John Rees

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