i’ve only been watching oln for two days and already i’m ready to bare my neck and concede what the oln “boys” (as phil calls them) want me to: an american will win this tour! nothing else is even remotely possible! an american will not win this tour, but let me at least entertain the hincapie thing.

contrary to oln wisdom, the key to hincapie’s victory is not in the mountains. it is in the time trials. in order for george to win, he must follow the indurain formula: win the tt’s and stay close in the mountains. big mig never won a mountain stage in any tour de france he won (he did win at luz-ardiden, i think, when he was with reynolds in 1990). take this to the bank: hincapie has already won the only mountain stage he will ever win in the tour. what he needs to do now is put everything he has into the long tt’s of this tour.

the problem is that indurain often/usually crushed the opposition in the tt, even when the opposition was highly skilled at the race against the clock. indurain was so good that he made even bugno and rominger look second rate–and rominger was a world hour record holder! hincapie is not that good. no matter how well george goes, he will still be close to landis, valverde, julich, savoldelli, and even leipheimer–not to mention specialists such as zabriskie and rogers.

this means that even if george does win, he will have to use his team to control the race in the mountains. fortunately, george has the team to do so. hopefully, he also has the complete loyalty and confidence of his team, which he will need in the same way indurain needed jeff bernard to expend himself on alpe d’huez in (i think) 1992. george’s newfound climbing skills will be on display just trying to stay with falco and chechu at a brutal pace, not (as oln keeps suggesting) winning at alpe d’huez or la toussuire.

finally, george will have to take another page out of indurain’s book in not being afraid to take the race to the opposition. this will be hardest for george as, in my view, outside of the classics, he is a big wimp. After winning the ITT in stage 9 in 1994, Indurain came out swinging three days later in the first stage in the pyrenees, riding everybody but luc leblanc off of his wheel, then dueling in the mist and rain with leblanc, all the way to the summit at hautacam (this remains my all-time favorite tour stage to this day). indurain didn’t win, but he made it clear that he was not afraid to put his all into climbing, even when it looked like all he needed to win was his ITT ability. in my view, armstrong (or, more likely, bruyneel) adopted this strategy in the early years, when lance would almost always attack in a mountain stage following an ITT in which he had been successful (in the later lance years, nobody really challenged lance, so this became unnecessary as strategy and was only sometimes trotted out as theatre).

so, george wins this tour if (1) he wins the ITT’s, (2) he attacks in the mountains, (3) uses his team to control the race before the mountain finishes (with ekimov in the role of gerard rue), and (4) expends to the point of death lieutenants like savoldelli and rubiera to haul him up the big finishes at huez and la toussuire. in my opinion, all four of the necessary ingredients are questionable for george, with the exception of number (3). thus, george does not win this tour, but at least i gave it serious consideration.

apw.