting tidbit:  Cummings is the grandson of e.e. cummings, the mediocre poet whose contribution to poetry was to be the first one to eschew all punctuation and capitalization.  (Maynard, please run that down post-production and fact-check it … I’m pretty sure it’s true but am starting to wonder if I made it up.  About being the grandson I mean.)

Vasil Kiryienka (Team Sky) detonates and is going backwards, off the back like a comet.  It can’t be easy setting tempo for Froome, no matter how lubed you are.  It’s no matter though … Sky still has plenty of dudes at the front (and in fact a highly “not normal” number, though that’s normal for Sky).

Any scandals in this Tour?  Well, there was a lot of bickering about whether Sagan should have been disqualified.  I don’t have much to say on that because I only watched the video footage like 100 times, and most of the Internet pundits have watched it at least 1,000.  The other scandal is about Aru attacking while Froome was having bike problems.  The announcers and post-race commentators zealously tore into this one, with all the Internet trolls adding their considerable expertise to the debate.  Aru defended himself, saying he didn’t notice that Froome was having bike problems, and I tend to believe him … after all, Froome’s head is down half the time anyway.  What is it with Froome and mechanical problems?  Remember the 2015 Tour when his gears were mashing or something and Vincenzo Nibali attacked him?  At least this time around, post-race, Froome declined to take the bait and cry foul—maybe he read my diatribe about this and learned his lesson!  (No, of course he didn’t.)

Anyway, I totally support attacking the GC leader, whether he’s crashed, had a mechanical, or had to take a dump on the side of the road.  All this “unwritten rule” talk is pure BS.  What other sport or contest doesn’t let you take advantage of the leader’s bad luck?  Imagine if you’re playing Monopoly and one guy has like all the monopolies and all the money and has like a dozen hotels and is gradually bleeding everybody dry—and then he gets the Chance card that says, “You are assessed for street repairs.”  What are you gonna do, appreciate the relief, or say, “You know what, just take another card, we wouldn’t want to harm your chances, since you’re already winning and everything.”  Luck is supposed to be part of this sport—it makes things more exciting.  And any Tour with Froomestrong in it needs whatever twists and turns it can get.

With under 10 km to go in the stage, Sky is still dominant at the front.  Needless to say.

Wow, Spain (I’m reduced to watching a foreign-language video feed today) has really racy commercials!  Lots of scantily-clad women!  Who knew?  Now it’s back to the race, I guess, but it’s just some unknown person blathering away about the time trial course.  WTF?!  Time trials are boring enough to watch, much less talk about.  This coverage sucks.

Okay, I’ve dismissed that silly all-TT-blather-all-the-time feed and now have nothing.  Wow, cool!  I tried a third browser and now have the Eurosport feed.  What a relief.  It’s the good announcers and everything.  Wait … okay, now it’s vanished.  I sent a note in the little chat to the admins, and they replied, “both are working. the problem is at you.”  Story of my life.

Now I’ve switched to a different PC and a different Internet feed.  Gosh, I’ve missed a lot.  Cummings is still the leader, solo, and he’s got 2 minutes on the GC group with 12 km to go.  He’s on the last real climb of the day, the Category 1 Col de Peyresourde.  Its summit is just 5 km from the finish, which is atop the supposedly Category 2 climb to Peyragudes, which looks so short on the profile I can’t imagine how it got that rating.  It doesn’t really matter though, because my feed has dried up again.  Should I just stop now?  Let you go about your day?  Okay, I’m back to the first PC. 

Wow, Kwiatowski (Team Sky) blows sky-high!  The hammer has truly gone down in the main GC bunch and Cummings’ lead is suddenly down to just over a minute.  The GC group is down to 11 riders, three of which are Sky.

Man, within the last minute Cummings’ lead went down to under 30 seconds … he’s doomed.  Oh man, suddenly he looks deflated … he’s really suffering.

And just like that, they’ve got him. 

And now Cummings is spat right out the back!  Poor dude.

Dang, while my feed was AWOL, it looks like Nairo Quintana (Movistar Team) got dropped!  I guess he’s no longer even an outside contender for this Tour.  Must have tired himself out trying (in vain) to win the Giro.

Not a single non-Sky rider has seen the front of this GC group all day.  And Froome hasn’t faced the wind for more than about a minute or two, cumulatively, since July 1.  I guess that’s how it’s supposed to work, but I wish something would break down.  The Giro d’Italia was really exciting because winner Tom Dumoulin’s team was so frail, he had to do a ton of work himself and he only just barely got it done.

Aru is just sitting on Froome’s wheel, as he’s been the whole day.  He’s brashly told the press that he’s not afraid to attack Froome, and my reaction is like, duh!  Are you a racer or not?  It’s not like he’ll do anything in the TT, so sitting around and hoping Froome’s clockworks finally wind down isn’t much of a winning strategy.  But we’re 1.4 km from the summit of this climb and it’s just Sky slogging away on the front while Froome sits there and Aru, Bardet, and Uran just sit there too.  I guess the pace is just too high for anyone to attack.  Not since the Indurain years has a Tour stage been this boring.

