Title: A different Tour
Tags: cycling training doping
Blog Entry: Have you noticed it? I have. I started noticing it during the spring classics in March and April. I am talking about how different pro cycling races look since last year's Le Tour de Fiasco. When Operation Puerto began exposing the names of alleged dopers, team sponsors began pulling out as quickly as the accusations were being flung at nearly all the top riders. Cycling was a mess. Many wondered if the sport could rebound from something this damaging. No sponsors, no support, no cycling. Period. Things were going to have to drastically shift if the sport was to truly survive. Then along came two American teams, Slipstream Chipotle, now called Garmin Chipotle; and Team High Road (and yes, I do believe the double meaning was intentional), now named Columbia. These two teams assembled an international cadre of riders, all who made the pledge to be tested extensively and by the team itself. They vowed to ride clean. Squeaky clean. I had heard this desire to clean up pro cycling and restore its honor was being heralded not only here on our soil, but across the pond as well. Look, I don't mean to be cynical. But when I heard this I was skeptical this could succeed, because the very nature of the sport of pro cycling is so demanding, unforgiving and punishing, doping had become a way to merely survive. But bravo to the effort. Good news for those of us who tune in to Versus to watch the Tour de Flanders, Milan-San Remo, Gent-Wevelgem and Paris-Roubaix in the spring, the Giro in May and the grand dame of them all, the Tour de France in July. And when I saw my first race of the year, I noticed it right away. The race tactics looked different. The riders who were up in front were different. The old hammer, then hammer some more way of racing, forcing a rider to recover so quickly from an effort it defied logic (hello!) then attack again, was totally different. I was seeing more conservative riding by the team leaders. More calculation with regard to attacks and counter attacks. And watching the domestiques ride hard for their man but doing it with more emphasis on strategy and less on brute force effort.It was truly startling. And predicting the winner was somehow much more tricky. Now it is July. I have seen every stage of the Tour so far and it is definitely a Tour like I have never seen before. The standing joke is that French riders haven't been successful in more recent years because they've been too clean to compete. Nearly every breakaway of the early stages thus far, has been brimming with Frenchmen. The Yellow Jersey is changing hands every day -- as are the Green and Polkadot jerseys for the best sprinter and king of the mountains respectively. Also noted, the guys who are all around riders, who both time trial and climb well are showing a definite strength at one or the other, rather than that dominance of both, which has been the norm for so many years. It's also apparent that riders are being more conservative with their energy. Should they decide to burn too many matches too early, you see that fatigue on the next few stages, where in the past, one day of pulling back and they were ready to go again. I speak in generalizations here. There have been years with good riders who have competed clean. But the use of EPO and other performance enhancers seems to have been largely eradicated for so many of the elements of racing, in both the one day classics and the grand tours, to look so startlingly different. And for that I am thrilled. It is a wonderful, challenging, crushingly punishing sport, that requires the riders to train with intensity, intelligence, and precision. The riders are subjected to a test of mind, body and constitution that is paralleled by few sports. It makes the awe and respect I have for them so much deeper, when I know this is the rider out there; just his own talent, training and mental strength, that accomplishes the most intimidating and strenuous of athletic feats. And the effect is that the unpredictability that is a by-product of this movement has made the Tour incredibly exciting to watch. Gone are the days when only a handful of riders were really in contention for the Yellow Jersey. This is anybody's race and you can see that. All are welcome to put their helmets down and compete with all they have. And that is the way it should be.
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