le grimpeur

Défaillance, part 12
Guy WR posted in Classic Stages, Climbing Skills on August 9th, 2009

The diocese of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne honours Saint Aprus, who founded a refuge for pilgrims and the poor in the seventh century. Greg LeMond found little refuge in the town of the same name during stage 14 of the Tour de France in 1992 but could certainly feel our pity.

The town is at the foot of the road that climbs westward up the Col de la Croix de Fer on the main local highway that leads to the local alpine ski resorts and over the border into Italy. On this day during the Tour, LeMond had already made it over the lonely road that climbs the Col du Galibier but abandoned before the tough ascent of the Croix de Fer.

LeMond had failed to ignite the race. But it had already been a thrilling affair. Continuing to lead the so-called Italian renaissance in cycling, Claudio Chiappucci had completed an epic escape the day before, leading for 250 kilometres – almost the entire stage – and winning at Sestriere, over the border in Italy. “One of the finest escapes I’ve ever seen in any of twenty Tours,” said commentator Phil Liggett. LeMond was 130th on the stage, nearly 50 minutes adrift.

And on stage 14, LeMond’s American compatriot, the leader of the Motorola team, Andy Hampsten, was setting himself up for a massive win on Alpe d’Huez, holding off the big names chasing his breakaway and cementing what would be an impressive 4th place overall in Paris.

It would be triumph for one American and disappointment for another. Already lagging behind as he rode with a teammate into Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, LeMond looked tired. Almost emotionless, he pulled over to the side of the road, hopped his bike up onto the curb, and abandoned the Tour. Just two years prior, LeMond had won his third Tour; now, he was stepping off his bike – defeated. (more…)

The Tour is won on the Ventoux3
Guy WR posted in Classic Climbs, Classic Stages on July 15th, 2009

One of last year’s publishing highlights for this avid cycling book reader was The Tour is Won on the Alpe, by renowned French journalist Jean-Paul Vespini and brought to us Anglo readers by VeloPress.

Alpe d’Huez has been the scene of many epic Tour de France battles and this book covers them all. Even the most well-read of cycling readers will find new stories, anecdotes and statistics in its pages. Indeed, it was a primary source for le grimpeur’s analysis of last year’s Tour-winning climb by Carlos Sastre.

For this year, though, the Tour will be won on Mont Ventoux. While the mountain has not featured as often as Alpe d’Huez in the Tour, it still has a mythical status – for a number of reasons. And the sheer toughness of the climb has meant that the GC contenders so far in the race seem to be keeping their powder dry for the difficult final week of the Tour that the Ventoux stage completes. (more…)

The Giro d’Italia as epic0
Guy WR posted in Classic Stages on June 29th, 2009

This blog has commented previously on the epic, myth-making stories in writing on cycling (see here, for example). In his essay, The Tour de France as Epic, French philosopher Roland Barthes critiqued this style of writing but also added his own level of somewhat over-blown analysis.

“The Tour [de France] is the best example we have ever encountered of a total, hence ambiguous myth; the Tour is at once a myth of expression and a myth of projection, realistic and utopian at the same time… the utopian image of a world which stubbornly seeks reconciliation by the spectacle of a total clarity of relations between man, men, and Nature.”

Quite. (more…)

3′ 10″2
Guy WR posted in Classic Stages, Climbers on May 7th, 2009

The remarkable aspect of the Grand Tours in cycling is that despite covering hundreds of kilometres over several weeks, the margins of victory are often very small. Seconds and minutes are lost relentlessly as small time differences on insignificant stages can have the same effect as larger margins on key days.

Such was the 1958 Tour de France when Italian racer Vito Favero lost the overall race to Charly Gaul by 3 minutes and 10 seconds. It was not the smallest margin in the history of the race – see 1989 – but for Favero it was the difference between a secured place at the forefront of Tour history as the vanquisher of the great Charly Gaul or a footnote as a great rider but not a great champion. (more…)

La casquette6
Guy WR posted in Classic Stages on April 8th, 2009

The cycling cap, la casquette, has a long and venerable tradition in our sport. The most current design, with the lightweight fabric shell and a small peak – easily stowed and adjusted – can be dated to the 1960s when it replaced some earlier designs.

While bare-headed, and often immaculately coiffured, riders are the iconic imagery of cycling, the cap has also offered defining images. There are a number of styles that that wearer can adopt, peak forward or to the back, peak raised or lowered, or the cap itself poised jauntily in moments of easy frivolity, or snug for serious racing. (more…)

René Vietto – Part 3: the return of the king2
Guy WR posted in Classic Stages, Climbers on February 12th, 2009

The 1939 Tour de France concluded just before Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939. The threat of Fascism an outright aggression from Germany and Italy had been building during the 1930s and France – mindful of the horrors of a European war just two decades previously – took a defensive position both politically and militarily.

