2023 Vuelta - Jumbo Visma & the Kuss Conundrum

Introduction

It’s been a hell of a Vuelta a España. Not since Vuelta del Taco Truck have I been so enthralled. Not that it’s a particularly close race lately—Team Jumbo Visma is dominating—but there’s some intrigue within the team. As I write this, the American Sepp Kuss is still leading the GC, but with just a handful of seconds over his teammate, recent Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard. Kuss is only another minute ahead of another teammate, recent Giro d’Italia winner Primoz Roglic.

The really weird thing is, Kuss’s lead has been dropping a bit, stage after stage, because his own teammates have been attacking. A member of my bike club emailed the group, “Can one of you armchair directors sportif explain today’s stage of the Vuelta in which 2 guys on the GC leader’s team attack him on the final climb? I’m struggling to find a charitable explanation.” By the time you read this, things may have changed, but I want to follow my pal’s prompt and investigate this weirdness from this particular moment in time, right after the Angliru stage, when the team still has the opportunity to decide how to conduct itself, with Kuss still in the red jersey. I have developed some theories.

Theory #1: it’s just the hierarchy

It could be that Team Jumbo Visma is simply too risk-averse to shake up the established hierarchy for no good reason. Not that they don’t have good reason, from my perspective as a fan. I mean, I think rewarding a very loyal domestique, who some commentators are saying may be the best mountain domestique in the history of the sport, is actually a good reason to challenge the established pecking order. But this team is about winning races, not just being cool. Roglic has won the Vuelta three times, Vingegaard has won two Tours de France, and the team can be confident these guys won’t falter in the final week, or buckle under the responsibility of finishing out the job. As a GC leader, Kuss is an unknown entity.

Beyond tactics, this hierarchy could extend into the messier realm of unconscious bias, like an unofficial caste system in the sport. Consider the label domestique. It wasn’t until I was talking about bike racing with some recovering journalists recently that I thought much about this term. I was just trying to tell the story of Kuss pounding champagne after his brilliant stage win (more on this later), but—with the curiosity befitting journalists—my friends backed me up and said wait, wait, wait. … support riders are actually called domestiques? It really is an ungenerous term, like calling your teammates “the help.” In this light, the sport really does promote elitism. Meanwhile, it surely takes a massive ego to be a Grand Tour winner and perhaps guys like Vingegaard and Roglic take it as an article of faith that they’re simply superior to their staff, occupying a more rarified realm. (“Kuss?! That motherscratcher? He’s never even made the final podium!”) If that’s their feeling, the idea of this (albeit strong) domestique becoming a GC winner is just preposterous and cannot be allowed.

From this hierarchical viewpoint, even letting Kuss ride hard in the Stage 10 time trial was actually charitable.  Don’t forget that Floyd Landis, while in his last year of service to Lance Armstrong, was severely punished for riding too fast in a Tour time trial (instead of saving his energy for his support role in the later stages). Although Floyd professed his innocence—“I was going easy, I’m just really strong!”—Lance threw a fit and flushed Floyd’s blood bag down the toilet, right in front of him, to remind him who was boss. (No, I did not make that up. It really happened. It’s in Tyler Hamilton’s book.)

By the way, Kuss was a good sport after the Angliru stage, congratulating his two teammates on, well, beating him.

Theory #2: no gifts

During one of his Tour “victories,” Lance let Marco Pantani win the Mount Ventoux stage, which was an unpopular move with everyone. In the press conference post-race, Lance casually mentioned he’d only cared about the GC, basically announcing the gift, and Pantani was offended and said so. There was more backlash because Lance could have just been making an excuse instead of admitting Pantani was stronger, and for this reason Lance himself came to regret his professed generosity. Many Pantani fans felt ripped off, too, like there was an unnecessary asterisk next to their hero’s win. Well, the next time Lance had the opportunity to win a stage, when he already had the GC in the bag, he took that opportunity, and during the podium celebration the former five-time Tour champ Bernard Hinault said to him, “That’s right: no gifts.”

Hinault lived by this ethos himself. Prior to the 1986 Tour de France, he announced that he would be working for his teammate, Greg LeMond, to reward him for his past support. It would be like passing the baton. But in the actual race, Hinault totally attacked LeMond, several times, leading to a big dustup in the media, a real soap opera. When questioned about breaking his word, Hinault shrugged and said something like, “I wanted to make him earn it.” And wasn’t it a better story in the end, that LeMond had to beat everyone, even his friend and teammate, to prove he deserved the Tour title?

Applying this to the current Vuelta is admittedly a bit of a stretch, but perhaps this “make him earn it” notion is a clever story Vingegaard and Roglic are telling themselves because it’s more palatable to them than, say, theory #1.