Wouldn’t it be cool if Froome sucked at descending, like Thibaut Pinot (FDJ)?  Then you might see people trying to take advantage.  But I have to hand it to Froome, he’s a very good descender, and deserves full credit for it.  After all, there’s no syringe for descending fast.

And just like that, the GC group is over the summit of the Col de Peyresourde.

I guess it’ll be exciting to see who gets the stage win. With bonus seconds on the line Sky won’t be giving anything up to anybody. Meanwhile, if Froome can’t put in his first real effort of the day up this last little section and increase his GC lead, I’ll eat my hat.

Of course, even if everything suddenly goes sideways for Sky at the end, remember that Aru needs to accumulate a two-minute lead over these climbing stages before the final TT if he wants to win.  If he doesn’t even have enough strength to mount a single attack today, he might as well give up his GC ambitions.  Then he could pick a stage to go off the back and build up a huge deficit so Sky no longer cares about him. Following that, he could go hunt for another stage win.  It would be pretty sad if he had to resort to such dregs, of course.

Alberto Contador (Trek-Segafredo) is somewhere off the back.  He’s crashed several times and is completely done, not just for this Tour but for his career, I’m afraid.

It’s just 1.5 km to go and still Sky, Sky, Sky. 

Warren Barguil (Sunweb), the current KOM leader, is off the back with Quintana.

With 1 km to go, Froome moves up to second position, the closest to the front of this GC group he’s been all day.  Dan Martin is moving over to the side, as if to prepare for an attack, or at least center the football for a field goal attempt.  And ... my feed freezes again.

And look at this!  George Bennett (Team LottoNL-Jumbo) attacks!  

But he’s instantly shut down!  And there goes Froome!  But this footage is just a slide show now!  I can’t see shit!  And now Aru is somehow in the front!  He’s drilling it but the grade is severe!

Now suddenly Bardet is in the lead!  Every time my feed restarts the positions are different!  Now I see why this short climb is a Category 2 ... the grade is unbelievably steep!

Froome is over the line but I can’t tell who won, I missed it!  Internet Tour coverage sucks!

Looks like Bardet got the win, with Uran getting second and Aru third.  Unbelievably, Froome lost like 20 seconds right at the end there.  Maybe his legs froze along with my feed?  Wow, I guess I need to eat my hat now! Froome is clearly not so dominant as in years past.

With the time bonuses, Aru could be the new GC leader because remember, he was only 18 seconds back. 

Here is the stage result, which is as much news to you as to me:

Okay, after some more scrambling for feeds, I  see the new GC, and sure enough, Aru has the yellow jersey, but only by six seconds.

The jersey will be a nice souvenir for Aru, and maybe he’ll even survive tomorrow and keep it for a while.  It’s too bad for him he didn’t (couldn’t?) try something earlier.

It’s tempting to think Froome could still lose this Tour.  Among the GC contenders there’s only one guy who can really time trial, that being Rigoberto Uran.  Uran did win a long time trial during the 2014 Giro d’Italia, but remember, notwithstanding his climbing prowess right now, he lost 51 seconds to Froome in this Tour’s first TT.

Meanwhile, the support Sky gave Froome today was pretty unbelievable (in every sense of the word). Time will tell, but in my biased opinion, Sky’s overall Tour campaign is looking alive and all too well.

Epilogue

I have now gone and watched the finish via freeze-free replays, and can see that I obviously missed the most exciting part of the race by far. I have also heard commentators weighing in on the controversy (recounted here) around Landa totally dropping Froome in the final sprint and taking 17 seconds out of him.  Here, I have to totally disagree with anybody who finds a problem here, and even with Landa for claiming not to have known what was going on.  Landa has nothing to apologize for.  That grade was unbelievably steep and the speed was not that high, so drafting would not have made a big difference ... and meanwhile, if Froome couldn’t find a wheel to follow that’s his problem.  At some point, you just may not have the legs, and he didn’t.  And let’s not forget that Landa is a totally legitimate GC contender and Sky’s best shot if something were to happen to Froome (e.g., crash, terribly timed mechanical, failed dope test, or one really bad day).  Why would you make Landa wait, with only like 300 meters to go? How much moral support could he even give Froome? I’m getting kind of tired of how everybody is trying to baby the yellow jersey.  He is (or was) a Tour leader, for crissakes, not an infant!  And we’re supposed to be rabid spectators, not helicopter parents! Dang.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--
For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2015 Vuelta a España Stage 20

Introduction

Some bike race coverage is better than others, but the vast majority of accounts share one trait:  journalistic integrity.  This means being responsible and only reporting what is verifiable fact.  How odd, then, that such coverage participates in the big lie that the sport has cleaned itself up.  An announcer must pretend to be excited when an obvious doper is doing well, when he’s got to be thinking, deep down inside, “What a disgrace.”