Unfortunately for France, this position proved a disaster. Nazi Germany under Hitler became bolder and when the attack on France finally came in May 1940, France’s famous Maginot Line of defence proved to be illusory. Germany moved its mobile forces through the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes and French armies, on paper quite strong, were hopelessly out of position. With British and French forces fleeing for safer shores from Dunkirk, it was all over for France by June. (more…)

Check your Tour knowledge1
Guy WR posted in Classic Stages on September 20th, 2008

Last month, le grimpeur presented the Tour de France quiz from the 1978 paperback edition of The Great Bike Race by Geoffrey Nicholson. The prizes from Magnum Publishers were three Raleigh bikes of various models, the top prize “based on the model used by the TI-Raleigh Team” for the Tour in 1976.

The team, which had its origins in the track racing success of Raleigh riders, made its debut in 1973 with all British riders. The parent company, Tube Investments (hence the ‘TI’), was a large steel products manufacturer, which most notably in the cycling world made Reynolds tubing (”Reynolds 531,” ran an advertisement at the time, “gives you lightness where you need it most.”). The company also owned a number of bicycle brands, including Raleigh. (more…)

The yellow jersey1
Guy WR posted in Classic Stages, Climbers on September 15th, 2008

That the Tour de France was even held in 1919 seems like a small miracle, attributable to the incorrigible belligerence of Henri Desgrange to return the race to the roads of France.

La der des ders, World War I, had concluded less than 12 months prior to the start of the 1919 Tour and the race got underway on June 29, the day after the armistice was finally signed with Germany. The main protagonists at the Tour, France and Belgium, had suffered grievously on the Western Front. Belgium and northern France were the battlefields and Belgium suffered close to 500,000 military casualties and well as its economy devastated.

The numbers for France in World War I were worse: 1.4 million dead and around 3 million wounded (one-third permanently disabled), according to sources. Two-thirds of soldiers were from rural occupations and lists of the dead can still be seen on monuments in even the smallest villages all over France. In northern France, estimates put the devastation of farmland at 2.5 million hectares, with 62,000 kilometres of roads and 5,000 kilometres of railway lines needing rebuilding.

Remarkably, cycle racing had not stopped entirely during the war and Paris-Tours was run in 1917 and 1918. Paris-Roubaix returned in 1919 over roads so terrible and in weather so desperate that a journalist from L’Auto christened the race with its famous name. (more…)

The real René Vietto – part 1: The Myth0
Guy WR posted in Classic Stages, Climbers on July 1st, 2008

Like many sports, cycling has its founding myths: the great heroic struggles of the riders, their giant shoulders broad enough for the current peloton to stand on. Henri Desgrange’s express intention when starting the Tour de France was a race more difficult than all the others, longer and more arduous. His ideal was a route so tough that only one rider would finish.

Desgrange enforced his conception of what the Tour and bike racing should be with a will and rod of iron. While his rules were constantly evolving, they were always punitive. Restrictions on equipment, support and food and water, rules against drafting, against mass sprints, even bad language. In 1913, with riders banned from receiving any mechanical help, Eugene Christophe – in one of the most storied events of the Tour – was forced to repair his own forks at a local blacksmiths, even incurring an additional time penalty. We remember Christophe’s dedication rather than Desgrange’s ridiculous regulations. (more…)

The Tour of Good Health: 19680
Guy WR posted in Classic Stages on July 1st, 2008

The year 1968 was a turbulent one for France, as it was for other countries around the world. Sport was caught up in the political events, with the Olympics that year in Mexico City featuring protests from some athletes that would later become iconic.

In May in France, student riots spread to the workers and it seemed like the Republic itself could be under the threat of revolution. But it was not to be. The students, it seems, were more willing to challenge the status quo of President De Gaulle’s political philosophy, particularly his ideas of ‘participation’ in society, rather than to bring down his government.

Historian Rod Kenward writes in La Vie En Bleu that in the view of many student leaders, “We had stormed the word, but not the Bastille.”

Still, the chaos caused by the riots and the strikes threatened the running of that year’s Tour, which was already under scrutiny and review following the death of Tom Simpson in 1967. The French government, with De Gaulle’s party returned to power following elections in June, wanted the Tour to go ahead, however, as part of a return to normalcy.

The BBC this week reviewed the anniversary of the student riots, and the self-reflection that has gone into their meaning. Writes Henri Astier: “The anniversary has in fact seen a strange replay of 1968 – complete with metaphorical barricades, a two-month talkfest, culminating in everyone switching off and heading for the sun.”

He might have added “…to watch the Tour de France”.

As this year’s Tour gets underway, as a fresh start, it is a good opportunity to look back on the 1968 event, some forty years ago. Click here to see my full article at Pez Cycling News.

