Tour de France, Stage 14, The Pyrénées Exact a Price

Remember in grade school when you were learning about dinosaurs?  There was this one, the Stegosaurus, that wasn’t the biggest or the fastest, but it had this ridge of blades sticking up out of its back that looked dangerously sharp and nasty and somehow more prehistoric than the others.  Well, if you’ve never seen the mountains of the Pyrénées which help form the border between France and Spain, that’s a pretty good mental picture to hang onto for the next few days.  The scenery in this area is breathtaking, but the mountains look nasty, unforgiving, and very dangerous – guess you’d expect that for a range that includes ‘The Devil’s Wall.’  The riders in this year’s 97th running of the Tour de France have to contend 4 stages in these mountains this year and today was day one of some of the most brutal climbs in pro cycling.  The first of today’s two climbs splintered the field and the second spit several big names out the back of the peloton.

It is said the mountain range’s name originates from Greek mythology involving the rather barbaric acts of Hercules upon the princess Pyrene who is later brutally slaughtered.  Not sure about all that, but words brutal and slaughter are quite appropriate when you see the damage the mountains did to the field today.  This 14th stage from Revel to Ax-3 Domaines covered 184.5 kilometers (115 miles), some 132 kilometers of which were a relative nonevent.  Then things went skyward and hell broke lose.

There was a sizeable breakout group of 9 riders that took their chances today and stayed out front for a very long time.  Some big names were in that group; Garmin’s David Zabriskie and Ag2r’s Christophe Riblon were among them.  They kept gaining a lot of time on the field and the teams in the peloton didn’t seem to take much notice until the break had gotten more than 10 minutes on them with the first big climb still way up the road.  Acting as one, the pack seemed to grasp the imprudence of this and started hunting them down.  Relentlessly, the peloton started eating a minute per every 10 kilometers out of the break for the next 70 kilometers.  It was like a metronome, at 115 kilometers to go the break had 10 minutes, but soon, before you knew it, at 65 km to go, they had a 6-minute gap.  At 55 km, they had 5 mins, at 45 km, they had 4 mins, at 35 km they had 3 mins.  You could have set your watch by it!  The break riders were certain to be engulfed by the main group and spit out the back.  Then things went uphill.  Straight, uphill.  And the breakers started falling like flies seemingly going backward to the peloton rather than being caught by them.

Astana did much of the work at the front the peloton to catch the break at this point and there was some separate action by Sky, but Saxo Bank was content to follow.  Some felt this meant that Astana’s Alberto Contador might just be planning to shake things up a bit with his climbing ability on the first day of the race coming close to his country, and while that might have been the plan, it was not really how it turned out.  Contador did put some moves on, attacking Saxo Bank’s Andy Schleck several times, but the Andy, the race leader, was glued to his wheel all day like they were on a bicycle built-for-two.  When Alberto pushed, it looked like there was an invisible wire attached to Andy’s bike yanking him after the assault.  There’d be not distance between them on the day.

The fun story was watching a bunch of other excellent climbers roll the dice today.  Cervélo’s Carlos Sastre made a valiant effort on mountains he’s conquered in the past.  Sky’s Geraint Thomas, Quick Step’s Van De Walle, Cofidis riders Stéphane Augé and Amaël Moinard, FDJ’s Benoit Vaugrenard, Bbox’s Pierre Rolland, and Katusha’s Pavel Brutt left everything they had out on the street today.  It proved unfortunately, to not be enough and watch for some of them to struggle tomorrow as a result.   Rabobank’s Denis Menchov and Euskaltel’s Samuel Sánchez, Katusha’s Joaquin Rodriquez, Rabobank’s Robert Gesink, and Lampre’s Damiano Cunego were hardly in the picture frame all day, wisely staying within themselves pedaling with purpose rather than flash.  All found their way into this stage’s top ten at the finish line.

Team RadioShack’s Levi Leipheimer hung with the main contenders all day.  The team gave him excellent support, but in the end dropped away and he pulled away and alone flew up the mountains in the main pack with the serious GC contenders.  He had a little trouble maintaining contact at the very end of the final, difficult climb, which at times was going over 10.5% grade.  He stayed very close though and finished 11th on the day, minimizing the time gap to 1:54 behind the winner of the stage, a Herculean effort in the mighty Pyrénées.

Ag2r’s Christophe Riblon worked very hard all day in the original break and did a magnificent solo finish besting the field by almost a minute at the finish line with a well-deserved stage victory.

They said from the start, the route selection of this Tour de France would favor climbers.  We are now witnessing that happen.  Sprinters and flatlanders can only hope to survive the next few days with these savage mountains only showing the tiniest bit of mercy on their downhill backsides.  The Pyrénées are going to continue to exact a price on the climbers who try to push too hard and too fast to tame them.  The pure mountaineers and experienced pros will patiently grind their way up these mountains and find themselves in better and better shape in the general classification in the days to come.  Even so, some big names found the grinding difficult today. Despite major efforts, Ivan Basso, Bradley Wiggins, Cadel Evans, and even the polka dot jersey Anthony Charteau found themselves in distress and a long way from the stage winner after the final mountain.

Tonight the standings look like this:
1.  Andy Schleck Team Saxo Bank
2.  Alberto Contador Astana +0:31
3.  Samuel Sanchez Euskaltel-Euskadi +2:31
4.  Denis Menchov Rabobank +2:44
5.  Jurgen Van Den Broeck Omega Pharma-Lotto +3:31
6.  Robert Gesink Rabobank +4:27
7.  Levi Leipheimer Team RadioShack +4:51
8.  Oliver J. Rodriguez Katusha +4:58
9.  Luis-Leon Sanchez Caisse d’Epargne +5:56
10. Ivan Basso Liquigas-Doimo +6:52

More stage 14 results

The good news for Team RadioShack fans after today’s brutal stage (okay, besides the fact that no one crashed!) continues to be that some of these current top 10 time trial like a brick.  Levi’s surely been called a few things in his long and amazing career, but I’ll bet good money that no one’s ever called him a brick.

By George Hurst, staff writer