Biased Blow-By-Blow, Vuelta a España 2014, Stage 20

Introduction

I know nobody follows the Vuelta a España.  It’s not nearly as prestigious as the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia, and it comes during football season when even the most diehard cycling fan is glued to ... wait, what am I saying?  It’s impossible to be both a cycling and football fan.

Anyway, since you can’t be bothered to wake up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday (except to ride), and no major cable network carries this virtually unknown race, I’m doing you the service of fighting with messy Internet feeds to get some live coverage so I can give you a blow-by-report that differs from, say, the cyclingnews one in a couple of major ways.  First of all, I get into much more detail about what the racers are thinking, where they get their hair done, etc.  Two, I spell everything correctly.  Three, I don’t have to bite my tongue when (right or wrong) I don’t like something a rider is doing (e.g., doping, being inelegant, having a funny name) and so I pretty much tell the whole story.  The real story.  The as-I-see-it story.  Sometimes an unrelated story here or there.  So here you go.

Stage 20 – 2014 Vuelta a España

It’s a great stage today.  Arguably the hardest of the whole Vuelta, with certainly the most brutal mountaintop finish.  Here’s the profile.

My Internet feed absolutely sucks.  It’s going about as fast as Cadel Evans in this Vuelta.  It’s more of a slide show, really.

As I join the action, the riders have got 47 km to go.  There’s a breakaway of four guys:  Wout Poels (Omega Pharma-Quick Step), Maxime Mederel (Team Europcar), Przemyslaw Niemiec (Lampre-Merida), and Jerome Coppel (Cofidis).  Wout’s manager is surely yelling “Wout, Wout, Wout!” through the radio.  Przemyslaw’s manager just calls him “Slaw,” and in fact nobody on the team can pronounce this guy’s name.  His parents can’t even pronounce it.  It doesn’t matter, though, because none of these names will become a household word because the gap is down to under five minutes and there are still two huge climbs to come:  the Category 1 Alto de Folgueiras de Aigas (Climb of the Folgers Crystals) and the Beyond Category Puerto de Ancares (Port of Apathy).

I’m on some Spanish site.  I knew I should have studied that language!  There’s a chat window alongside the video feed and the astute comments I see are “Vai!!! Vai!!! Vai!!! Froome!!! :-)” and “aru!!!”  So it’s nice to see Americans don’t have a monopoly on lameness when it comes to the amateur pundit game.

My online correspondent is having no luck with his Internet feed either.  Maybe the hacking group, Anonymous, is behind this:  shutting down certain video streaming websites to protest the jocks that used to pick on them in junior high gym class.

So, while I’m waiting for Eurosport announcer (and former champion) Sean Kelly to finish the sentence he started 30 seconds ago (before my feed froze again), here’s what’s happened so far in this Vuelta (since I know you haven’t been paying any attention because it’s only the Vuelta).  The Colombian favorites are out (Rigoberto Uran Uran and Nairo Quintana).  Quintana crashed in the time trial while leading the race, which is a shame.  And Uran Uran is too young to understand why older guys call him “Duran Duran,” which is also a shame.  Plus he got sick and dropped out. 

It’s 27 km to go and I’ve missed most of the last 20 km but I have a solid feed now.  The gap from the break to the peloton is down to 1:25.  The leaders are still on the penultimate climb.

So back to the recap:  the American hopeful, Andrew Talansky (Garmin Sharp) is way down in 56th place.  My favorite rider, Cadel Evans, is doing scarcely better, in 46th.  The defending champion, Chris Horner, didn’t get to start the race because his team decided he was just too damn old and with these new “elder abuse” laws on the books, they couldn’t afford to take the risk.  Well, I guess that’s not exactly what’s going on.  They decided his cortisol levels were too low so he wasn’t healthy enough to ride.  This is in keeping with the MPCC (Mouvement Pour un Cyclisme Credible) which Horner’s team, Lampre-Merida, is voluntarily participating in.  Team Sky, meanwhile, doesn’t participate in MPCC because, according to their spokesman, “We don’t need to be a part of that program because we asked our guys if they doped and they clearly said no, and they would never lie.”

Speaking of Team Sky, I see that their domestique Vasil Karienka (who is wearing “the horse face” according to Kelly, whatever that means) is at the front of the Sky train hammering the pace at the front as they’ve been doing all day and for the last few weeks.

So, getting back to the status of the race overall.  Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) is leading the GC by 1:19 over Chris Froome (Team Sky).  Froomie had a lousy time trial, which puts his pharmacist in a really tough spot, but Froomie has lately been riding better so he might well try something on the brutal Puerto de Ancares, which is 13 km (8 miles) at 8.7%, with pitches of 18%.

Contador crests the final summit of the sawblade Alto de Folgueiras de Aigas in first place, perhaps to send Froome a message but more likely because his mom is watching the stage today but will miss the finish due to a hair appointment.

So, this stage may be the final battle of this Vuelta because tomorrow’s time trial is really, really short.  The GC contest is really between Contador and Froomestrong, because the perennial Spanish stage-race also-rans, Alejandro Valverde (Movistar Team) and Joaquim Rodriguez (Team Katusha), are no better than they ever are.  I think those two always vie for the final podium spot but get no higher than that, which is fine with me.  Valverde is a known doper, and Rodriguez has this thing where his upper lip gets pushed up way above his teeth, which combined with his overbite is aesthetically unsightly.  I know I should be kinder than that, especially since the poor guy has to put up with everybody spelling his name wrong all the time (i.e., Joaquin, as cyclingnews spells it) and he deserves better.  But that’s just how I roll.

