(1) The conspiracy theory. Landis is clean. The French can’t stand that an American won the Tour again and somebody spikes the sample after it is collected.

(2) The pragmatic acceptance theory. Everybody in the sport of cycling is dirty. Witness Boonen’s near confession in the NY Times today where he blames the Tour itself for doping. Too hard…of course everybody is on the juice when “they” make the parcourse so difficult. So in that climate…Landis’s rather eloquent statement about not being happy about Basso and Ullrich’s ejection and his decision to eat testosterone gummi bears (like Calci Bears for those of you with small children who hate milk) are both part of Landis’s clear conscience about his role in the sport. The short form is this: We are all doping. This is a level playing field. Another name for this is the Greg Lemond thesis which, I have to say, carries more weight than it might because a three-time tour champion believes that it is impossible to be a pro cyclist today without being on a doping program. (This is also the reason that CSC hasn’t dumped Basso. Believe me, Bjarne understands….)

(3) The crestfallen nightmare theory. This is the ugly one, the Shakespearean tragedy. And it goes like this: Post-bonk and utterly devastated, Floyd asks celebrity chef Michael Chiarello (oops, I mean Robbie Ventura) what he can do to recover for the next day and go on the attack. Ventura recommends an osso buco recipe that includes a testosterone froth. Then he explains to Floyd that some Swedish scientists mis-used some government money to buy a lot of aquavit and then designed a study to show that alcohol consumption screws with the T/ET ratio as a way to justify the expenditure. Ventura instructs Floyd to cook up a story about drinking beer and to keep mentioning that he had a few/several/more than he could count beers until columnists at velonews starting writing about his beer drinking as a way to create a cover story. Ventura knows enough to know that the testosterone won’t help Floyd physically but he doesn’t tell Floyd that. He says merely, “this shit will make you so fucking angry that you’ll eat the tape off your handle bars while on the joux tomorrow!” And then Floyd spends the rest of the night listening to “Alice’s Restaurant” and eating titanium screws.

Where’s the tragedy? Floyd could have done what he did anyway without the drugs…all he needed was for someone to find a way to arrange for a mennonite minister to call him a “weak pussy shit” in the few minutes before Stage 17.

So what’s the most striking difference in this year’s tour compared to the last seven? I’ll put forth the genuine affection that riders from other teams have shown to Floyd. Rasmussen gave him a hug after his great stage; Perreiro gave him a full-on man-grapple after yesterday’s stage. It’s clear that Floyd is well-liked in the Peloton, a fact which distinguishes him from Armstrong. I’m not sure if I recall even a discovery rider hugging Lance. There was no doubt that the Peloton respected Lance, as they should have, but a quiet thread of his seven-year reign is that no one, including LeBlanc, really liked him. The possible exception was Hinault who seemed to have a sympatico for a fellow badger-like character.

So now the question is: can Floyd make it back? The surgery he is about to undergo is equivalent to a Beloki re-tread. If he doesn’t, then what will the next year bring? Ullrich (career over, Jan) and Basso will certainly be sitting out suspensions. Cunego has announced he’ll focus on the Giro next year. Sastre, Evans, and Menchov all showed that they can’t respond to the pressure. So who’s left but Kloden? My dark horses are Popyvych, if he finally gets serious about his training and Zabriskie, if he trains his ass off enough to warrant being named team leader for CSC.

I say Retrospectacle because I think the source of Bobby’s 2006 problems — and there’s always a source for his problems — lies with sponsor Oakley. If you look at him before the crash in Stage 7, you clearly see that he is wearing a pair of Pro M-Frame glasses with red iridium lenses. This is problematic. Red iridium allows 15% light to eyes, increases contrast and definition in variable light under bright sunlight. At 46°N of the equator and partially-cloudy/average sunlight riding conditions, I would have recommended an amber polarized or better yet, orange lens.

Who’s to blame for this? At first you might think it was Julich’s poor choice. Perhaps not. Looking back at the Tour of Romandie earlier this year, we learned that Bobby had serious problems with his sponsor Oakley:

Minutes before I spoke with CSC’s evergreen American Bobby Julich, the 34 year-old was having a fairly in-depth conversation with a representative from Oakley, one of his personal equipment sponsors. Phrases like, ‘I need another set of M-Frames for the Giro and Tour’ and ‘the ones with black Iridium’ were thrown around, indicative of someone very particular about the finer details.

