Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2018 Tour de France Stage 16

Introduction

Of course there are many ways for you to enjoy the Tour de France, or at least try. My blog has the distinction of whimsy: if I feel like casting aspersions on this or that rider, I will. Professional announcers and sportswriters obviously aren’t allowed to do that. I’m sure they bite their tongues a lot because of a certain team that likes to dope. So read on for my biased blow-by-blow of Stage 16, Carcasonne to Bagnères-de-Luchon, which includes two Category 4 climbs, a Cat 2, and two Cat 1s toward the end. It’s not a summit finish, but the last descent is steep and only 10 kilometers. An important stage!

Tour de France 2018 Stage 16, Carcasonne to Bagnères-de-Luchon

As I join the action, Philippe Gilbert (Quick-Step Floors) has just stacked! I missed the actual footage because I am making pour-over coffee. What a bitch that is. Anyway, Gilbert looks like he’s okay—while getting back on his bike he actually gave the camera a thumbs-up. Oh, cool, an instant replay. Check it out!

Now, for you bike racing newbs, it’s not “GIL-bert.” It’s “zhil-BEAR.” So just stop it with the Gilbert Grape jokes. He gets some attention from his team car. Looks like some pretty painful road rash.

So there was some strange action earlier: a bunch of farmers went on strike and blocked the race. I’m not making this up. The police were nailing the protestors with pepper spray, and several riders were accidently sprayed, including the yellow jersey (Geraint Thomas, Team Sky) and current second place overall rider Chris Froome (also Sky). Tom Brailsford, ever vigilant, has cried foul and accused the farmers of conspiring to hamper his Sky team. Yes, I made that up, though Brailsford is just the kind of tool who would do such a thing. Hey Brailsford, you and me, let’s go! I’ll meet you at the flagpole!

The leaders have 53 kilometers to go and are climbing the Cat 1 Col de Menté (which translates Cool Mint). (No it doesn’t.) We’ve got three leaders, including George Hincapie. LOL! Just kidding! I’m not that old … I can still keep the names straight, though my footage is all in French. So the three leaders are Warren Barguil (Team Fortuneo-Samsic), Robert Gesink (Lotto NL-Jumbo), and Damiano Caruso (BMC Racing). They’ve got 17 seconds over current King of the Mountains Julian Alaphilippe (Quick-Step Floors) and some other dudes. There is a breakaway of more than 40 guys a bit behind them. At what point do you call that the peloton, and declare that the GC leaders are off the back?

I think the leaders are pretty tired from the Giro d’Italia. They keep letting these giant breakaways get waaaaay up the road.

Here’s Gesink. I’ve always liked him. He doesn’t win much, but he once broke his femur. That means if we ever met I could say, “Hey, I broke my femur too!” and we’d have something to talk about. We could compare physical therapy stories, etc.

Now, before we get too far into the action, I do want to pause here for a moment and apologize to Team Sky. I  have dealt with them unfairly. In my report of the last stage, I wrote that …

Okay, Barguil is dropped. Gesink and Caruso are just too strong for him.

Anyway, I wrote in my last report, “Team Sky has the weirdest, ugliest costumes ever for this Tour.” Actually, I didn’t write that, I just realized, looking back. I only thought it. But I’ll apologize now for even thinking it. The jerseys are ugly, but it turns out it’s for a good reason: there’s some sea creature depicted on their jerseys as part of some nature conservation species protection thing. I am totally in support of such philanthropy, even if it’s just a way for the filthiest, most dishonest team in the sport (perhaps in all of sports) to try to placate the public and burnish their image.

Gesink and Caruso are 1 kilometer from the submit of this minty penultimate climb. They’ve got only 25 seconds over the chasing group, though, so they’re probably doomed. It’s a long way (over 47 kilometers) from the finish.

Out of nowhere, Alaphillipe catches Caruso and Gesink and takes the KOM points at the summit, and then totally dusts everybody on the descent. Balls like King Kong, that guy! NOOICE!

