Contador Archives - Page 2 of 7

October 17, 2012

As if from nowhere…a Tour winner

The Tour de France is like life. It’s not a game, or a series of games. It’s a two-thousand-mile, month-long odyssey that creates and breaks heroes, elevates some while diminishing others. There’s unspeakable triumph and heartbreak, not in fleeting moments but washing over you for sustained periods. There are disasters, and illnesses. Babies are born while racers speed simultaneously away from and toward home. Deep friendships develop. Rivalries, too. Bikes crash. So do cars. There are cheaters — and there always have been, though the methods have varied. The Tour de France is the only sporting event, someone once said, so long that you have to get your hair cut in the middle of it. This messiness and glory is what I think of when I say the Tour de France is like life itself. It was always where I had most desired and most sought to prove myself.

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September 7, 2012

Nicolas Roche’s learning curve

A leader of a cycling team must have a strong personality, a will to win and the ability to get results. Some leaders are the quiet type that like to lead by example, think Carlos Sastre, while others are more vocal but still have no problem getting the job done, Mark Cavendish springs to mind. The leader who is vocal and yet can’t back up his words with performances will inevitably lose the trust of his team-mates and will shortly thereafter no longer deserve the status of leader at all.

‘Leadership and learning are indispensable to one another’ said a great U.S. leader of Irish descent. A current leader of more established Irish descent could have done with listening to these words of John F. Kennedy for he has now come to the end of the road as leader of his cycling team.

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August 17, 2012

Beware the wounded Schleck

Which rider won the Tour de France in a year in which he did not even take part in the race?

The answer, unsurprisingly, involves a disqualification and a subsequent default winner. The answer is also going through the worst year in his career thus far as a cyclist. The answer is Andy Schleck.

Earlier this year, Alberto Contador was banned and stripped of several victories including the 2010 Tour de France in which Schleck finished second. As such, in May of this year, Schleck was officially awarded the yellow jersey as winner of the 2010 Tour. So far this has been his only victory this year.

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June 23, 2012

Why Jens Voigt can win this year’s Tour de France

In 1956, on Stage Seven of the Tour de France, a group of 31 riders broke clear of the rest of the peloton on the road to Angers and finished more than 18 minutes clear. The best placed rider in the group was Roger Walkowiak, who consequently relieved his compatriot André Darrigade of the yellow jersey.

Walkowiak would later lose the race lead but he fought tenaciously in the mountains and regained the Maillot Jaune with four days to go until the Tour reached Paris. The Frenchman held on for the win and became only the second rider since Firmin Lambot in 1922 to win the Tour without winning a stage. In fact, Walkowiak remains the only Tour winner who never even managed to finish in the top three on any stage.

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June 18, 2012

The Grand Tour hat-trick: A stage win in each

The biggest stage races in the sport of cycling are the Grand Tours. Consisting of three weeks of racing, the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a Espana are each more than twice as long as the next longest stage race at the top level of the sport. To win one of these races is the pinnacle of any cyclist’s career.

Only five riders have ever won all three of these races. They are Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Felice Gimondi, Bernard Hinault and Alberto Contador. No rider has ever won all three in the same year. In fact, it is relatively rare to even complete all three in the same year.

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November 18, 2011

Vuelta 2011 – The best stage race of the year?

Froome and Cobo battling it out at the 2011 Vuelta a Espana

It is now the end of the cycling season and we await once more for January to roll round so we can get excited about the perhaps undeserved hype of the Tour Down Under. As such there have been plenty ‘Best of 2011’ lists appearing in various places.

The category ‘Best Stage Race’ is rarely ever not the Tour de France in these retrospective lists. This is because it is the most famous race and many people deciding to fill out the voting form may not know their Paris-Nices from their Paris-Roubaixs. But this year, when people decided to give their vote to the Tour de France it seems to come with a caveat along the lines of ‘I know everybody always votes for the Tour de France, but this year’s really was the best stage race of the year’.

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