Theory #3: Plan B

It’s also possible that according to some convoluted tactical logic, to have Vingegaard and Roglic attack is just a way to make sure Jumbo Visma has a plan B for winning the GC if Kuss should happen to falter. Since the time Kuss took the red jersey, Vingegaard has soloed twice. The first time, at least, the Dane wasn’t in great position on GC, having had a poor stage or two. His attack bought him some needed time on his rivals, and after all nothing was preventing Kuss from also attacking and defending his own position (which he did). Such tactics aren’t very nice, of course, but if the overall team directive is to win the GC at all costs, and if Vingegaard and Roglic have the legs, why not?

This wouldn’t be the first time a team put a GC leader’s bid at risk to support a Plan B. In one of the Tours that Lance “won,” his teammate Víctor Hugo Peña crashed in the team time trial, and the team waited for him. I was astonished … Lance was not known for his dedication to the team, to put it lightly. A pal explained to me that Peña was the team leadership’s Plan B for the GC if something happened to Lance, so they needed to keep him from losing time in the TTT.

Jumbo Visma themselves have some experience with Plan B: last year, when Roglic crashed in the Tour and couldn’t perform at his normal level, his support rider Vingegaard had been kept close enough on GC to take over and get the win.

Theory #4: envy

It could be that Vingegaard and Roglic are nursing petty jealousies when it comes to Kuss. I mean, let’s not kid ourselves: Kuss is better looking, has more charisma, is more of a crowd favorite, and as the tireless, loyal domestique is more relatable than these past heroes … and now he gets to lead the Vuelta on top of it all. A real Cinderella story.

In case you don’t take all these claims for granted, let’s look at a couple of Kuss’s endearing exploits. When he won his first Vuelta stage a few years back (and again when he won a stage this year), he did something that American mountain bike racers have done for years: as he headed for the finish line he rode near the fencing at the side of the road and held out his hand to high-five scores of fans. I don’t think these European fans had ever seen anything like it. To see him doing that, a big shit-eating grin on his face … I had tears in my eyes.

And then let’s consider Kuss’s podium celebration after this year’s stage win. He took the standard jumbo-sized bottle of champagne and sprayed the crowd with it, as is customary, but the he went completely off-script. Most cyclists, especially climbers, can barely lift that magnum to their lips, and take a prim little sip. Kuss hefted that bad boy above his head and started just pounding it. Check this out:

It’s kind of amazing how long he went and how much he drank … that would be impressive even for a non-bike-racer. The commentator Christian Vande Velde said admiringly, “You go, boy!”

It’s not just any cyclist who could do this to such good effect. Roglic, who to me looks like a bit of a thug with his swarthiness and amateurish tattoos, might have looked kind of scary pounding the booze. And Vingegaard … God forgive me, but everything about that guy seems a bit weird, so to see him guzzling the champagne might have just seemed, I dunno, a little creepy. But Kuss, with his apple-pie face and boyish charm, and his unassuming persona, and that little surprised, half-suppressed burp at the end, all wrapped up with an exuberant grin ... well, it’s the very epitome of charisma.

Roglic in particular might envy Kuss’s situation enough to want to spoil it. In the 2020 Vuelta, during the last mountain stage, Roglic had a narrow GC lead that was challenged when Richard Carapaz made a sweet solo move. Carapaz needed only like 40 or 45 seconds to unseat Roglic, and things looked dicey for a bit. Uncharacteristically, Kuss was dropped, and another Jumbo Visma domestique had to make his way up and slay himself for Roglic. In this situation, Kuss—though he’d let down his leader in a key moment—didn’t get a lot of attention; his lapse wasn’t that visible because the cameras weren’t on him. Compare this to the one Tour de France that Roglic probably felt he had in the bag, only to spectacularly lose it in the final time trial to the upstart Tadej Pogacar. Roglic will never live that down. And now Kuss, who is leading the Vuelta seemingly by accident, could go on to lose it without any particular disgrace because after all, he didn’t come into the race with any ambition other than to do his normal job of domestique. To Roglic, that might rankle enough to incite an attack or two.

Theory #5: the business people

It’s possible that Vingegaard and Roglic didn’t launch those attacks on their own initiative. The big brass of the team might have ordered them to do it, for financial reasons. After all, if Kuss were to win the Vuelta, he’d be in high demand from other teams and Jumbo Visma might have to raise his salary. If all they care about is one of their members winning the GC, why not make it one of the guys who’s already at the top of the salary scale?

Theory #6: the business people, continued

It’s also possible that the team’s business leaders didn’t like Kuss’s champagne-swilling antics. Perhaps, they feel, this sent the wrong message about the Jumbo Visma team culture. They may have decided his behavior was unprofessional and glamorized the uninhibited consumption of an alcoholic beverage. “Think of the kids! Those poor impressionable youth!” they might be thinking. Perhaps they determined that the less attention Kuss gets from here on out, the better … so he shouldn’t be allowed to win the Vuelta. So they deploy their henchman, Vingegaard and Roglic, to stop him.

