Le Tour de France: Anybody's Ballgame
Yeah, yeah, we know.
You had Oscar Pereiro in the office Tour de France pool until you watched the OLN Tour Preview show and Bob Roll convinced you to change it to Floyd Landis. Right, and you had Carlos Sastre on the podium too until your buddy Joao from Portugal got you thinking that Jose Azevedo had this one dialed in. And you've always been a huge Cyril Dessel fan, but you thought he was still a year or two away from going big time; this was going to be finally going to be Georgie Hincapie's year.
Sure you did. We guarantee that nobody had Pereiro, Sastre, and Andreas Kloden in the top three (well, maybe Kloden) before the Tour started.
The Tour is a long way from over, including another brutal mountain stage today and the final differentiating time trial, but some things are now certain. One of those certainties is that after completely cracking in Stage 16 yesterday, Floyd Landis will not be the winner of this year's Tour de France. Another certainty is that the Tour is more wide open than it's been in years.
Mickael Rasmussen flashing his Jesus Christ pose -- Reuters.
On July 14, after Landis captured the maillot jaune (tip o' the cap to reader Arnaud) in Stage 11, MSNBC declared the "Tour de France is now Landis' to lose." Unfortunately, that's exactly what he has done. MSNBC by the way is now singing a different tune.
Apparently Phonak Director Sportif John Lelangue is a student of the Marty Schottenheimer School of How Not to Win. Like Marty, Lelangue built his tour strategy on an inherent disbelief in his team and his team leader. This was evident in Phonak's decision not to chase down Pereiro's 28-minute breakaway, at all, in Stage 13. We're sure Phonak won't be second-guessing that decision this off season.
In fact, it appears that Phonak's strategy for victory was to eek out a tiny lead for Landis and then hold on for dear life. That is not a winning strategy for the Tour, especially with a generally weak team like Phonak. In the past two critical mountain stages, the only other Phonak rider anywhere to be seen for Landis was Axel Merckx. That's not going to get it done when the entire GC field is going after you. As Lance showed the past seven years, you can get a long way with strategy, but at some point, you just have to physically and mentally overpower everybody else. Landis showed neither of these capabilities this year, but hopefully he will learn from this miscalculation and come back next year ready to win stages, and the Tour.
One man who did show incomparable force of will in Stage 16 was Danish rider Mickael "Chicken Legs" Rasmussen. Winner of the 1999 Mountain Bike World Championships and defending King of the Mountains champion, Rasmussen led an early breakaway and swept all four categorized climbs, including two Beyond Category (HC) monsters, en route to a gutsy stage win in La Toussuire. Coming across the finish line, his face was agony and ecstasy, a perfect portrait of the Tour.