So, in case you’ve been ignoring this Tour, maybe nursing a World Cup hangover, let me fill you in on the race thus far. Froome enters the rice totally fried from his extraterrestrial performance in the Giro d’Italia, where he rode poorly for the first couple weeks of the race and then did like a 50-kilometer solo breakaway and destroyed everybody. So yeah, he’s super tired now.

Did you catch that, just now? That sophisticated literary technique I employed, that you’ll never get from mainstream sportswriters? Yes, it was irony. I stated that Froome was totally fried, which is of course absurd. He’s never fried, really. He’s far, far too lubed for that. Only bad luck can keep him from winning his fifth Tour.

He’s actually had some bad luck in this year’s race, crashing a couple times and losing time on the flatter stages. He sits 1:39 back from his teammate Thomas, a track pursuit rider who reinvented himself as a stage racer (with a little help from the Sky doctor) and then reinvented himself again as a climber, winning the brutal stage over the Hors-Categorie Col de la Croix de Fer and Alpe d’Huez climbs. The media is pretending there is a rivalry between Thomas and Froome, a tug-of-war over team leadership, but that’s all nonsense. Froome is slated to win this Tour. It’s practically written into his contract.

Third on GC is Tom Dumoulin (Sunweb), eleven seconds behind Froomestrong. On paper it looks like Dumoulin could be a strong contender, because there’s still a time trial coming up and he’s the reigning world champ in that discipline. That being said, Froome—a reedy, willowy, ghastly, gaunt, ungainly climber—has the uncanny ability to beat time trial specialists at their own game when required. Also, Dumoulin—whom I suppose is clean—is probably going to crack at some point. Fate does not jam. Sky and Froome do not lose.

The rest of the GC is in tatters. Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida) crashed out with a broken vertebra, having stacked four kilometers from the summit of Alpe d’Huez and then having valiantly chased back to limit his losses. Man, that guy has a high pain threshold. Riche Porte (BMC Racing) also crashed out, on Stage 9 (the same stage he crashed out last year). Rigoberto Uran (EF Education First – Drapac), last year’s Tour runner-up, also crashed out. Nairo Quintana (Movistar Team) has lost a bunch of time, maybe due to crashes or maybe just being at the wrong end of a split or two. So despite not having the yellow jersey yet, Froome has caught a lot of lucky breaks in this Tour.

The GC group is on the descent. There are still five Sky riders in this group, notwithstanding the four categorized climbs the race has gone over and this being the third week of the Tour. This is simply because Sky management is really good at recruiting, according to one of my online correspondents. It really has nothing to do with doping. This is not US Postal all over again. Don’t worry, we’re all good!

Everybody is doing a really long descent so there’s not that much to report, other than my dismay at some of the French TV ads I’m watching. It appears that, notwithstanding the success of the self-help book French Women Don’t Get Fat, there does now seem to be a market in France for weight-loss products such as ready-made frozen lite dinners and, bizarrely, this vibrating fat-melter:

There are also lots of ads for over-the-counter pharmaceuticals whose purpose I cannot grasp, my French being too poor. And there appear to be purpose-specific shaving creams. One is apparently for shaving your chest. Another ad shows this guy with the Don Johnson stubble admiring his reflection, then squirting the shaving gel into his hand, and then—incongruously—admiring his reflection again with the stubble still intact. So … what did he shave? His palms? Hmmmmm.

So the two leaders have extended their gap to over a minute on the chase group. Very impressive! The GC group is hovering at a little under 12 minutes back, Sky lined out on the front tirelessly. A bunch of dudes who fell off the breakaway are now absorbed like the disgusting fluids that collect in that spongy little pad in a Styrofoam pack of Tyson chicken parts.

Movistar comes to the front, perhaps looking to set up Mikel Landa or Quintana for an attack.

