Paris-Nice 2012: Thoughts so far...

I'm having the same problem I had during the Vuelta last year. My heart wants Bradley Wiggins to win, my head reminds me that he's been fourth in the Tour, third in the Vuelta, first in the Dauphine Libere and that he's ridden commandingly on just about every mountain short of the soul-sapping 24% gradients of the Angliru. But then there's my guts, which have that craven British trick of honouring a plucky tryer rather than dreaming big.

The general feeling is that unless Van Garderen has an amazing day tomorrow, Paris-Nice will shake out it's GC on Mende and the Col d'Eze, and that the major players will be Wiggins, Leipheimer and Valverde. No one's too worried about Leipheimer: head to head, Wiggins has the beating of him in the time trial and probably on the open slopes as well. Valverde, on the other hand, has me bothered.

I know, I know, he's basically an uphill sprinter of the type that picks up Ardennes wins. More importantly, he's  coming off the back of a two year lay off brought about by giving blood transfusions to his dog. I should have more confidence in Wiggins. Yes, Mende and Col d'Eze are sharp hills of the sort that Valverde likes, but it isn't that simple. Mende may be shorter than a mountain, but it's a hell of a lot longer than the Willunga or the climb up to Lac de Vassiviere where Valverde's fired off his late K hill sprints this season. If he dashes off in the last K, he won't take much time. If he attacks early on the cruel lower slopes he'll need to survive for an awful long time once the gradient settles down onto the longer, shallower grind of the sort that Wiggins time trialling diesel power allows him to tackle strongly.

That same logic applies to the Time Trial up the gentler slope of Col d'Eze-with only three of it's nine K breaking the 7% mark, and the bulk of it wavering between 3 and 5%, it's not the sort of climb that will worry Wiggins. It may be a mountain time trial, but the emphasis is definitely on time trial.

So why am I nervous? I suppose because Mende, or the Montee Jalabert as they call it these days, is meaner than you'd think. Remember Andy Schleck climbing it 2010? His eyes went wild, his jaw went slack, and he drooled like a baby. He's known as a Mende-hater, but he's still one of the best climbers in the world. The Montee Jalabert can give riders a nasty surprise. I hope it doesn't shock Wiggo.

I was going to illustrate my fears with footage of Schleck's suffering, but no one wants to see an irritating Luxembourger dribbling and enfeebled, so I'm signing off my Mende worries with a happy memory and the greatest tune ever to come out of a stylophone and wah wah guitar:

Sky Squad Speculation

Team Sky have announced their teams for Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico, and very interesting they are in light of expectations of the team for the rest of the season.

Tirreno-Adriatico’s status as preparatory leg stretcher for Milan-San Remo explains the decision to send Edvald Boasson Hagen, Mark Cavendish, Bernhard Eisel, Juan Antonio Flecha, Mathew Hayman, Thomas Lofkvist, Ian Stannard and Chris Sutton. With the exception of Lofkvist, it’s a team of guys who specialise in flat or arduous terrain, and in Eisel and Stannard you get two tireless workhorses who excel at setting Cav up for a sprint.

Perhaps more interesting is the Paris-Nice squad. The race’s three most pivotal stages will be the opening time trial, the stage from Onet-Le-Chateau to the summit of Mende  that features a 3rd, a 2nd and three 1st category climbs, and the traditional closing time trial that climbs the short, sharp Col d’Eze.

 It’s a route that begs for a strong time triallist supported by riders who can climb a bit. So Sky are sending  Chris Froome, Christian Knees, Danny Pate, Richie Porte, Kanstantsin Siutsou, Geraint Thomas, Rigoberto Urán and Bradley Wiggins.

It’s hard to envision a a squad better suited to shepherding Wiggin’s to a victory.  Take it a step further: if you were picking a nine-man Sky squad for the Tour de France and Cavendish weren’t an issue, than you’d pretty much just send that Paris-Nice squad plus one more climber for mountain protection-most would suggest Lofkvist, but I haven’t forgiven his anonymity at the Vuelta, so I’d opt for Sergio Henao.