The gap is down to 48 seconds between the doomed breakaway and the peloton.  They’re on the final descent before that brutal finishing climb.

The other big thing you have to know about this race is that a few days ago, a couple of the racers got in a fistfight, while riding!  It was awesome ... everybody else in the pack started chanting “Fight!  Fight!  Fight!” just like in junior high.  No, of course I made that part up, but the fistfight was real.  You can see here a video of Gianluca Brambilla (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) being told by the race officials, who are yelling at him from their car, that he’s out of the race.  (Footage of the actual fight starts about a minute into the video).  You should check it out ... it’s something to see.  Brambilla keeps gesticulating, as angry Italians often do, and then sitting up and riding no-handed.  I guess he figured “That’ll show ‘em!” and I can only hope he doesn’t do that when he’s riding in traffic and some car cuts him off.  That could be dangerous.    

So, were Brambilla and his foe, Russia’s Ivan Ronvy (Tinkoff-Saxo) ejected due to unsporting behavior?  No, it’s a bit more complicated than that.  The director of the race simply felt that their fight was disgraceful because they were such pansies about it.  And I have to agree.  They punch like little girls would if little girls threw punches.  I’ll bet any boxer could do a better job climbing the Puerto de Ancares than these guys did duking it out.  So needless to say, neither rider was given the day’s Combativity award.

It’s not the first time poor fighting skills have gotten people into trouble.  I got in a fight in my junior high gym class and landed what I thought was a pretty good punch.  It made the other guy’s mouth bleed, which I kind of felt bad about and kind of felt great about.  So then the guy started screaming and trying to kick me, and I dragged him over to the gym teacher.  To my amazement, the teacher—a war veteran, it was said—yelled at me:  “I saw the whole thing!  What is this—you land one good punch and then you come to me for help?  You don’t just hit a guy once!  You hit him again and again!”  I was bewildered.  Was this some reverse-psychology thing?  Anyway, I didn’t actually get in trouble, but having a crazy war veteran yell at you is overrated, as life experiences go.

The break is down to 17 seconds.  Sky is absolutely drilling it on the front.  It’s nothing but black jerseys and they’re taking the field apart.  Froome is sitting in third.  He’s easy to make out because his elbows stick out to the sides.  It’s really awful to look at.  The Eurosport announcer, Carleton I think he’s called, said the other day, “Froome is not flicking his elbow out to ask Contador to help ... his elbows always stick out.”

Is Sky setting the stage for an awesome come-from-behind GC victory for their man?  Could be.  Brailsford, the Sky team manager, said yesterday, “I think Froome can still win this Vuelta.”  But Brailsford also said, back in July, “It’s best not to put Bradley Wiggins in the Tour,” and said a couple years ago, “Blackberry doesn’t need to do a touch-screen ... the iPhone is a flash in the pan.”

Wow, Anna is calling me!  And she has pretty big hooters!  How do I close this pop-up without accepting the call?  I can’t handle that kind of distraction!

Man, this grade is brutal, and the road surface is medieval.  Rodriguez makes an attack!  It’s a pretty good one, too.  There’s 9K to go.

The lead group is really small now, like eight guys.  J-Rod, or “J-Wad” as he’s unaffectionately known in some circles, is still looking quite strong.  My online correspondent says of him, “He’s like an untrained porn star,” by which I think he means that J-Rod often attacks too early and blows his wad long before he’s supposed to.

Froomie is drilling it on the front with Bertie right on his wheel, out of the saddle, doing that slightly duck-footed lazy mongoose sway he’s so fond of (and which seems so effective).

J-Rod is bobbing a bit, but looking pretty solid, and he’s not doing the white man’s overbite yet.  Maybe today is finally his day.

To Contador’s credit, he isn’t wearing red shorts to match his red leader’s jersey.  His gloves and shoes are the same yellow his teammates get.  For that reason, and because his elbows don’t stick out, I’m hoping he’ll keep the lead today even if he is a filthy doping scoundrel.

It’s 17 seconds between J-Wad and the GC group.  Valverde is off the back.  Anna is calling again.  Fabio Aru (Astana Pro Team) is clinging for dear life.

J-Rod is only 2:29 behind Contador in the GC, but they can give him a bit of leash.  Contador has been doing this a lot:  letting, for example, Froomie go on ahead so that Valverde and Rodriguez have to chase while he, the accountant, sits on.  I’d have to say, those two podium hopefuls have done a lot more to help Contador than his Tinkoff-Saxo team has.

Wow, J-Rod is making it happen ... his lead is now 26 seconds.  There are time bonuses in this race, too.  Maybe he’s hoping Froome and/or Contador will blow up trying to close the gap.

Aru is just barely hanging on to the others.  Froome starts totally hammering on the front!  Whoah, Valverde is totally getting dropped!  It’s unbelievable how quickly he’s going backward.  Froome is going incredibly fast, and looking really awful with his long, skeletal arms out ahead of him like a zombie’s.