Theory #7: nationalism

Ever since the Dubya years, and particularly since the Trump years, the United States hasn’t exactly been the darling of Europe. It also doesn’t help our cause when American tourists like me go around saying things like, “World War II: you’re welcome.” (No, of course I don’t actually say this, but you get the point.) It also didn’t help that Lance took his don’t-mess-with-Texas ethos over there and messed with Europe, handing the Tour (and the sport) its biggest scandal in history. For Vingegaard and Roglic, as helpful as Kuss has been to his team, maybe they’re nursing some unconscious anti-American grudge such that they can’t bring themselves to promote him to the protected rider.

If you’re skeptical about this theory, and haven’t felt like Kuss wears his nationality on his sleeve, consider Exhibit A, his bike travel case:

That really does smack of unbridled patriotism, doesn’t it? I mean, would you use such a loud, brazen product? I sure wouldn’t. With all this in mind, you’ll surely be relieved to learn that (at least to my knowledge) Kuss’s bike case actually looks nothing like this.  I was just messing with you.

Theory #8: it’s not about Kuss

It could be that these attacks actually have nothing to do with Kuss. For all I know, Roglic and Vingegaard are bitter rivals, and their attacks are simply on one another, with Kuss and the rest of the peloton being collateral damage. Or even if the two get along, Roglic could be lashing out at having been kept off the Tour team this year, and wants to show everyone he was wronged, and/or Vingegaard wants to demonstrate that only he could have won the last two Tours.

Theory #9: irrational exuberance

Maybe these riders have been trying to do the right thing and work for Kuss, but they just can’t help themselves. When you’ve got the legs, it’s hard to resist using them. Look at LeMond in the 1985 Tour, attacking Hinault, his team leader. I already mentioned Hinault returning the favor in the 1986 Tour. Then there was Marc Soler up in the breakaway throwing a tantrum during the 2019 Vuelta when his Movistar team called him back to help his leader (i.e., do his fricking job). Sport in general is riddled with reckless, impulsive behavior. Chalk it up to testosterone poisoning.

Theory #10: none of the above

Of course it’s entirely possible there’s a perfectly good reason for these attacks that just isn’t apparent to an armchair directeur sportif like me. For example, Roglic and Vingegaard could be space aliens driven by forces utterly foreign to us humans. That would explain a lot, actually.

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Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2021 Paris-Nice Stage 7

Introduction

It has become harder and harder to watch bike races online for free. Meanwhile, Europe is six to nine hours ahead of the US, and getting up early is hard. Plus, it’s rare to get find interesting (i.e., snarky, honest, judgmental) commentary that can breathe life into a race. That’s why I rise before dawn to provide no-tongue-bitten blow-by-blow reports in (near) real time.

Today I cover the key stage of this year’s Paris-Nice stage race. The race concludes tomorrow, unless (as happened last year) they cancel the final stage due to the pandemic. But they probably won’t, as I’ll get into shortly.

Paris-Nice Stage 7 – Le Broc to Valdeblore la Colmiane

As I join the action, the riders are just over the … crap, I really have no idea where they are. The course profile map means nothing because the course was changed up at the last minute due to COVID concerns. They should call it the Paris-Levens because the race will not actually ever reach Nice. As detailed here, a few days ago the mayor of Nice said, “What? A bike race? In my town?! During lockdown? C’est impossible!” Why he couldn’t have said this weeks or months ago, I have no idea. But I’m good and pissed off because today’s shortened stage—which still finishes atop the Category 1 Valdeblore la Colmiane—will wrap up at about 6:00 a.m. my time. So I had to get up at 4:30 to give this blow-by-blow. You’re welcome.

So the riders are on some unnamed climb. They’ve got 34 kilometers to go. My coffee hasn’t kicked in so it took 6km for me to write that last paragraph. My brain is barely working. The announcer, some Australian guy who always sounds kind of lugubrious, and who is working solo because NBC couldn’t pony up enough money for a second commentator, was just talking about Julian Alaphilippe, who isn’t even in this race, and is now talking about how well sprinters can climb, which of course is completely untrue. So he’s making no sense which isn’t helping me get oriented.

There’s an intermediate sprint and Sam Bennett (Deceuninck-QuickStep) takes it, to pad his lead in the green jersey competition.

Bennett didn’t have to sprint very hard because he’s in a 15-man breakaway that evidently doesn’t feature any other sprinters. He kind of looked back at the others as he easily crushed them, perhaps with an annoyed look like, “Why are you even making me sprint? You know you can’t beat me. Why don’t we all agree those points are mine and skip the sprint, so as not to mess up our rhythm?” Or maybe he thought nothing of the kind, or indeed nothing at all, or something more like “Hulk kill!” because maybe that’s how sprinters’ brains work. I sure as hell wouldn’t know.

