After the entree served up in the Vosges Mountains, the Tour de France has finally covered the meatier course of the Alpes. If things continue in the same fashion for Vinzenzo Nibali, the Pyrenees are looking to be his dessert.
Having said that, the fact that Nibali hasn’t had to face his biggest rivals in Froome and Contador has led to the feeling among some that he’s only enjoying a sort of “Steven Bradbury” moment and owes his success to luck more than strength.
In an interview given after Stage 12, Nibali was quoted as saying that crashing and avoiding crashes is part of bike racing, and he is absolutely right. We can lament the loss of a great encounter that might have occurred between Froome and Contador, but their crashes should not detract from Nibali’s performance.
His ride on the Pave was a display of the complete bike rider, and his superior bike handling skills continued to keep him upright in a week that felled many of his challengers.
This clean run was down to a lot more than just good luck, and likewise Contador and Froome didn’t simply suffer bad luck; it was Nibali’s better bike handling skills that put him in this position, and he should be applauded for it to the same degree as is, for instance, Froome’s time trialling strength.
Bike racing, especially the Grand-Tours, makes for a complex and long story at times, with no one factor ever defining the outcome. It’s this epic quality that creates so much excitement and builds so much mythic power into a race like le Tour.
In our technical age we tend to compare theoretical power outputs and individual performances that are easy to break down and analyse, but at the end of the day you can’t win a Tour without passing the whole set of challenges that is presented.
Nibali was the only pre-Tour favourite capable of getting through the first half of the race unscathed and, in my opinion, this makes him the most worthy of owning the title, without having to qualify it with detractions of “good luck”.
While overall victory was always an ambitious expectation, before Stage 14 to Chamrousse we were all hopeful that Richie Porte would be able to battle it out for a podium spot and provide us with a good show on the way.
Unfortunately, he suffered so much on that final climb that he’s no longer even in the top 10.
Most people were aware that Richie has tended to have a bad day or two in a Grand Tour. Last year, on the day following an absolutely dominant display on AX-3 Domaines, he lost almost 18 minutes after being dropped on the Col du Mente.
But this year he looked good in the Vosges and from my position on the roadside he looked comfortable with his new-found position of team leader. I was hopeful that those “bad days” he’s had in the past were more to do with having to bury himself in support roles than anything else, and that he’d get through this Tour with consistency.
However, he looked like a different rider in the Alpes and was clearly suffering a huge drop in form.
Since then, Porte has reported that he’s been battling with a chest infection since Day 5. This is no surprise given how bad the weather was for the first week on the continent, but it’s admittedly a real shame.
That said, surviving poor conditions with good health is just one more of those challenges in bike racing, and everyone currently still racing had to face the same conditions while managing their health and not getting sick.
Richie will no doubt continue in the hope of finishing in Paris and will add this year’s Tour travails to his still-growing experience.
Nibali appears to be a shoe-in for the victory now, and I would say that Alejandro Valverde is the most likely candidate for the second step of the podium. His experience will certainly be an advantage as we enter the final week.
Third place is still completely open, though.
The French will be fully behind their unexpected contenders, Romain Bardet and Thibaut Pinot, but my bet is on Tejay Van Garderen to continue his improvement as the Tour goes on, eventually moving into the final podium place.
It is actually great to see so many relatively young and inexperienced riders find the opportunity to lead their teams with serious overall intentions at the Tour de France.
Along with Pinot, Bardet, Van Garderen, and Porte, are Bauke Mollema, Jurgen Van den Broeck, and Michel Kwiatowski.
Unpredictable events have been one of the best aspects of this year’s Tour and it could be any of the above riders who end up taking third place in Paris. But I would actually love to see yet another upset, with one of these guys on each step of the podium behind Nibali, rather than Valverde.
For me, that would be a nice and symbolic changing of the guard and the showing of a promising future.
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