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John Wilcockson: The 2009 Tour is far from easy

Published: Jul. 17, 2009

All week long, people watching the Tour de France on TV have been saying, “This Tour looks too easy. When are they gonna start racing?”

Memories are short, and appearances are deceptive.

A week ago, everyone was saying that the opening stages of this 96th Tour de France were the hardest in recent memory, and that the excitement level had been ratcheted up several notches by the return of Lance Armstrong. And speculation was high on how the upcoming fight for control of the Astana team between the Texan and his Spanish teammate Alberto Contador would pan out.

Yes, it was an exciting start to the Tour. The week overflowed with riches: from Fabian Cancellara’s dominant time trial win in Monaco to the Columbia-led split into La Grande Motte; from Mark Cavendish’s dramatically fast sprint wins to Astana’s brilliant team time trial success; and from Thor Hushovd’s last-gasp win in rainy Barcelona to Cancellara’s dogged defense of the yellow jersey.

Since then, the drama has been more thinly rationed. But that doesn’t mean the racing has been easy. Three mountain stages in the Pyrénées were barely contested by the main contenders but that was partly because of the way the course had been laid out — and averaging almost 40 kph on a stage that crossed the Aspin and Tourmalet showed that no one was slacking.

The uphill finish to Arcalis was relatively short and a fierce head/cross wind didn’t encourage attacks; and neither did the too-long run-ins from the final climbs to the stage finishes in St. Girons and Tarbes. But none of the Pyrenean stages were easy for any of the riders. They were relieved to finally get a rest day after nine very full days of racing.

So it was no wonder that the majority wanted to recover during the Tour’s middle week across the heartland of France, from the southwest to the northeast. Even so, this past week has seen two more impressive sprint victories by Cavendish and two worthy breakaway wins by respectively Nicki Sørensen and Heinrich Haussler. It hasn’t been boring.

There may have been no notable changes to the GC since Contador made his mini-gain of 21 seconds in his 2km acceleration to Arcalis last Friday; but everyone knows that the third and final week of this Tour is packed with tough stages. Everyone needed to catch their breath.

The racing may have looked easy on TV, but statistics do not lie. After 2,175km of racing in this Tour, the average speed is 40.647 kph, among the fastest Tours on record. And if you’d been standing on the road after the finish of Friday’s stage in Colmar, you would have seen rider after rider slowly pedaling to his team bus or hotel in various states of near-hyperthermia.

The cold rain and vicious winds that hit the peloton through the Vosges was so bad that when Team Lampre’s Slovenian rider Simon Spilak struggled to the finish line almost 46 minutes behind Haussler, and far outside the official time cut, the commissaires allowed him to stay in the race because of the extreme climatic conditions.

The temperatures are forecast to be slightly warmer, in the low-60s F, for Saturday’s stage 14; but there will be a head wind throughout the 198km from Colmar to Besançon. That won’t make the going easy for breakaways, which could play into the hands of the Columbia-HTC team — which needs to get another stage win for Cavendish so the Brit can again displace Hushovd from the green jersey.

And for all those fans who think they are watching the “easy going” Tour, just wait till Sunday and the mountaintop finish at Verbier in the Swiss Alps. That’s where they’ll see that, indeed, this is the “not so easy” Tour.

So, as Larry King says before commercial breaks, “Don’t go away.”

Follow John’s twitter at twitter.com/johnwilcockson. His latest book, “Lance: The Making of the World’s Greatest Champion,” is available at www.velogear.com