The announcer is talking about kits, as in team costumes. He’s using the word over and over again, kit kit kit, as if to deliberately annoy me since (as detailed here) I’m not fond of that term. God, he won’t shut up about it. Kit, kit, kit. I’m going to take a little break here (the coffee is kicking in) and when I get back here, he better be on to another subject!

The breakaway has a little over a minute on the main bunch, and is .pppppppppppppppppppppp87oeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee dang it, my cat is walking across the keyboard. She doesn’t understand why I’m up in what must seem to her like the middle of the night, and it’s got her all stirred up.

So anyway, it’s like a dozen guys in this break. I won’t give their names because a minute six just isn’t enough with 16 km still to go. Here’s what lies ahead … check out this great little road snaking its way up the climb.

The break is starting to fall apart … look at this UAE Team Emirates dude going off the back. It’s David de la Cruz.

Wow, Bennett has totally given up, and just pulls over and stops to let the peloton go by! Yesterday his team was working for him toward the end of the stage and he was in great position until just a few kilometers to go when he just completely detonated and went straight out the back.

It’s 15km to go and the gap to what’s left of the break is down to 47 seconds.

Here’s what’s happened in this stage race so far. In the time trial, some young French guy I’ve never heard of named Stefan Bissegger took the win, wearing a totally ridiculous helmet that is an embarrassment to this—and in fact, all—sport.

Perennial favorite Primoz Roglic (Team Jumbo-Visma) took third in the TT, putting him in striking distance of the GC lead, and right behind him was a young American, Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates)—who handily beat the bizarre, probably sociopathic prima donna Rohan Dennis (Ineos Grenadiers), by the way—and moved into third overall. Alas, McNulty crashed out yesterday.

Then Roglic won stage 4, took the yellow jersey, kept it for stage 5 (which Bennett won, his second stage win), and then triumphed again in stage 6 to pad his lead. He came into this stage with 41 seconds over Max Schachmann (Bora-Hansgrohe), last year’s GC winner. In third is Ion Izagirre (Astana-Premier Tech) at 0:50, with Aleksander Vlasov (also Astana-Premier Tech) in fourth at 0:51. Fifth is an American, Matteo Jorgenson (Movistar Team) at 1:08.

Simon Geschke (Cofidis) attacks the field. Pretty sweet attack—he’s got a big gap right away.

I know that’s a pretty lousy photo I managed to get—I’m doing my best—but at least you can see Geschke’s beard. You might think a beard would slow a rider down due to the poor aerodynamics, but I’ve actually found through firsthand experience that a beard makes you faster. Probably my best ride at the Everest Challenge was when I was rocking a beard (though not as sweet as Geschke’s).

Up at the front, the break is down to three riders: Neilson Powless (EF Education-Nippo), Kenny Elissonde (Trek-Segafredo), and Gino Mäder (Bahrain Victorious). Note how I put Powless first, even though he’s sitting third and not really working. That’s because I’m an American, born American, and these colors don’t run!

(You can’t really see Powless in that photo but trust me, he’s there, trying to close the gap to Mäder.)

The break’s lead is going back up, now 57 seconds with just under 10km to go. They might just have a chance! Back in the field, Jumbo-Visma is setting tempo, swallowing up the human shrapnel from the breakaway.

Cofidis has been doing a lot of work for their leader, Guillame Martin (Cofidis) who launched an early and doomed sprint yesterday, and sits 1:41 down on GC. It’s kind of cute how they still have faith in him.

Geschke is riding well and scoops up a breakaway orphan.

The break is still kicking ass, now up to 1:07 ahead, with Mäder doing all the work.

This climb is very long but not that steep, only 6.2% average. It occurs to me that you, gentle reader, may or may not have a visceral sense of what 6.2% feels like. I have long felt that I did, but as I ponder this more deeply, I realize that these pro riders are essentially a different species and whatever I think of 6.2%, it would feel totally different to them, like a false flat or something.

Mäder attacks! Instantly Elissonde detonates. (He was in a doomed breakaway yesterday and is surely pretty fried from that.) Now it’s just Mäder vs. Powless.

Wow, Powless reels Mäder back pretty easily. He’s had his Wheaties today.

These dudes need to pick it up though, as their lead is down to just 49 seconds. Powless better think about doing some work.

Mäder takes the final intermediate sprint. These two riders are no real threat to the GC, about 2:30 down, so maybe Jumbo-Visma won’t chase too hard.

Mäder attacks again but it’ a tentative testing-the-waters type move.

With 5km to go, they’re at 35 seconds. Powless grimaces and suddenly, he’s off the back!

The mournful-sounding announcer is talking about Mäders awesome attack but really, Powless simply died and Mäder sped up a bit in response. His lead has gone out to 37 seconds. If Mäder pulls this off, it’ll be his first-ever World Tour victory…

Back in the peloton, Fabian Aru (Qhubeka Assos) goes off the back. He officially sucks now. Funny that he was once thought to be a Tour de France contender.