The scenery footage has gotten a lot better in recent years. I think they have multiple helicopters now. Or maybe as I age I’m just more receptive to the sublimity of nature and so forth.

The leaders have 20 kilometers to go. They’re at the base of the Cul du Portillon, a fairly beastly Category 1 climb. The gap to the GC group has dropped to about 10 minutes. At some point Caruso and Gesink were caught by the chasers, probably during one of the commercials. Man, there are a lot of them. Here’s the profile of the climb:

Barguil detonates! He’s going backward now. So is Mathias Frank (AG2R La Mondiale), who has surely done a lot of work today for team leader Romain Bardet, who sits 5th on GC, 3:21 back. When a domestique works hard for a teammate and then blows up and gets dropped, that looks clean to me. Just sayin’.

Man, Gesink is really drilling it on the front!

He’s got a gap now with Domenico Pozzovivo (Bahrain-Merida). Back in the field, Astana and Movistar are moving their guys up into position. Maybe we’ll get some good attacks here.

OMG, my brother, who is visiting, just clocked his head on this jutting-out ceiling bit above the stairs down into the home office! My dad once said, “If this were my house I would put foam rubber there.” I replied, “It’s my house and I just watch where I’m going.” No, I didn’t say that. I wanted to. Anyway, my brother’s head is fine apparently. Still, I’m going to outfit him with a helmet for the rest of his visit. I’m taking the time to explain all this because my Internet race feed has gone away so there’s really nothing else I can report on at the moment. Dang, it’s not coming back! I’m starting to get worried.

There’s some ad that requires the Flash player, which I don’t have, which stops my feed cold. When I re-launch the page I have to watch American commercials, which are even worse than French ones.

My feed is back, and Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) is off the front solo!

Behind him, Alaphilippe dukes it out with Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo). The giant earlier breakaway has mostly exploded, with maybe six guys left in it.  

Yates is rocking black socks with white shoes. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Actually, I am: I don’t like it. It’s completely backwards. But he’s really haulin’ ass, and I like that!

Now it’s another American commercial, this time for a Star Wars themed Disney Cruise Line cruise. The end of civilization is officially here. The center cannot hold.

So, Yates has only 22 seconds over Alaphilippe as he crosses the summit, but it’s downhill all the way to the finish. It’s gonna be a nail-biter because Alaphilippe is a great descender. If Alaphilippe catches Yates, who’s the better sprinter?

Imagine the pressure on these guys. Alaphilippe cuts a perfect line through a sharp curve, meaning he comes this close to grazing a rock guardrail.

OMG! Yates stacks!

Alaphilippe is in the lead now, tucking in a way that presents maximum risk to his giant testicles.

Yates isn’t that far behind Alaphilippe, considering. I’m amazed he (apparently) wasn’t hurt, crashing at that speed. Presumably he has a massive amount of adrenaline to work with now, anyway. He’s 10 seconds behind, and 16 seconds ahead of the chasers. These guys are flying down this thing, 80 kph (almost 50 mph).

Jon Izagirre Insausti (Bahrain-Merida) has caught Yates. Alaphilippe is only 1.7 kilometers from the finish and is hammering along the flats now.

He flashes the camera a grin. He’s under the 1K banner now and looks to have this in the bag! He hammers toward the line and starts waving to the crowd. Big old grin. Keeps looking over his shoulder like they always do—“Is this for real, do I really have this?” He does! He’s got the win!

A few others come across, and then a bit behind them is Yates. He must be sooooo bummed. I wonder if this is mixed with relief that he wasn’t hurt. Probably not … that’s just me being a parent. I don’t enjoy watching the descents like I used to. I used to watch and think, “I could do that. I could hang with those guys on that downhill.” Now I think, “Oh, be careful you guys!”

A fellow rider congratulates Alaphilippe. I wonder if they mind the armpit stench.

It looks like the GC group is over the summit without any fireworks. There’s a guy whose job it is to decide what footage is worth showing. (I know this because I once had that job, for ESPN covering the Coors Classic.) Evidently nobody in the GC group was doing any attacking, so this person decided to use the footage of the stage leaders on the descent. Good call, since that really was riveting.