Well, my coverage is different.  I like to tell it how it is, or at least how I suppose it is.  My goal is simply to entertain, even at the risk of inaccuracy, because that’s the purpose of sport anyway, right?  And yeah, I play favorites ... because what sports fan doesn’t?  So read on for a totally biased blow-by-blow report of the crucial penultimate stage of the 2015 Vuelta a España.

Vuelta a Espana Stage 20:  San Lorenzo de El Escorial – Cercedilla

As I join the action, Ruben Plaza Molina (Lampre-Merida) is off the front solo with almost 80 km left in the stage.  This looks pretty quixotic, but what better country to be quixotic in than Spain? 

Haimar Zubeldia (Trek Factory Racing) decides to do something panzic, and tries to bridge from the chase group up to Plaza.  What’s “panzic,” you ask?  Well, if we can derive “quixotic” from Quixote, to mean “acting in a way that Don Quixote might act,” can’t we do the same with Quixote’s faithful sidekick, Sancho Panza?  I’ll make you a deal:  you help spread “panzic” as a word, and I’ll keep providing these blow-by-blow reports free of charge.

Zubeldia is caught.  Man, he almost didn’t even last long enough for my verbal aside.  So, I’m not sure how big this chase group is.  It’s about 12 minutes ahead of the peloton, and 2:20 behind Quixote.  Er, Plaza.  Is Plaza being stupid?  Not necessarily.  This is a really strange course:  nothing but up and down ... 176 km (109 miles) with four Category 1 climbs.

Long flat sections doom a solo rider, but drafting doesn’t help that much on climbs, and if the road is twisty, a good descender can hold his own pretty well.  Think of Floyd Landis in Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France, when he soloed for a huge distance over such terrain to [seem to] win the stage.  (If he hadn’t drunk too much Jack Daniels and fallen asleep with a testosterone patch on his balls, and if all the American cyclists hadn’t turned on each other via the Lance Armstrong investigation years later, I might have managed that last sentence without the bracketed caveat!)  So yeah, maybe Plaza’s move is smarter than it looks.

Speaking of turning on each other, I think Sean Kelly is getting fed up with his co-announcer, Carlton, who has just made a lame joke about race leader Tom Dumoulin (Team Giant-Alpecin) breaking his bike in a crash yesterday.  “Giant was probably pretty upset about that,” he quipped.  Earlier in this Vuelta, Kelly might have politely ignored this, but instead he disagrees, saying, “In a crash like that you’re actually just glad your man wasn’t hurt.”  I can’t blame Kelly for being impatient.  During a crucial earlier stage, Mikel Landa (Astana Pro Team) was soloing, and Carlton said, “He’s Mikel Landa, and he’s about to land a big one!”  What I heard next was hard to make out, but I think it was the sound of Kelly punching Carlton in the windpipe.

With 53 km to go, the riders are on the penultimate climb, the Puerto de la Morcuera, which is 10.4 km in length at an average grade of 5.3%.  Plaza has almost 3 minutes on the chasers, whose gap to the main field is down to 10:50.  Plaza doesn’t look so hot—his shoulders are really rocking—but then, form isn’t everything.  I mean, nobody looks worse on a bicycle than Christopher Froome (Team Sky), but that doesn’t stop the guy from winning the Tour de France.

Speaking of Froome, he dropped out of this Vuelta long ago.  He was way out of contention after a crash, but frankly he was never really in contention anyway.  He almost got a stage win on a summit finish, but as he was making his disgraceful, mincing-stepped, high-cadence, bobble-headed way to the finish line, Dumoulin—who had failed to solo minutes before—defied the laws of gravity and came flying by to take the win.  Dumoulin is a big man, a man’s man, and it’s not a stretch to say a macho man, and he wielded his bike like a fricking bat instead of a badminton racquet like Punky Froomester does, and I had to let out a whoop of pure joy and relief that the sport isn’t totally ruined by the kind of boring predictability that Froome and Sky have been working to produce through their undeniable lead in the pharmaceutical arms race.

It’s actually been a very exciting Vuelta, because no single rider or team has built up too great an advantage.  Sadly, Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing Team) crashed out; Nairo Quintana (Movistar Team) looks too tired from the Tour de France to contest GC victory here; Vincenzo Nibali was disqualified for holding on to his team car (which was disgracefully, embarrassingly blatant; he might as well have been caught on camera dirty-dancing with a podium girl); and other contenders like Rafal Majka (Tinkoff-Saxo) and Fabio Aru (Astana Pro Team) have been excellent but not dominant.  Going into yesterday’s hilly stage, Dumoulin had only 3 seconds over Aru in the GC battle.  He dropped Aru on the short cobblestoned climb at the end to get 3 more seconds.

Near the top of the Puerto de la Morcuera, Astana is drilling it on the front, and Dumoulin is gapped!  They’ve got about two seconds on him!

Dumoulin’s team is nowhere around; probably they’ve all been shelled.  (I think of them more as a sprinter’s team built around John Degenkolb than a GC team.)  But Dumoulin is a cool customer.  He lost snatches of time—30 seconds here, 30 seconds there—in the earlier, more brutal mountain stages, confident that he’d make up time in the time trial, which he certainly did, crushing everybody (including the second-place rider on the day, who lost over a minute).  Still, 6 seconds is nothing on such a hard stage, particularly when Aru has such a strong teammate, Landa, to help him attack.

