Tour de France, Stage 16 Recap – Shark’s Teeth, Tête de la Course

What an inhuman bunch of climbing that was thrown at the cyclists today, as they had to travel up some of the highest peaks in the Pyrénées at the southern most border of France.  Once again, the scenery was beautiful and dramatic with mountains shooting straight up into the sky and valleys so deeply etched in the terrain that you wonder if some of the inhabitants there ever see much sun.  Stage 16 was 199.5 kilometers (124 miles) long with almost none of it flat going from Bagneres-de-Luchon to the often-used city of Pau.  Cyclists were either going steeply up or steeply down most of the day.  With 4 categorized climbs totaling 70 overall kilometers of some of the most difficult mountains in cycling, it was a day that most of the general classification contenders would end up conceding to a breakaway group.  A breakaway group that included Lance Armstrong!

The 4 BIG climbs on this route were:
1.    The Col de Peyresourde – a category 1 climb, 11 kilometers long with an average incline of 7.4%
2.    The Col d’Aspin – another category 1 climb, 12.3 kms long, averaging 6.3%
3.    The Col du Tourmalet, beyond category, 17.1 kms long, avg 7.3%
4.    The Col d’Aubisque – beyond category, 29.2 kms long, avg 4.2%
Any one or two of these climbs would make for a hard stage and be a full day’s work on the pro cycling circuit.  Together they formed a hellacious stage of uphill struggling and hair-on-fire descending which at times propelled the cyclists to speeds of 95 kilometers an hour.  The profile for today’s stage looked jagged, dangerous and sharp, just like shark’s teeth.

Sure enough, some break out riders rolled the dice today right off the bat.  One of them was none other than Team RadioShack’s cycling legend, Lance Armstrong.  After only about 60 kilometers into the race Lance was pushing forward like the aggressor of old, with seemingly fresh legs and bottomless reserves of strength.  For a while he passed everyone and those wonderful words showed up on the television screen right under the image of Lance, alone on the mountains in France, ‘Tête de la Course’ which in French means ‘Head of the Race.’  How appropriate, not just on this day, but for the history of this race.

Lance was eventually joined by 8 other riders including teammate Chris Horner and it was great to once again watch this champion bare his shark’s teeth and stay in the mix for hours, right to the finish.  The break contained some very talented, strong riders:
Christophe Moreau – Caisse d’Epargne
Damiano Cunego – Lampre
Jurgen Van de Walle – Quick Step
Carols Barredo – Quick Step
Pierrick Fedrigo – Bbox
Ruben Plaza – Caisse d’Epargne
Sandy Casar – FDJ

None in this break posed a big threat to the time gaps of the main GC contenders, and they would not end up giving chase today at points allowing the break to have as much as 10 minutes advantage on them.  So all they had to worry about was each other…oh yeah, and those horrible mountains.  But each member of the group was a serious contender for the stage, none being pushovers.  Several had decent time trialing skills, reasonable sprint capability, and all had shown strong performances in the past.  This wasn’t going to be easy for any of them and the outcome was unpredictable.  That’s what made it fun!

At about 44 kms to go, Carlos Barredo made a gutsy dig – some, no doubt thought it a foolish one – shooting off the front of the break with so many kilometers still to race.  Didn’t seem he’d have a chance, but he somehow amassed about 40 seconds lead as everyone in the chase group was looking to someone else to burn energy and pull back the gap.  Chris Horner finally jumped ahead and took responsibility with a long pull at the front of the pack.  They started hunting the solo rider down, but it looked like they were none too keen on catching him early.  A late catch, culminating in a sprint finish would not favor Lance’s chances.  The 8-man chase group continued to hunt down Barredo, but it seemed like it was taking forever.  There just wasn’t enough time left given the speed of the chase and Barredo was certainly not going to make this easy, pedaling like a man possessed, with the perfume of the finish line in his nostrils just as strongly as any other rider out there.  With 4 kilometers to go he still had a formidable 23-second gap.

It was a nail biter, but the group caught Barredo right at the 1 kilometer-to-go marker as he seemed to simply collapse from his excruciating effort and all the other riders started taking each other’s measure coming to the line.  Lance had to come far left to try to power on by with just a few hundred meters to go.  His effort looked very promising, at one point he was in 3rd place motoring forward, but this type of finish not being his specialty he saw that some of the young guns in the group were going to get to the line first, and he knew this would not be his day.  Had he not slowed, he likely would have had 3rd in the stage, maybe 4th at worst, but a champion who has won everything this race has to offer, doesn’t need a 3rd or 4th place on his resume.  For the record he came in 6th, Chris Horner just in front of him, but it was all so close, they all got the same time, except for poor Barredo who coasted in some 28 seconds later, completely spent.

With no racing tomorrow – a blessed rest day after all these sheer peaks – there will be plenty of time for people to write numerous critiques about the wisdom of the effort and the strategy deployed to try to give fans one more thrill and one more great memory of this amazing rider.  My two cents – though by now you know I’m biased – it was the right day, the right time and was very well calculated.  The tactics were almost perfect and the effort was excellent as always and with just a couple of things happening differently we would have once again witnessed the image we have come to associate with this American champion; a podium somewhere in France, a couple of very pretty girls, a tired but beaming champion acknowledging a cheering crowd, in the greatest show in cycling.  It may happen yet.

Team RadioShack’s best-placed rider remains Levi Leipheimer, who is still in 7th place going into Thursday’s stage 17, the final day in the Pyrénées which includes a mountain top finish up the Col du Tourmalet – yeah you read that right, their going up it again in this year’s Tour.  Levi lost a little time (34 seconds) today to the leader, Astana’s Alberto Contador.  Andy Schleck is still in second and still a bit unhappy about yesterday’s outcome even though Alberto apologized last evening.  Menchov and Sanchez are really dueling it out, and a lot can and will happen in the coming days.  With another mountain stage, a flat sprinter’s stage, and then a 51-kilometer individual time trial before the circuit in Paris, there’ll still be movement on this current leader board:

General Classification Standings
1  CONTADOR Alberto (Astana)                              In Yellow
2  SCHLECK Andy (Team Saxo Bank)                        +00’ 08″
3  SANCHEZ Samuel (Euskaltel – Euskadi)              +02′ 00″
4  MENCHOV Denis (Rabobank)                               +02′ 13″
5  VAN DEN BROECK Jurgen (Omega Pharma)          +03′ 39″
6  GESINK Robert (Rabobank)                               +05′ 01″
7  LEIPHEIMER Levi (Team Radioshack)                    +05′ 25″
8  RODRIGUEZ OLIVER Joaquin (Katusha)     +05′ 45″
9  VINOKOUROV Alexandre (Astana)               +07′ 12″
10 HESJEDAL R (Garmin-Transitions)    +07′ 51

Team RadioShack Standings
(the strongest team in the race so far leading the category by 4’ 27”)
7   LEIPHEIMER Levi    +05’ 25”
14  HORNER Chris    +08’ 52”
16  KLODEN Andreas    +11’ 14”
25  ARMSTRONG Lance    +33’ 46”
37  BRAJKOVIC Janez    +53’ 02”
45  PAULINHO Sergio    +1h 14’ 38”
87  POPOVYCH Yaroslav    +2h 14’ 21”
115 RAST Gregory    +2h 47’ 50”
157 MURAVYEV Dimitriy    +3h 19’ 33”

More stage 16 results

George Hurst,  20 July 2010