“I mean, you’re used to doing things the right way and when a guy like that is right here and can take care of a problem… ” says Julich, his voice trailing off before explaining the reason behind his nitpicking: “In the time trial, there was something wrong with my glasses - I kept having to pull them up - and we found out they were a little uneven; of course, you don’t have the right vision if they’re tilted.”

Kröner, Hedwig, Ed. “Reality bites thrice for Julich” Cyclingnews 28 April 2006. 22 July 2006 <http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2006/apr06/romandie06/
?id=/riders/2006/interviews/bobby_julich_romandie06>

While I think that black iridium would have been the worst choice for the Tour TT, maybe what we’re missing from this is an on-going problem with Oakley not being able to deliver the proper equipment to Bobby. One look at Landis in the starting house in his orange (ideal in medium light conditions) Oakley Zero glasses makes you wonder if there isn’t a conspiracy afoot.

As much fun as it is to make predictions (and we make them recklessly here at Velorant, just for the heck of it), I did not see Floyd’s implosion coming. Everyone has been cagey about not saying exactly what happened. Robbie Ventura was hysterical on OLN, positing a list of things that could have gone wrong with Floyd–as if Floyd hadn’t said to him the night before, “Robbie, it was just (fill in the blank).” My guess is not particularly profound: heat stroke. The assiduousness with which Floyd hydrated and cooled off yesterday was almost absurd. If he finished with a fever on Wednesday, then he could be easily cooled off and recuperate by the next day; heat stroke, in my experience, is not “fatal” in that way. Of course, it was probably more than one thing, but I suspect that was at the heart of it.

On Wednesday night, I was bumming along with all other true fans of cycling–not just American fans. Let’s be honest: going backwards ten minutes on the last climb while wearing the yellow jersey does not qualify as “panache.” Yes, I know that Floyd–of all people–would have gone harder if he could have, but the yellow jersey is supposed to show some mettle, even in distress (Simon, Voeckler, and Pereiro are just recent examples). The saddest part of Wednesday was the feeling that Floyd has just sort of given up. He had ridden well, but he hadn’t won a stage, and then he took the maillot jaune on a backwards ride to ignominy. Floyd was destined to be a mere footnote in Tour history. An American who wore the jersey for one pathetic day.

Thursday fixed all that. And the ironic part is that Floyd ended up almost exactly where he wanted to be: safely ahead of all his real ITT threats, and safely behind a couple of non-ITT threats; it is as if Wednesday never happened and Floyd had executed exactly the plan both Frank and I had for him: win on Wednesday, sit tight on Thursday, and rest up for the ITT on Saturday. Instead, Floyd died on Wednesday, won bigger than anyone could have predicted on Thursday, and then started resting up for the ITT. Oh, well, better late than never!

What’s the lesson of all this? First, Thursday is what a bike race looks like when no team is strong enough to control the race, and no rider is strong enough (without doing a once-in-a-lifetime ride) to scare the others. In other words, the era of Lance and Discovery is over. As Menchov said of why he did not go after Floyd’s early attack, “I don’t play Russian roulette on the first climb.” And he was right: there was no reason to believe the peloton could not bring back a suicide break. Perhaps we will now enter an era of grand tour cycling where riders have to be a bit more open to the idea of Russian roulette. Good.

Second, the idea that only lowly riders, or riders going for the KoM points, can do successful long solo breaks has grown like a cancer in cycling. Most great champions, or near champions, of the Tour have a risky break somewhere in their resume. The Lance formula of only attacking on the final climb works only if (1) you are already the strongest rider in the Tour and (2) you are well rested from being protected by a strong team. Let’s hope we see more real attacks from real contenders in the future. Why there wasn’t one today, I really cannot say. Are Pereiro and Sastre really planning beat Floyd in the ITT? Is that their strategy? Good luck. Attacking is not the answer to everything in cycling, but it is the answer to most things.

Which brings me to my final notes on my favorite whipping boys. Through all of this drama, Levi Leipheimer managed to conserve energy. You would think that after yesterday he would have hung it out today like man possessed, but instead he rode a conservative break that netted him nothing. Yeah, I guess he can do well in the ITT tomorrow; maybe finish top five. Great. As for George Hincapie, well, you know the drill: yesterday he was in the early break that Floyd went through like a hot knife through butter. He’s over an hour back. Does he have something to lose that I don’t know about? With a few exceptions (Lance’s machine-like dominance being one of them), you have to be willing to finish last if you hope to finish first. This rule does not change much in long-distance sports.

