Do No Harm

My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time —
To let the punishment fit the crime —
The punishment fit the crime;

And make each prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment!
Of innocent merriment! 

The Mikado

 Cycling managed to, yet again, shoot itself in the foot by pulling the Yellow Jersey off Julian Alaphilippe’s back on the basis of a banal mistake, one that made absolutely no difference to the outcome of the race, destroying a charming storyline while infuriating and disappointing a worldwide audience. That “click” that reverberated through the universe yesterday was the sound of televisions being shut off in disgust. We should be happy, I suppose, that at least the UCI didn’t throw him out of the Tour as they did to Peter Sagan in 2017, for a supposed fault that turned out to have been a gross misjudgment on the part of the commissaires. 

 Professional cycling needs – and I’m speaking of European men’s pro road racing -  more than ever, to decide if it is going to stay true to its roots as an entertainment business or whether it’s going to allow itself to be drawn ever further into the messy and too often inept politics of Federation rule. As an entertainment business, which it in fact is (should be), along with boxing, NFL, NBA and MLB, there is an overriding responsibility to the fans, the people who dedicate their hearts and time to the sport. Yes of course rules are rules and need to be followed, but especially in a sport as fluid as cycling, where kilometer markers often don’t exactly correspond with true distances and massive organizational errors such as not street sweeping that sure-to-be-slippery-in-the-rain descent on day-one of the Tour, there has to be room for interpretation and a dose of humility on the part of the commissaires. The Yellow Jersey has in fact rights, more than the other riders. He’s the object of world-wide attention, has accomplished one of the greatest achievements one can have of the entire world of sport – just remember what massive, life endangering risks Alaphillipe took on that afore-mentioned descent to stay in contention for Yellow – and should always receive the benefit of the doubt. The UCI commissaires act as the doctors caring for the overall health of the race, keeping things moving smoothly and efficiently, eliminating any threats to integrity the event. Like true doctors, they should be guided by the oath of Do No Harm. The UCI commissaires hurt the Tour de France yesterday with, like Sagan in 2017, a completely disproportional response where a good healthy fine would have sufficed. Yes it would have slightly bent the rules, but I guarantee you that not one other team or rider in the race would have protested as that decision would have been for the good of the sport rather than leaving us today with a man, who did not earn the honor and is embarrassed to be wearing Yellow.

 I thought yesterday was a fine stage and am happy that the riders approached it in a most professional manner, with the sort of race we used to ride in the 1980’s and before. This Tour is stupid hard and the racers need to pace themselves through it in order to make it to Paris. It’s funny how the same people who would be banging on about doping seem now to be screaming that the riders didn’t go hard enough yesterday. There is an old saying: the slower the field goes in the beginning, the faster they’ll go in the end. And boy, was that finale worth waiting for as the peloton gave us one of the most interesting shows I’ve seen in a long time. 

 Ineo’s Team Captain Luke Rowe decided that his teammates needed to remember their status as best team in the world and with 10-k to go launched them on a spectacular echelon attack that caught the Jumbo-Visma back in the peloton and off guard. Seeing Egan Bernal blasting through the front with his entire Ineos team hugging the left side of the road while the side wind blew the field to pieces was beautiful. Then, further down the stretched out, suffering field, where one saw chunks of the peloton coming apart, the Dutch Jumbo’s formed their own, personal echelon, and began to claw their way back up to the front. Then it got really crazy as the road split in two, and the Ineos led by Rowe raced up the left side with ½ of the peloton hanging on, while his boxing partner Tony Martin did the same for the Jumbo-Visma’s on the right. The two men exchanged looks across the media strip at one another in what was nothing short of a track pursuit match by the two teams. That was real racing.

 It all came back together again for the inevitable field sprint which Wout van Aert won with ease, further cementing Jumbo-Visma’s sense of complete dominance so far in this Tour. I love to analyze the way different riders sprint, what form they have on the bike and how they coordinate their bodies to transmit full power to the pedals. A good part of van Aert’s success is due to his near perfect mastery of that form, learned in his years of cyclocross racing. When riding ‘cross on muddy or sandy terrain, the act of jumping, or sprinting back up to speed with your body lifted off the saddle, requires perfect movement otherwise the back wheel won’t grip the dirt surface and slip. The balance must be perfect and all unnecessary movement eliminated. One sees in watching van Aert that his sprint power is concentrated in his abdomen and flows perfectly from there into his quadriceps. The bicycle moves from side to side as with all sprinters, yet much less so that almost any other rider. His is a perfectly concentrated, efficient sprinting style that, coupled with his massive power and bike handling skills, makes those sprint wins inevitable.