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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I was just reading some of the riders and managements opinions regarding the Port de Balès chain debate. I think this is well said and pretty much covers my opinion of it....Cervélo team owner Gerard Vroomen had this to say on Twitter: "Contador just gained a great chance to win, but he lost the chance to win greatly."
My two cents:
When the blood is rushing, it is pretty hard to think in a nice considered manner like we are doing now. Whilst Schleck was no doubt ahead of AC when he dropped his chain (bizarrely, there was no shift, no nothing to cause the chaing to skip, just power to the drivetrain??? "I was riding so hard that my chain started hurting so much that it jumped off for a rest"), Contador was definitely responding at the time and was going a bloc. So maybe he clearly sees a dropped chain, however a dropped chain usually is righted pretty easily (Schleck did panic and cost himself seconds here) so he is not going to suddenly stop to a halt. I think not immediately stopping is certainly forgivable as things were happening pretty fast.
SO I don't hold AC too accountable there, but I do believe he missed the chance to right something later on, ie. should AC have taken "affirmative action" somewhere on the hill once he realised the severity of Schleck's problem? I say yes and to do that he would have needed to call a halt to Menchov, Sanchez et al.
A TRUE patron of the peloton would have made this call and matters would have been righted - or maybe a good DS would have made the call to AC or other DS'. So whilst I don't think Cuntodor was Dick Dastardly, he missed a chance to mark himself as a true statesman of the sport. Wasn't quite a hanging offence, but not far short.
That being said, fuck I hope Schleck nails the Spanish sonofabitch to the wall - or failing that, that AC wins the Tour by far more than the 39 seconds he gained today - so that this doesn't become an issue forevermore.
@Marcus
I agree. The classy thing for Thrush to do would've been to tell Denis and Sammy to ride tempo until Grimpeur had rejoined. He didn't. That ain't classy. In fact, he seems to be using them as part of the excuse. Even less classy. Right about now, Bjarn will be saying to Andy "Don't think about the lack of class - think about the reasons for it. He's scared of you. Go get your jersey back from the sonofabitch." And I hope he does. Big time.
Couple of good and sensible quotes from Bruyneel and Riis below. They don't seem to think Contador did too much wrong - but equally, as pakrat noted above, he missed a chance to mark himself as a great. Imagine how cool it would have been if AC had waited (even if Menchov et al went off) and he and Schleck had worked together on the way down? Would have been one for the ages, regardless of who wins in Paris. But how long do you wait? So there are at least two sides to this story.
"In the heat of the race and the finale, you cannot say to Contador, 'wait for Andy.' Andy didn't wait for Contador on the cobblestones, either," said RadioShack's Johan Bruyneel. "You can't say to Sammy Sánchez, I'll let you go because I'll wait for the yellow jersey. No, there are no gifts in this race."
Saxo Bank boss Bjarne Riis was trying to remain upbeat about Schleck's overall chances despite the bitter twist of fate. The squad huddled inside the team bus immediately after the stage to discuss their feelings and plot a game plan to try to bounce back.
"Sánchez and Menchov were going full gas. It won't help to criticize. For us, it would have been better if they had waited, but we cannot expect any help in these circumstances," Riis said. "I think Contador waited at the beginning, but it took awhile before Andy was on his bike again. How long can Contador wait? I don't know. Of course we'd have hoped he waited more. I don't want to create a polemic, but how many guys crashed today? Nobody helps them, nobody waited. That's how it is."
@Marcus
Really well said, mate, and a great little quote in there, too:
New term for a dropped chain, that.
I think you're absolutely right about the blood pumping and making it hard to think clearly; but it's precisely that which defines those different "champion" qualities. Ullrich and Armstrong were locked in battle as well, yet Der Kaiser backed off in the midst of it. Granted, there was no debating that something serious had happened.
@Salsa_Lover
Thanks for sending that along; that was the right thing to do by him - to apologize like that. As a case in point, I've never known Cav to do that, and I think it goes a long way towards correcting the situation. But he's not giving back the time, and it still doesn't change what he did in the moment.
But therein lies one of the major problems we have in a sport like this: the fans see one thing from the tele and the pros are in the midst of it. Whatever the rationalization may be, we judge them based on what is tangible to us. Generally, that tangible bit is what we've seen with our own eyes, and how we interpret that.
