It’s been a 51 years since professional teams replaced national teams at the Tour de France, but if Chris Froome fails to reach the top step of the podium on July 22, it will be the Spaniards who are largely responsible.
After ten stages of this amazing centenary edition of Le Tour, there are four Spaniards in the top 11 riders, plus Nairo Quintana, a Colombian (who speaks Spanish) and Rui Costa, a Portuguese, but who like Quintana rides for a Spanish team.
There are four teams represented here, Movistar, Saxo-Tinkoff, Katusha and Euskaltel Euskadi.
Only two are ‘Spanish’ – Movistar and Euskaltel (technically a Basque team who don’t like being called Spanish), but if push comes to shove at the business end of a stage, expect the Spanish Armada to the major animators working together to foil Froome.
Tonight’s first Individual Time Trial should not see any of the Armada make inroads into Froome’s healthy 1:25 lead over the best placed Spaniard Alejandro Valverde.
The flat 33kilometres course looks perfect for Froome, and he should increase his advantage by at least one minute over all his rivals.
But on Sunday when the peloton ascends Mont Ventoux to conclude the Tour’s longest stage (242km), that time gap should shrink markedly, especially if the “contenders” recommence the work they started on la Hourquette d’Ancizan.
We witnessed four attempted attacks on the isolated Brit by Quintana on d’Ancizan but with a 30 kilometre descent after the summit he soon realised that the reward for effort wasn’t going to be worth it.
But that was a taste of what will happen in the days to come.
After Ventoux it’s the final rest day, but we’ll be served up with an amazing climber’s fest…great for TV and us fans, but an absolute nightmare for the peloton.
In five brutal stages, the peloton will have to conquer 21 climbs rated Category three or higher. Five are Hors Catagorie and three are Cat 1. There are eight Cat 2 cols and five rated Cat 3.
If the leading riders club together to target Froome on the key climbs each day, how can he possibly survive?
I’m not suggesting that a Spaniard is going to win the Tour, or even a rider from a Spanish team. Given what has happened thus far, making any kind of prediction is really dangerous.
Despite the potency of the Movistar team, with three riders in the top 10, (Valverde, Quintana and Rui Costa) there’s a question over their ability to time trial, and history says, if you can’t time trial in the Tour you can’t win.
Maybe this year, with only 65 kilometres of Time Trial, and so much climbing, the outcome will be different.
If so, perhaps a rider like Valverde can win cycling’s biggest race.
Chances are though it’ll be a clever rider who wins le Tour, and in what’s been a race of extreme performance differentials, it’ll be a consistent rider who takes home the final yellow jersey.
They wouldn’t necessarily need to be one that attacked Froome, but as long as several riders do, continuously, then Froome won’t be able to hold on. When he drops back the others must simply follow a wheel and maintain a high-placed finish.
Hell, that rider could be Cadel…or even Andy Schleck.
Four minutes 36 seconds sounds a lot right now for Cadel to be behind (Schleck is at 4:00), but with Froome so isolated on GC, he just needs to have a bad day – and why not when many others have–and the race is wide open.
When you look at that final week, it’s hard to see how Froome can hold on to Yellow. Sure, he could choose to lose it for a while, but with Sky showing their mortality Sunday, there’s no guarantee his team could take it back at will.
Without Porte fighting for GC, thus denying Sky a second option for the podium, Froome himself is most worried about the threat posed by the Armada, admitting he was “quite glad” there weren’t more attacks on d’Ancizan as riders like Quintana are “not easy to follow” on the climbs.
Describing Porte’s presence in second place as “a huge boost for me knowing he was right there”, he will now be hoping that the collaborations don’t materialise in the days ahead.
But that’s exactly what Movistar Team Director Eusebio Unzue has in mind, especially with Team-Saxo Tinkoff and their GC gun, Alberto Contador.
“Can we form an alliance with Contador?” he mused.
“We’ll certainly try, but it’s a question of whether you have the strength to take advantage when the opportunity arises.”
That opportunity won’t arrive tonight, but it will arrive.
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