What a fine stage we witnessed yesterday, with all the drama one could possibly hope for - Soler's admirable win, Contador's violent attacks, Cadel Evans' gutsy hanging on, Vinokourov's shocking, slow motion collapse, Moreau's evergreen vigor, Team Disco's brilliant tactics, Chris Horner's now-routine workin' man's excellence.
While the racing as a whole is better in the Giro, yesterday served as a reminder about why the Tour is beloved. Five or six times over the course of three weeks, it serves up a race-within-the-race that is utterly compelling, nearly impossible to turn away from. Stage racing is operatic in nature - and I'm talking about Wagnerian epics, not these little two hour pleasant diversions from Puccini. You sit there and watch a cast of dozens, each with an important story to tell. The rookie, the climber, the struggling sprinter, the kid from nowhere, the aging champ, the rider everybody loves but who just doesn't quite have it, the Team that's a Machine, the troubled team, the favorite who collapses, the underdog who does or doesn't deliver, the guy whose bike or team lets him down, the wild card team that has a great day or two... Man, it's all in there. Like a Wagnerian opera, a good day at the Tour pummels your senses for three or four hours, six if you watch the live feed. The multi-faceted narrative slowly unspools, with every narrative skein spilling out at its own pace. The viewer is engaged on a number of levels - I can relate to those suffering sprinters, those old guys who have a tough time with the kids, the underdog, the guy with the mechanical. It just plays out, and unlike most of our movie and television dramas, we don't really know how it's going to end. So it's absolutely engaging.
Like the Giro, the Tour rewards the patient viewer, year after year. I guess there are people who don't get it, and that is a shame; more than any sport I've ever seen, a stage race encapsulates a lot of the struggles of daily life; almost any of the story lines could serve as a really good metaphor for some struggle we all face at one time or another. If you really follow the Tour for a few weeks, you come to understand that bicycle racing isn't just a metaphor for life, it is life.
5 comments:
GREAT POST. I miss DC, even with all the morons... Ever since bikesnobNYC showed up you seem to have stepped up your writing... It's becoming a bike blog renaissance period.
Sometimes it takes somebody with a highly critical view of your pastime to make you take a fresh look at it. It can turn you off to it, or reinvigorate you. BikeSnob offers a lot of moments of cultural affirmation for me - you look at his stuff and go, "yeah, that's *exactly* how I feel, and not only that, but it's exactly how I am supposed to feel." It's bitchy but somebody needs to remind us about community standards sometime, if being a 'bicyclist' has some content to it. I was thinking on the ride in today, I really love road bikes. You can take a human bear like me, put him on a roadbike, and suddenly he becomes somewhat fast and graceful, capable of finesse. You can take a little tiny dot of a woman, put her on a road bike, and suddenly she becomes a hill climbing powerhouse. Then there's all the weight lost, the health health gained and the friends made. Roadbikes are special, and the Snob knows it, and tees off on people who don't get it, I think as a means of educating us on 'the right way of doing things.' It's reactionary, but in their slightly oversized, slow beating and rather green/progressive hearts, most cyclists are very old school people and know this.
FWIW, my writing waxes and wanes during the year. Most of my best stuff seems to come in the fall or early race season - more goofy stuff happens, combined with more time to sit around in bad weather, no kayaking or jogging or swimming to eat up time. Right now, I'm particularly jacked up by listening to the two best color guys in the bidness, Phil Ligget and Bob Roll, going into paroxysms over the racing in the Giro, then the Tour. Their enthusiasm (and the amazing racing the first two grand tours have produced so far) is infectious, kind of like when the hometown sports team finally gets on a roll. The doping enforcement scare seems to be making the racing much more interesting too. There is a little magic in the sport right now, and everybody can snag a bit of it, racers and tifosi alike. So don't blame me, blame Schleck and Piepoli, Soler and Gerdeman. Thanks much for the compliment.
I think your blog is great, so good in fact that it made the "sites almost as good as mine" section on my site. However, sometimes these guys who are in the Michelin Service Course category do serious riders a great service. See, they ride a few times and it hurts and they take the bike back to the store that told them it was the wrong size in the first place. And City Bikes, being a great if self flagellating shop (let's just say there is a good reason I'm not in retail), takes it back and gets him a different size. And then after it sits there for a while, some racer with a gleam in his eye, a wrecked frame, and the genetic gift of suiting a size 56 C'dale down to the ground walks in and walks out with Cannondale's finest and a receipt that says "you saved $2100 on your purchases today." I should scan that receipt and post it.
So who do you figure for the overall?
Thanks Chuck, I like your blog too. With the talk about the delectable champaign / chocolate mousse mixture produced by Amish taxi cabs and other assorted atrocities, you appear to embody one of my credos in life, "Nobody, but nobody, beats me in a field sprint to the bottom."
I agree with you about CityBikes. I was hoping they'd make me an offer on this On One Il Pompino that somebody rode, but apparently didn't like. Maybe their girlfriend or wife Babelfished "il Pompino." Canondale makes some nice bikes but they are overpriced - so $2100 off any bike in the C-dale line strikes me as a fair, even slight bargain price for one of them.
The overall... George Hincapie, definitely George Hincapie. Why? Because I'm proud to be an Ameri-can, where at least I know I'm free... to pick the most popular, good looking guy to win. Hey, if it works for our political system, why can't it work in the TdF?
If I was being serious I'd go for Cadel Evans. I thought he was dead last night but he really showed me something when he led the chase back up to Contador. He TT's alright, climbs decently, and when it came time to dig, he dug deeper than anybody. I think he'll do some damage to Rasmussen in the TT's, and hang tough in the Pyrenees. Rasmussen may also blow up there - one thing about the really, really skinny guys, is they seem to not recover as well as the merely really skinny guys. So Rasmussen seems to be a one good day, two bad days kind of guy. Cadel - he seems to plug away every day. That is sort of the right coordinates for a TdF winner...
Now watch, he hits a squirrel and crashes out tomorrow...
I was dying when I saw that poor freaking dog get hit. Man do I love dogs. Way more than people, generally. Love to see Evans, but I'm kind of thinking Valverde myself. Used to like him a whole lot, but now I don't and I'm not sure why. He does drive one sweet mother Mini, though, so he has that going for him.
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