Le Tour So Far

I’ve been away on our first family vacation in years and yesterday was in fact the first stage I’ve seen of the Tour. Now, I did manage to sneak the Radio Tour feed down to the beach, listening to some of the stages along with my reading – which was delightful – so am not completely out of touch, but the Tour must be seen to be understood and I’ll now hazard some observations beginning with the Van wars.

It's no miracle that the Green Jersey Wout van Aert is the great racer you see dominating over every terrain except high mountains where he’s simply very good. The Belgian has spent the past three years riding high, sub-threshold (just under maximum effort) pacing for his team, steadily bumping up that threshold to its now insane level, topping off with maximal efforts during the winter cyclocross season. He’s only done one Grand Tour a year, and, despite the worries of his racing too much one sees in the press, he’s raced only 22-times on the road before this Tour. Add to that his marvelous – along with Kasper Asgreen – almost perfect bio-mechanical efficiency on his Cervelo machine, the fact that he’s generally one sprocket lower that everyone else in the race at the same speeds (almost always between 100-110 rpm even/especially on the climbs) which serves up this epitome of efficiency – efficiency that directly translates into increased endurance and speed.

I didn’t understand why Mathieu van der Poel rode his first-ever Grand Tour (the Giro this year) in the mad dog manner that he did. Pushing himself to his limits every day, lashing, thrashing in an unhinged manner, the Dutchman not only had to digest his first-ever three-week race, but swallow the effects of all those unnecessarily massive efforts as well. I was shocked when the news came out that he was going to race the Tour. Way too much wattage dispensed in way too little time, logically resulting in the Champion’s sad display. That’s bad management.

There’s a real Money Ball situation in cycling right now. While the old school teams like Van der Poel’s - and I love that deep cycling knowledge mind you – do use technology, but as you saw with the Dutchman, race on instinct and mood, Jumbo Visma, currently the most modern team in the sport, are strictly data-driven. I had a roadside discussion with one of the principles of ProcyclingStats during the Dauphinè, the website that is an indispensable tool for journalists and team directors alike. They’ve developed a special app just for Jumbo-Visma, one that accesses the real depth of data that they’ve collected on the riders over the years, much, much deeper than what we see on the public version of the site. If you look at the PCS rider profiles, in the upper left corner is a box titled “Points per Specialty”, where they analyze the respective weapons of each racer. Jumbo-Visma makes every tactical decision based on analysis of these points – and of course who knows what other info they can mix in. It’s all measured, quantified, analyzed, and run through the computer before any pedal strokes in anger are made.

Someone forgot to tell Tadej Pogačar that the Merckx era was 50-years ago, and that cycling has changed so much that the old era is almost unrecognizable from the modern. Merckxian domination will never again be achieved – it would take forever to go into the reasons – so why is the Slovenian’s management allowing him this, what I can only call, Merckx complex? Even on my Greek beach, hazily following Radio Tour, I was wondering why he was pushing his team so hard to win stages. Exciting yes, but Pogačar’s team, although risen to higher levels due to his brilliance, is not Jumbo-Visma. A damaged Marc Hirschi, who should have been following Caleb Ewan around in the gruppettos (slowest group of the race), trying to regain his health so that he could be useful perhaps later in the race, found himself instead on the front, banging away, and certainly putting himself further in the hole.

I watched two stages yesterday, the live then after the replay of Stage 9 through my old stomping grounds of French Switzerland– most enjoyable with no commercials and excellent commentary btw. Why oh why, was Pogačar defending the Yellow the way he was when there was a perfect scenario up the road, one that might have given the Yellow away to Rigoberto Uran? Why not have given his UAE team a bit of ‘rest’ in the two days leading up the crucial Alpine stages and allow EF Education-Easy Post a moment in the sun, a couple of days of doing the proxy defending? As Cyrille Guimard (Greg Lemond’s DS) famously stated, “The Yellow Jersey is poison. Only take it at the last possible moment.” The exhaustion brought on by the extra hour of protocol ceremonies each day, the pressure, the team responsibilities…It all adds up over three-weeks.

I deeply admire Primoz Roglič and believe that he is in terrible pain after his crash, and that he’s been bluffing over the past days, so successfully that Pogačar, and his team believed that the fellow Slovenian was back on race-winning form. The series of attacks they launched yesterday, the insane series of attacks – all certainly planned, measured, and calculated to the millimeter from the team car behind – proved to be Pogačar’s undoing. He chased Roglič when there was no need to – Roglič ended up collapsing and losing 11:31 – a masterclass in the Money Ball approach.

 I’m going out on a limb here, and fully expect to be slapped back (Radisha, I’m looking at YOU) but there’s a problem in the UAE management which goes directly to their principal director, Slovenian Andrej Hauptman. He’s too close to Pogačar who he’s basically raised from a boy into a champion. I don’t think he sees clearly; I believe it’s turned too much into a ‘family’ operation and he’s blinded by the brilliance of his charge. Johan was the boss of Lance, Guimard of Greg, both directors having to hold back their respective predators at times. I think that Pogačar has the upper hand on the team, and that instead of managing and guiding his ambition, they give it free rein. With the results we saw yesterday. That said, for all of us, the delicious prospect of a furious Pogačar attacking his way back into contention is very much worth looking forward to, beginning today on l’Alp de Huez.