This Week in Road Cycling: July 28 to August 3

The Tour is over, and there is still not much bike racing in Arizona. Hold onto your chamois, it's This Week in Road Cycling.

Shazzam!!!

Local Racing

Races in August (Thank God it's no longer July):
-Mt Lemmon TT: Tucson, AZ - Aug 10; http://www.saguarovelo.org/infolemmon.htm
-Tortilla Flats RR (the last one): http://www.azcycling.com/08cal/FLYERS/tft_08.pdf
-Kitt Peak TT: Tucson, AZ - Aug 17; http://www.saguarovelo.org/infokitt.htm
-Skull Valley RR: Skull Valley, AZ- Aug 24; http://wmrc.org/skull/index.htm

Pro Racing

Tour de France:

-Stage 16: The riders climbed over the highest road in all of Europe. I don't really think any of the riders were very excited by this accomplishment. Since this stage wasn't a mountain top finish, there wasn't likely going to be very many big gaps between all the GC favorites. For the most part that was the case, except Denis Menchov(Rabobank) and Christian Vande Velde(Garmin-Chipotle) were dropped on the climb and couldn't manage to get back on the descent. Menchov lost 35 seconds, and Vande Velde lost 2:36 (He crashed on the descent). Frank Schleck stayed in yellow.

-Stage 17: Today was the day that many were saying would be the most important day of the Tour, and it lived up to the hype. Stage 17 was a hard day that was made up of a total of 3 Hors Categorie (French for, "Don't ride your bike up here, or you might die.") climbs, ending on the famous Alpe d'Huez In a brilliant display of what can happen if you have a team of the strongest riders in the world, CSC-Saxo Bank took control of the day and delivered Carlos Sastre into his first maillot jaune of his career. Their plan for the day was to keep the pace high for the whole day, having riders like Jens Voigt (badass) and Fabian Cancellara (robot) driving the pace over the first two Hors Categorie climbs of the day (the Col du Galibier and the Col de la Croi de Fer). After that it was all left up to the three climber of the team (Carlos Sastre, white jersey wearer Andy Schleck, and yellow jersey wearer Frank Schleck). Sastre attacked from the very bottom of the Alpe d'Huez and managed to get a over 2 minutes to Cadel Evans and the rest of the gc guys. This would give him a 1:33 advantage over Evans heading into the important time trial on Saturday.

Stage 18: After the excitement of stage 17, stages 18 and 19 would have little to do with the overall race. Instead, teams who hadn't won a stage were going to try their best to salvage their tour. One such team who had some salvaging to do was Quickstep. Carlos Barredo did his best to win the stage, but was outsprinted in the end by Columbia's Marcus Burghardt. Barredo was really mad (video). Sastre just sort of hung out with his yellow jersey. Also, Damiano Cunego's Tour de France, which was already going horribly, got even worse when he crashed. He still finished the stage 20 minutes down, but abandoned the next day.

Stage 19: Kind of the same thing as stage 18, except this time Sylvain Chavanel (Cofidis) would beat out Jeremy Roy (Francaise des Jeux). Sastre stayed safely in yellow... until tomorrow?

Stage 20: This was supposed to be the day that Cadel Evans became the first Australian to ever win a Tour de France. The thinking was that Sastre isn't such a good TT'er and Evans would easily take back more than the 1:36 he needed. He didn't. In fact, Evans only managed to take back about 30 seconds, giving Sastre a comfortable minute lead to enjoy the final stage of the tour. The time trial was won again by Stefan Schumacher, who somehow found a way to beat the mighty Fabian Cancellara.

Stage 21: Even though the last stage of the Tour is technically a race, it isn't ever treated like won. Traditionally, the last stage of the Tour is reserved for doing stuff like this, this and this. In the end though, the sprinters try and make things dangerous, because winning a sprint on the Champs Elysee is really important or something. Gert Steegmans finally managed to salvage Quickstep's Tour with the win.


I just want to say that I loved this years Tour. It had some depressing moments, with several positive drug test, but watching a team like CSC-Saxo Bank totally take control of the race and get the win by racing unselfishly was amazing to watch. They managed to get: 2 stage wins (Arvesen, Sastre), the overall team classification, the white jersey (Andy Schleck), and of course the yellow jersey (Sastre). It's kind of hard to describe if you're not absolutely nuts about this sport like I am, but the way this team rides and acts is completely unlike any other team in professional sports. If you have the chance, watch the movie Overcoming and you'll see what I mean.

I'll try to tone down the geekiness in the coming weeks

Thanks for Reading,

Anthony