It’s 5.9 km to go and my feed has evaporated, straight up vacated.  Dang it!  I’ve hit refresh but all that’s done is get Anna calling again.  Okay, now I can at least hear again and eventually can close these pop-ups.

The next kilometer averages 13%.  In case you have no idea what that means, it’s just really, really steep.  Probably twice as steep as that awful climb between your house and the video store.

Froome and Contador have caught J-Rod.  Froome sits up and rides no-handed while he futzes with his sunglasses or something, and has now stepped up the pace.  I guess he’s trying to psych out Contador. 

Man, this grade is nuts!  It’s 14%!  Froome looks solid though he’s bobble-heading a bit.  Contador looks a bit tired, but I mean, duh!  He’s been racing for three weeks!  He’s wagging his jaw, but then he always does that.  Probably does that at the dinner table.  Froome’s neck must be tired as he keeps staring at the ground and then looking up, again and again.  Maybe he’s trying to burp.

It’s 4.4 km to go.  Camera switches back to Aru to show how he’s all alone and just suffering away.  Aru punched Froomie’s ticket at the end of a recent stage and took the win, so he can’t be too bummed now.  So the top five on the GC are the top five on the road at the moment.

J-Wad is dropped!  Did I call it, or what?

Froome is so gaunt, he’s at real risk of having his jawbone slice through his flesh.  It can’t be comfortable having less than 1% body fat.  I mean, how does he even sleep at night?  And how does he shave?  What does he even eat ... rice cakes?  He’s a mystery, this guy, or maybe a space alien.

It’s just Froomeboy and Bertie on the front now, about 3 km to go.  I’m starting to think this is a stalemate, unless the race officials command them to ride no-handed from here on out just to make it more interesting.  Wouldn’t that be great, if race officials could issue such commands, like the DJ at the roller rink who would sometimes say, “Now, skaters, turn around and skate the other way!” or “Everybody skate backwards!”

Carleton says, “The road is only 2% now, that’s nothing, but soon it kicks up rather rudely!”  I love these British announcers, in a strange way.  No, not that way.  I mean I love what they say.  Or more precisely, I don’t love what they say but I like listening to them say it.

Valverde is suddenly bearing down on these guys with a quickness.  

Froome is frowning, as if thinking, “I don’t like this at all!  I don’t like Contador and I don’t like this climb and I don’t like this sport!  But it pays better than being an extra in a zombie movie, which was my only other offer, so I guess I’ll continue on.”  

My daughter Alexa has pointed out that Froome’s jersey sleeve says “FROOMEY” on it.  Are you kidding me?!

Now he’s out of the saddle and his elbows are sticking out farther than ever ... it’s really ghastly.  But it’s no good, Contador cannot be dropped.  So all Froome is achieving is to help Contador pad his lead over the other Spaniards.

Contador will probably make a huge effort at the very end—the first time he’ll face the wind all day—to get the bonus seconds, since you can never have a big enough lead facing the final time trial.

Wow, there he goes!  Contador has attacked.  He’s grimacing and just absolutely killing it.  He really has the edge.  He’s got that George Mount grin (and if you don’t know who George Mount is, don’t sweat it—he’s even older than Duran Duran).  Dang, Contador is really pulling away.  I can just see the slight scarecrow figure of Froomie, in his cadaverous black kit, back in the distance.  Man, this finale is super-steep and Contador knows what the hell he’s doing.

I just hope that, when the time comes, he won’t do that pistolero victory salute where he mimes shooting a handgun.  This guy’s upper body is so spindly, he couldn’t take the recoil of a cap gun.

He’s got the win!  And he actually put both hands up in the air, like a proper winner!  What a pleasant surprise! 

Froome staggers in a bit later ... 16 seconds the final gap.

Valverde crosses the line almost a minute down.  And here comes J-Wad, upper lip stuck way the hell up there, totally bummed.  The rest of the peloton will come over in dribs and drabs over the next couple hours.

“I’m not suggesting he’s yodeling,” Carleton says of Contador.  Does this Eurosport announcing gig have a two-drink minimum or something?

The big loser of the day is Irishman Dan Martin (Garmin Sharp) who lost over 3 minutes, slipping from 6th to 7th overall.  He remains the only English speaker in the top 10.

And Contador gets his penultimate red jersey and a kiss from the podium girls.  I hope these women get hazard pay, having to kiss a sweaty cyclist every day.

Well, that about wraps it up ... this stage, my coverage, and the overall race since tomorrow’s time trial is only 10 km in length.  Nothing more to see here, move along, move along ... go mow the lawn or something ... make yourself useful.

Biased Blow-By-Blow, Tour de Suisse 2014, Stage 9

Introduction

This is my tradition:  giving a live blow-by-blow report of a bike race, mainly to my instant-messaging correspondent, but also (shortly afterward) to my albertnet readers.  Since nobody is paying me, I don’t have to bite my tongue when I  see something untoward, like an obvious doper, or something really toward, like a podium girl.  Read on to learn about the final stage of the 2014 Tour de Suisse, which (spoiler alert) ends up being a lot more exciting than the Giro d’Italia.