The breakaway, by the way, is still over 10 minutes ahead of the field, which makes Aru’s job harder because they’ll eat up all the bonus seconds for the top 3 finishers.

Alejandro Valverde (Movistar Team) is all by himself, having been sawed off from the GC group.  That’s been the story of this race.  He’s always either trying to solo, or getting dropped from a group.  Maybe he just prefers being alone ... maybe he just doesn’t like his competitors.  Fine by me ... I don’t like him, either.

The GC group is down to 8 guys.  I love these later stages in grand tours, when so many riders are so blown, they just give up when the hammer goes down.  It certainly makes it easier to tell what’s going on among the GC favorites.  It’s particularly easy with this Vuelta because Dumoulin is so much taller than everybody else, like a giraffe among gazelles.

Astana attacks again!  Oh, man, Dumoulin is really hurting!  His shoulders are rocking and he’s totally isolated!  Ooh, it’s a big gap.  Sure, he has a long descent before the final climb, but if it’s not technical, he won’t necessarily make up time on the group.  Being dropped this far from the finish also doesn’t bode well.

The front group of 6 has split in half but they’ll come back together.  They’ve got about 22 seconds on Dumoulin now.  Majka and Quintana are in that group and obviously highly motivated to work.  Quintana sits 5th on GC, about 30 seconds behind Majka.  I'm sure he’d love to make that up today.

Dumoulin is working with Mikel Nieve (Team Sky) and has decreased the gap to around 18 seconds.  Assuming he catches up, the final climb is going to be brutal.  If he manages to stay anywhere near the leaders on that climb, he’ll have a 7 km flat section before the final descent.  He showed in the time trial how much faster he goes on the flats than the little climbers.  Like a Kawasaki Ninja against a bunch of Vespas.

Could Dumoulin be faking it, to give Aru false hope?  Probably not, but it’s not impossible.  In a really hilly road race I once let myself get dropped on every climb, because it wasn’t that hard to catch the group on the downhills.  I did this for the whole race until the last couple climbs, when keeping up mattered.

Dumoulin is hauling ass ... Nieve can barely hang on, despite what must be an awesome slipstream.

I wonder what the Giant-Alpecin director is saying to Dumoulin over the radio.  How do you motivate your rider without demoralizing him?  Maybe it’s something like, “You have to beat Aru.  He’s the kind of jerk who sticks his chewed-up gum to the bottom of the desk.  He’s mean to old people and kicks dogs when nobody is looking.”

Dumoulin has shrunk the gap to 10 seconds.  This would be great news if he didn’t have that final climb, 11 km at 5.3%, to deal with.  Dang, he looks really tired.  He flicks his elbow and Nieve takes a turn at the front.  Now they’re chatting.  What could they be saying?  “Dude, you’re crazy, Natalie Portman is way hotter than Scarlett Johansson.”

Dumoulin gives a little head-shake, reminiscent of George H.W. Bush.  Either he’s cooked, or this is the greatest rope-a-dope since Lance on the Alpe d’Huez stage of the 2001 Tour.

Dumoulin drops back to his team car, but then seems to change his mind and just keeps riding.  Maybe he was going to ask for a strong cup of coffee but then remembered that caffeine is a diuretic and didn’t want to have to take a piss during the climb.  That might knock him off the podium.

Look, I’m not going to deny it:  I’m totally rooting for Dumoulin.  When it comes to bike racers, I’m size-ist.  This isn’t really on aesthetic grounds; it’s just that, being a tall, heavy rider myself, I’ve had countless opportunities—hundreds, I think—to resent the little climbers as they break my legs off.  I admit it:  I’m bitter.  When I look at a big guy like Dumoulin, I can relate to his difficulty in these mountains.

It looks like Aru has another teammate ... somebody must have dropped back from the breakaway.  If so, that’s the first time Astana has done anything intelligent in any bicycle race.

Man, Dumoulin must be heartbroken ... at one point he was 10 seconds behind the leaders but now it’s stretched out to over a minute, despite his getting some help from a couple more riders.  He’ll be lucky to hang on for a podium placing at this point.  Poor guy, he’s really suffering.  I dare say he even looks, well, clean!

Way up front, Plaza is still going it alone, 1:40 ahead of the chasers.

Dumoulin’s radio earbud is taped to his ear.  I always find that a little sad.  Some riders have the good kind of ear that holds the earbud; some don’t.  Lance never needed tape; Ullrich always did.  Ullrich’s taped-on earbud looked sad, too.

Man, Plaza just slashes away.  He hasn’t looked good all morning, and yet his lead is holding steady.  His saddle is about 2 inches too low ... maybe it’s slipping down.  And Dumoulin’s beret is all crumpled; his sunglasses are scratched; his zipper is jammed; back home, a drain is clogged; his cat just missed the litter box by like 4 feet.  The center cannot hold.  I think I’m going to cry.

