The Cycliste Moderne, August 29, 2005

The Vuelta

The last of the Grand Tours started this week, with the Vuelta a Espana commencing in Grenada, Spain. This year it is a little tough for me to get excited about the Vuelta. Maybe it is the complete absence of any US domestic television coverage. Maybe it is the burn out over a long season. Maybe it is the fact that with the ProTour bringing a relatively high level of racing to races throughout the year, the presence of arguably the weakest field of the three Grand Tours is a little tough to get excited about. Clearly the significant amount of racing required by the teams this season before the Vuelta has taken its toll on the peleton. The start list for the Vuelta is a veritable list of nobodies. In particular, the Italian and French teams have sent B teams at best.

I am not going to provide the level of coverage that I did during the Giro and Tour. The Vuelta should be exciting but it is not like my morning is going to be spent waiting for the stage results to stream through like I did for the Giro and Tour. Plus, since all the ProTour teams are contesting the Vuelta and I have already reviewed them for fashion sense, there is not a lot of Vuelta filler to throw out there.

Here are the big stories for the Vuelta. Can Liberty Seguros’ Roberto Heras repeat as champion after having had a really poor Tour? Heras had a strong opening time trial and has a lot to prove this year. Can Euskaltel-Euskadi finally have some results on home soil? The Basque team has had a largely unproductive season. Their only victories have largely been flukes and they bring former Vuelta champion Aitor Gonzalez to the race as their leader. Will Gilberto Simoni do anything and prove his worth to a team for next year? Simoni has had nothing but poor results since finishing second at the Giro earlier this year. For a guy that is out of contract and on the market, he needs to prove that he can still be competitive.

We will see what happens.

Hincapie Wins Again

George Hincapie of Discovery Channel continued his excellent season winning Sunday’s GP Ouest France-Plouay. The GP Ouest France-Plouay is second only to Paris-Roubaix in importance on the French calendar during the cycling season. Held in Bretagne, the race has always been important for the French. Hincapie’s victory in a photofinish over Alexandre Usov of Ag2r-Prevoyance was overshadowed by the jeers Hincapie received on the podium from the French fans. Now that they do not have Armstrong to kick around, they take it out on his friends and teammates.

Hincapie has won five races this season, finished second at Paris-Roubaix, had a strong showing at the Dauphine Libere and has maintained his form throughout the season. He has now moved up to 7th in the ProTour standings. He will contest the San Francisco Grand Prix in a couple of weeks which he won in 2001 and then will likely call it a season.

US Presence in ProTour Standings

Hincapie’s win at Plouay and Levi Leipheimer’s stage win and overall win at the Tour of Germany has put four Americans in the top seven of the ProTour standings. Armstrong is 3rd, Leipheimer is 5th, Bobby Julich is 6th and Hincapie is 7th.

Although all four of them are done for the season as far as ProTour points are concerned, with the exception of the World Championships in Madrid which Julich may contest, they are all likely to finish in the top 15 on the season.

Poor French Showing in the ProTour

Amazingly there are no French riders or riders from French teams in the top 20 at this point in the season in the ProTour standings.

The French are going to have to realize that their poor performance over the last twenty years has not been caused by drugs in the peleton but rather incredibly poor tactical racing and even poorer preparation. The great French champions Hinault, Fignon, and Jalabert are running races or providing commentary, not running teams. The French media have given French riders an easy excuse not to perform. If everyone is drugged except the French riders then they cannot win. Amazingly the French riders do not seem to care about their poor performances.

French teams have also become very insular in their racing. The Coupe de France series is very important to the French cycling teams. Historically only French riders or riders on French teams could acquire points in the series. As a result, it gave the French a skewed view of the level of quality of their riders and teams. Occasionally top riders like Armstrong or Ullrich would contest Coupe de France races for training.

However, the level of competition was not high enough to give the French teams a real measuring stick. While French stars such as Virenque, Brochard and Moreau would win occasional races, they have been at best only top 30 riders in the world. The lesser French riders and the lesser French teams have done little to develop domestic talent. When a potential star emerges in France, the hope for the next coming of Hinault has resulted, caused emerging riders such as Sylvain Chavanel to wilt.

As long as French teams whine that they cannot win because the peleton races at “two speeds” and insinuate that everyone else dopes, they will continue without champions. The French lose because they are not as talented as Ullrich, they do not work as hard as Armstrong, they do not have the killer instinct of Vinokourov, they lack the perseverance of Julich, and they are completely lacking in the joy of racing and winning exhibited by Cippollini.

It will be truly ironic if Cofidis signs Gilberto Simoni to be their GC leader for next year as the Italian rider is more French than most of his future teammates will be. He whines a lot, has ready excuses for his poor performance, and has gotten everyone to forget he was thrown out of the Giro for testing positive for cocaine, which he claimed first claimed came from an emergency dental procedure he had forgotten to disclose and then later that it came from a lozenge his grandmother gave him.

It has got to be the shoes.

Sometimes it is all about the shoes.