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I’d love to go into super-detail arguing about Ferrari’s sprint, and how 1) moves like that happen a lot and 2) when they do go wrong, relegation is invariably the sanction, but there really isn’t much point. Take out two of the most popular riders in the English-speaking world in front of an audience that generally sees bunch sprints in slick 8-second clips (as opposed to watching the whole run-in), and people will be calling for your head on the internet. And it’s just not worth arguing details with the fanatics.

Related posts:

1. How The Race Was Won – 2009 Giro d’Italia Stages 3-6
2. Amstel Gold 2012 – How The Race Was Won
3. 2012 Paris-Roubaix – How The Race Was Won

It wasn’t in a Grand Tour, of course, and it took a couple pretty serious climbs to thin out the field, but still—watching Wiggins reach back to his trackie days to hold Liquigas’ leadout, jump from the cheap seats, and even gamely extend his twiggy little elbows in the final meters was pretty damn cool:

The last time I saw something like this, it was 2004 and the biggest race in the US was a mid-April appointment in Georgia. Taking advantage of a field thinned by some late climbs, and leaning on his unique ability to lay down power at a high cadence, Lance Armstrong made a late surge in a fast, downhill sprint. Hate the Texan all you want, but respect the skills and instinct—rest day refills almost certainly didn’t help him here:

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For all its current novelty, the sight used to be much more common. Eddy Merckx was a frequent contender and winner in bunch sprint stages, and as recently as the 1980s, Bernard Hinault made it something of a tradition to battle with the sprinters on the Champs Elysees. The Badger barely missed out in Paris at the end of his final Tour win in 1985, and scored convincing yellow-clad wins in 1979 and 1982:

If you’re a retro-grouch, you’ll call it the death of panache, and if you’re a techno-geek, you’ll chalk it up to modern training and equipment allowing cyclists to become more specialized. While a few modern GC contenders—Danilo DiLuca and Alejandro Valverde come to mind—have managed to regularly produce a mean finishing kick, unless El Imbatido can show me something different this summer, I’m inclined to say that both their stints as Grand Tour riders were more triumphs of biochemistry than multi-disciplinary focus.

But I’m guessing the main driver for the decline in overlapping ability is economic. When salaries were low and riders needed off-season jobs, they didn’t really get to train year-round. They came into the season on little or no fitness, and those with the most natural ability ended up winning in a fairly wide variety of finishes. With season-long sponsor pressure to perform dulling the razor’s edge of fitness, a rider’s ability just to perform through an endless barrage of race efforts outstripped the importance of fine-tuning a natural inclination toward sprinting or climbing for a few weeks in mid-July.

With today’s sponsors bankrolling year-round training and massive on- and off-course support, the single-digit percentages that separate the specialist from the rouleur have become minutes on the hills and bike-lengths at the line. As training became targeted toward peaks at Grand Tours or a handful of one-day events, entire teams coalesced around the specific abilities of a given rider. Mario Cipollini’s Saeco team perfected the sprint train, Armstrong and US Postal perfected the comprehensive approach to winning Grand Tours, and nowadays, there’s precious little ground between them—though one does hope today’s GC winners are somewhat less “comprehensive” in their preparation than Armstrong.

Related posts:

1. Curing the Giro Hangover – News
2. La Vuelta: Training Race No More
3. “A Sprint that will be Talked About”

[right-click for iTunes-compatible download]

And with that, the spring is officially over. Trends that struck me across my many bleary-eyed hours of watching, re-watching, writing and editing were (aside from the obvious) the emergence of Europecar as race-makers and champions, and the sound and fury that BMC put into controlling large sections of Amstel and Liege to come away grasping and feathers in the finale.

Will HTRWW continue into the Grand Tours? I can only speculate. Physically, I’m really beginning to wonder whether I’m up to the task, and it certainly isn’t helping me out career-wise. Then again, if I had a different sort of career…

Related posts:

1. How The Race Was Won – Liege-Bastogne-Liege 2010
2. How The Race Was Won – Liege-Bastogne-Liege 2009
3. Amstel Gold 2012 – How The Race Was Won

[right-click for iTunes-compatible download]

Fancy that, naming something awesome (a bike race) after your product. To think that there are still a) unbranded products and b) products advertised with banner ads—boggles the mind, does it not?

Related posts:

1. How The Race Was Won – Amstel Gold 2009
2. How The Race Was Won – Amstel Gold 2010
3. Tour of Flanders 2012 — The Race Was Won How?

[right-click for iTunes-compatible download]

Just for the record, this was completed about 16 hours after the race concluded and was live before any competing, similarly-named titles at other sites (though I did not beat the Specialized unfiltered cut). I suppose it’s possible that after I’ve published this, these sites could have release better-produced, more creative, cleverer, more sharply analytical videos, but somehow, I doubt it.

Related posts:

1. How The Race Was Won – Paris-Roubaix 2009
2. How The Race Was Won – Paris-Roubaix 2010
3. Tour of Flanders 2012 — The Race Was Won How?

[right-click for iTunes-compatible download]

You might get another one of these this year. You also might not. The way I made this was by not sleeping last night and that’s not really sustainable. Or pleasant. Consider it a reminder of how well I can do this sort of thing now that others seem to think it’s a worthwhile idea.