The chase group has broken up and it’s now four riders chasing Plaza:  Giovanni Visconti (Movistar Team), Alessandro De Marchi (BMC Racing Team), José Gonçalves (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA), and Matteo Mantaguti (AG2R La Mondiale).  Do you like how I bothered with the cedilla on the “c” in Gonçalves?  You won’t get that on cyclingnews.com.  They wouldn’t bother.  On the downside, knowing it’s pronounced “Gon-SAL-vays” means I can’t make a pun about calves.  Maybe that’s for the better.  (Yes, I’m killing time before the finish because the denouement of this race is such a long, painful one.  If this were boxing, the ref would call the fight right now, but in bicycle races everybody has to serve out his full sentence.)

Dumoulin has fallen behind the group he was with and some Astana guy is on his wheel now.  I’m sure the Astana rider is taunting him from back there.

Quintana attacks!  No, he doesn’t have grand ambitions here, being almost 3 minutes behind Aru on the GC.  But as I mentioned earlier, he’d love to overtake Majka in the GC.  Needless to say, Majka is right on him.  The two are pulling ahead of the other GC favorites. 

Plaza reaches the final summit!  I think he’s got the stage win.  What did I tell you about Plaza’s long solo move not being as stupid as it might look?

Majka attacks Quintana, just before the summit.  Not that he really wants to distance him; I think it’s just a gesture:  “I see your effort to pass me in the GC, and I spit on it.  Look, I’m beating you to the top of the hill!”

Dumoulin’s director is saying, over the radio, “It’s okay, Tom.  You’re still a good person.  You’re not mean to old people, and you’ve never kicked a dog.  We just talked to your girlfriend and she says she doesn’t care because you’re way better looking than Aru.  She says he looks like a stricken baitfish.  She really said that.”

The peloton is over the final summit, while Dumoulin has almost 4 more minutes of miserable climbing ahead of him.  As my brother Max likes to say, “It’s all over but the crying.”

Plaza is struggling to maintain his gap on this flat section.  Funny, isn’t it, how a flat section can be cruel for a climber?  Still, his spirits are surely high, so his suffering is only physical.  Poor Dumoulin.  I wonder if he’s seen “On the Waterfront,” and if, despite not having seen it, he might be thinking, “I coulda been a contenda!” without any knowledge of where that comes from.  Probably not.  He’s probably thinking something far less predictable, like, “Mikel Nieve is such an idiot.  Scarlett Johansson isn’t even that hot.”

The chasing quartet is on the final descent now.  Their gap is down to 1:18, but with less than 5 km to go, they’re pretty much doomed to fight it out for second place.

Man, the GC group crested that final summit with 3 Astana guys left!  Astana is half the lead group!  I wonder if Team Sky has any plans to hire Astana’s team doctor away.  Not that Sky needs any help with its doping program, but it’s always wise to neutralize a fearsome opponent if you can.

Plaza has just 700 meters to go!  I wonder if he’ll do the new victory salute that has become so popular, where he tugs on his necklace until he’s pulled out the pendant, and polishes it up on his jersey before crossing the line.  Those Europeans are so weird.

Here he comes!  He looks back—he can’t help it—and now he does something really cool:  he takes his gloves off, and throws them to the crowd!  That is just fricking awesome.  I’m glad he didn’t get carried away and throw his helmet to the crowd; it would be awful to get disqualified only 25 meters from the finish line.

The next two riders are sprinting for second and I don’t care who gets it.  My enthusiasm has been deflating for about the last hour, in case you can’t tell.  Really, it’s Dumoulin, not Plaza, who’s the Don Quixote of this Vuelta.  At least he gave us a show!

Aru crosses the line and does an awkward, blurry victory salute with his teammate.  I never liked the “GC victory salute.”  Do you know who was the first guy to do that?  Lance Armstrong.  Do you know who was the second?  Carlos Sastre.  Now it’s almost standard.

The camera is on Aru as he’s mobbed by the press.  Even in victory, he looks like a stricken baitfish.

Dumoulin crosses the line, surrounded by a group of also-rans that evidently caught him as he made his lugubrious, plodding way toward the line.  It’s probably better for him, having a little bit of anonymity at the finish line instead of giving everybody a chance for some emblematic photo of his great loss.  He slips to 6th overall in the Vuelta, less than 24 hours after leading it.  Oh well ... he’s young.  He has many opportunities ahead.

They’re interviewing him.  He’s gracious enough to allow it (in contrast to Aru, who refused to speak to the press yesterday after losing 3 measly seconds).  Dumoulin is asked, predictably, how he feels.  “Just empty.  I mean, my legs are empty.  But don’t forget, I’m sponsored by Alpecin shampoo.  So my hair feels great!”  Ah, a true professional to the last!

Biased Blow-By-Blow - Giro d’Italia Stage 15

Introduction

Today I continue my ongoing tradition of giving the blow-by-blow race report that real journalists aren’t allowed to.  I’ll put words to the vague feelings of antipathy you may have toward certain riders, other personalities, or the sport in general, and I’ll deliver fascinating back-story that might as well be true.  Read on for my biased, fearless coverage of today’s Giro stage.

