I’m sorry about the situation. I attacked and went. Hope you understand

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/riis-reveals-he-advised-contador-over-chaingate?ns_campaign=news&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=cyclingnews&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

Absoltuely, and I do not want to rehash this whole thing as you all already had a great discussion on it but I think the best quote that summed up the whole mess the best was the one posted earlier by pakrat “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.” Pretty much will be what I remember about the 2010 tdf, even is Clentador goes down for the doping.

Then the next day I was on that same route on my rain bike and did the exact same thing.

Dropping your chain sucks ass on a training ride. It sucks even more ass if it causes you to lose the Tour. I’m installing chain catchers on all bikes.

Salsa_Lover :
“If you draw your sword and you drop it, you die.” – Ryder Hesjedal regarding Shleck’s dropped chain and Cantador’s attack.
:D

Outstanding quote. I had not seen this one before. Ryder is an up-and-coming Rock Star!

It is tradition like this that’s makes this more than a race.

A bit of perspective is required here. It’s a fucking race. By all means when the peloton is rolling along don’t attack if the MJ has a problem, but if the race is on then all’s fair.

A lot of current Pro cyclists would struggle with the word “sportsmanship” given the era they raced through and the things they got up to.

He has gained respect from me lately. Hell, for all we know, he may become the next Poulidor.

frank I agree with you wholeheartly, about tradition, honour, class and all.

But, in this particular event, there was no crash nor mechanical.

Andy just went to attack on the wrong gear, clumsily droped the chain and then freaked out for 30 seconds.

he simply brought it on himself.

Conti could have been generous and wait for him, I agree this would have been a beautiful beau geste.

But is is a race and they are there to win it.

Would Schmuck have done the same if it was Drac asking people to wait for Bertie? I doubt it. Faboo would have been gleefully charging off after Chavanel to defend his jersey whilst carrying the brothers Schmuck in his wake.

Well, that’s just speculation. But, it’s feasible. I think all of them would have wait, but the only fact we actually have is that they did wait, and at this point it’s becoming unclear whose idea it was and what others would have done.

@Salsa_Lover, @Hawkeye

“If you draw your sword and you drop it, you die.” – Ryder Hesjedal regarding Shleck’s dropped chain and Cantador’s attack.

Touché. More from the whole waiting game, from Mediocre Cadel:

If we waited every time something went wrong, we’d still be at stage 3 by now, waiting for someone to adjust their underpants.

Classic.

But lets not loose sight of the fact that we’re not talking about G.C. favorites waiting for one another any time a crash happens. We’re talking about the tradition of never attacking the Maillot Jaune when they crash or have a mechanical.

:D

I think Stage 2 had a lot of GC hitters crapping their pants wondering what the feck just happened, and Faboo shutting the race down was an easy solution for them to take, especially when they were probably so thankful to get back onto the bunch. Bertie (and Good Cadel in particular (he didn’t bite it from memory and was right up the front), and Armstrong, and a couple of others) DID choose to not attack further though once they’d shaken themselves off. And it was sporting of them. How many chances does one dude get in a race?

Would Schmuck have done the same if it was Drac asking people to wait for Bertie? I doubt it. Faboo would have been gleefully charging off after Chavanel to defend his jersey whilst carrying the brothers Schmuck in his wake.

In the end it matters not. My money’s on Bertie giving young Schmuck a lesson in bike riding tomorrow after he’s already given him one in class. And then rubbing it in on the TT by well over a minute.

Hell, even Vino slowed for AS until Bertie caught up and kept on rolling. I like that it has been spinned that he was counterattacking at the moment…. he was simply in panic mode.

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.

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.

If he does win the Tour, it better be by minutes – otherwise its a tainted yellow jersey.

FTW!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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…

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!

For those who speak French or read Dutch, on the incident in 1971, between Merckx and Ocana:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc5te542baM

I was riding so hard that my chain started hurting so much that it jumped off for a rest.

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.

“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.”

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdOJLuePexs

Cyclops… Love your BMX story… reminds me of that Ryder Cup when the American holed out on the 17th “to win”, and the entire US team + wives stormed the green… before the Euro had even been allowed to try and putt his 30footer to level… the classy thing would have been to say “My bad, I’ll give you a gimme… let’s call this evens, and I’ll beat you on the last hole… let’s go to it” instead, the US guys all settled down, the Euro fluffed his putt, and the US victory was diminished… and that golfer (I can’t even remember his name) missed the chance to be known as the greatest sportsman whoever lived.

I’m also hoping my t-shirt arrives for Thursday, as am hosting a Pau-Tourmalet BBQ, and it would rock.