Biased Blow-By-Blow – Tour de Suisse Stage 9

Well, I got up at 6, ready to report on the second half of the final stage of the race, but every Internet video feed I fired up was giving me goofy Euro types sitting around talking about motorcycle racing.  So I read the fine print on steephill.tv which said the coverage doesn’t start until 6:30.  I just tried again, at about 6:20, figuring I could at least make fun of the motorcycle commentators’ clothing, only to find the footage has started “early!”  But wait, this is the footage from yesterday, 2.6 KM from the summit at Verbier.  Johan Chaves (Orica Greenedge) has just attacked.  I know what will happen but you don’t so I’ll fill you in.  The way Greenedge has been winning this year you’d almost call them “Greededge.”  Did I just type that?  That is just horrible.  That’s something that a really bad commentator would say and don’t worry, I’ll never do it again.

Chaves is joined by some other bloke briefly but has now crushed him.  He looks really good.  Bauke Mollema (Belkin) is chasing hard.  He was like 6th in last year’s Tour de France and I consider him a favorite for the Tour de Suisse overall.  He had crummy time trials but he’s a great climber.

I’m sneezing so hard, it’s amazing this cat is staying on my lap.

Race leader Tony Martin (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) is climbing like a climber, which he isn’t, being a time trial specialist.  I hate it when time trialists hang with pocket climbers, and when pocket climbers win flat or flattish TTs.  So as long as Martin gets shelled in today’s mountain stage, I’ll still respect him.  If he hangs on for the win, of course I’ll have to label him Not Normal (i.e., start doubting his cleanliness—I mean, even more than is customary given that he’s a cyclist).

Yesterday I actually missed this coverage, joining too late, but did get to watch the podium presentations.  Stage winner Chaves had never won a ProTour race before, and was just gleeful.  Big grin on his face over the line and again at the podium.  None of this grim Nadia Comaneci stoic stuff for him, no looking constipated like Cadel Evans, and he didn’t do anything totally lame like Alberto Contador’s standard “pistolero” salute, which he always holds for several seconds just to make sure all the photographers get it.  Nope, this was just pure glee, even down to petting the two St. Bernards they brought onto the stage.

You can’t see his glee in this photo, of course, because the feed is so blurry his face looks like those creepy blank ones on the school kids in “Pink Floyd The Wall.”  But look at that giant hunk of Le Gruyère cheese he gets as part of his spoils!  It’s freaking awesome!

Okay, today’s coverage has finally started.  The riders have about 45 KM to go.  There’s a breakaway of three just ahead of the yellow jersey group.  It’s a pretty small group.  Ah, and looking at the little status banner at the top of the screen, I see that there’s another group 24 seconds ahead of them.  Of course, these aren’t very big gaps.  I won’t bother saying who’s in these breakaways, other than Sep Vanmarcke (Belkin), who has the most badass-sounding name in all of cycling, and Andy Schleck, who in years past could have been considered a favorite but who, in his modern “all-losing-all-the-time” incarnation only serves to make the breakaway look bad.  Schleck lost over two minutes yesterday and now is almost 7 minutes behind in the GC.  On the plus side, he’s off the drugs and high on life!

The break has consolidated into one group and has 1:22 now.  Martin has lost all his teammates.  They’ve crossed the penultimate summit and are bombing the descent.  Remaining is the final HC climb up to Saas-Fee.  To clarify, Saas-Fee is a little town with a ski resort, not what you pay for Software As A Service.  On paper the climb looks pretty brutal, piling up well over 3,000 vertical feet in about ten miles.

The gap is up to almost two minutes.  If it keeps going up I’m afraid I’ll have to start noting more of the names here.  Most notably, Rui Costa (Lampre Merida) is in the break; he is the current world champion and sits in third overall in this race, only 1:14 behind Martin.  Costa, a Portuguese rider, won this race last year and the year before.  Bauke Mollema is in there too; he sits 5th in the GC, another 36 seconds back.  Ah, and the 4th rider on GC, Mathias Frank (IAM Cycling) is also in the break, 1:14 behind Martin.  He has extra motivation here because he’s Swiss, so if he won he’d get not only the adoration of the home crowd, but the “Bester Schweizer” (“Best Swiss rider”) award.  Here he is getting that award yesterday:

Why the horns on the podium girl?  I have no idea.  Lots of spectators have little red horns, too.  I haven’t had time to research it.  But I did look up “Bruno’s Best” after yesterday’s podium ceremony.  Check it out:

That BMC guy was the Most Combative rider yesterday, and won a nice wooden bowl containing a bottle of Bruno’s Best salad dressing.  He doesn’t look that happy about it, and I can’t blame him.  If his solo attempt had stuck, he’d have won the cheese!  Have you tried Le Gruyère cheese?  It’s delicious, and no, they don’t sponsor me in any way.

The riders are still descending, and there haven’t been any crashes, so I’m going to follow up this “strange prize” theme with a tale of my online real-time race correspondent, Peter, winning a schvarkenslull back in 1991.  What’s a schvarkenslull, you ask?  Well, I don’t know if that’s an actual word—Pete says it’s just what he and his US teammates called it—but it refers to the pig’s dick he won in a race in Germany for finishing dead last.  Here’s our chat on that lofty topic:

Pete:  “I was in a pissed-off mood.  I was dead last, but it wasn’t like I was the first guy who got dropped, either ... it was a really hard day, and like 40 people dropped out.  I was like the last guy legitimately racing.  So after the race these German guys come up, chuckling, ‘You’re wanted on the podium.’  I can’t remember if I went to the podium or not.  I was so chapped because these douchebags are acting like this is the funniest thing ever.  So I got some money, a non-trivial amount, something like 50 Deutsche Marks, about $50. And the schvarkenslull.”

