Tour Analysis: To win the Tour, you need a team

Professional cycling is a strange beast because it is the only team sport where the individual rider wins. Of course, a team could collectively win in the TTT’ but it’s not the same as the individual taking the trophy.

In the Tour de France, there is a classification for the best team and they are recognized by their yellow race numbers. It used to be that the top 3 teams in the TdF gets automatic qualification for the following year but with the quarrel between ASO and the UCI, things are a bit vague.

A strong team with dedicated domestiques is a must for any TdF contender. A very motivated team will short of take a bullet for their leader. Domestiques are needed to fetch water from the team cars(a leader can’t go and expend energy just to get a panini), give up a wheel or a bike, pace the leader back to the front of the peloton in case of a flat, shield the leader from the wind, chase any breakaways or set a high tempo to discourage breakaways.

When Lance Armstrong raced, his US POSTAL/DISCOVERY CHANNEL perfected the technique on how to put together a team for the Tour. The team was a very motivated (who wouldn’t be motivated if you’re not only paid well but riding for future legend?) and unarguably was the best team of all time. The team not only have strong riders for the flat stages (Slava Ekimov, Frankie Andreu, George Hincapie…) but also in the high mountains (Roberto Heras, Jose Acevedo, Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis…). The team could ride for one month if needed.

However, assembling a great team is easier than finding a leader who can win the Tour. In this year’s Tour, there are three teams that can be considered above average- CAISSE D’EPARGNE, COLUMBIA and CSC-SAXO, all strong teams but without a capable leader.

Maillot Jaune Cadel Evans’s does not have a good team therefore SILENCE-LOTTO has been silent when it counted most. Its best domestique, former DISCOVERY CHANNEL rider Yaroslav Popovych, has underperformed. It’s a good thing that nobody is as dominant as Evans in the TT.

Greg Lemond had only one rider in Johann Lammaerts to count on in 1989 but he came out a winner by simply following the wheels of Laurent Fignon who had the strongest team then in SYSTEM U. How SILENCE-LOTTO will play this out will be very interesting.

I guess you know about Moises Duenas by now, but you probably haven’t heard of Ludo Dierckxsens, the 1999 Belgian National Champion who won stage 11 in he 1999 TdF. Dierckxsens was a rider you’d find hard to hate. A former truck driver who turned pro at the late age of 30, the comical, bald, tall Belgian was an attacking rider who won just 3 races in a 10-year career as a domestique.

After wininng stage 11, he went directly to the doping control room to be tested. But before the result came out, he confessed that he used steroid to treat a knee injury without his team’s knowledge. An outright confession in the absence of a positive test is a positive test so Dierckxsens was kicked out of the Tour.

So what’s the punchline? When the urinalysis came out, the testers found nothing but pure piss!