So, a cycling fan who hasn’t raced, or a commentator who is going senile, might fault riders like Dumoulin and Bardet for not attacking Team Sky on the final climb. “They’re not taking enough initiative and they’re just letting Sky win,” this untutored rube or age-addled pundit might say. This is completely false. It’s one thing to know what you have to do, but quite another to actually do it. How can you attack Sky when they’re setting such a high pace you’re almost going out the back?

The GC group comes through. It’s down to 14 guys, and four of them are Sky riders. That’s not suspicious or anything, though. I’m sure Team Sky just tries harder, eh? They just have more heart. They care more. They’re not as lazy as the other teams. Uh-huh. Anyhow, needless to say there is no change in the GC from today’s stage.

They’re interviewing Alaphilippe. “I almost didn’t start today,” he explains. “My wife called from home, and it seems our cat was lost this morning. She’s having her folks stay with her while I’m gone, and the cat got a little spooked. She was a stray, you see, and very skittish. So my wife was biking all over the neighborhood yelling ‘Freya, Freya!’ Neighbors would ask, ‘Did you lose a pet?’ And she’d reply, ‘No, I’m just talking to myself.’ Anyway, I was all set to fly home to help in the search, but then the cat turned up. She was hiding under the stairs. I’m so glad I stayed and raced because this is a beautiful victory.”

To be honest, I’m not at all sure I translated that correctly. In fact, I guessed quite a bit. Okay, full disclosure: I couldn’t understand a word he said. As I said before, my French is poor, and Alaphilippe was mumbling a bit and I have the volume turned low because the family is sleeping. That thing with the cat? That actually happened to me. It’s as close as I’ll ever get to riding the Tour.

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Biased Commentary - Could Chris Froome Be Innocent?

Introduction

I enjoy posting “biased blow-by-blow” reports of World Tour bicycle races. I label them “biased” because I when I think a rider is doped I can’t bear to bite my tongue like real journalists and commentators do. And, being just a blogger, I don’t have to.

Needless to say, I have never given Christopher Froome, nor his Sky team, the benefit of the doubt. And, with Froome returning an “adverse analytical finding” (i.e., a positive test) for twice the allowed amount of salbutamol, I seem to have my perennial accusations validated. Not surprisingly, Froome came right out and said, “Yes, I have been cheating all along—and I’ve let down my team, my sponsors, my fans, and my sport, and I am really sorry.”

No, of course he didn’t say that! Like so many dopers who get caught, he’s professing innocence (in the standard-issue tricky language, “I haven’t broken any rules”).  So I’m going to examine his nascent defense and the possibility that he’s actually innocent. And I’m going to be as fair as possible (with the caveat that of course I’m biased). And for those of you who (quite reasonably) are too jaded and cynical to care about Froome, I’ll examine what all this means to the sport.

In case this sounds boring and like ground that’s been covered before, I promise my analysis will be different. For one thing I’ll be pulling in some experts, like the philosophers William of Ockham, Karl Popper, and Marshall Mathers (aka Eminem).

Petitio principii

Because I’m biased, I need to be careful not to commit a classic logical fallacy, petitio principii, otherwise known as “begging the question” or “circular reasoning.” This fallacy occurs when the argument depends on the truth of a premise that is also the conclusion (usually in a disguised form). It’s an absurdly blatant kind of fallacy, but pops up surprisingly often.

Here’s how this would apply to Froome. We start with the premise that he’s a doping, cheating scumbag. Add to that his positive test. Since the test confirms what we already knew (i.e., that he was a doper), we know we can trust the test. And since a trustworthy test produced a positive, he is by definition guilty of doping.

Like many poor arguments, this one is one-sided. That is, it might stoke the coals of other Froome-bashers, but it’s not likely to win over any converts. So it’s non-useful and I won’t use it.