As I said earlier, it’s like Wednesday never happened. Floyd is the winner on paper tomorrow–and that’s not thin paper: he was second in the first ITT (with a bike change), far enough ahead of all rivals to be sitting pretty tonight. The threats to win the ITT over him (always Gonchar, Rogers, Karpets, maybe Zabriskie, if he’s not fried) are not rivals for the final maillot jaune. But I would be remiss–and ahistorical–if I did not point out that traditionally the maillot jaune who is not dominant in the ITT tends to ride an amazing final ITT. Chiapucci did it in 1990, Pantani did it in 1998–heck, even Virenque did a half decent job in 1996 to consolidate his one podium finish. Pereiro and Sastre are both excellent cyclists. They will push Floyd to the limit tomorrow. It will be very close. Floyd could win–or lose–this Tour by seconds. As few as eight seconds? As the French say, “On verra.”

Quel etage!

If you were to name the major teams over the past several seasons, all of them came out to play today except Discovery. The implosion there suggests that they still have recovered from Lance’s departure. Morale is obviously quite low. Meanwhile, the other well-drilled teams each put into play classic strategy. And this now includes Phonak.

Phonak opted to put a domestique up the road to help out on the final climb. And it was great to watch Merckx fils bury himself for his c.g. leader.

CSC went on offense as their Viking DS would have it; they made the stage today. Zubriskie has become my new favorite rider. It’s great to see an American riding on a fully European team and burying himself as part of a larger effort to spring a teammate for a win. Not since Greg Lemond has there been an American so truly integrated into the workings of a non-Americo-centric team. What else does one say about Voigt but that here’s a hard, hard man.

T-Mobile has always been a bit of an enigma: Vino, Kloden, Ullrich…it’s never been a clear situation. Kloden has been lucky to inherit full command but even still Massolini was never in it to help him up the mountain; he did his bit only after Damiano Cunego told him to fuck off. Still, Kloden looked better than good today while Menchov suffered. Will Menchov recover from the rest day? I’m not sure. He’s a big ring climber and needs to learn that F X V = W can result in a large value with a small F and a big V.

That said, Rasmussen’s effort to try to bring Menchov back into contention probably deserves the l’or du jour for the gutsiest contribution to a team. Rather than drop back to help, he rode his way to the front on L’Alpe. Enough said.

Tomorrow will be interesting. I stand by my previous predictions…although now I’m wondering if the podium will be Landis, Kloden, Leipheimer…with Menchov out of the picture. One thing is for sure…only two riders didn’t go to their limit today: one was Landis, can you guess who the other was?

The Izoard is not easy, but the descent into Briancon is long, and there is a flat section through the village of Cervieres that slows the descent. Then, the ride from Briancon to the Lautaret is one long false flat averaging about 3.5 percent. This is the reverse of what the riders did last year coming off the Galibier, when Vinokourov won a screaming finish into Briancon. I cannot see the front group not coming back together between Cervieres and Lautaret. Then it’s all downhill from Lautaret to le Bourg d’Oisans. The only way somebody is going to be in the lead is if he is on a suicide break–and even then he may need the complicity of the pack to allow him to go solo.

Thus, scenario one is that the front group allows a good climber who is not a c.g. threat to go for glory on Alpe d’Huez; call this the Hampsten scenario. Possible Hampstens: Garzelli, Simoni, (I’ve picked him for Alpe d’Huez before and been wrong), Chavanel, Landaluze, and Caucchioli.

Scenario two is that there is nobody up the road (with the exception, perhaps, of the long-suffering Chavanel) and the main contenders hit the bottom of the Alpe all together. Then it goes one of two ways. The strongest stay together for a close finish at the summit, as happened at the Pla-de-Beret, or somebody–or a couple of bodies–slip away for a strong finish. It should be pointed out that this is how the Alpe is usually won (it’s how Mayo won in 2003), and it’s historically a Dutchman who does it. So here is my pick to win the Alpe on Monday: Michael Boogerd. Historically more dangerous than you think on the Alpe: Totschnig and Moreau.