Of course, Cav is an issue, and I’d expect him to want to take Eisel and Stannard to the Tour. There’s a long time to go until July, but when Sky eventually announce their Tour squad I wouldn’t be very upset to see it composed of those three plus the strongest six from the Paris-Nice squad. Obviously past TDF stage winners Edvald Boasson Hagen and Juan Antonio Flecha would feel somewhat differently, but in all honesty, I'd be happy to see no stage  hunters taken at all. I feel awful for saying it, but I'd even drop Cav and Eisel given the choice, and build the Tour squad entirely around Wiggo's pursuit of Yellow.

In any case, next week's racing should provide the first hints of what we'll see come July.

Cavendish and Wiggins: The Simple Solution

In Dave Brailsford's recent Radio 5 interview he suggested that the key to defending the Green Jersey won by Mark Cavendish last year whilst simultaneously pursuing the Yellow Jersey for Bradley Wiggins would be in packing the team out with super-strong domestiques. Marvellous. Glad he thought of that. So simple.

We all know it won't be that easy. The last team to successfully pursue yellow and green was Deutsche Telekom, who managed the feat in 1996 and 1997, with Erik Zabel taking the first two of his six Green Jerseys, while Bjarne Riis and Jan Ullrich both captured their sole Yellow Jerseys. Deutsche Telekom could draw on an admirable selection of super super tough domestiques, including Rolf Aldag, Brian Holm and Udo Bolts.

Cavendish knows Aldag, Holm and Zabel well, having worked with them as directeur sportifs at HTC. While they undoubtedly contributed a great deal of experience and tactical savvy to the Manxman's tally of victories, one ingredient from the Telekom team that they've always tried to leave behind is EPO.

I'm not being snide here. I've said plenty of times that pre-Festina doping and post-Festina doping seem like very different things to me. The point is, packing a team full of domestiques capable of leading out sprints through the first week and towing leaders over mountains in the second and third isn't really as practical as it used to be in the bad old days of proper preparation.

There is a simple and practical solution, however. One that we all know, but which no one will dare say out loud: don't chase the Green Jersey. I love Cavendish to bits; he's made the first week of the Tour worth watching again, but he's only 26. In all likelihood, he's got at least four more years before his powers even begin to fade, and as Zabel showed, canny racing can still bag you points jerseys even after you stop being as powerfully and repeatably explosive as you once were.

Wiggins, on the other hand, is 31. He hasn't got many chances left. More importantly, how often in the last ten years have you seen a Grand Tour route with over 90K of Time Trialling in it? When Team GB saw how well suited to Cavendish this year's Worlds route was, they agreed to put aside all individual ambitions and ride for Cav. Team Sky need to apply the same logic to the Tour. The route suits Wiggins, and he'll never have a better chance to win the biggest prize in cycling. The team needs to be entirely and completely focussed on working for Bradley.

For one season, Cav needs to put his Tour ambitions aside. The team can build his program around the Giro or the Vuelta, or he could chase Milan-San Remo, Ghent-Wevelgem and Paris-Tours. He'll have plenty of opportunities to chase the Green Jersey in years to come, but I'd hate to see Wiggins lose his best shot at the Tour because Dave Brailsford thinks he can split the efforts of a clean team the way it used to be possible to split the efforts of an 'enhanced' squad.

Screw Twitter: Thoughts on Wiggins and Froome

When it comes to supporting cyclists or cycling teams, I’ve never been particularly motivated by patriotism. Exciting riding styles, strong teams or the ability to dethrone a rider I dislike have always been the major factors in choosing who I support. Except it now turns out that my lack of patriotism has merely been down to the lack of a strong British/Kenyan-British contender.

Like every cycling fan, the performances of Wiggins and Froome over the last three weeks had me gripped. Froome’s attack on Pena Cabarga made me shout myself hoarse. As hope faded over the final week that either man could retake the jersey from JJ Cobo I engaged in ever more convoluted and far-fetched imaginings as I tried to figure out where the Sky pair could get another 13 seconds with fewer and fewer climbs available. In my head, Sky one-twos put Cobo under pressure even on the flat. I knew it would never happen, but my newfound need for a patriotic win saw the borders of sporting credibility stretched like an old sweater.

(Incidentally, I’d like to see “stretching the sweater of credibility” become a counterpoint to “unpacking the suitcase of courage”, as in: “Landis is really unpacking the suitcase of courage here, Phil.” “Actually Paul, I think he’s finished unpacking and started stretching the sweater of credibility.”)

