The Cycliste Moderne, July 14, 2005

Happy Bastille Day

July 14th is Bastille Day in France. Typically French riders try to show up on Bastille Day and do something. Thursday’s profile is a difficult but not too difficult day. After the high mountains, it could be a day when an opportunistic French rider like Laurent Brochard of Bouygues Telecom and his famed mullet get in a break and tries to ride away to victory.

Americans may know that the storming of the Bastille marked the beginning of the French Revolution. The Bastille was reviled as a symbol of the French Monarchy but at the time it was stormed, there were just a handful of prisoners in custody. Now when you finally get to go to France to see the Tour de France and you get off the Metro at “Bastille,” don’t be an ugly American and ask “Where is the Bastille?” They tore it down. It’s not there. There is a monument in the middle of the traffic circle, really cool but not overpriced shopping, the new opera house and a whole bunch of cafes at Bastille. However, there is no Bastille.

Stage 11 Recap

Stage 11 went off pretty much as expected. It was a very difficult day with the monster climbs over the Col de la Madeleine, the Col du Telegraphe and the Col du Galibier. Climbing the Galibier from the north really turns it and the Telegraph into a single climb that goes on forever. However, with a long downhill to start the stage from Courchevel and a 40km downhill run to Briancon from the top of the Galibier, the stage did not really provide an opportunity for the leaders to pick up any major time gaps on each other. As is typically the case, two team leaders who rode poorly on the first day in the mountains and lost significant time were allowed by Discovery Channel to seek redemption by attacking over the big climbs for a stage win. Alexander Vinokourov of T-Mobile and Santiago Botero of Phonak spent much of the day off the front and trying to stay away. Their efforts resulted in just over a minute gain over the Discovery Channel lead peleton by the finish.

Sorry I do not have more insight into today’s stage. Although I watched some of it this evening, this morning I was in my motel room in Riggins, Idaho, refreshing the live internet commentary at cyclingnews.com and velonews.com and waiting as long as I could before heading off to my meeting this morning.

Oh No Dario!

Fassa Bortolo’s Dario Frigo got busted again for drugs. As you may recall he got caught four years ago during the Giro d’Italia in a drug raid where he was found to be in possession of “Hemassist,” a drug that was so dangerous that it had been removed from US testing when it was determined that almost half of the patients who used it died, as opposed to a less than 20% mortality rate for the control group. He confessed to having purchased the drugs “just in case” he needed them and was given a suspension.

It turns out that his expensive “stash” purchased over the internet, naturally, was nothing more than saline that he had paid thousands of dollars to acquire. This week, his wife was arrested by French police after they stopped her car and searched it, finding ampules of EPO and human growth hormone hidden in a thermos packaged in ice and hidden in his trunk.

After the Raimondas Rumsas affair a few years ago, where Mrs. Rumsas was arrested shortly after her husband finished on the podium at the Tour de France, returning to their home in Italy with a veritable pharmacy in her trunk, you would think that riders would not be using their wives or girlfriends as mules. I just cannot see either Sheryl Crow or Odessa Gunn carrying their man’s stash.

Tour Fashion Review #7

Cofidis is a French telephone credit company. Just like in America, you pick up the phone and somebody gives you a loan at 200% interest for a month. Cofidis has always sported Red, Blue and Yellow kits that are tied to the color and logo scheme of the sponsor. Cofidis only gets a C+ for their uniforms, however. I do not have any problem with the color scheme or placement or number of logos, but the toll free number on the front of the jersey is just too much information. If this were in the United States, you know there would be a disclaimer to follow the telephone number.