I first saw the pig’s dick in 1994 when I visited Pete in Colorado.  It’s this very long, slightly curved dick skeleton, completely encased in a block of amber and mounted to a nice wooden plaque.  He had it on prominent display in his apartment.  Really bizarre.

Pete:  “So the question is, which is worth more, the schvarkenslull or the deutche marks?”

Dana:  “But you don’t have it anymore?”

Pete:  “I gave it to [national team coach Chris] Carmichael, sometime around 1994.”

Dana:  “Didn’t somebody ask for it at the time, when you were first awarded it, but you refused to give it up?”

Pete:  “Yeah, I guess that’s right.”

Dana:  “Who was it?”

Pete:  “The only guy who could have legitimately asked me for it was Carmichael.”

Dana:  “So you refused to give it to him in 1991, but relented and gave it to him later, sometime after 1994?”

Pete:  “I don’t remember, it was a long time ago!”

Dana:  “Dude, you’re supposed to remember everything about those days.  You’re supposed to spend every moment of your autumn years reliving all the glory days, when your life was exciting and everything seemed to matter!”

Pete:  “Look, giving away the pig’s dick wasn’t exactly part of the glory days.  Now you’re pushing my buttons, bitch!”

Well, after a mix of boring flat stuff and ads, the race is finally getting exciting again.  They’re all on the final climb.  Mollema’s Belkin teammate, Stef Clement, goes out the back of the breakaway.  No, wait, I guess that’s the main group.  Maybe he helped earlier?  I don’t know.

The gap is 2:01 (down from its peak so far, 2:20) with 19K to go, all of it uphill.  Schleck has been dropped from the group and is fighting to stay in the yellow jersey group, and the sport in general.  Cadel Evans is in this group, though I know better (from the Giro d’Italia) than to expect a lot out of him, as much as I’d like to see him win the stage.  (He’s in 10th overall, 2:30 down, and would have to have an amazing day to do anything in the GC.)

Dang, more ads!  The Brasil tourism board, Hyundai, and Samsung are all doing World Cup-themed ads.  I’m really glad I’m not trying to watch that.  No offense to soccer fans, but (as I’ve opined before), pro soccer is completely whacked.

Martin is really suffering, his mouth contorted to the point that he looks a bit like a goldfish.  The riders are really flying and Jenny paid $23.41 for her Beats by Dre headphones.  (Sorry, pop-up ad.)  The gap is actually down to 1:49 now.  The break, which had like 16 riders at one point, is down to about half that.  A lot of pretty tall guys, though it must be said this video feed is kind of warped.

There’s a Giant-Shimano guy on the front of the Martin group, doing a whole lot of work.  Now Martin takes up the chase himself.  This group is a bit bigger than it had been earlier.

Gap is down to 1:42.  I suspect that Frank, Mollema, and Costa are going to strike out again.  They have not only Martin to worry about, but one another.  We’ve got a real race here!

Oliver Zaugg (Tinkoff-Saxo), up in the break, gets some food from his team car.  I guess at some point they’re no longer allowed to do that.  I wonder if everybody is properly fueled?  (I mean properly, not inappropriately.)

Sander Armee (Lotto Belisol) detonates from the breakaway.  He’s going backward.  He’s a really tall guy, or is that my distorted feed?  Nope, just looked it up:  he’s 6’3” and not ideally suited for such a huge climb.

Costa has no teammates in the break.  The only team with more than one rider is IAM Cycling, with Johann Tschopp and Marcel Wyss, working for Frank.  I can’t shake the idea that their team is sponsored by a dog food company.  That would be Iams.  One time a guy cornered me at a cocktail party and blathered for like 20 minutes about his awesome career as a radio sports commentator, and when he finally (out of politeness) asked me what I did, I said I sold Iams pet food (“out of my garage for right now, but...”).

Okay, the last volley of ads is finally over.  It’s under 10K to go and the lead is back up to 2:01.  The other riders in this break are Andre Candoso (Garmin-Sharp), Jeremy Roy (FDJ.fr), and Steve Morabito (BMC).

A Movistar rider has attacked the yellow jersey group.  He gets hauled back. 

Wyss has just been hammering on the front of the break for a good while now.  I reckon he’ll blow before too long.

Okay, suddenly the gap is down to 1:36.  Either the yellow jersey group really picked it up, or the split was wrong earlier.

Laurens Ten Dam (Belkin) has just attacked the yellow jersey group, and they let him go.  I wonder if he has the legs to bridge up to the break and help Mollema?  Ten Dam is a great climber.  I raced against him once, in La Marmotte, a brutal road race in France with three HC climbs.  He deprived me of victory (along with the next 187 riders behind him, who also deprived me of victory, and the 7,000 behind them, who did not).

It’s under 5K to go, gap now up to 1:44.  Martin is grinding away on the front of his chase group.  In the break, the IAM boys are right on the front, with Wyss continuing to do most of the work.  The last bit of this climb looks (in the profile picture) to be the steepest.  They’re on this little flat section just heading toward it.