Of course, I was far from the only one to become obsessed with the Sky duo, it seemed like every British cycling fan was paying close attention. Unfortunately it seemed like at least half of them were in the same camp as Twitter’s FestinaGirl, who said of Froome: “shame Sky didn’t appreciate his right to wear the Red Jersey when he had it” among many other pointed comments about Sky’s decision to throw all their weight behind Wiggins even when Froome was in 2nd position overall. The question occurred time and again on cycling related forums: where would Froome be if he didn’t have to work for Wiggins?

My answer to that is that he’d probably have been somewhere in the top twenty.

How Teamwork Works
Don’t get me wrong, over the whole three weeks Froome was the stronger of the two Sky men, and by the end of the race was riding in a delightfully aggressive fashion, but it was Wiggins who rode like a team leader, and Wiggins who rode like a race favourite. It was Wiggins riding in the front two and marking the favourites on Sierra Nevada. It was Wiggins deciding who to leave and who to chase. When the Sky pair chased down Dan Martin and defending champion Vincenzo Nibali on La Covatilla it was Wiggins who assumed leadership of the group, moving to the front and sustaining a pace that burned off Rodriguez, Scarponi and Nieve, and made sure that Nibali couldn’t escape a second time.

Did Chris Froome help his team leader do all this? Of course, but thats what mountain domestiques do. They drag their leader up to the front group on the mountains. Once they’re there, however, it’s the leader who rides with his head up, bossing the field, setting the pace and attacking the weak. That’s what Wiggins did.

Froome’s reputation before this Vuelta was that of a strong climber with limited tactical nous, a penchant for crazy attacks, and a bad habit of positioning himself at the back of the bunch. If he’d ridden his own race, as half the internet seemed to have wished, he’d have flared brightly and then been left to slip down the rankings long before the race reached the Angliru.

Riding Wiggins into the lead is what taught Froome to ride at the front. Sticking with his savvy leader in the mountains is what taught him self-control. He added his own tremendously exciting attacking style to that, tear-arseing out of the bunch in pursuit of bonus seconds or gaps, but the Froome who finished the Vuelta in second place was not a podium rider who’d been held back all race, he was a domestique who’d been remade over the course of it.

Personally, I can’t wait to see what he does next, but for those of you who’d rather he’d bucked the team hierarchy, ridden selfishly and battled his own teammates, may I suggest you watch the Italian team at the Worlds next week?

How steep?!?

So, we said that the mountains would be too much for him. No, the really long mountains. No, sorry, the really long mountains with lots of changes in gradient. Not only have they not been too much for Bradley Wiggins, but his head-up, commanding riding at the front, marshalled by Chris Froome has been too much for many of his rivals.

Seriously, look at the list of riders that Wiggins has dropped at one point or another in this race: Vincenzo Nibali, Joaquim Rodriguez, Michele Scarponi, Mikel Nieve. Not bad for a chap we thought would defend in the mountains.

Of course, tomorrow we’ve got a really long mountain with lots of changes in gradient and some horrifically steep sections. By rights, that should be too much for Wiggins, but by this point he’s confounded expectations often enough that it wouldn’t be a terrible surprise if he holds it together on the Angliru.
Even after the Angliru there’s still stage 17's summit finish on Pena Cabarga, a climb too short for massive time losses, but steep enough for gaps to be created easily - a good day tomorrow could lay the foundations for a deciding attack on Wednesday. Nevertheless, Wiggins is in the strongest spot now.

Of his expected challengers tomorrow, any attempt by Mollema to get away would lead to an Anglo-Dutch replay of last year's slo-mo Mosquera/Nibali chase. TGBM has the strength to maintain a gap, but not the acceleration to make the gap especially dangerous.

Cobo could have something left in the tank, but it would be almost the reverse of the Mollema situation - he could easily open a sizeable gap, but potentially not maintain it - much like today, where he was chopped back to 15 seconds by the finish.

I can't bring myself to count Nibali out entirely either. 1:25 is a big deficit for a guy with so little acceleration, but he's finished second and third on the Mt Zoncolan in the last two years. When it comes to really long climbs with batshit gradients, Nibali has proven that he can hang in there even as the faster guys fade. The Angliru might yet play to his consistency.

Nevertheless, Wiggins has to defend the time he’s already got, while everyone else has to overcome sizeable caveats (and sizeable mountains) to seize the time they need. I don’t want to tempt fate, but things have never looked this good before...