This will be a great day of racing, no doubt about it, but anybody who has ridden the Glandon-Croix de Fer loop–either clockwise or anti-clockwise–knows that those two climbs from the Maurienne Valley to the twin shoulders of Glandon-Croix-de-Fer are as hard as it gets. Add the final kicker over Mollard to la Toussuire and you have the queen stage of the Tour. This is the one that Landis will win with strong descending skills and his proven grit. If Landis does not take the jersey back at Alpe d’Huez on Tuesday, he will have it on Wednesday night.

On to the Alps. Three brutal stages and all effectively mountain-top finishes. The plunge into Morzine won’t matter much after the carnage of the three days of climbing.

The contenders all probably figure that the first day’s racing won’t really happy until L’Alpe d’Huez. After Phonak gave away the jersey to a former teammate and friendly rival I had brief hopes that Phonak might have had plans to attack hard on the very first day and shatter the peloton before getting to the bottom of L’Alpe. But then I heard Landis’s quote in which he said, “So long as I have the yellow jersey in Paris, I don’t care if I haven’t won any stages.” That’s not the mentality of someone planning to attack in the first instance.

My prediction is that the Tour gets mostly settled on day 2 in the Alps. There may be hints after day  1 but the approach to the Croix de Fer via Glandon is the hardest of the three approaches with a very steep last pitch on the Gladon before a modestly steady rise over the Croix de Fer. The descent is then very technical before running onto decent roads below St. Jean d’Arves. There really isn’t much room for those who’ve been dropped on the Glandon–Croix de Fer to catch back on before the final ascent. Contrary to my previous posts…this is the stage I think Landis is most likely to win. On day 1, I bet he rides well but that an early break on non C.G.s riders stays away until the end.

Back in yellow and with a couple of minutes lead, Landis won’t need to be offensive on day three. The right break will go up the road and Phonak will use the remainder of its energy to protect him until the bottom of the final climb…where Landis will allow Menchov and others to take the lead and merely cover the moves.

Having written this, I hope it plays out very differently. Nothing would make me happier than to see Rabobank go on the attack on Tuesday or T-Mobile or both…and watch the carnage unfold.

The hardest part, given my wrist and hip, was literally getting on and off the bike. Remember, I had the wrist surgery and some major road rash on my hip, plus, I think I might have tweaked my adductor muscle a bit. So, when you have to press down and kick your leg over to mount the bike, it’s something that’s impossible for me not to feel.

I’m sure with perseverence like that, we’ll see Bobby J. back on the road in no time at all. Meanwhile, in addition to “feeling” something when he rides his bike, he’s having to face the fast food demons at home in Nice:

My wife asked if I wanted anything [from McDonalds]. Sometimes, you can turn to comfort food like that to help boost morale, but I declined. Of course, I am not an angel. We plan to dine at my favorite Mexican restaurant in town, Texas City (the one I told you about earlier in the Tour). So, I passed another test — turning down the Big Mac for the burrito. I can say that the latter has gotten me where I am today!

Way to go, Bobby! Stave off the Jan paunch and keep the shiny side up!

After today’s breakaway:
1 Oscar Pereiro (Spa) Caisse d’Epargne-Illes Balears                      59.50.34
2 Floyd Landis (USA) Phonak                                                             1.29

 Today was a yin and yang day for discovery. Il Falco and Noval drop out; Popo proves he’s a hard man and takes Bruyneel’s tongue-lashing to heart and gets in the right break.

The finale was classic cycling. My favorite part was watching Freire give second place to Ballan. That was class. He was all but gassed and couldn’t chase down Popo’s accelerations. He had enough to hang on but then had to explain to Ballan that he wasn’t sandbagging; he was just finished.

 Meanwhile, Popo showed he has the class of a winner rather than a Hincapie (or a Leipheimer…that’s for you Fausto). He kept hitting the front with terrific attacks without regard for the C.G., although he knew he was riding his way back into a potential podium finish.

 That said, this tour is over. The interview with Landis afterward confirmed to me that he is supremely confident that he can destroy anyone he needs to when it matters. I bet Landis hasn’t even been tested in the tour. Without a doubt, his DS talked to him about whether or not they needed to close the gap…and Floyd was content as things are. I look for him to win L’Alpe D’Huez!

 So who are my final three: Landis, Menchov….and…and….Leipheimer. Look for him to not only do well in the Alps but to show true form in the last TT. Over the winter, Levi will beat himself up for the two weeks he took off after the Dauphine and did fuck all but drink beer and kick back. The dude needs to get away from Santa Rosa if he is every going to be a Tour winner.