Wow, Wyss finally detonates!  Not surprisingly, Tschopp totally attacks.  Only Mollema and Costa can stay with him!  Tschopp goes to the other side of the road to try to shake Costa.  The problem is, he’s actually shaken his team leader, Frank, which really isn’t useful.  Mollema is just barely staying in contact.  Morabito has blown and is dropped.  Zaugg is the only  other rider staying close.  Now Costa himself is drilling it on the front.  He’s been sheltered the whole race and is looking really good.  That is, looking strong.  I’m not actually attracted to him or anything.

Wow, Costa is soloing!  He suddenly has this massive gap!  I don’t know how he can manage this, he’s just brutally strong.  Frank has made it back up to Mollema (maybe Tschopp went back for him?) and has now dropped Mollema.

It has occurred to me that the Tour de Suisse GC is a race between two reigning world champions:  Costa (road) and Martin (time trial).

It’s under 2K to go so Martin, still over 90 seconds back, will miss the podium.  Still, two stage wins and eight days in yellow ain’t bad.

Mollema has come back and turns the tables on Frank!  It’s a real battle between these two, but Costa is fricking gone, way the hell off the front.  He’s only got 1.3K to go.  Mollema and Frank can still see him, but he’s way up the road.   

They’re under the 1K banner.  Mollema is absolutely drilling it, with Frank dying on his wheel, but the gap is still pretty big.  Frank needs to stay in contact with Mollema to hold on to second overall but both these guys are assured of podium spots.

My feed freezes just in time to miss Costa’s victory.  And Mollema has dropped Frank, but not by enough to pass him in the GC.

Morabito crosses for 4th or 5th.

Wow, on the super-slo-mo I see why Frank got dropped:  within 100 meters of the line he dropped his fricking chain!  What is it with these team mechanics?

Wyss crosses the line.  What an awesome job he did today.  Too bad Frank didn’t manage to win the GC today, but I’ll bet he’s pretty pleased with Wyss’s efforts anyway.  Frank, sitting down at the side of the road, blows a kiss to the crowd.  Yeah, he only got second overall, but he’s probably really stoked about that Bester Schweizer award!

Martin has finished, and must be disappointed (though not particularly surprised) to lose the GC victory.  To top it off, the Velominati guys will be bagging on him on their silly little blog for breaking one of their stupid Rules.

Costa has his world champion jersey totally unzipped, which is pretty lame because a) it can’t be that hot on this Alpine summit, b) he has no chest to speak of, being a cyclist, and c) he has no chest hair.  I just figured out why he did this:  he’s wearing CrampSys clothing, which I happen to know fits like a damn tourniquet.  I won’t burn your retinas with an image of Costa’s chest, but here’s his victory salute from the replay:

He’s doing the chest-pointing victory salute, which either means “I won this race, me me me!” or “I won this because of my sponsor, Lampre!”  (Lampre “specializes in pre-coated steel production,” so I’m not sure how they helped Costa’s riding, other than paying for it.)

So just to recap, the stage was Costa, Mollema, Frank and the final GC is Costa, Frank, Mollema.

Costa comes up for the final podium celebration.  Here’s his glass trophy—I hope he doesn’t drop it.  Now his podium kisses.

I have to say, I cannot go on record approving of the podium girl tradition.  But insofar as it does go on, and there’s nothing I can do about it, and any act of rebellion I might make by refusing to watch would be pointless and ineffectual, I go ahead and watch, and frankly, I don’t mind making the most of it.  Say I’m eating soup at a restaurant, enjoying it, and somebody points out it’s made with veal stock.  I’m not a proponent of veal production either, but I’m not going to spit out the soup, which after all has already been made.  Can’t I be ideologically opposed to something without being aesthetically repelled?  So I’m just going to say it:  these Tour de Suisse podium girls are really easy on the eyes.

There, I said it, and I guess I better shut up now.

Victory Salutes

NOTE: This post is rated PG-13 for a crude gesture.

Introduction

Check it out:

Is this a little man trapped in my smartphone, trying to bust his way out? No, it’s a large man, the Norwegian sprinting ace Thor Hushovd, who has just won Stage 3 of this year’s Tour de France. Alas, his exuberant—and I must say, macho—victory salute got a little too close to the screen there.

In this post I’ll discuss bike race victory salutes, including my own (albeit limited) history with them, and catalog some of the more interesting ones. I’m well aware I’m not the first person to have blogged about this, but I think I can apply a fairly unique spin. And if you don’t like it, you can just leave.

Why victory salutes?

The victory salute actually serves a very humdrum purpose: it makes a bike racer’s sponsor highly visible in photos. A racer is usually bent pretty far over the bars and if he didn’t sit up and show the logos, his sponsors would feel cheated. Some clothing makers are even clever enough to put their logo on the palms of cycling gloves so they show up in these photos.

Of course that’s not the only reason for victory salutes. It’s also a show of exuberance, like a football player spiking the football on the ground after a touchdown (though I’m led to believe this has for some reason been outlawed). For ages the victory salute was a pretty simple, rote thing, but in the last couple of decades racers have evidently felt the need to constantly innovate with their salutes. They bring in new elements all the time: pointing at the heavens with a reverent look; stabbing their chests with their fingers as if to say, “See? Me! Me! Me!”; or even, in the case of a Tour de France stage win by Carlos Sastre in 2003, crossing the line with a pacifier in his mouth as a way to dedicate the win to his two-year-old daughter. (There’s a much better way to honor a baby, as you shall see later.)