Jumbo-Visma is no longer at the front of the GC group. I don’t know who all these guys are, it’s like amateur hour. I mean, they’re all pros obviously, but no clear leadership.

Okay, I stand corrected. The rider on the front is George Bennett, riding for Jumbo-Visma as Roglic’s super-domestique. He’s rocking the New Zealand national champion’s jersey. (As discussed here the New Zealand federation rejected the original design for this jersey, in a bureaucratic dustup worthy of Flight of the Conchords.)

This race just isn’t that exciting. Maybe I’m just not awake enough. There should be stirring background music. Could I scrounge up a radio at this point? Too much work. And who still has a radio, anyway?

Bennett is still on the front, setting too high a pace to allow any GC hopefuls to attack. With Roglic so dominant in this year’s race, would it kill Jumbo-Visma to toy with the peloton a bit, just to make things more interesting? By doing a great job, Bennett is actually making the race a bit boring.

Mäder looks impressive at the front despite his terrible sunglasses.

He’s still got 38 seconds, with just under 3km to go. This dude is putting the pussy on the chain wax!

Crap, Microsoft Word has frozen! I’ve lost my report! And now Roglic starts hammering at the front! I’m stuck with Notepad and nowhere to paste screen shots! Damn Microsoft to Hell!

As I fight with my software, the race is coming to a head! I’m running to and fro like Mary Macgregor in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie during the hotel fire! If you remember that! This is the wrong kind of excitement! Mäder’s lead is coming down as the much-diminished lead group throttles up! The GC hopefuls are running out of road to take time out of Roglic!

OMG, it’s a real nail-biter! Mäder might have just enough road to keep his lead and win! But now in the group Roglic attacks again! He’s insatiable!

It’s a blistering attack and only Schachmann can respond!

OMG, it’s coming down to the wire! Roglic is absolutely flying just as Mäder bogs down! Can he hang on? This would be the biggest win of Mäder’s career, and he has ridden so well today … he’s so near the finish … could Roglic run out of road? Crap, here he comes, with Schachmann in tow!

Roglic drops Schachmann and thus has the GC pretty much in the bag, but still he keeps coming! Poor Mäder is hanging on for dear life, the finish line just a couple dozen meters away!

Roglic passes Mäder, ruthlessly and needlessly! Mäder looks back to see what’s going on, surely puzzled as to why Roglic would do such a thing, with all his GC foes clearly vanquished!

And Roglic has the stage win, as if he needed it! Look at him celebrating like this was anything but a dick move!

As they show a super-slo-mo replay of the finish, we can see Mäder make a very small gesture: he just kind of raises a hand halfway up like a non-psycho cyclist does when a car cuts him off, kind of a “what the hell” thing.

I totally get Mäder’s gesture. The cool thing for Roglic to have done would have been to be content with taking a few more seconds out of the other GC riders, and let Mäder win while making it look realistic. Roglic could have put on a face of anguish and suffering while falling just short of overtaking the young Swiss rider, who could then enjoy his victory. It would be literally a win-win. Instead this seems never to have occurred to the yellow-clad dumbass.

(You might think that’s an unrealistic scenario, and that any athlete would have instinctively taken the win if he could. Not so. I have personal experience with this: in the 1985 Red Zinger Mini Classic, it was obvious that Peter Stubenrauch was not only the best rider in the race, but by far the best sprinter, yet he routinely let me win primes so as to not be too greedy. The first time he inexplicably eased up at the line to let me take a prime, I looked over like “WTF?!” and he just grinned. And this wasn’t because we were friends, as we weren’t—yet. Now, over 35 years later, we still are. I’m guessing Mäder and Roglic won’t be friends in the year 2056.)

Roglic is being interviewed. “You have to win everything, don’t you,” the interviewer sneers. Roglic responds, “Yes, I wanted to win, because ... why not?” He trails off now because he can’t think of a single other thing to say. The announcer prods him further: “Take me through the last 100 meters. You know you’d stomped out the other GC hopefuls, and you were in a position to be gracious and elevate your profile among the fans, which must be important to you because you generally come off as some sort of robot and surely you can grasp that your career depends not just on your palmarès but on your connecting to people, which can lead to all kinds of lucrative endorsements and so forth. And yet you not only cruelly passed up Mäder, but also did this great big alpha-male victory salute as if this were the most impressive victory of your career when really it doesn’t matter much, your dominance here actually making the race look bad, like it’s unimportant, like your main rivals had  bigger ambitions and hadn’t trained specifically for it because it’s only Paris-Nice. The way you punched the sky, it was just so tone-deaf, bringing to mind the smarty-pants kid in the classroom who’s constantly putting his hand up and, when the teacher ignores him, raises it higher, higher, higher, so his shoulder is raised, half his butt is lifting off the chair, and he’s going ‘Ooh, ooh, ooh’ and can’t figure out why the teacher won’t call at him yet again. What was going through your mind, if anything, at that moment?” Roglic seems dumbfounded and finally replies, “It was really tight at the end so I was really happy to [crush out this young rider’s dream and notch another unimportant victory because obviously I’m riding the best right now but it’s only Paris-Nice and nobody so maybe I should reflect that this isn’t good for my image but I’m too stupid].”