In Froome’s defense

Some riders have come out against Froome with statements that are lame enough to inspire a backlash. For example, Tim Wellens described his own refusal to use inhalers, even though doctors have told him it would help with his bronchial obstruction. “I could improve my breathing capacity by 7 or 8 per cent... but I'm against inhalers. If the public knew the number of riders who have an inhaler… it's enormous.” Another rider, Mathieu van der Poel, was more blunt: “Maybe asthma patients will understand the case better, but cycling and all sports in general are for healthy people.”

I’m not an “asthma patient,” but I do have bronchospasm, which is what afflicts so many cyclists. It’s not chronic the way true asthma is, but involves asthma-like symptoms during hard exercise (which is why it’s often called “exercise-induced asthma”). It’s more common among athletes than the general population, and it’s more common among cyclists than any other athlete. The reason is that cyclists move huge amounts of air through their respiratory systems, without the benefit of it going through their nasal passages to be warmed up and filtered. We can ride for hours at a time, day after day, and cold, damp, or polluted air, or very hot, dry air, can inflame our bronchial passages. (Mountain bikers have bronchospasm more commonly than roadies because of all the dust and dirt.)

I speak from experience when I say Wellens isn’t grasping the benefit of an inhaler. Without it, I will start wheezing ten minutes into my bike ride, which will hamper my performance (far more than 7 or 8 percent) for the whole ride. It’s unfair for van der Poel to accuse me, or any cyclist with bronchospasm, of being an unhealthy person. I’m totally unafflicted by breathing problems unless I’m riding regularly (which is, of course, my lifestyle).

That said, using an inhaler doesn’t give me special breathing powers; it just neutralizes a possible barrier to my normal respiratory function. It won’t give an edge to any person unafflicted by bronchospasm, any more than Viagra will make a sexual dynamo out of a person unafflicted by erectile dysfunction. As Dr. John Dickinson, an expert on asthma, states in this article, “We know that therapeutic doses of inhalers don’t touch performance, so if you’re a non-asthmatic taking a couple of puffs of salbutamol, it’s not going to do anything for you.”

Wait ... not so fast

The person I just quoted was talking about inhaled salbutamol. In the doses inhalers provide, this drug does a great job at reducing if not eliminating the inflammation that dogs bronchospasm sufferers, without conferring any unfair advantage. But taken in high doses through other means, drugs like salbutamol certainly can. According to this article, “Oral or injected beta 2-agonists can have anabolic effects and are banned in and out of competition.” Greg LeMond told Cyclingnews, “Taken orally or by injection [salbutamol] acts as an anabolic steroid, similar to clenbuterol, the drug that Alberto Contador was positive for.”

It’s not outlandish to assert that a very large dose of a drug can affect you in an entirely different way than a small dose. If you take the normal dose of Latisse, you’ll enjoy longer eyelashes. If you take the normal dose of Lumigan, you’ll effectively treat your glaucoma by lowering intraocular pressure. But guess what? They’re exactly the same drug! Only the dosage is different. So you see, one man’s side effect is another man’s performance-enhancing drug. This is why there’s a legal limit on salbutamol.

How was Froome using salbutamol?

According to this article, “Froome will argue that he took three puffs of his inhaler just before providing his sample to anti-doping after stage 18 of the Vuelta.” I’m not sure exactly where this assertion came from but it’s backed up by this quote from Froome: “I have a clear routine when I use my inhaler and how many times I use it. I've given all that information to the UCI to help get to the bottom of this." (Click here for the context.)

Naturally Froome would like us all to believe he took this drug the normal, therapeutic way, by inhaling it. As Cyclingnews explains, “Inhaled, [beta 2-agonists] are not considered performance enhancing. Inhaled doses are allowed in competition without a TUE at doses up to 1600 micrograms over 24 hours or 800 micrograms every 12 hours.”