Back in the 90’s Gary Ellis dominated the national AA Pro BMX scene. Then came Christophe Leveque – a French pro that was smooth and stylish. Leveque tore up the pro ranks and was a shoe-in for the ABA #1 pro plate. The only problem was that the ABA had a rule that a foreigner could not be the AMERICAN Bicycle Association #1 Pro. At the Grand Nantionals Leveque won all his motos and mains and finished the year with more point than Ellis. They called Ellis down to award him the #1 plate and the keys to the new Jeep. Right then and there Ellis had the chance to go down in (BMX) history as the greatest/classiest pro of all time. He could have called Christophe from the stands and handed him the keys and the plate and said “You earned this, I didn’t.” But Ellis didn’t do that. He kept the Jeep and ran the #1 plate all next year. He missed out on what a true champion is. By the way, the next year the ABA changed the rules to allow for foreigners to win the #1 pro title and two years later Leveque won the title two years in a row.

Chavanel had a bunch of flats on the Pave, but I think that the stones dictate another atmosphere altogether; they’re so hard to rider over, you can’t hear anything in the radio and slowing down is a very hard thing to do over a terrain that requires speed in order to pass safely. That said, though, it’s tough to see the Maillot Jaune be lost that way for sure. Of course, Bertie’s mech with the spokes on the stones is a tough one, too, but I don’t think he lost much time there as he finished a few seconds behind Veino’s group, which was the one he was already riding in – that, and he wasn’t in the jersey, of course. I liked seeing the Pave in the Tour, but in retrospect, I suppose all this points to the notion that having such a stage in the Tour doesn’t really make sense. You don’t want to see differences in time made on such routes. Grand Tours are three week races, not classics.

All that said, it’s a good point that they’re even now, and that’s a fair point in a sense; neither rider has proven dominant over the other, with each taking 10 seconds on an uphill finish.

With that in mind, I wait for tomorrows stage with renewed anticipation.

Yes, if you look righ the video, Andi has the problem and slows down, AC comes from behind and passes him, and when Andi stops with his chain problem, AC is away and don’t look back so he couldn’t know what was going on.

A droped chain could be set back in 3 seconds. why Andi took so long to do it ?

If you watch the footage, it’s clear that Contador was on the attack well before the chain actually dropped. I’m inclined to believe Contador when he says he was quite a ways ahead before he actually found out about Andy’s mechanical. What he did in spite of having found out, however, is where the unsportsmanlike conduct lies: The fact that after he found out, he continued his attack in spite of it.

Logically, what he did makes sense, and like Ligget and Hesjedal said: That’s racing. Andy needs to put some extra Rule #5 in his bottles and take the jersey back. You didn’t see anybody wait for Lance when he crashed this year, and Andy already got his break on the Cobbles when Faboo organized a the neutralization of the stage.

On the whole, I’ve been disappointed with the sportsmanship in this Tour. This generation of racers has no respect.

Andy didn’t crashed, he just mishandled his bike and droped his chain, it was not a “mechanical” because the bike was fully operative, it was just operator’s error.

And also, when Chavanel was in Yellow on the Pavés and he suffered 2 flats, nobody wait for him…. and guess whose team profited of the situation to recover the yellow Jersey then ?

Also at the same stage, Bertie had a mechanical, he broke an spoke and had to ride Kms on an untrue wheel… nobody wait for him too and for that reason he lost the 30 seconds that made Andy the race leader later on.

AC just recovered those 30 seconds today.

The race is even again.

Interestingly, Contador was loudly booed on the podium taking his maillot jaune by the (somewhat educated, I must say) crowd in Bagneres de Luchon… and would love to know what Schleck said to him as he went up to take his white jersey passing Contador coming off stage.

On ITV4, Boardman said that Contador was right to attack, as Schleck hadn’t fitted a chainguard as he’d gone without to save 50g for the climb [is this what Roche meant?], so Contador had calculated it was his (Schleck’s) choice and his risk. Bollocks to that, I say. At best, Contador panicked… but then he had the remaining 3km of the climb to correct his error (and didn’t); at worst, he disrespected the tradition of the race, the maillot jaune, and brought himself into disrepute. I also didn’t see Menchov or Dirty Sanchez reining AC in either.

I attacked before he had a problem with his chain and was a long way ahead when I heard what had happened

I agree that AC knew exactly what was happening, the MJ is not going to stop suddenly in the middle of an attack except for a mechanical. Stephen Roche said the mechanical was probably Andy’s fault, I’m wondering if he’s losing some marbles in his old age… it doesn’t matter if it was Andy’s fault, it’s not how the MJ should be lost, especially when he’s the stronger rider.

It was interesting to listen to Paul and Phil get at it; Phil definitely held that AC did nothing wrong, but Paul was very much in question as to what had happened.

I did my best to yell at AC to stop because he was being a “dirty slimy fuck”. You do see him look around and maybe pretend to slow down for an instant, but if anything, that shows that he definitely assessed the situation and made the decision to continue. The notion that he didn’t know what happened is ludicrous. As you say, he lurches around him to attack as Andy stops. Highly disrespectful to the Yellow Jersey, and these types of “excuses” are highly disrespectful to the fans.

Umm…correct me if I am wrong, but AS had just launched an attack, Veino responded and was pursuing, and AC was third…he would have had to have passed AS after his chain dropped when he was lurching around. SO AC’s rationale is a bit sketchy to say the least.

It’s amazing that AC is not getting more heat about this, frankly, other than on cycling forums…