First-hand experience

Alas, most of my own victory salutes have been done in practice. After my brothers and I signed up for our first race, the 1981 Red Zinger Mini Classic, we spent the weeks leading up to the race practicing our victory salutes, just in case. Up and down our street we’d ride, a finish line imagined in front of the house, and we’d throw our arms up in various ways, critiquing one another’s efforts. Occasionally we’d stage a sprint, taking turns “winning” so we could better approximate the feeling of doing a real salute. It didn’t occur to us to actually train for the race, nor did we realize that our chances of needing a victory salute were way down there with winning Lotto.

My brothers and I were forbidden to ride no-handed, of course. Max got chewed out at the dinner table because my dad had seen him riding down a nearby street, Howard Place, with his arms folded across his chest. My dad tried out sarcasm: “Oh, here’s the big … macho stud riding with his arms folded!” Bryan, Geoff, and I laughed and laughed. I think our dad’s awkward phrase was as funny to us as Max being bawled out. (We were also forbidden to race: “You boys are too stupid to race bicycles. You’ll get yourselves killed.” Lack of supervision was a real blessing in that household.)

The first race I can remember winning was the citizen’s edition of the Buckeye Road Race in Colorado in 1985. There wasn’t much of a field there, and I’ll confess that my victory salute—after all those years of dreaming!—was just a bit sheepish. I’d debated about even doing one, and finally decided I’d better, as there were several categories on the road at once, I’d dropped the second-place rider by a huge margin, and I wanted to make sure the referees saw me go by and registered that I was a winner. (This strategy served me well in my 1990 world championship victory as well.)

In the 1985 Red Zinger Mini Classic, I was second in most of the stages. There was one guy I couldn’t beat, Peter Stubenrauch, who won every single stage leading up to the final one, a criterium. I managed to beat him in a couple of primes during that last stage, almost certainly because he threw them (not being a particularly greedy guy). I didn’t realize this at the time; I just figured I was having a great day. On bell lap, I really psyched myself up, told myself I could beat Pete, just like I'd beaten my own brother on this course earlier in the year. I launched my sprint early, and—amazingly enough—managed to hold Pete off all the way to the line. I threw my arms up, shook my fists, and roared with satisfaction—“YEEAAAH! YEAAAAH! YEAAAH!” As victory salutes go, it was way, way over the top. Finally I looked back at Pete, whose reaction was simply, “Dude, we have another lap.” Which we did—I’d sprinted a lap early and hadn’t won after all! I was completely mortified. In fact, I just about died of embarrassment. (The race director evidently didn’t know you’re not supposed to have a prime on the penultimate lap.) To assuage my humiliation afterward, a friend said disingenuously, “I just figured you really, really liked primes!” If there’s a moral to this story (besides “Check the lap counter!”) it’s “Don’t overdo the victory salute!”

Among my handful of victories in mass-start races, the most satisfying was the 1986 Boulder Cup criterium, around the Pearl Street mall in downtown Boulder. It was a pretty big race, though the junior category I was in was missing the top local team, Dale Stetina’s 7-Eleven junior team (who were doing a big race elsewhere in the country). The problem was, the finish line was too close to the first corner of the course, and I really felt like I didn’t have enough road for a victory salute. (It was a close sprint so this would have been an after-the-line deal.) Also, I couldn’t believe I’d actually won. In fact, it wasn’t until the end of the fifteen minute period during which riders could register protests that I really believed I had. Not that I’d done anything worth protesting; it’s just that a) racers in those days always seemed to be protesting every finish, and b) as I said, it seemed too good to be true. Later in the day my friend Bill won his category of the race, did throw his arms up, and just about stacked in that first corner.

Once I joined the collegiate racing circuit, I never won another race, except team time trials. It would be the height of conceited absurdity to throw your arms up at the end of a TTT, of course. The only time I’ve seen a victory salute work for a time trial is with the modern Tour de France, where the overall race leader starts last and knows, from his director yelling in his earphone, that he’s done well enough in the TT to defend his yellow jersey going into the last day’s race (which is little more than a parade and a last chance for the sprinters to have stage-winning glory). A couple of racers I can think of (Lance Armstrong and Carlos Sastre) have finished the last Tour time trial with modest one-armed fist-pumps that were, I think, tasteful.

A brief catalog of victory salutes

Of course I can’t categorize every type of victory salute, as new ones are being created all the time, but there are some classics worth describing. I also won’t position myself as an arbiter of taste as far as these are concerned; that’s what the teeming masses of fans are for. Another disclaimer is that I had to use amateur models for my photos, as I can’t afford professionals and don’t dare post copyrighted photos from race coverage websites. Thus, these won’t be perfect examples of the various salutes, but they should get the point across.

The Classic

The most basic victory salute, of course, is just throwing your arms up. The palms can face forward, or you can make fists, whatever. This was Davis Phinney’s standard victory salute; no matter how much he won, he kept it pretty simple. Nothing wrong with that!