Froome’s adverse analytical finding (AAF) is the result of having double the allowed amount of salbutamol in his system. That’s a lot, because the legal limit is very generous. I can say this with some authority because the amount of albuterol I need is just 180 mcg—less than a quarter of the legal limit.

Beyond my personal experience, I’ve been around road and mountain bike racers for decades, and I’ve done some calculations based on the most salbutamol I have ever known a person to take. During a full-blown bronchospasm attack, clearly audible to anybody in a 50-foot radius, this person needed two 90-mcg puffs, having taken the standard 2-puff preventive dose before the exercise. So that's a total of four puffs, which is 360 mcg. (All these inhalers provide the same dose.) Simple math tells us Froome would have had to take 18 puffs on his inhaler to reach twice the legal limit.

Giving Froome the benefit of the doubt, let’s suppose he really did get all his salbutamol via inhaler. What might that look like? Suppose he took two preventive puffs before the race, and then forgot he’d done so, and took two more. And let’s say that for some reason he had some breathing problems anyway, but that nobody heard him wheezing, maybe because of all the cheering fans, and nobody saw him use his inhaler during the race because he’s always surrounded by and thus eclipsed by his Sky teammates. So he was able to take a couple more puffs without being seen. That’s six total. And that’s a lot. The person I witnessed having four puffs total suffered jitters and shakes and was not comfortable and probably would have hesitated, to say the least, to take any more salbutamol.

But let’s say Froome is just tough as nails and shook off these side effects ... we’re still only at six puffs. Remember, the legal limit works out to 18 puffs ... so we’re supposed to believe that he took a dozen more puffs, all without anybody noticing, because the wheezing still wasn’t controlled? This seems pretty damn unlikely. Froome would like everyone to believe that the legal limit is really low, so an accidental overuse of the inhaler (e.g., one puff too many) could put him over ... but the numbers say otherwise.

Drug level detected vs. ingested

The rest of Froome’s defense centers around a possible discrepancy between the amount of salbutamol detected in his urine and what he actually used. As described here, “The threshold of 1000ng/ml was set by a scientific study, but metabolism of the drug varies greatly from person to person. In cases of an AAF exceeding the threshold for inhaled salbutamol, athletes can submit to a pharmacological study of their metabolism of the drug to try to prove exceeding the dose was unintentional.”

The logical explanation for a higher concentration of the drug in a rider’s urine (mentioned in two of these articles) is dehydration. Is it plausible Froome was just really, really dehydrated on stage 18 of the Vuelta, when he returned the AAF? Well, two circumstances suggest otherwise. First, he had a great race, cementing his lead over Vincenzo Nibali. I, for one, do not ride well when I’m so dehydrated as to return double the concentration of any substance I could (hypothetically) be tested for. Second, according to the Cyclingnews blow-by-blow report, the temperature was only 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) that morning, and two other riders commented on it being generally rainy toward the end of that Vuelta. (That’s about all I can glean about the weather.) If Froome has always meticulously followed the same salbutamol dosing regimen—“I have a clear routine when I use my inhaler and how many times I use it,” he told Cyclingnews—then how has he not had an AAF for salbutamol at any time in his decade-long career when he’s surely been tested after very long, hot days on the road that would have left him dedydrated?

But you know what? We could spend an eternity considering the various possible factors that could lead to the test results being so far off, and that’s the wrong approach. If you’re asking, “Who says?” then my answer is, “Philosophers.”

Ockham’s razor

Scientists—including Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, and Albert Einstein—have long made use of a heuristic principle known as Ockham’s razor, devised by the philosopher William of Ockham. As described by Wikipedia, “His principle states that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected or when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better.... One justification of Occam’s razor is a direct result of basic probability theory. By definition, all assumptions introduce possibilities for error; if an assumption does not improve the accuracy of a theory, its only effect is to increase the probability that the overall theory is wrong.” 