Biased Blow-By-Blow – 2015 Giro d’Italia Stage 15

As I join the action, the racers have 60 km to go. I think they’re way ahead of schedule. Of course this leads to suspicion that it’s “game on,” à la the early aughts and the pharma-fueled peloton.  How early does a guy have to wake up to see two full hours of race coverage?

The situation is this:  there’s a breakaway of ten that has about three minutes on the main bunch. It includes Beñat Intxausti Elorriaga (Movistar), who won stage 8 (a summit finish like they’ll have today), and Brent Bookwalter (BMC).  Intxausti must either be really tired, or he was loafing during yesterday’s time trial, because he lost over 8 minutes.

Do professional cyclists actually loaf during time trials?  Yep.  I remember watching a time trial stage of the Coors Classic in 1985, and Giuseppe Sarroni came by.  I recognized him immediately—he’d won the world championships three years before—so of course I cheered like a maniac.  He wasn’t going hard at all, though; he was riding on the hoods and looked bored.  When he heard me cheering, he seemed suprised, and gave me a look that said, “Stop carrying on like that, boy—you look like a damn fool.”  And yet, this guy wasn’t totally washed up; he won two Giro d’Italia stages that year.

Sean Kelly is one of the commentators today, which I’m glad of.  I don’t know where he was for stage 8, but I’m imagining somebody trying to wake him up, pre-race, and him saying, “Bike races are boring, I’m not doing it.”  Either that, or he was there for stage 8 but said so little, I didn’t hear him.  I was watching a replay of stage 13 the other day, and actually heard Kelly get kind of animated.  I was so surprised, I watched that part over and over again. His voice actually goes up a little, with just a hint of a chuckle. He’s describing a crash and says, “It was just very calm,  no real big nervousness in the peloton, somebody touched a wheel there and then they just fall down like skittles.” (I was sure I heard this wrong, being an American quite familiar with the colorful candy, but unaware of the chiefly British game that sounds a lot like bowling.  The game is called skittles, as are the pins that get knocked down.)

Okay, they’re back from a commercial intermission, and the other announcer is talking about handbags.  I think you have to be very uninhibited to be a race announcer. I’ve heard these guys go on about asphalt composition, techtonic plates, and gifts of hand-knit scarves sent by grateful sports fans.

Since Eurosport has evidently adopted the “all ads, all the time” format favored by American broadcasters, I’ll take a moment to describe today’s course.  The racers have already gone over the La Fricca climb, which interestingly enough is the climb that gave the world the word “fricking,” meaning “really hard” or just “really.”  Pretty soon they’ll hit the Passo Daone, which is 8.5 km at an average grade of 9.2%.  Probably the Italians call pronounce this “day-OWN-ee,” but clearly it should be pronounced “da 1.”

Bookwalter is dropped from the breakaway, confirming the total dearth of Americans in this race.

We’ve gone split-screen, and they’re showing podium girls strutting along the road in the start/finish section! This must be a specific request from Kelly, just to keep him entertained. That’s a great idea and I’m sure it’ll be written into his contract for next year. I, for one, am pleased.

Gilbert, who finally won a stage of this Giro a few days ago, is dropped.

Wow, Richie Porte is getting dropped!  This poor guy.  He was in third but after a series of mishaps, and a really lousy time trial, is down in 17th. Either he’s really sore from his recent crash, or he’s just collapsed psychologically, or maybe the team doctor said, “You suck right now Richie, I’m not wasting any drugs on you.”  Okay, maybe that last bit was a low blow.  Perhaps it’s slightly more plausible that the team doctor actually said, “Richie, you suck right now, so let’s save this blood bag for the Tour.”  I guess it's also possible that he's just tired from having raced so fast all spring.  As my online correspondent says, “You burn that candle that bright for that long, you’re gonna run outta wax!”

So, Edoardo Zardini (Bardiani CSF), who won a mountain stage of the Giro del Trentino last year, has attacked the peloton and is trying to make his way up to the breakaway.  He’s making pretty good progress.

Wow, Rigoberto Uran (Etixx-Quick-Step) is really struggling, off the back.  He’s another favorite who really never found his legs this year.  He lost over 2½ minutes in the TT yesterday and was in 4th on the GC going into today’s stage.  He’ll tumble down the GC for sure now.

The announcer who isn’t Sean Kelly is very fond of saying “at the minute.” He says it constantly.  I’ve heard “at the moment” once in two stages of coverage, with countless “at the minute”s.  I did a little research on this and figured out what’s going on.  This guy’s brother has hated, since childhood, how he says “at the minute” instead of “at the moment,” and the announcer has discovered this and is using this knowledge to maximum advantage, just to spleen his brother, who he knows is watching this coverage.  The brother retaliates by having a hotter wife.  Sibling rivalry never really dies, does it?

The grade is at 14%, they’re saying. It never looks as steep on TV, but you can see how badly the racers are suffering.  Shoulders rocking, etc.

