Five observations after le Col de la Madeleine.

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Five observations after le Col de la Madeleine.

Basso. He's tired, we're all tired.

A few thoughts after the epic and brutal stage 9 over the Madeleine that basically destroyed the field except for Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck.

1) Cadel Evans will never win a grand tour.

While I have immense respect for Cadel’s talent and perseverance, I think he’s a psychological beaten man after fracturing his elbow, yet another grand tour undone by bad luck. Something always happens, a slow wheel change, a bad cold, an ill-timed crash, you name it. He’s simply cursed in the Giro and Tour de France. I suspect that this is the tour where he admits to himself that a podium is an unlikely goal ever. A shame, really.

2) Who the hell is Jerome Pineau?

And more importantly, the follow-up: why is he wearing the coveted polka dot jersey of best grimpeur in the tour? This is laughable because it’s doubtful to me he’d make the top 30 best climbers in the ProTour.

Okay, I get the silly game. The first week of the tour some ambitious second tier dude goes full gas and sucks up all the easy points on the early climbs when the real climbers don’t care. Pineau is King of the Mountains compared to who? I know the tour organizers need to spice up the action on those early climbs for the fans but give it a different jersey. It should have a vacuum cleaner on it and we’ll call it le maillot aspirateur.

On the tail end of his career, Laurent Jalabert played the suck up mountain points game in the tour. That was forgivable because Jaja was a big talent and a former top GC rider. Jerome Pineau? Reminds me of my new fave French expression: permit de rire. Excuse me while I laugh.

3) Where were the Americans on la Madeleine?

Having watched the Tour de France many years on the boob tube, I’m used to seeing legions of crazed Americans cheering for Lance and the boys. I walked down from the summit two — if not two and a half — kilometers and didn’t see one American flag or Texas long star. On the flip side, I saw a minimum of two dozen Norwegian flags. Little Norway taking care of business!

I looked carefully because I hadn’t eaten lunch and had nothing to drink so I was scanning for Americans to take pity on me. Again, passed hundred of parked campers and not one Go Lance sign. I did see a chalk message or two supporting Armstrong but I’m convinced they were left over from a previous tour. Did everybody just fly home after he dropped out of contention?

4) Schleck and Contador are in a higher universe.

Thee two riders are head, shoulders and anaerobic maxs above everybody else who dares pedal a bike in their vicinity. As I mentioned in my Madeleine post, every single rider had a grimace on their face except Andy and Contador. Note the post stage quote: the Spaniard called it a “nice stage” Nice is not what the word others like Sastre, Wiggins, Evans and Sanchez were selecting. In the old days, you’d need a dozen bags of fresh blood and two new legs after a stage like this. The top two podium steps are set and that third step is 100 feet lower down.

5) Jesus, I’m tired.

On a personal note, hey, this is hard. So far this has been both a dream trip and an exhausting experience. People have no idea how hard the tour is for the journalists covering the event. They have my immense respect.

As Richard Pestes of the pezcyclingnews web site told me, he has three teams covering the tour, one team per week because after a week, they’re blown and the next fresh team takes over. Each writer has a driver because I’d say the average is 4 hours a day in the car, chase riders all over France, write for two or three hours, reach hotel a 10pm, try to find dinner, bed. The logistic alone will kill you.

Tour vets have so many hilarious disaster stories I don’t even feel bad any more about my own snafus, rookie mistakes and logistical screw-ups. They lose passports, destroy rental cars, get beat up, have beer bottles thrown at them by drunken mobs of Basque fans — you invent a crazy story and it’s probably happened at Le Tour. James Raia of Versus told me by the third week he’s seen journalists fall asleep on their laptop keyboards, they’re so fried.

My clothes are filthy, I stink, I’m sore from running up and down mountains on foot. You have to make a choice: do you go the journalist route and try to do every start and finish AND get to a mountain top or you you dial it back and play blogger just dipping in and out, not stressing about missing something. I started with option one and I’ve learned that option two is better. If I had daily assignments (besides my own blog) things would be different but I decided to up the fun quotient. More wine, more good food, more clean clothes.

In short, the guys that cover the tour all three weeks writing everyday are pretty impressive. Almost as impressive as the riders.

By |2019-02-03T16:25:57-08:00July 13th, 2010|Tour de France, Uncategorized|4 Comments

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4 Comments

  1. Ron July 13, 2010 at 4:56 pm - Reply

    Matt, I did see a couple Texas and American flags on the TV yesterday but not like during Lance's glory years. Americans like winners…maybe they moved on to baseball.

    You're gonna sleep for a week when you get back. Your own bed, food you recognize, cold beer on demand. It'll be like you just got back from Iraq….well, almost! And for the first couple days they family will be treating you like a king, then its back to taking out the trash.

  2. grio July 13, 2010 at 9:22 pm - Reply

    Matty, you're doin a great service to us "cyclists" here in the USA.

    sounds amazingly draining, but wildly entertaining to say the least…you're in heaven buddy, stay pumped!

    i like your prediction of the lance-levi-one, two punch…we'll see if levi can hang w the andy/alberto show!

  3. renee July 14, 2010 at 12:24 am - Reply

    4) “Alberto and Contador are in a higher universe”

    I know you’re tired, but though I’d give you a heads up so you can edit that…. unless you’re insinuating that Bert is some kind of super human cyborg with half being A and the other half being C.

    Really enjoying your take on things, keep up the good work! = )

  4. Christopher July 14, 2010 at 8:40 am - Reply

    Matt,
    James Startt and I were both exactly 2km from the summit of Madeline shooting/filming for Bicycling where we are daily contributors. I had lots of energy bars and water in the car. Might of been hard to notice us, as we were joking with the locals in French.
    We shut down the press room at 10 last night. Drove like madmen to Chambery, found a decent meal and got to our hotel at 1. Then I spent an hour trying to upload my final Jens Voigt interview. (of course I got booted off the server so it never made it)
    Two years ago, I got really sick at the Tour, lost almost two kilos. The Quick Step team doctor kept me alive saying that if I wasn’t so fit from cycling, i woulda’ been in the hospital.
    Take care of yourself and, look for me, I have a funny bucket hat in khaki and a video camera with a furry animal on top.
    Christopher
    http://twitter.com/CKeiser

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