.JPG)
Tour de France review 2013
.JPG)
.JPG)
Here is my review of the Tour de France 2013. It was a cracking race, led from about the end of week one by Chris Froome of Team Sky right through to the end. In the end it appeared as a simple win for Chris Froome - and the second for Team Sky in two years. Chris Froome is ostensibly British, albeit having been born in Kenya and grown up and educated in South Africa, he still rides under a quasi-British flag.
Podcasts
I was travelling a lot during the tour, but I kept up to date with podcasts when I could not watch and I list some of my favourites below.
Velocast - I paid for high quality daily updates and these were well worht the money. velocast.cc
BBC Bespoke
Cycling weekly
Race Radio
Humans invent
Le Mont Saint Michel time trial
The time trial around Le Mont Saint Michel was stunning. Really one of the truly beautiful stages. This was overshadowed by Cav getting some urine thrown at him - seemingly due to the tifosi believing he had caused a crash the day before. Even so this is nothing less than an absolute disgrace.
Froome rode the new Pinarello Bolide - a lovely looking bike, interesting because there are brake fairings that guide the wind from the bike - this is officially banned under UCI rules, but it appears that the fairings are part of the brake design so they have got round it somehow. It's an interesting looking bike.
Mont Ventoux
Chris Froome won up Mont Ventoux, deploying a crazy attacking style, with a seated climbing style, with pedal rpms in crazy numbers, dropping all the other riders. Tom Simpson died on the Ventoux in the 60s, from an overdose of some doping or other. This climb is seared into the minds of the British, so it was great that someone quasi-British won here.
Alp D'Huez
This year featured a stage with a double ascent of l'Alp D'Huez. Amazing riding, eventually won by the Frenchman Riblon, overtaking Teejay Van Garderen near the line, which was the first win for the french for quite a while. The day had some big drama - the Sky car following Froome had had a leak of water from the ice box holding drinks and foods, blowing the electrics. Alledgedly this meant that Froome could not get food during the second half of the stage. Nearing the climax of the stage, Froome put his hand up and Richie Porte went back to the team car and took some gels that Froome took. He had bonked. And since this was team support in the final 10 km of a stage was an illegal move. In the end, both Froome and Porte were docked 20 seconds, but the losses otherwise could have been massive. It was a professional foul, but an interesting one nontheless.
Dutch corner was of course crazy. Some of the riders too taking a cheeky beer on the way through :)
Funniest moment
On day 1, the Orica Green Edge bus got stuck under the finish line in Corsica. This caused mayhem as it was stuck for quite some time. The race organisers changed the location of the finish, and then reverted it back to the original when the bus was freed - apparently causing mayhem in the peloton and possibly causing the large crash that later happened.
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
Some serviettes my parents picked up whilst watching the TdF go through Abbeville last year, cute!
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
Peter Sagan's green hair
Peter Sagan won the green jersey again. He said early in the race that the only thing that could stop him winning was a crash, and he was right. He's a character and on the final day dyed his hair green to match the jersey. Chapeau.
.JPG)
Nairo Quintana's life story
There is a great tale about Nairo Quintana and his life story. A crazy story - the Colombian drove a taxi when he was 10, but only at night so the cops wouldn't know he was under age. Maybe that is why he looks so old, despite being only 24. He won the white jersey for the best young rider, the polka dot jersey for the best climber, and finished 2nd overall. Clearly a future winner, and he seems a thoroughly nice guy.
Contador
Supposedly the best attacking rider of his generation, this tour showed Alberto Contador's demise - he attacked a few times, and had a classic day taking over a minute off Froome through windy echelons, but really it seems that he cannot compete in the clean days. Tinkov, the owner of the Saxo Tinkov team was very vocal in his bizarre tweets accusing Bjarne Riis of not using all the tools available to him to get the team performing (doping). Takes a lot to make Riis seem like the more honest man!
One day Contador fell on a descent and Froome, being Froome, sent a ridiculous tweet during the evening, telling him to be more careful. Idiot.
