|
“If you
fail, try, try, try again.” – An old
saying. They
tried. It didn’t
work…. T-Mobile
tried – valiantly – to put significant time into Lance Armstrong (Discovery
Channel) Saturday. Near the
start of the first of the Stage 14’s two significant climbs, Port de Pailheres
(15.2km, 8%), Alexandre Vinokourov powered away leading his T-Mobile teammate
Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso (CSC). So sudden
and effective was this attack that it left Lance Armstrong in a following group
of riders without any support from his Discovery Channel
team. This may
have been one of the most critical junctures of the 2005 Tour de
France. Armstrong
didn’t panic. He got off his seat
and launched into his trade-mark, quick-cadence pedalling (learned from
five-time tour winner Miguel Indurain) and quickly bridged back to the
T-Mobile-led group.
And there
he stayed the rest of the race, eventually besting Ullrich and then Basso in the
last kilometer of the final climb (AX-3-Domaines, 9.1km,
7.3%). T-Mobile
tried, and failed. Opportunities
for such attempts to either dethrone, or at least throw a scare into Armstrong,
are fast diminishing in this year’s Tour. Sunday’s
Stage 15 from Lezat-sur-Leze to St. Lary-Soulan will provide that opportunity –
plus. This is
the toughest stage of Tour 2005, its “queen.” Armstrong’s
challengers should choose Geoffrey Nicholson’s The Great Bike Race (1977)
as their bedtime reading tonight.
In it is an excellent account of Lucien Van Impe’s decisive victory in
Stage 14 of the 1976 Tour, which he went on to win. At that
point in the race Van Impe was out of yellow. His plan was to attack on the final
climb, the fearsome Pla-d’Adet (10.3km, 8.3%), the same climb that ends
tomorrow’s stage. However,
Van Impe’s team-manager, Cyrille Guimard, had something else in mind. He wanted Van Impe to attack much
earlier on the Col du Portillon, also part of tomorrow’s stage.
These
instructions were carried to Van Impe by a team-mate (this was before radio
contact between team cars and riders was introduced). Van Impe, so taken aback by these
orders, refused to accept them unless Guimard delivered them in person. Guimard promptly motored up to Van Impe
and ordered him to attack. Which he
did, with gusto. Over 4.20 down
from the race leaders at this point, Van Impe, an excellent climber, made big
gains on his rivals up the Col de Peyrsourde, and on the final climb up
Pla-d’Adet blew the race wide open to take an overall lead of 3.18. Guimard,
in a later interview, compared Van Impe to a “big schoolboy” who had never taken
responsibilities. In the tour of
1976 he finally did, and he won. The time
for Armstrong’s rivals to take their responsibilities is upon them. 
| bicycling app for Nokia phones
| 
|
|