Note that if your eyes are closed and/or your chin in way up, this becomes the “fireballs to heaven” salute most famously used by Alexi Grewal when he won the Olympic road race in 1984.

The Fist-Pump

The simple fist-pump victory salute is useful in a variety of situations. If you’ve sealed your Tour de France general classification victory with a solid ride in the final time trial, this is appropriate (whereas anything else wouldn’t be). The fist-pump is also good if you don’t have much maneuvering room after the finish line, or if conditions are otherwise sketchy. It can also, oddly enough, be the opposite of modest: Sean Kelly won so many races, sometimes he just couldn’t be bothered with a more extravagant gesture.

The fist-pump is often used in conjunction with other victory salutes. When a rider manages a solo breakaway, you’ll often see a combination platter of salutes as he approaches the line, and this is a very common one in such cases.

The Awkward

I don’t think anybody ever does this one intentionally. Sometimes a rider is so wasted at the end that his victory salute is just kind of off. Maybe one arm is higher than the other, or neither is raised high enough. Most often the awkward salute comes from somebody who doesn’t win a lot of mass-start events, so the victory salute is anything but old hat. I’m reminded of Christian Vande Velde’s victory salute when he won a stage of last year’s Paris-Nice. It wasn’t a bad victory salute, but his legs were kind of going one direction and the rest of him another.

Really, I kind of like the awkward victory salute; it’s sort of sweet, like the guy never expected to win and didn’t spend a lot of time practicing how to throw his arms up. (The exception is the guy who forgets to zip up his jersey. That’s just downright unprofessional, and generally unsightly.)

The “I can’t believe it”

This is another charming victory salute. Sometimes it comes right on the heels of a standard or awkward victory salute; the racer suddenly can’t believe it’s really true he won, and clasps his head (or these days his helmet) with his hands. The expression of joy that accompanies this particular salute can bring a tear to the eye. It’s hard to simulate in a photo shoot but I think young Lindsay has done a pretty good job here.

The Rock-the-baby

I first saw this one from Alexandre Vinokourov, though several riders have done it. It’s a tribute to the racer’s infant offspring, though I suspect it’s really more of a peace offering to the spouse left behind at home changing diapers and cleaning spit-up while the pro racer is off pursuing glory. I don’t think you’ll ever see this one after a bunch-sprint, where the guy is going like forty miles per hour and has to worry about being run into from behind. It’s perfect for solo victories, so long as you have an infant child at home. For a non-parent to do this salute would be just plain weird.

Joy from the heart

I’d be surprised if anybody recognized this one; its heyday was in the eighties when cyclists were still very Euro and hadn’t adopted the brutish American no-neck aura of NHL and NFL players. I can’t remember the last cyclist I saw do this one—it’s been a while—but I remember practicing it. I think any racer would earn extra style points for bringing it back.

The Second Place

My friend John used this once. He’d been finishing second to our friend Nico a lot, and though I don’t think John invented this salute, he managed to put it to use. It’s not likely to ever become popular because it takes real presence of mind to remember it, and has to be done just right or the crowd won’t understand it. I once got second in a collegiate criterium and it never occurred to me to pull this one out; I was too busy sprinting and frankly hadn’t really counted on losing. Good for a guy who is dropped from a two-man break just before the line, I guess.

(By the way, my model, Alexa, had no idea that this was a pantomime of a guy shooting himself in the head. She just followed my instructions and chalked the oddity up to another inexplicable cycling behavior.)

The Tyson

Obviously this one is a bit dated. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it used, but I practiced it plenty and did get to use it once, in a collegiate team selection race. (We had a series of intra-club races to determine who rode in what categories.) I well remember the joyous cackling of Trevor, our coach, team president, and star rider, watching me from the sidelines.

For years I tried to get my friends Bill and Pete to use this one in competition, but as often as they won they couldn’t be bothered to do the Tyson. It’s a pity. Lindsay does a wonderful job here; her missing teeth lend an extra air of verisimilitude.

The Contador

Alberto Contador wins all the time, and invariably does the pistol-shot victory salute. He’s even taken to doing it while up on the podium, and I once saw him pause beforehand to make sure all the photographers were ready. It has a scripted quality to it, almost like he’s a careful custodian of the Contador brand, but it’s not a bad salute. I wonder if somebody besides Contador will ever dare try it. Surely someone out there has the chutzpah to bite Contador’s style, just to make it fresher….

The Cav

No catalog of victory salutes would be complete without the outrageous victory salute that got the brash road sprinter Mark Cavendish ejected from the Tour de Romandie this year. It ranks up there (down there?) with Alexi Grewal throwing his bike over the finish line at the Morgul Bismark stage of the Coors Classic, or Grewal ripping his 7-Eleven jersey down the middle before a victory salute at the Garden of the Gods in Colorado springs (which antic got him thrown off the team). As irresponsible acts go, this salute beats doping, anyway. (Speaking of responsibility, rest assured that although Lindsay does a great job with this one, she has no idea what the gesture means. Heck, not being Italian, I don’t know exactly what means either. I do have a strong sense that this photo wouldn’t’ be a good one to post in Lindsay’s“My Book About Me” for school.)

And there you have it: a brief catalog of victory salutes. It's never too early to start practicing these, though for many of us it may be too late.

dana albert blog