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.

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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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