Ok, I'll admit it: I've been watching the Tour de France this week. Thankfully, I've been doing it via Tivo, since it's on (reasonably close to) live at 5:30am Seattle time. Timeshifting is a happy thing, both for picking the start time and for skipping over those looooooong boring parts where nothing happens but the announcers keep droning on. This is the one sport where the TV announcers really earn their money: having to keep up the commentary for three hours of nothing punctuated by ten seconds of interesting stuff every fifteen minutes or so. At least in baseball the teams change sides and different people come up to bat; in cycling the peloton just plugs away endlessly and seemingly mindlessly.
The big story this week has been American David Zerbriskie, on Team CSC. (fyi, Lance Armstrong's team is sponsored by, and named for, Discovery Channel). Day 1 was a 20-kilomoter "individual time trial" sprint. Cyclists do the race individually, spaced one minute apart. Zebriskie, just another guy on a bike, went very early on -- before anyone was paying attention (the big names went near the end). He put in a stunning time, and held the lead by two minutes for most of the day. By the time it got near the end and the really good cyclists were going, that was cut to one minute, which is still a HUGE lead.
Side story about Lance: Two days before the Tour started, all 189 riders were tested for drugs. Starting one day before, they randomly test one rider a day. Guess who got "randomly" selected first? That's right, Mr. Armstrong, the one who has had constant rumors and innuendo circulating for years that he uses drugs. Sure, it was completely random. (he was clean -- as was the case for every other drug test he's ever taken).
Back to the individual time trials on day 1. Lance's turn comes -- he's the last rider of the day, right after his good friend and arch-rival Jan Ullrich -- and ten feet past the starting line he accidentally pulls his right foot off of one of the pedals. His shoes are supposed to attach to the pedals, somewhat like ski boots to skis, so this throws him comepletely off for a few moments. But he quickly gets it back on, and takes off like a bat out of hell. It's clear that he has something to prove to the world. Or perhaps lots of things to prove. and there was lots of speculation that his performance was fueled by his anger over being "randomly tested" the night before. Two-thirds of the way through the trial, he PASSES Ullrich. Unheard of, especially for someone the caliber of Ullrich.
Lance finishes two seconds behind Zebriskie. So the kid from Utah gets to wear the yellow jersey on Day 2, and Zebriskie and Armstrong have nearly a one-minute lead on the rest of the pack.
Day 2 was a long, flat, 200-kilometer trek. The sprinters tussle at the end, Zebriskie and Armstrong stay out of their way, and the overall standings don't change at all. Zebriskie still; has the yellow jersey.
Day 3 was very similar, although a funny thing happens near the end: one of the sprinters, Robbie McEwen, stuck behind the stage's leader (Tom Boonen), leans way over to his right just before the finish line and uses his HEAD to push back the rider right next to him to get some maneuvering room. Overall, it was a silly thing to do, since when that many riders finish together the rules say that they all get the same time. But he did it anyway, the judges saw it, and they didn't like it one little bit. They penalized him and now he's for all intents and purposes out of the running for the Green Jersey, which goes to the best sprinter.
Day 4 was the team trials: sort of like the individual time trials, 67.5 kilometers, but all 9 members of a team leave together (teams are speced 5 minutes apart). All members of the team get the same time: the finishing time for the 5th team member to cross the finish line. Unless, of course, a team member were to drop too far behind the others.
Discovery Channel (Lance's) went second-to-last, and set a record-breaking time. Team CSC (Zebriskie's) went last, and at all the splits up until the end was leading by several seconds -- though the gap was shrinking with every successive checkpoint.
All of the stages end in some city or town, and usually involve interesting maneuvers down narorw streets or around treacherous curves. Especially on the sprinting days, the ends can be very dangerous -- which is why the contenders for the yellow jersey tend to hang back and stay out of the fray.
1.4 kilometers from the finish line, Zabriskie went down. No one is really clear what happened, but suddenly his bike was flying in one direction and he was scraping along the pavement in the other. He was in the middle of the Team CSC pack, and fortunately no one else crashed into him, but it looked terribly painful and it took him a long time (by Tour standards) to get back up. His team staff swapped his bike out for a fresh one (this is allowed) and he slowly climbed back on and pedaled to the finish line, well behind the rest of his team and looking very bruised and scraped up. Too far back to get the team time. His teammates crossed the line 2 seconds behind Discovery Channel's time, which would have put Armstrong and Zabriskie in a virtual dead heat. Actually, given that they were thrown off their rhythm by the crash, had Zebriskie not fallen they probably would have beaten Discovery Channel and Zebriskie would have not only kept the yellow jersey for another day but extended his lead.
Here's the killer: the rules say that if you crash in the last kilometer of the race, you still get your team time. Zebriskie missed that by four tenths of a kilometer, in a 67-kilometer race. And Lance got the yellow jersey.
Today, Stage 5, started out interesting. Lance felt bad about what happened to Zebriskie, so he decided that he didn't want to wear the yellow jersey. He showed up without it, and the race officials told him that if he didn't wear it, he wouldn't be allowed to race, so he grudgingly put it on. Truth be told, there's no right answer here; Armstrong was a class act for not wanting to wear it to show respect to Zebriskie, but the race officials understood that lots of fans had travelled long distances to watch someone race by in a yellow jersey, and he had a responsibility to wear it. Fair point.
Stage 5 was another long, boring flat course. A few cyclists rabbit out in front, and near the end the peloton swallows them up again. Much mad sprinting at the end -- even through a 90-degree street corner turn only 500 meters from the finish -- and Robbie McEwen just barely edges out Tom Boonen to win the stage. Much grandstanding by McEwen after winning, to show the judges that they couldn't keep him down. But Boonen still has the green jersey, and Armstrong still has the yellow. McEwen knows that the time penalty given to him by the judges is probably not something he can overcome to get back into contention. But he fights on.
A couple more days of relatively flat courses are coming up, and then on Sunday the fun begins as they hit the mountains. This is where Lance dominates.
The official web site for the Tour de France is here. Enjoy. And I encourage you to check it out. I watch it in the morning while I'm on my exercise bike. (I have a real bike that I take out on weekends, but I'm lycra-free, and proud of it) and my kids and I watch the end of the race while eating breakfast. Good for the digestion.
9:01:34 PM 
|
|
