Of all people, a Velominatus knows that our sport is a civilized one; it is steeped in tradition and etiquette and rife with unwritten rules. High on the list of unwritten rules are those that outline acceptable behavior when various hardships befall the leader of a Grand Tour. One of the reasons such rules exist is due to the brutally difficult nature of our sport; in the context of stage races where crashes and mechanical incidents are a part of daily life and can have a major impact on the competitive landscape, such conventions and agreements form a foundation in the quest to find the winner of the events through athletic, tactical, and strategic superiority while minimizing the impact that misfortune may have on the final outcome. The Golden Rule in this case is that riders are never to attack the race leader when they suffer a crash or mechanical incident.
At the Giro d’Italia, on Stage 7 over the Strada Bianchi, the race leader Vincenzo Nibali crashed and was left to struggle behind. The question was raised then, why did the leaders not wait for Nibali, the fallen Maglia Rosa, to rejoin before continuing to race? One reason might be that Nibali wasn’t considered a legitimate threat to take the final win. Another reason was that the race was on in full force and as such there were too many riders already attacking at the moment of the crash. Justified or not, the sportsmanlike thing to do would be to wait. They didn’t, and in the end it had little impact on the result (the winner, Ivan Basso, was also held up in the crash), but a small bit of our accepted etiquette died with the decision to continue on.
Today at the Tour de France, we saw a similar situation where the Brother Grimpeur the Younger distanced rival Alberto Contador before a mechanical eventually saw him lose his Yellow Jersey. Schleck had to stop to right his dropped chain, and while he did so, Contodor came by him and pushed his advantage home, all the way to the finish. In the end, Schleck lies a few seconds behind Bertie, and in truth the 30 second lead he had before the incident was likely not enough to win the Tour. Indeed, little has changed in the reality we face in the coming days: Andy must attack Contador if he is to win this year’s Tour.
One thing that has changed, however, is that Contador has proven something I have long suspected: he is a rider whose ambition to win is greater than his sense of sportsmanship. Marko has written in these archives about the A.C. Enigma and his ambivalence towards this rider. Bertie has given us little reason to love him, aside from his blistering accelerations up the steepest grades in the mountains. He has also given us little reason to hate him, for we know little about him. For me, the greatest riders are those who perhaps do not win often, but they lose with class and dignity, and they fight. Riders who display dignity and respect for the sport and fellow athletes in the midst of dishing out huge helpings of Rule #5 is what endears a rider to this particular heart. Jan Ullrich is the prime example of this; his sportsmanship on the slopes of Luz Ardiden in the face of an opportunity to win the 2003 Tour is unmatched. Even after spending year after year being beaten by Armstrong into second place; he still had the overriding sense of sportsmanship to wait and resist pushing home the advantage when Armstrong crashed.
In our sport, a champion is one who holds the unwritten rules of conduct in higher regard than a trophy. These are the athletes who understand that the very manner in which they set about achieving their results will be woven into the fabric of their career and weigh more heavily than the golden trophies of their victories.
At the end of the day, little has been decided in the outcome of the Tour. The one thing that has been determined is that Alberto Contodor is not a true champion, for he would rather win another Tour de France than show his fellow colleagues (not to mention the fans of this sport) the opportunity to discover who is the strongest through head-to-head competition. Alberto Contodor has shown his true colors as a great rider for whom winning is more important than sportsmanship.
Tomorrow will dawn with a renewed opportunity for Andy Schleck to also show his true colors. Will he protect his second place and race conservatively into Paris, or will he rise up to fight and try to win the Tour despite today’s setback? I have a feeling that we are about to be treated to the latter. I certainly hope so.
Alberto Contador did not need to wait today. But he should have, for ours is a civilized sport, and we, fellow cyclists, are not animals.
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good to be back fella's, from vacation in colorado w/no electronic devices, no internet, just a singlespeed mtn bike.
This is a conundrum for sure.
One, is the brilliant foresight of AC's enigma. Brilliant prophecy without a doubt.
Second, was it a cheap shot or good racing? I would say it was more a cheap shot than not. Either way, AC will wear the feather in his cap for better or worse. And, if he gets booed enough, perhaps he will think more on it...or not.