That’s a really poor photo I’ve managed to get but you know what? Roglic doesn’t deserve better because he’s just an asshole. (Oh, by the way … that interview? I’m not sure I got it verbatim. My mind wandered a bit during Roglic’s protracted speechless interval and it’s possible I made some shit up. Okay, I totally did. But I think I stayed true to the spirit of the dialogue the interviewer would have liked to have had.)

Here is the stage result.

And here is the new GC.

Our top American, Matteo Jorgenson, slipped from fifth to tenth. Too bad. (No, I’m not a rabid patriot or anything, but my poor country has taken such a beating with COVID, it’d be nice to see us do well at something.)

Now Roglic takes the podium. I have little to say here. Haven’t we seen enough of this?

At least Mäder wins the combativity award for today. Poor guy … he really doesn’t look very happy.

Tomorrow is the final stage and though it features four Cat 2 climbs and one Cat 1, the last summit is over 30km from the end, so the GC is not likely to change much. That said, as the master strategist Roglic said in his (actual) interview, “It’s not really finished until you reach the finish line.” Damn. He’s practically a poet.

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

Introduction

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

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

2017 Tour de France Stage 12 – Pau to Peyragudes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And just like that, they’ve got him. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Epilogue

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

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Biased Commentary - Froome, Nibali, and the “Dick Move”

Introduction

As I recounted in my Biased Blow-By-Blow report of Tour de France Stage 19, there was some post-race mudslinging.  Vincenzo Nibali had attacked right when Chris Froome was stymied by a bike problem.  Nibali went on to win the stage, and then Froome complained about it—first to Nibali after accosting him near the podium, and then to the press.  In an epilogue to my report, I bashed Froome for this, concluding, “Froome, man, get some class!”

Well, a reader of this blog—perhaps the reader, who in this particular case is not my mom—wrote me to say, “I kinda disagree with you about Froome’s comments after the race.  It didn’t seem like whining to me.  While Nibali didn’t really threaten him at any point whatsoever, it did look like a dick move at the time when he attacked.  Nibble looked over his shoulder, saw that Froomey was stopping for some reason, and then he attacked.  I thought that was generally frowned upon?”

In a perfect world, I’d always get comments on my blog posts, and could fill up these pages responding.  I’d never have to think up a topic again.  So, even though the whole matter reeks of soap opera, I’m going to respond.

Quick recap

As reported in cyclingnews, “Nibali revealed Froome verbally attacked him after the stage in the podium area.  ‘I won’t say the words he used because they’ve too harsh and it’s not nice to say them. He was very angry but I don’t know what his problem was. Lots of things happen in a race....’”  Froome acknowledged the post-race altercation, telling the press Nibali’s attack  was “very unsportsmanlike and not what the Tour de France is all about” and adding, “I told him just what I thought of him.”

Reactions to Nibali’s attack

While watching the attack unfold, I predicted there would be post-race blather about Nibali’s move.  As I wrote in my blow-by-blow, “Wow, Froome has something wrong with his bike!  He’s looking down at his drivetrain, clearly puzzled at all the whizzing gears and such.  He’s getting dropped!  Nibali, meanwhile, is attacking!  If anything comes of this attack, he’ll be compared to Contador and ‘chain-gate....’”

(In case you’re a cycling fan who spent some time under a rock, or a normal person who doesn’t waste his or her time with cycling gossip, “chain-gate” refers to an episode in the 2010 Tour de France when Alberto Contador clearly took advantage of Andy Schleck’s dropped chain to launch what proved to be the race-winning attack:  in Paris Contador ended up first place in the GC by 39 seconds—exactly the time he took out of Schleck in that stage.  The blow was perhaps lessened 19 months later when Contador had the title stripped, due to a doping offense.  The whole matter became even more irrelevant, at least to me, when Schleck’s brother Fränk tested positive, was suspended, and neither brother ever achieved anything remarkable again, which tells me Fränk’s positive test scared Andy straight, meaning he’d been a doper all along anyway.)

I watched this race via a live Eurosport feed, and neither commentator—Carlton Kirby nor the former Irish champ Sean Kelly—made any mention of the attack being unfair.  At least, nothing I remember.  Those two had chatted before about racers not behaving perfectly—like Rafal Majka pretending his radio wasn’t working earlier in the Tour when he failed to support his leader—but they didn’t get up in arms about it.  Kelly chuckled at remembering how a PDM teammate of his was similarly insubordinate during a grand tour.  “He couldn’t have blamed a radio, though,” Carlton pointed out, to which Kelly laughed, “No, he tore the instructions to pieces in front of our director!”  I’ve seen this laissez-faire attitude before on Eurosport, like when Mark Renshaw head-butted another rider during a final sprint and commentator David Harmon cried, “Renshaw gives him a good battering!” (To which Kelly replied, “That’s your job in that situation, making sure your man doesn’t get crowded out.”)