He got loads of responses and almost 2600 retweets. For me the best response came from a spoof account:
Angry Cipollini (@cipothelionking)
Froome
I don't like Froome. I like Wiggins, and it appears that the two are like marmite, you can like one or the other, but not both. I found his comments to the press, too sculptured, too obvious and too clean, like reading from the Team Sky lexicon. His celebration on winning the Mont Ventoux stage was strange - like he knew he was supposed to do a celebration but he was not committed to it, or that he knew how to do it. He is an ugly ugly bike rider. And, I don't know why, but I just don't like him. So there.
He didn't have a great start - crashing in the neutral zone on stage one, clipping a pedal on a kerb and hurting a knee, but after this he got stronger and stronger and looked unstoppable, especially up the mountains. Chapeau.
Richie Porte was a great lieutenant for Froome. He had one shocking day which cost him more than ten minutes, and after this time he supported Froome and left behind his GC ambitions. He was the real lieutenant and behaved so for Froome, in contrast to Froome's childish behaviour whilst supporting Wiggo last year. Several times, Porte was distancing Froome, but he dropped back and looked after him perfectly.
Peter Kennaugh was strong and showed great talent, putting the massive gears into the bottom of all the climbs. He took one shocking fall - being elbowed off the road by Ryder Hesjedal - and ended up falling meters down a slope and was lucky to come out virtually unscathed.
The rest of the Sky Team struggled, Boasson Hagen crashed and snapped a shoulder, Kiryienka missed a time cut, and there was a great piece by David Walsh in the Times describing how BRailsford thought the team was weak, and describing a team meeting when he told David Lopez that he knew they were only at 80% but they had to give 100% of that 80% and changed the Team Sky plan. Certainly, the squad really missed Henao and Uran Uran (now on route to Omega Pharma Quick Step) who were real workhorses in 2012.
Doping
Froome was constantly asked if he was doping. It appears the journos are going the other way, after the Armstrong years they have been accused of not being inquisitive enough, so now are going crazy for it. Sky have firmly denied this, and even released some data to L'Equippe to show that Froome is clean. I sincerely hope he is. Certainly he seems to be a real geek, and perfect for the Sky approach. Unlike Wiggo who smokes, drinks and gets fat off season, Froome seems to hold his tiny weight constant year round, perfect for Marjory Gains.
Again, I hope the tour was clean. Certainly there were plenty of human behaviours. Froome bonked, Porte bonked, Contador was gash. I still feel that some of the Sky bonks were almost too perfect to make it seem that they were human - they seemed to come after epic performances, just to reassure the rest of the world. I really really really hope that I am just being overly suspicious and cautious.
At the same time, lots of other sports were being hit really hard by doping. Turkey banned 31 track and field athletes for doping (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-athletics-turkey-doping-idUSBRE9740LM20130805), this came after the shocking, but obvious news that the Tour of Turkey winner, Mustafa Sayar (http://velonews.competitor.com/2013/07/news/tour-of-turkey-winner-mustafa-sayar-tests-positive-for-epo_295298) tested positive for EPO. Not surprising - I have somewhere some commentary of the stage where he road away from the full peloton, up a hill, still in the big ring. Then there were several very very high profile sprint athletes given a major ping, including Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell (http://www.theage.com.au/sport/athletics/tyson-gays-doping-confirmed-by-second-sample-20130728-2qs6g.html) and now we hear about A-Rod, Alex Rodriguez who was pivotal in a doping ring in baseball which will result in him being banned (http://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking_news_detail.asp?id=37250). Hopefully doping in cycling has turned a good corner, but we will not know. Especially since during the tour, ASO decided to announce a huge list of riders that have had retrospective positive dope tests from the 1998 Tour de France (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/24/us-doping-cycling-france-idUSBRE96N0PA20130724).
Merch
Some great merchandise was available this year. Some of my favourites here:
Animation
A nice animated review here of the how the Tour de France works:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7wPa1Hl5ZA&feature=player_embedded&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dh7wPa1Hl5ZA%26feature%3Dplayer_embedded&nomobile=1
Of course, next year, le grande depart will be from Yorkshire. Ecky thump - I cannot wait!
Ciao for now.
The top three: Froome, Quintana, Rodriguez.
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.PNG)
.JPG)
.PNG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
No comments:
Post a Comment