John Rees

The “Fake”.

In a bike race, the people who often win are protected for most of the stage by their teammates.  These teammates ride in front of their leader, saving as much as 20% of the protected rider’s effort in the wind.  They bring bottles from the team car and chase down attacks by rivals on the course.  On mountain stages, a team might send their riders to the front of the group to set ‘tempo’.  In other words, teammates will sacrifice themselves at the front, driving a hard enough pace to keep other riders from trying to slip away.  Once they are spent, the rider will slip behind and end up finishing well back for the day, their job done.

In stage 10 of the 2001 Tour, the worker bees on the teams were going to have their work cut out for them. The stage had several climbs that finished with a climb up the famous Alpe d’Huez.  In an earlier stage that was not nearly as hilly, Lance’s teammates were unable to stay with him and the Texan was isolated quickly on a climb.  Since the hills were not as severe, Lance survived with no time lost to his rivals.  Before stage 10, the talk was whether it would happen again and whether Lance would lose time.  As the stage progressed, TV viewers and team directors were witnessing a Lance Armstrong they had never seen previously.  Instead of riding at the front of the diminishing pack of riders, Lance was near the back floundering.  Since the team directors had TV’s in their cars, they were all seeing the same thing as viewers at home.  “What was wrong with Lance”? Is his defense of the Tour de France over on the first major mountain stage?

The rival Telekom team of Jan Ulllrich saw an opportunity and took it.  The German team sent all their riders to the front and rode a hard tempo through the first three climbs.  This brutal pace thinned their own team members, but also thinned out the number of riders in the pack.  Armstrong seemed to hang on, if only barely.   One TV close up (from a motorcycle for the broadcaster) showed Lance shaking his head in apparent defeat.  Telekom had expended a lot of energy and riders keeping the pace hard.  Now even Ullrich was showing the signs as he rode with his team at the front of the group.  When the riders reached the foot of the mighty Alpe d’Huez though, another Lance Armstrong appeared.  Very quickly, the Texan moved to the front of the group and quickly sped away.  Ullrich had nothing left and lost 2 minutes to Lance by the finish.  Lance chalked up another stage win and took time out of his chief rival.  The trick had worked.  Thanks to modern technology, everyone saw the acting job, and many were tricked.  Later, Rudy Pevenage, the director Ullrichs Telekom team said “When we saw the way Armstrong attacked we lost all our morale”.

This stage also is the source of the last of my seven on word events.. tomorrow.

The “Wait”

As I mentioned yesterday, there is an unwritten code amongst racers to wait if the leader has had difficulty.  This policy isn’t always followed and the circumstances and tactics of a race can make it impossible or even unsafe to do so..  However, in stage 13 of the 2001 Tour, Lance waited for his perennial rival, Jan Ulrich when he crashed off the road during a fast decent from the Col du Peyresourde.  Ulrich was using carbon fiber wheels, which were new at the time.  As light as these wheels are, they have a quality that is quite undesirable for fast, mountainous downhills.  They have poor braking performance.  Unlike aluminum wheels, which collect the heat from the brake pads readily, and distribute it throughout the rim, carbon fiber conducts heat poorly.  This means all the heat from the friction remains in the pads.  It was quite common for rubber brake pads to literally melt away from heat build up.  Later, pads of cork and also composite materials were developed.  But at the time, the braking was still quite dangerous.  This was a risk Ulrich knew and apparently accepted.  Armstrong, on the other hand, was racing with a set of lightweight aluminum wheels.

The crash:  Armstrong, Ulrich and a teammate of the Germans, Kevin Livingston were making their way down the twists and turns of the narrow mountain road.  On a particular sharp bend, Ulrich could not stop enough to avoid hitting his teammate in front of him.  He chose to take a wider line and missed the corner entirely.  The German champ ended up rolling down a ditch and into a stream.  Livingston waited as Ulrich climbed back out from the muck.  Amazingly, the bike was intact as was the rider.  They remounted, and with Kevin Livingston pacing him back, they later re joined Armstrong.

They were able to catch back on because Armstrong, aware of his rival’s bad luck, sat up on the bike and slowed, allowing him to rejoin.  Once back together Lance asked Ulrich if he was OK, and the fight resumed.  The wait was a nice gesture, but Lance still won the stage.  But since he was sporting about the crash, nobody could claim the stage win was because Lance had taken advantage of the crash.  One of the reasons this give and take works is because riders never forget, and if the situation is reversed, the favor is returned.  As, in this case, when Ulrich waited for Armstrong in the 2003 Tour de France

The “Bag”
As I mentioned yesterday, racers in the Tour de France do not stop to eat.  They get food handed to them from team cars or in a designated ‘feed zone’.  In these zones, team assistants hand the racers cloth bags full of food, gel and water bottles.  These bags are called ‘musettes’.  Once the riders have transferred the contents to their pockets, they discard the bags.  But before you think these bags litter the French countryside, you need to know they are highly sought after as souvenirs.  These musettes get grabbed up immediately after the riders have moved on up the road.

In stage 15 of the 2003 Tour, Lance was in a fight with Basque Iban Mayo and German Jan Ullrich on a climb to the ski area of Luz-Ardiden.  Shadowing the Texans wheel, Mayo was right behind Armstrong when his handlebar clipped the musette bag of a girl standing on the side of the road.  The bag pulled Lance down and over the handlebars.  Mayo went down and crashed into Lance’s bike.  Ullrich, who was a few meters behind was able to steer away from disaster and ride on.

Then, two remarkable things happened:  Lance managed to get up and re-mount his bike.  The road was so narrow and full of spectators, the team could not get a spare bike to him.  Lance took off in pursuit of Ulllrich up the road.

Next, Ullrich, observing an unspoken code in the Tour, slowed and waited for Lance to get back up to speed.  It is considered bad form for riders to attack the yellow jersey when they encounter misfortune, and Lance was wearing the yellow jersey of the leader.  Two years previously, in another mountain stage, Armstrong had waited for Ullrich when, on a fast descent, the German had lost control and crashed off the road and into the trees.  Armstrong waited then as a sign of respect, and Ullrich returned the favor when the Texan tumbled.

As he raced up to catch Ullrich, Lance once again nearly crashed as his foot clipped out of the pedal. Once back with German, the racing resumed, and the adrenaline from the crash and near crash lit a fire in Armstrong and he dropped his break away partners and went on to win the stage.  It was another epic day in the mountains, but there is more to tell:  After the stage, Lance’s bike was inspected and it was found to have been cracked from the impact with the road.  The bike could have failed at any time, and the damage is likely the reason that Lance had trouble keeping his foot in the pedals as he chased down the other riders.