On the other hand, when I watched a replay of the NBC coverage, I was surprised at how indignant Phil Liggett got.  He missed the attack initially, because they were on a commercial break, but when they returned to the action Phil reported, “This happened literally seconds ago, Chris Froome seemed to have a problem, I didn’t see actually see it, we’re gonna have a look in a moment, and this will be taken [as] a very dim view of this, because Nibali saw the stopping of Chris Froome and launched an attack at the front.  Well, whatever happened to Chris Froome, it’s a dim view, and a black mark for Vincenzo Nibali.  You don’t attack a rider, that’s a gentlemen’s agreement when the rider is down from no fault of his own.”  When they showed the replay, Phil’s voice rose a few octaves:  “Let’s show you now what happened here.  The yellow jersey had something wrong with his gears I think ... Nibali looks right at him, saw it, and accelerated!  That’s not very sportsmanlike and I think the press will tell you that!”  (This is about 2 hours 2 minutes into the footage if you want to have a look.)

Actually, other than the press reporting both sides, I didn’t see much else in the way of criticism.  The official ASO stage highlights commented, but without much bile:  “The champion of Italy benefited from Froome’s mechanical problem on the Col de la Croix de Fer to escape from the yellow jersey group.  Then he caught and passed Pierre Roland on the final descent.”

Was it a dick move?

Okay, forget what everybody else said about it.  Let’s get down to brass tacks:  was Nibali’s well-timed attack a dick move, or not?  I suppose that first we should look into the matter of whether Nibali actually saw that Froome had a problem.  As reported in cyclingnews, Nibali claims he didn’t:  “When I looked back, it was to look at [teammate Tanel] Kangert. We did the race on the Col de la Croix de Fer and were planning to make a big attack.”  So:  was this true?  Let’s look at a couple snapshots from the replay that Phil got so heated about:

Well, Nibali is clearly looking back.  But he really does appear to be looking at Kangert.  In the first photo, Kangert is pretty well eclipsing Froome, which isn’t hard to do because Froome is so damn thin, he’s practically 2-dimensional.  If we look at the next shot, a second later, it’s even more apparent that Nibali is looking at Kangert, but we can also see that Froome is really slowing down—look at how Quintana (in white) has passed him.  Could it be that Nibali has noticed this, and senses that there’s a bike problem?  Possibly.  And he could have heard something over his radio.  But all this is far from obvious.

What really is obvious is that Nibali had to know sooner or later, as he continued his attack, that Froome had had a mechanical.  Here’s a photo a bit later of Nibali clearly looking back at the struggling racer leader:

Actually, there are three guys looking back at Froomie in that photo, and I don’t see any of them waiting up!  And think about it.  You’re Nibali, you’re the defending Tour champ, and you’re having a crappy Tour.  You’re in 7th overall, 8 minutes behind Froome, but only 25 seconds behind 6th (Robert Gesink) and 1:24 behind 5th (Contador).  The podium is almost 4 minutes away, but the rider currently in 3rd on GC is Alejandro Valverde, who (possibly due to an impossibly complicated doping program) has a history of really bad days in grand tours.  So Nibali wasn’t attacking Froome to begin with.  He was attacking everybody else.  Of course he won’t pause his attack to let Froome join the party.  And let’s not pretend there was anything definitive about his initial gap on Froome.  They’re climbing, after all.

But you know what?  This analysis is beginning to drag, so let’s assume that Phil Liggett was right and this was totally a dick move by Nibali.  Now we can ask some other questions.

Could Froome have known it was a dick move?

If you watch that footage (or at least refer to the snapshots above) you’ll see that wherever Nibali was looking, Froome was looking down.  Hell, Froome always looks down.  I’m surprised he hasn’t run into a fricking post by now.  He’s the downest-looking, and looking-downest, racer I’ve ever seen.  Here are a couple of snapshots I took more or less at random when I was watching the race.  Looking down, and looking down.

And at the crucial moment of Nibali’s attack, Froome was certainly looking down, as I reported live during my blow-by-blow commentary:  “Wow, Froome has something wrong with his bike!  He’s looking down at his drivetrain, clearly puzzled at all the whizzing gears and such.”  At this moment, Froome was rightly more concerned about what was wrong with his bike than what was happening ahead, so he wouldn’t have seen Nibali turning his head, even if Nibali wasn’t eclipsed by Kangert.  So I doubt he saw the (putative) dick move.  He just guessed about it.