If you’d be interested in bankrolling the production of similar videos in exchange for promotional consideration, I am all ears.

Related posts:

1. How The Race Was Won – Tour of Flanders 2009
2. How The Race Was Won – 2010 Tour de France, Stage 11
3. How The Race Was Won – Tour of Romandie 2009

[right-click for iTunes-compatible download]

(Contains just a few photos and screenshots from various sources, and video from Eurosport.)

It’s an exciting conclusion, despite the relative lack of action from the one-day specialists. Their absence does set up some interesting plot lines going into Lombardy, though the parcours at that event might lead us right back into the doping discussion again.

Related posts:

1. How The Race Was Won – Paris-Tours 2009
2. How The Race Was Won – Paris-Roubaix 2010
3. How The Race Was Won – Criterium du Dauphine 2010

I’d hoped to scrape some more goodies from The Lance Chronicles, but Floyd and the radios just don’t come up all that much.

Some blame should also go to @mmmaiko for coming up with the idea (kinda).

Related posts:

1. No Radio – Rant
2. The Four Impossibilities of Radio-Free Racing
3. The US Team And A Wiggins Drama Timeline

[click for iPad/iPhone/downloadable version]

[Contains, in order of appearance, footage from Eurosport, Versus and NOS, and still photos from Graham Watson, Pascal Pavan, Eric Gaillard, Lauren Rebours and Fotoreporter Sirotti.]

I said almost immediately—and have the audio to prove it—that I thought Renshaw would get relegated for closing the gate, but I think the race jury wanted some way of punishing Cavendish for the actions of his leadout man, and so bumped Renshaw from the race. The Aussie’s been fantastic all Tour long—it’ll be interesting to see how things shake out without him.

No shortage of opinion on this one, ranging from no sanction should be given to no headbutting should be allowed ever in any sport. I obviously think I’m right, but please don’t feel bound to defer to my feelings on the subject. Versus did a great job of getting reaction interviews moments after the finish: here’s Dean, Farrar, and Renshaw.

Related posts:

1. How The Race Was Won – Stage 15 – 2009 Tour de France
2. 2009 Tour de France – Stage 2 – How The Race Was Won
3. 2006 Tour de France – Stage 15, Stage 16, and Stage 17

[if you're having trouble viewing this, maybe try right-click/save file as... - if it still doesn't work, direct you complaints to Eurosport, who filmed the interview, didn't put it online, and then decided to pull it from YouTube]

While I may be a few thousand miles away from the action, I have a sneaking suspicion that the discontent is somewhat over-reported; it both makes for good headlines, and is informed heavily by the long-term interests of GC-contending teams.

Levi’s comments after Stage 2 about how Tour organizers “want to see us bleeding” by using “courses like this”, while highly-quotable, doesn’t really make sense. The Stockeau comes nearly 100km from the finish of Liege-Bastogne-Liege, and is descended annually by large packs of extremely motivated riders (far less incentive to finish in a one-day, after all) almost without incident.

As a squad stacked with strong stage racers, it’s in RadioShack’s best interest to keep everything completely under control until Johan Bruyneel decides it’s time to make the race. And while I don’t doubt the sincerity of Jens’ emotional commitment to his teammates, I think if Andy had had racked up five minutes in Stage 3, instead of merely recouping his prologue losses, SaxoBank might be singing a different tune.

It’s important to remember that the Tour runs on a set of rules; denying a decision by the man in Yellow to neutralize the stage—especially when he and his team are strong enough to make things seriously unpleasant for you over the next twenty days—would be a pretty serious violation of those rules. It’s not that these rules can’t be broken, it’s just that your interests are better served by adhering to them.

Smaller squads are heavily dependent on breakaways for their Tour success, and the success of any given breakaway depends almost entirely on decisions made by the stronger teams setting the pace of the event. As Filippo Simeoni can tell you, speaking out too boldly—even when you’re in the right—can ruin your entire Tour.

While Cervelo, a stronger team than most, certainly wasn’t shy about their opinions of the neutralization, the team made sure not to “be a pain in the ass” and avoided breaking up the agreement, even if it was “too friendly”. And I think this deference to the established rules of the race has already begun to pay dividends.

Consider yesterday’s finish: Fabian Cancellara—who probably could have battled Hushovd for the win—attacked only once after the final selection, and took a not-especially-tactical pull up to the final 200 meters. One could argue he was trying to build Andy Schleck’s gap, but unless Andy was absolutely shattered, he would have almost certainly been s.t. regardless of sprint tactics. Had VanPoppel given the word to break the truce on Monday, I think Tuesday’s finale would have played out very differently.

So while I dislike neutralization and whining as much as the next man, I think that there’s a lot less agreement amongst the riders than is conveyed by the media, and I think that VanPoppel’s comment above that the Tour “is not a Mickey Mouse race”, and that it’s time to get down to business reflects the unspoken professional opinion of a majority of the peloton.

Related posts:

1. 2007 Fitchburg-Longsjo Race Report – Stage 2 Circuit Race
2. How The Race Was Won – Rules of the Group Sprint
3. 1987 Tour de Suisse