If we apply this principle retroactively in assessing past doping cases, its reliability is almost comically obvious. What makes more sense: the complicated notion that Tyler Hamilton had a chimera (i.e., a vanishing twin that got lost in the womb) that produced a false positive for foreign blood population—or that he doped? Which seems more probable: that Alberto Contador got clenbuterol from beef brought to him all the way from Spain by a friend—or that he cheated? Which better passes the sanity test: that Floyd Landis drank over 60 bottles of water during a single Tour stage because he was just really, really thirsty, and he returned a positive test because the lab was totally incompetent—or that he doped?

Theories that defy the Occam’s razor principle usually start with some version of, “Wait, there must be some other explanation.” Let’s look beyond cycling history. Consider the song “Guilty Conscience” by Eminem. A scenario is laid out: “Meet Grady, a twenty-nine year old construction worker. After coming home from a hard day’s work, he walks in the door of his trailer park home to find his wife in bed with another man.” Eminem has an interior debate with his conscience, which is voiced by Dr. Dre.

Dr. Dre: “Wait! What if there's an explanation for this shit?”

Eminem: “What? She tripped? Fell? Landed on his dick?!”

Here again, the most likely scenario is also the simplest. Grady’s wife has cuckolded him.

How applicable is Ockham’s razor to Froome’s defense? Well, considering that Froome’s urine level showed twice the limit, and that the limit is so very generous to begin with, and that he hasn’t yet advanced any specific counter-theories for the test being so far off, and that the obvious dehydration explanation doesn’t match the circumstances of the race, doesn’t the idea that he’s somehow innocent seem a lot more complicated than the very simple notion that yet another pro cyclist cheated?

Karl Popper

Karl Popper, a widely esteemed philosopher of science, weighs in on Ockham’s razor in a way that provides more food for thought on the topic of drug testing in sport. Again according to Wikipedia, “Popper argues that a preference for simple theories ... may be justified by its falsifiability criterion: we prefer simpler theories to more complex ones ‘because their empirical content is greater; and because they are better testable’ (Popper 1992).”

“Falsifiability” is a key concept to have in mind when we consider doping in sport. Falsifiability is the idea that a proposition is more believable if its veracity can be determined simply and equivocally through a test. For example, the statement “all swans are white” can be proven false by producing a black swan. Popper cites falsifiability as the “demarcation criterion,” such that “what is unfalsifiable is classified as unscientific.”

Team Sky principal David Brailsford made a grand statement that doesn’t begin to meet the falsifiability standard: “I have the utmost confidence that Chris followed the medical guidance in managing his asthma symptoms, staying within the permissible dose for salbutamol.” Brailsford is countering the existing falsifiable evidence with sheer emphasis, without employing any falsifiable evidence of his own, because nobody has even begun the process of creating a convincing alternative explanation to the AAF. His defense, strident though it may be,  is utterly theoretical at this point, so it’s not even as solid as “She tripped, fell, landed on his dick.” Drug testing is built on the principle of falsifiability, but guys like Brailsford get to counter them with vague what-ifs.

Returning to petitio principii

Look, I’ll be honest: I love the idea of Froome being given three puffs of salbutamol, starved of water, and then placed in a sauna—and then having this procedure repeated over and over again until he manages to produce a urine sample with twice the legal limit of salbutamol. I’d rather watch him do that than win another bike race, frankly. But it’s wrong to indulge him.

Why? Well, I started this essay by promising not to engage in a petitio principii argument that conflates the conclusion with a key premise. But that’s exactly Brailsford is doing by assuming that if Froome’s test returned an AAF, the fault must be with the test. The credibility of Brailsford’s whole team suffers when he automatically takes Froome’s side instead of suspending him from competition. Meanwhile, the credibility of cycling suffers when a rider who fails a drug test gets to keep racing because he is on a wealthy team and has a loud, powerful boss. (Whether or not that is exactly what is going on here is immaterial; this is how it looks to the world.)