Team Astana is doing a great job forcing the pace at the front.  They’ve still got five or six guys.  I only see one Tinkoff guy supporting Contador.  Astana’s leader, Fabio Aru, is tucked right in there, at least for now.  Poor Aru hasn’t had the Giro of his dreams, other than wearing the maglia rosa for a day. He lost 3 minutes yesterday, whereas race leader Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) only lost 14 seconds and appears to have this Giro locked up.  Aru’s still in second on GC, but to a fricking cripple!  I’m referring to Contador’s separated shoulder, which ought to have him totally out of the action but instead doesn’t seem to bother him a bit.  Anyway, Astana is driving the pace, led by Paolo Tiralongo, just to make sure Uran loses enough time to cease being a threat to Aru in the GC.

Poor Bookwalter.  He’s all alone out there, just waiting for the peloton to swallow him up, digest him, and perhaps excrete him as so often happens when a breakaway goes bad.

Bookwalter is hanging off the back of the peloton now.

The breakaway is down to just three guys, and I’m tempted to give you their names, but that’s just so sad when they’re probably doomed.  They had 3 minutes before this climb, and it’s down to half that.  Giovanni Visconti (Team Movistar) took the KOM points.  Now they’re getting handed some newspapers.  They don’t look like pink newspapers to me, which is a lost opportunity.  In the U.S., everything is monetized, and these would be pink newspapers that would be sold off as “collectibles” after the racers are done with them.  The smeared ink would be proof that these were used by an actual bike racer in a famous race.

So it’s 30 km to go with the next big thing being the ... oh my god, there’s an ad here for a caffeinated shampoo.  That’s just absurd.  I just googled this to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.  I wasn’t.  (I haven’t had that much caffeine myself.)  I guess the idea is that it’s absorbed through the scalp.  Neat idea, except that of course it’s solving a non-problem.  You wanna absorb caffeine?  Drink a fricking cup of coffee!

So, the next big climb, as I was starting to say, is the Madonna di Campiglio, 15.5 km at an average grade of 5.9%.  It’s a mountain-top finish, which almost always makes for pretty good excitement.

Man, five Astana guys on the front, with Aru just sitting in, practically carried on their shoulders.  It’s too bad a team this good doesn’t have a better leader.  I mean, I had to bag on Aru, it’s not like he’s a slouch or anything, but I just don’t see him mounting any kind of threat to Contador, or even matching him.  My online correspondent agrees:  “If Contador goes hard on the last climb, Aru’s gonna get sawed off.”

The break is down to 55 seconds.  They’re all on a flat section, having finished the short descent after the Daone.

Since there’s a lull in the action here, I’ll take this opportunity to weigh in on the controversy around Richie Porte getting docked two minutes for taking a wheel from a friend near the end of one of the early stages, when Porte was still in the top three on GC.  A lot of guys complained, not just Internet whiners but some racers and even Robert Millar, the former champ.  I think it’s all complete BS, and I’m not just saying that because I don’t like Porte (though I don’t).  Yeah, I get it that Porte already had some bad luck and now gets dinged a massive two minutes on top of that. But you know what’s supposed to mitigate bad luck scenarios?  Your fricking team!  Where the hell were Porte’s teammates when he punctured?  I mean, he’s the team leader!  The team’s entire job is to support him, but not a single-dingle one of them was anywhere to be found.  Why should their stupidity be softened by race officials willing to leave basic rules unenforced?

Besides, when you let non-teammates help out, you’re turning the sport into a popularity contest. That’s not what the sport is supposed to be.  I was talking with a friend about this a few days ago, and he said, “Remember when Cadel Evans flatted in the Vuelta and lost gobs of time waiting for the team car?  He’s standing just off the road watching everybody pass him by.  Nobody gave him a wheel, probably because he has that high-pitched voice and the lap-dog, but is that fair?”

I’m also fine with the Porte penalty because it makes a nice cautionary tale.  The officials didn’t actually see the illegal wheel change, but discovered it because minutes after the race a photo of it circulated over the Internet, being endlessly tweeted and retweeted and retwitted, even by Porte himself. I’m going to tell my kids, “Whenever you see a pal with a camera, DUCK!”

The breakaway is as good as caught.  Just a handful of seconds as the racers make their way at blistering speed across this flat section. 

Contador is going for a time bonus!  An Astana guy is fighting him for it!  But Contador’s totally got it!  Man, he’s leaving nothing to chance.  Contador is already 2:28 up on Aru in the GC; is way stronger; and doesn’t really have any legitimate challenger beyond that.  Currently third on GC is Andrey Amador (Movistar Team), whom I’ve never heard of in my life.  Uran won’t be fourth at the end of today.  The GC battle is getting pretty dull.

You know how the race officials should handle all the complaints about their penalty for Porte?  They should completely turn it around and say, “Hey, when it comes to draconian decision, we’re just getting going!  To make this race more exciting, we’re going to make Contador do the rest of the race while holding a tennis ball in his mouth.  And Astana has to give over one of its riders to Saxo-Tinkoff!”