Third, will history remind us of this later on?? I doubt it. Some things of the grandeur scale one could recollect, but the moment of a chain slip, a yell from the DS and AC runs like a billy goat on speed...I doubt the sport will remember that long. We tend to wax over this stuff too easily IMHO.
Nonetheless, I was expecting to see it come down to the TT, but AC isn't content to wait. It will be interesting to see what comes up next.
@Souleur
You know how when you read the posts at this site and you use your "Outside Voice" to holler everyone's screen name and then mutter along outloud in what you assume to be their voice or at least their accent as you read what they have to say as your rush to come up with something witty to reply with?
Yeah, so, whenever I see your screen name, I yell out in my best obnoxious French accent, "SOU-LAY-RrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRAH!"
Good to have you back, but no one in the two adjoining offices will feel the same way.
@Souleur
Oh - and now that I've finished reading your post - you've touched on an important bit: what role did the DS play in this? No doubt Andy was acting on orders from the car, and for certain the Astana DS knew what was happening. It's an interesting detail.
To be a fly on the faux-wood paneling inside any of those Skodas. One thing is for sure, as Paul said, AC was acting out of panic more than anything else. And Andy should remember that.
@frank
What did Merckx do on the stage to Marseille?
frank: thanks and you have an interesting take on 'souleur'
I just tried to take a screen name, make it mine and own it. So...as a Rouleur in the saddle, who is also a fundamental Cognoscenti at heart, I wanted to wear a deeply seeded virtuous name reflecting this...so...'Souleur' it was.
@Seth
FTW!
Contador is a weasel - that was no way to take the yellow jersey. He saw what was going on and took advantage of it. That was lame.
If he does win the Tour, it better be by minutes - otherwise its a tainted yellow jersey.
@Dan O
More a lemon jersey than a yellow one...
You blokes are kidding yourselves. Just because Schleck has a bit of personality, he gets a separate set of "benefit of the doubt" rules. He was given a life by Contador on Stage 2. He then attacked the fuck out of Contador who was stuck behind someone else's crash (not anything to do with him in the least) on Stage 3.
Schleck's gear change leading to a slipped chain was amateur hour. His inability to put it on for half a minute or more was first-time-on-a-bike hour. He can bleat on about revenge and respect all he wants. He is a whining piece of shit who is happy to attack people hit by problems outside of their control, but moans when it happens to him. He was at least partially in control of the situation. There are not separate rules for cobbles and hills, and nor should there be. The Tour de France is a bike RACE. Not some hand holding let's be friends hand shake affair. Yellow Jersey or not, he is expecting everyone else to subscribe to Andy's rules, which are "play fair towards me, and I'll do the same."
I hope Contador pins him to the wall tomorrow on the Tourmalet. He is by far the best bike rider in the race, and has handled this with grace, as he handled Schleck attacking him on Stage 3: it's bike racing.
Lance was flipped over the front of his bars going up a hill. This was clearly something well outside of his control, and Ullrich slowed for him. Totally different circumstance to a bloke not managing to keep his own chain on his own bike.
@Hawkeye
You're right about it being a bike race; the only thing you've got wrong here is that it wasn't a flubbed gear change - it was a nasty fluke. Here's a pretty interesting article by Zinn (with whose frame fit theories I disagree with) talking about what might have happened:
http://velonews.competitor.com/2010/07/news/technical-qa-with-lennard-zinn-why-did-schlecks-chain-come-off_130090
I also think it's interesting that up until this week, everyone blamed Spartacus for getting everyone to wait for the Schlecks, but now Contador is taking credit for it because it benefits him. Stage 3 was a different scenario, though, with the race and the attack already well under way and people falling off because of it, ala Merckx in '71. That Bertie was stuck behind the crash had less to do with misfortune and more to do with being too far back in the group.
I do have to say that either way, Bertie has handled this gracefully; the YouTube apology was a class act, and something I hope we start seeing more of. Cavendish should watch that video and take some notes. And, he didn't do anything wrong; he just didn't behave in a sportsmanlike way. He could have been a Legend, but instead, there's a big question mark.