No rider above the legal limit for salbutamol has ever escaped suspension by successfully establishing, after the fact, that he could produce an AAF after taking a legal dose. And no rider has surpassed this legal limit as egregiously as Froome. I look forward to the day Froome is finally brought down, but the circus we spectators will have to endure in the meantime will be even uglier than his doped-to-the-gills race “victories.”

Oh, and one other thing: doped or not, Froome is a jerk.

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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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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!

Contador and Bardet regroup. Man, Lopez is gone! He just straight-up vacated! I don’t think there’s any question of him catching Yates now.

Sure enough, the gap to Yates is down to 33 seconds. Lopez looks really, really strong. I’m not sure how much leash the GC group will give him, but he could move into the top 5 on GC at this rate. I guess everything could change if a GC contender (say, Nibali) actually attacked Froome, I mean for real, none of this silly testing-the-waters stuff, but that’s almost impossible in the modern era, as we all know.

Lopez is only 11 seconds behind Yates. And he’s macking it! And just like that, he’s got him.

Man, he closed that gap like nothing! But Yates has jumped right on … maybe he was saving something up there.

Oh, man. I sure got that wrong. Yates detonates!

Uh oh. Yates isn’t the only one having problems.

Looks like I’ll have to settle for a Spanish-language feed from here on out. And a spotty one at that. It freezes constantly.

With under 3km to go, Lopez has 57 seconds on … well, could be the chasers, or the peloton. I can’t tell. Okay, looks like the chase group got caught. So now it’s Lopez off the front, and Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha Alpecin) has attacked ahead of the GC group.

Wow, Zakarin is really motoring! I guess he is looking to increase or protect his GC position.

Contador has been dropped from the GC group. Wow, Aru is getting dropped, too!

Lopez is on the final switchback! And he’s got the win!

Zakarin crosses the line 35 seconds behind. Maybe with this he will make into the top 3 on GC.

The GC group, in tatters, blathers over the line. Can a group blather? Yes, though I guess you’ll have to take my word for it. No, they weren’t talking. But it was a blather. Straight-up blather.

“It was a big day, and lived up to its billing, don’t you think?” the other announcer asks Kelly. “Yes, well, it was a big day, but [because Sky is too dominant, it was actually totally fricking boring],” Kelly replies. No, that’s not verbatim but you get the gist.

Why do I watch this sport? It’s pretty futile hoping something unexpected will happen. It’s always the same … either Froome wins the stage outright, or Sky lets some GC no-hoper have a bit of stage glory while locking down the group of contenders to make sure Froome has no problem hanging on to the GC lead. About the most I could really hope for is a freak accident that disrupts the essentially fated outcome.

It’s kind of like how, back when I got the newspaper, I’d read all the comics, even the really stupid ones like “Family Circus.” I knew it was pointless, that I was just wasting my time, but somehow I held out hope that one day, one of these comics would actually be funny. And they never were. At least the grand tours have a bit better track record; after all, this year’s Giro was actually quite exciting, particularly because the race lead changed hands due to a mid-race toilet emergency. We were all on pins and needles wondering if Dumoulin could make up the minute or so he lost trying to take a dump. Maybe somebody needs to slip Team Sky some powerful laxatives at some point. Maybe then we’d have a real bike race.

Well, they’re interviewing Juan Antonio Flecha now, so I’ve officially lost my patience. You know what, Vuelta a España? Just shove it.

Okay, I guess I’ll sit through Lopez’s interview. “My team was amazing. The route was really hard. I am happy.” Funny… he sure doesn’t look happy. Maybe that’s because he’s just realized how totally hackneyed his interview responses have been. “What would my speech teacher say?” he might be thinking. “I’m a total failure as a public speaker!”

Here is the stage result.

And here’s the new GC. Sure enough, Zakarin has made the (virtual) podium.

If Froomie doesn’t dominate Tuesday’s time trial too badly, I might be back to cover the final mountain stage, up the Angliru, on September 9. So stay tuned. Or not. Whatever.

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