They’re showing Ryder Hesjedal now.  He’s wearing some seriously micky-mouse sunglasses, a sartorial decision so distracting I can’t tell whether he’s off the front or off the back. 

It’s got to be hard for team managers.  Astana’s got six riders in the lead group, and yet my money is on Contador today, to beat them all, and possibly even win the stage.  Which means Astana’s looking at their doping budget and saying, “The worse these guys do, the more dope they’re getting.  It’s like we’re rewarding mediocrity!  Maybe we should make them earn their drugs.  But of course, they can’t win clean.  It’s a real conundrum.”

Hesjedal is definitely off the back, over a minute behind the lead group.

Man, this grade is insane!  Astana continues drilling it.  The lead group has shrunk considerably. I do see Kruijswijk in there, who rode well in stage 8, but he’s like 11 minutes down on the GC.  Maybe he’ll climb into the top ten today if he stays in contact.

Aru is right on Contador’s wheel. He’s wearing one of those silly nose strips that’s supposed to help his breathing.  You know what?  If those things really worked, you’d see American masters racers using them. These are the guys who read studies about everything.  There’s just something so Euro about being unscientific.  Fricking snake oil.

Man, the lead group is down to eight guys!  Amador is in there. Kruijswijk is still there too, sitting on the back, looking pretty miserable.  I think it’s pretty silly to see a group of eight, with three out of the front four guys all on Astana.  It’s like US Postal all over again.  There hasn’t been a non-Astana guy on the front since Contador’s time-bonus sprint. 

The others in this group are Jurgen Van den Broeck (Lotto Soudal), currently fifth on GC; Carlos Betancur (AG2R La Mondiale), way down in 27th; Kruijswijk; and Leopold Konig (Team Sky), down in 10th; and Yury Trofimov (Team Katusha), all the way down in 54th on GC.  It’ll be a great day for a few of these guys, anyway.  I could try to figure out who the Astana guys are, but do you care?  I don’t.  Okay, I’ll tell you one of them is Mikel Landa, sitting 7th on GC.  Presumably Dario Cataldo (sitting 6th) is there.

Landa attacks!  Contador is right on there.  But Aru is dropped!  Astana’s teamwork, lauded all morning by the announcers, is overrated, I think.  Landa has set up Contador perfectly—and here it is, Contador attacks!  The group is shattered!  With 2.5 km to go, there doesn’t seem to be any group left.  It’s all Contador now, they’re just pulling away!  It’s getting really steep.  Okay, now Aru makes it back, along with ... wow, Aru attacks!  Maybe he was rope-a-doping!  But it’s not too much of an attack, Contador is right on him.

Landa attacks!  Contador jumps right on him.  I cannot imagine what Astana’s strategy is.  It’s like one after another of them are helping Contador spank Aru. It’s not like Contador even needs to respond to these attacks; he’s got almost 5 minutes on Landa.   So to see him react to every attack must just be psychologically devastating to Aru.

Contador is saying something to Aru. We can only guess what.  “That all you got, beyotch?”

Trofimov is trying to solo, and the commentators have nothing to say about this.  Either they didn’t catch his name, or consider his effort hopeless.

Landa attacks!  Just in time for my feed to freeze!  

Contador is finally just hanging back!  Landa is hauling ass!  He’s overtaking Trofimov!  He’s all alone!  He’s got the win!

Trofimov hangs in for second, and Contador slips in for third, picking up a time bonus and thus padding his lead over Aru—and, more importantly, further demoralizing him.

Man, the peloton was just blown to bits today.  Riders are coming over the line one by one.

Landa is being interviewed.  Nothing he’s saying is very interesting.  What I really want to know is whether or not he, Landa, used to be a soap opera star.  He really looks like a soap opera star, doesn’t he?  This is a major compliment for a bike racer, by the way.  So many of them look like they were in sci-fi movies before turning to cycling.

Oh, geez, they’re going to interview Juan Antonio Flecha endlessly now.  “Do you think these riders get chapped lips?” / “Yes, in all likelihood they do.  When I was racing as a pro, I myself did often have chapped lips.”  / “Are they allowed to use Chapstick?”  /  “Yes, but not Carmex.” /  “I see that a rider won the race today. Is that typical, for somebody to win?” / “Yes, you see that a lot in this sport.”  / “Do you think Landa went faster than the others?” / “Yes, that seems to have been his tactic.” / “Do you think it’s okay for you to wear a pink button-down shirt for every one of these interviews?”  / “Yes, I am very secure in my masculinity.”

Leopold Konig moves up to 5th in the GC today and will be the new team leader.  Porte, meanwhile, will be made to fetch his slippers and fluff his pillow.

Landa is getting his podium kisses but doesn’t look very happy about it.  Perhaps he’s thinking, “My wife is going to be pissed.”

Well, I could hang around and watch Aru get his white jersey for best young rider, and listen to Flecha say insightful things like, “Yes, Aru is young, and he is fast, and that is why he gets to wear a white jersey,” but I really have to micturate.  Thanks for tuning in!