Speaking of guesswork, let’s remember that Phil Liggett was also guessing about the dick move.  His accusation of unsportsmanlike conduct began, “Chris Froome seemed to have a problem, I didn’t actually see it, we’re gonna have a look in a moment....”  He claims that “Nibali saw the stopping of Chris Froome and launched an attack at the front,” but he hadn’t actually seen this yet.

Similarly, Nibali—when caught up in a Stage 6 crash caused by Tony Martin—initially guessed (incorrectly) that it was Froome’s fault.  Probably because he hates him.  That brought about the pair’s first post-race altercation.

Should Froome have cared about the dick move?

Whether or not Nibali knowingly capitalized on Froome’s mechanical, and whether or not Froome saw this, he obviously learned soon enough that Nibali was benefiting from the situation.  On a gut level, this would obviously have pissed him off, because he hates Nibali to begin with, and was surely nervous about anything fouling up the status quo of his eerily, suspiciously powerful Sky team controlling the pace.  But once things settled down and Nibali was away solo (with Valverde safely back in the GC group), Froome—being a professional—should have seen this move for what it was:  a blessing. 

A blessing?  Yes.  Nibali was no threat to Froome’s GC ambitions.  But, being a serious GC threat to Robert Gesink, Alejandro Valverde, and Alberto Contador—all present in this group—Nibali had now created a situation where all three riders, and their three teammates in the group, had to chase, giving Sky carte blanche to just sit on.  And if Nibali stayed away, he’d snap up the time bonus at the end, so Quintana couldn’t get it.  Meanwhile, a solo victory by Nibali would remove that extra motivation for Quintana at the end; how much faster might Quintana have gone if he could have nabbed a stage win?

But okay, racing isn’t a mellow affair, Froome was chock-full of testosterone (not all of it synthetic), and perhaps it’s inevitable that his blood (thick like jam) would boil when his enemy took advantage of him.  I can’t expect Froome to have appreciated, at the time, how good Nibali’s move was for him, since he’s not exactly a tactician.  But after the race, when the results were posted, should he still have been angry?  Granted, Quintana had taken 30 seconds out of him, but that had nothing whatsoever to do with Nibali, and Froome still had a nice cushion.  Meanwhile, Froome had taken over a minute more out of his other rivals.  And he wouldn’t have won the stage anyway, since Quintana was obviously stronger at the end.  For my money, Froome should have shrugged, reflected that all’s well that ends well, and moved on.

Should Froome have said anything?

All right, I’ll go one step further and excuse Froome for being angry even after the fact.  Maybe he’s a hothead, he doesn’t like to share the limelight, and he’s bitter at having urine thrown at him and people spitting at him.  Maybe it takes a long time to come down off all that adrenaline and reflect on how good things actually are.  But should he have whined to the press about Nibali’s tactics?

This is where I refuse to cut Froomie any slack.  By complaining, he just came off looking petty and small.  After all, he was still on top!  He was on the cusp of winning his second Tour de France, over a route that (due to its lack of time trials) so little favored him, he had considered (or pretended to consider) not racing it at all.  He was still the alpha dog, and in no position to complain about anything!  Poor Nibali, criticized all year for not winning anything, got this stage win but was still almost 7 minutes down and, as a defending champ with only an outside shot at even making the podium, was still the cyclist equivalent of a dog huddling under the couch, tail between its legs, sobbing in that lugubrious doggie way.

Moreover, Froome should have recognized that some journalist was bound to bring up Nibali’s tactics, so the question still would have been raised, and the notion of Nibali’s treachery would have seemed more legit coming from the press instead of a sulking, petulant adversary.  And fielding this question would have given Froome a great chance to boost his (clearly sagging) image by playing it cool.  “No, there was nothing amiss about the atttack,” he could say.  “Nibali is a true champion and that was a brilliant stage victory.”  In the context of his ongoing feud with Nibali, Froome’s comment would have been widely reported, and he would have looked gracious, classy, and magnanimous.  Meanwhile, he’d be extending an olive branch to Nibali, which would be a wise move professionally—after all, it’s never good to have enemies in the peloton.

My final comment, this being (after all) a biased analysis, is that Froome looks like a pretty big hypocrite when he gets on his high horse about Nibali’s attack being “unsportsmanlike and not what the Tour de France is all about.”  What is the Tour de France all about, Mr. Froome?  Doping?  Riding for a team that’s so obviously lubed we all can’t help but think of US Postal?  A team that, instead of engaging in intelligent tactics like Movistar showed in Stage 20, merely bludgeons the entire peloton to death, stage after stage, by going to the front on climbing stages and having teammates (some who aren’t even climbers, like the track racer Geraint Thomas) set so high a pace, true tactics become unnecessary and the race becomes boring?  Is the Tour de France all about being so abnormally strong you can afford to neutralize everybody, even the sad sack who, having totally given up on winning the Tour de France, is just trying to save a little face with a stage win?  And then complaining later because you didn’t get your way on absolutely everything?

Based on this close analysis, I’m sticking with my original conclusion:  Froome, man, get some class!