Tire Shredding Cobbles, Tour de France, Stage 3 Recap

The scary, exciting cobble stage in this year’s Tour lived up to its billing. The ‘pavés’ as they’re known in France provided the riders and the fans with the dust–in-your-mouth taste of Paris-Roubaix, the classic that normally treads on these stretches of difficult to negotiate paving stones. Paris-Roubaix is nicknamed The Hell of the North and it showed why today, as the uneven and often sharp stones chewed through tires and caused crashes in large numbers. The classics riders and powerful bike handlers good at traversing this bone jarring terrain scattered the peloton into several disconnected bunches while working their way to the front, unpredictably scrambling the general classification like only a cobble race can.

A good result on any ‘pave’ race requires massive amounts of ability and raw power, a confident relaxed attention to the immediate path in front of you (for hours) and large doses of luck. Lance Armstrong had all of that today in extra measure, he was way in front of his main rivals, at times riding in 3rd place in the strung out peloton staying out of trouble late in the race. There was just one little problem somewhere around 25-30 kms to the finish. A cobble ate his tire. Flatting in the closing kilometers it seemed like an hour (and the whole peloton) went by before the team sorted out the repair. By then, all of the main contenders had passed by and seemed to drive just a bit harder sensing an opportunity to put some serious time on him.

Yaroslav Popovych immediately dropped back and did excellent work pacing LA to try to bridge back to one of the scattered bunches but completely used himself up with the effort at about 8.5 kilometers from the finish. Lance appeared to be in some distress while drafting him and when Popo dropped off the worst possible scenario happened. Lance isolated by himself, on difficult cobbles way back from all the contenders, with absolutely no help from anyone – not a teammate, not another rider anywhere in sight in front or behind. Not withstanding the bad luck, Lance looked like the Armstrong of old, finding somehow, once again the reserves and shear willpower that few riders can boast of. He put his head down, flew past Popo and started clawing his way back to a distant bunch in front.

This effort salvaged Armstrong’s chances for this year’s Tour. Most riders, getting a flat under those circumstances would likely have kissed their Tour chances goodbye. They might limp to the finish line, voice some suspicion about a mechanic’s competence and wait for the evening’s team meeting to see who the coach says he will now be supporting given that his chances are ruined. But, I guess by definition a 7-time champion of this event, is not ‘most riders.’ There’s just one. And we got a little better understanding today of why that is. He’s amazingly gifted, he’s inhumanly determined, he’s exceptionally focused – but there’s at least 15 other cyclists out there that you could say the same thing about. You sense there’s a little something else. Some call it luck. Well, what we witnessed today was no one’s definition of luck. What we saw today was someone who takes what he’s given to work with and makes his own damn luck. Loved his comment at the end of the stage; “sometimes you’re the hammer, sometimes you’re the nail. Today I was the nail. I have 20 days now to be the hammer.”

Was the effort enough to get him on the podium in Paris? Who knows – the time gaps are pretty strange as of tonight. But another thing a champion of this caliber doesn’t do – is panic when things don’t go according to the morning’s chalkboard. Do you read any panic in that ‘Hammer and Nail’ quote? I’m hearing an experienced champion that knows full well what he’s capable of.

Cancellara is back in yellow again with another powerful display of cycling. Cervélo’s Thor Hushovd won the stage’s sprint finish rather easily among the small group that got forward and is now in green. Jerome Pineau of Quick Step is in the mountain jersey and Thomas Geraint of Sky is deservedly in white after a very strong performance. But here’s my version of the real race given current standings. In other words the time difference between the serious contenders:

1. Cadel Evans Catbird Seat
2. Andy Schleck 30 seconds behind Cadel
3. Alberto Contador 1:01 behind Cadel
4. Denis Menchov 1:10 behind Cadel
5. Bradley Wiggins 1:10 behind Cadel
6. Lance Armstrong 1:51 behind Cadel
7. Levi Leipheimer 2:14 behind Cadel
8. Janez Brajkovic 2:21 behind Cadel
9. Andreas Klöden 2:22 behind Cadel
10 Christopher Horner 2:38 behind Cadel
11 Carlos Sastre 2:40 behind Cadel
12 Ivan Basso 2:41 behind Cadel

I know, I know, I didn’t name a few of the touted contenders or maybe even a couple of your favorites but hey….it’s my list!

On other news of the day, Frank Schleck had a terrible fall and is out of the Tour with a broken clavicle. Poor Sylvain Chavanel of Quick Step, who started the stage in yellow, had a long day. His chain flew off, then later he flatted, only to flat again farther up the road all during the final segments of pavés. He could very well have retained his jersey even with the powerful effort of the Saxo Bank riders had the cobbles not been hungry for his rubber late in the stage. There were several other crashes and injuries on the day, most coming in the last quarter of the race on the pavés. As one person said after yesterday’s finish in Spa, the rider’s quarters are starting to look like hospital wards instead of hotels.

Stage 3 results

By George Hurst, staff writer
6 July 2010 – Nivelles