What I saw today was not the actions of a champion.
In Nordic ski racing, we did mostly time trials. The convention was that a faster, passing skier from behind always had the right of way; the skier would let out a howl and the other skier was expected to move to the side. I was lapping a less experienced skier who didn't adequately move to the side. I clipped my ski tip on his and he (briefly) interrupted my rhythm. I still won the race, and he didn't cause me to fall, but I called him a "worthless piece of shit", right to his face.
I still regret that to this day, and it must have happened...15 years ago. I can rationalize it by saying I was consumed by the competitive fire (I always was) and I was always a good sportsman off the skis; always respectful and humble. I doubt the other skier remembers this event, but in my heart I know I was wrong.
I regret that action because that behavior - especially during the intensity of the race - is not becoming of a champion.
@Marcus
Interesting quotes. Makes you think.
For those who speak French or read Dutch, on the incident in 1971, between Merckx and Ocana:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc5te542baM
In the haze of my gun-destroying ride today, I realized through a self-imposed mechanical that this all is possibly frank's fault. I shall explain myself:
There's no doubt that most of the professional Hardmen frequent this blog. One knows at the very least that Jens probably has The Rules tattooed on his retinas in such a way that he can only view the world through Them.
Because of that, I figure it went down like this:
Jens (in the big ring): Hey, Andy Schleck, I was reading, again, our favorite blog the other day. Specifically, I was reading an entry by one frank from July 11, 2010.
AS: What's that Jens? Sorry, I was too busy climbing.
Jens (shifting to yet a bigger ring): Ah, yes, of course. I was saying check out the entry from July 11, 2010, by one frank on our favorite blog. It's called, Reverence: The Double Shift. I've been practicing it all night on the trainer I keep in my bed.
AS: The Double Shift, you say? I like the sound of that...
And you all can see where things went from there. As I--myself inspired by frank's Reverence article--was wiping the chain oil off of my hands this afternoon after the old hop-off-the-bike-in-a-fit-of-winded-rage-so's-I-can-put-my-chain-back-on routine, the epiphany was made clear: Andy Schleck, too, was fully stirred by frank's inspirational Double Shift article, and the world of cycling is yet again changed forever.
All jokes aside, I, too, was watching, heart racing, audibly cheering AS on. Love the blog, everyone!
Those who compared this to what happened on the pave are dealing with apples and oranges. In the context of this stage and part of the race, and what was happening at the time, it's totally different. Hell, back on the pave, Huevos Lancheros was still leading Bertie til he flatted. All hell was breaking loose on the pave, and let's not forget that AS lost his brother on that stage as well.
At this latest stage we have two men - the two favorites to win the race - locked in a tight duel, and it's in this context that Bertie shows himself to be a douchebag. NO, we don't expect him to "stop", but he was looking over his shoulder - the man is not an idiot, and it's clear from the video that he must of been aware that the MJ was having a mechanical. It's not credible for everyone to say that "no one knew what was happening to Andy".
ALSO - it's not totally clear that this "chain dropping" was due to some fault of AS, as many are implying. In this case, no matter how you slice it, it was not an action worthy of a true sportsman and Velominatus. He saw that the MJ was in serious trouble and then went on a vigorous attack. Rationalize all you want, but actions speak louder than words. There's a reason he got booed and so many people are disgusted by this, no matter what the talking heads say...
@Seth
Brilliant. I also had to manually replace my chain after fucking up an attempted double-shift on the weekend (warming up for hill repeats on an 8% - 10% grade in honour of the Montee Jalabert climb - except it was freezing cold and pissing with rain, there was no runway at the top and I didn't climb very well for my weight, so that as homages go it was a rank failure). I cursed Frank (and my gullibility) accordingly. But I hadn't made the - in retrospect entirely obvious - mental connections to see that Frank is equally to blame for the Grimpeur's misfortune.
Frank, if Our Boy Andy loses time again, and it turns out that the reason is that Jens had told him to wrap 3M electrical tape around his seat post and the tape had failed and his seat had slid down and his stroke had been ruined as a result, so help me I will fly over to Seattle and hunt you down ...
@Seth
Jens doesn't sleep.