re: Cycling

Tour de France Stage 20: Time Trials

Eye-catching stat from today's time trial: Tony Martin, the Stage 20 winner in a time of 55:33, won on the same course June 8, Stage 3 of the Dauphine Libere, in 55:27. For the civilian cyclist and for anyone who looks at the Tour racers as I do and assumes that the race takes a brutal toll on bodies, endurance, and psyches, it's sort of a starling statistic. The guy dominated then, and he dominated today at the tail end of a race in which he's been driven very hard to help his team's sprinter (HTC Highroad, Mark Cavendish) and has had to go over all the big mountains with the rest of the pack.

I figured there were more interesting comparisons to be made between the Dauphine and Tour performances. Here's another: Cadel Evans, who rode a very strong second today in 55:40, finished seventh on June 8 in 56:47. So there's a guy who's been driving very hard for three weeks--has been on the spot to cover all his rivals' mountain moves and with his team's help (BMC) has reliably kept himself out of trouble near the front of the pack--who made a major improvement in his performance in the space of six weeks. Thomas Voeckler, fresh off several harrowing days defending his overall race lead, improved by almost a minute.

One question it raises--no, not about doping--is what are the factors besides fatigue that might explain such an improvement. I'm not taking that on right now. Instead, here's a side-by-side comparison of some of the other Dauphine/Tour performances on the Grenoble course used in both races (I haven't done them--yet--all because my painstaking one-at-a-time method takes a little too long; I'm about to break out a spreadsheet to do the whole list):

Racer		Dauphine time		Tour time		Change
Jean-Christophe Peraud		58:20		57:06		-1:14
Cadel Evans		56:47		55:40		-1:07
Thomas Voeckler		58:45		57:47		-:58
Lieuwe Westra		58:28		58:12		-:16
Kristjan Koren		58:10		58:09		-:01
Tony Martin		55:27		55:33		+:06
Sandy Casar		58:29		58:36	+:07
Rein Taaramae		57:23		57:36		+:13
Danny Pate		58:39		59:03		+:24
Adriano Malori		57:31		58:11		+:40
Vladimir Karpets		58:29		59:09	+:40
Nicky Sorenson		58:37		59:24		+:47
Jerome Coppel		57:35		58:24		+:49
Jeremy Roy		58:05		58:56		+:51
Christophe Riblon		57:04		58:12		+1:08
Maxime Bouet		58:22		59:32	+1:10
Gorka Verdugo		58:35		59:46		+1:11
Juan Antonio Flecha		58:42		59:53		+1:11
Robert Gesink		58:16		59:34		+1:18
Edvald Boasson Hagen		56:10		57:43		+1:33
Ramunas Navardauska		58:42		60:21		+1:39
Andriy Grivko		59:58		62:24		+2:26
Rui Alberto Fario da Costa		57:27		60:02		+2:35
David Moncoutie		58:29		61:58	+3:29
Joost Posthuma		58:36		62:09		+3:33
Geraint Thomas		57:03		60:48		+3:45
Rigoberto Uran		58:08		62:24		+4:16
Biel Kadri		58:10		63:03		+4:53
Brian Vandborg		58:20		64:00		+5:40

Tour de France Stage 2: Fast, But Not the Fastest

Team time trial speed record? Good post from Chris Carmichael on how yesterday's shorter (Stage 2) time trial played out. But he and others are calling yesterday's 23-kilometer the fastest in Tour history.

Really? The winning team, Garmin Cervelo, clocked 24:48 for 23 kilometers. The way I calculate the speed (dividing 60, the number of minutes in an hour, by 24.8, the finishing time in decimalized minutes, then multiplying the dividend, 2.41935484, by the distance covered, 23 kilometers), I get an average speed of 55.65 kilometers an hour. That means that Team Discovery's 2005 team time trial, in which they covered 67.5 kilometers in 1:10:39, an average speed of 57.32 kilometers an hour, is still the absolute record. (Some of the excitement about the average speed came from the stage's first time check, for which the fastest team (Sky, I think) came through in 9:02. For that opening stretch, their speed was 59.8 kilometers an hour).

Even if yesterday's winning time had been the fastest average speed on the Tour books, I think it would be awkward at best to consider it the fastest in Tour history. No two Tour courses are the same, for one thing. For another, I think Discovery's feat of maintaining that sort of intensity over such a long distance--what, you're going to say they were *all* doping?--was exponentially tougher than the dash we saw yesterday.

Also of note: the high speeds put in by other teams in the 2005 TTT. Team CSC was just 2 seconds behind Discovery, 57.17 kph; T-Mobile came in 35 seconds back at 56.86; Liberty Seguros was 53 seconds back at 56.61; Phonak, 1:31 back and 56.12; Credit Agricole, 1:41 and 55.99; Gerolsteiner and Illes Balear-Caisse D'Epargne tied at 2:05 and 55.68.

By my count, that's eight teams that recorded higher speeds over a much longer distance than Garmin-Cervelo put in yesterday.

Tour de France: Stage 1, A Day for the Crasheurs

If crasheur isn't a word in French, it should be, at least for the three weeks of the Tour de France. It would denote the huge crowds of racers hitting the deck on the Tour's byways, as happened today more than once. I don't know the details, but a typically incautious fan standing on the edge of a road managed to get hit by someone from Team Astana. The racer bounced off and veered into the very tightly packed peloton. Result: Lots of bodies on the pavement. Les crasheurs.

Somewhere up the road, Belgium's Philippe Gilbert won the stage on a long uphill just ahead of Australia's Cadel Evans. The good news in the high Evans placing: he's a legitimate condtender in the race, especially seeing how the likes of Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck were caught in or behind the mass crash and a subsequent mishap and lost more than a minute today. The bad news in the high Evans placing: We can count on hearing his whinging on a daily basis as the race progresses.