Un cycliste est mort: Mont Ventoux and the death of cycling1
Guy WR posted in Classic Climbs, Classic Stages, Doping on May 28th, 2008

“…le Ventoux, lui, a la plénitude du mont, c’est un dieu du Mal, auquel il faut sacrifier.” — Roland Barthes

It is an iconic image in cycling’s lore. Jacques Goddet is ascending the rocky slope of Mont Ventoux, clutching a wreath for the memorial to Tom Simpson. In the background, surely not by coincidence in the timing, is Eddy Merckx, on his way to the stage finish at the summit and overall victory in the 1970 Tour de France, and he has turned to watch Goddet. (more…)

Coeur de grimpeur – part 4 – ride of redemption2
Guy WR posted in Classic Climbs, Classic Stages, Climbers on April 3rd, 2008

With 20 kilometres to go, at the base of the ascent of Mont Ventoux on the Bedoin side, the 11-man group had around 7 minutes over the peloton. The group looked comfortable together, but as the pace lifted it started to break up. With 11 kilometres to go, there were only two of the eleven left, the Russian rider on Ag2r, Alexander Botcharov, and Richard Virenque.

Finally, 1 kilometre later, Virenque stood and lifted the pace and Botcharov had no answer. His Domo-Farm Frites jersey agape, unzipped, Virenque had five minutes over the chase group, led by Lance Armstrong in yellow, ONCE riders Jose Azevedo (before he joined Armstrong’s team) and Joseba Beloki, the notorious doper Raimondas Rumsas, and white-jersey wearer Ivan Basso (before his own doping fall from grace).

Nominally the team leader, Virenque had so far been quiet in the 2000 Tour de France, perhaps conserving his strength for the latter stages, or perhaps riding in deference to Laurent Jalabert, who was looking to claim the KOM title for the second year in a row in his final year of a glorious, if controversial, career.

Riding alone, however, seemed ironic. In his tenth year as a professional, disgraced for doping, suspended for much of the 2001 season, one had to wonder what he had left to prove at, or even contribute to, the race. Was his lonely ride a metaphor for his isolation, with no offers to ride for French teams, now apparently notoriously suspicious of journalists, buoyed only with his die-hard fans, and now his stature eclipsed by exciting young French riders like David Moncoutie. (more…)

A new grimpeur?2
Guy WR posted in Classic Climbs, Classic Stages, Climbers on March 19th, 2008

Oh to dream!

In watching the stage 4 finish on Mont Ventoux of Paris-Nice, le grimpeur could not help but wonder how many other viewers were quietly wishing the impossible, that Jens Voigt would hold off all the chasing climbers and take a well-deserved mountain stage win.

Voigt had his characteristic grimace on full display, and after attacking the breakaway group at the bottom of the climb to the north slopes of the mountain, officially Mont Serein, had around 3.5 minutes of lead time over the peloton.

“When I attacked the group at the foot of the climb, I believed I could make it,” he told CyclingNews. “I only lost 30 seconds in the first five kilometres of the ascent. So I told myself I could possibly do it, just looking at it mathematically.”

He was riding strongly, but hardly the perfect example of climbing souplesse – driving the pedals, hands on the hoods; time-trialling the climb. He still had 2 minutes with 6 kilometres to go, but the gap kept coming down, driven by Quick Step as well as KOM jersey wearer Clément L’Hottelerie. (more…)

Plus souffrance2
Guy WR posted in Classic Stages, Climbers, Climbing Skills on February 7th, 2008

One of the fascinating aspects of cycling is the diversity of physical builds and talents in the pro peloton. Although a careful attention to weight is the norm, and even the biggest sprinters can still look remarkably svelte, the burly still mix with the barely noticeable.

A quick glance across the team statistics from last year’s Tour de France gives an interesting comparison. Magnus Backstedt, then with Liquigas, was perhaps unsurprisingly at the top of the scales, weighing in at 94 kg (206 lbs) for his 1.93 metre frame. At the bottom end, Manuel Calvente from Spain, on Agritubel, tipped the scales – well, barely tipped them – at an astonishing 54 kg (118 pounds) for the 1.69 metre-tall rider: over 80 pounds less than Backstedt. The more well-known climber Leonardo Piepoli, the star of the mountains in the Giro, apparently weighs in at 52 kg.

While the Body Mass Index (BMI) is a poor tool for assessing athletes, it does make for some amusing comparisons. Backstedt rates as slightly overweight, while Piepoli would be assessed as clearly below normal weight.

Such is the life of the grimpeur. There would be no mistaking Backstedt if one were to see him out riding, and no doubt that he would tear the cranks off at a moment’s notice – especially if one were to call him overweight. It might be easy to misjudge the slightly-built Piepoli, though, until he disappeared into the stratosphere when the road turned upward. (more…)

Souffrance3
Guy WR posted in Classic Climbs, Classic Stages, Climbers on December 18th, 2007

For professional cycling, suffering, or souffrance, is the nature of the game. Ultimately, part of the appeal of the sport is the visceral connection to be had between competitor and observer, as the latter sees the former overcome (or submit to) the suffering, often against backdrops of stunning natural beauty or breathtaking difficulty.

Le grimpeur was reminded recently that this year is the 20-year anniversary of one of the most exciting years of pro racing, 1987, when Stephen Roche won the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France, and the World Championship all in one season – a truly Merckxian feat.

While each race included plenty of suffering (the Giro passing into legend with the politics involved), the Tour de France that year added its own particular brand, and Roche was right at the centre. (more…)