If you have taken both of these steps and things still don’t look right then please let me know what you are experiencing in the comments section. Any additional feedback in the comments section is also appreciated.
July 22 was a pretty amazing day for the 1987 Tour de France. Not only did a resurgent Laurent Fignon win the stage after two years of languishing in turmoil due to physical problems, but Stephen Roche put in a ride that has to go down as one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the sport.
The day before Roche had conceded 1:46 to Pedro Delgado on the climb to Alpe d’Huez. Roche, who had been wearing the maillot jaune following Jean-Francois Bernard’s collapse following Bernard’s dramatic time trial win on Mount Ventoux, was trailing Delgado by 25 seconds going into stage 21. Delgado, now wearing the yellow jersey, was clearly climbing better than him and Roche knew that he needed something special to happen on stage 21 if he was still going to have a chance to win the Tour.
Roche gambled everything in a do or die attack before the climb of the Col de la Madeleine and was able to put almost a minute into Delgado over the summit of the climb. Roche flew down the descent of the Madeleine, taking every possible risk in order to eke out as much lead as he could, but it was not enough. In the flat feed zone between the Madeleine and the final 18.5km climb of La Plagne Roche was caught by Delgado. It would take everything he had in order for Roche to stay in contention for overall victory.
Once on the slopes of La Plagne Delgado let him have it, attacking in the first few kilometers and putting a minute into Roche within the first 5km. Roche knew that he could not match Delgado’s climbing style so he instead bided his time and worked patiently behind doing everything he could to limit his losses. The attack created the gap but Delgado could not push home his advantage and the time between the two never got over 1:30.
With 5km to go the gap was now just under a minute. Roche then gave it everything he had and started bringing back Delgado. Riding through blinding pain Roche brought the gap down to 40 seconds, then 25. In the last 500 meters Roche had him in sight. Around the final turn before the finish line Delgado, the Spanish climbing specialist, was fighting for all he was worth just to stay 4 seconds ahead of Roche. Totally exhausted, Roche crossed the finish line, fell from his bike and was given oxygen to help him recover. With only one stage left in the mountains Roche was now just 29 seconds behind Delgado in the overall standings.
The question was how fast Roche could recover from his stage 21 effort. Roche answered this question the next day by (unsuccessfully) attacking Delgado twice on the climb of the Col de Joux-Plaine and then, amazingly, attacking Delgado on the descent of the climb. Roche took advantage of his superior descending skills and captured 18 seconds from Delgado at the finish of the stage in Morzine. Two days later Roche beat Delgado by over a minute to take back the yellow jersey the day before the finish of the Tour in Paris.
Roche would later go on to win the World Championships later in the year. These two victories, along with his victory in the Giro d’Italia earlier in the year, would make Roche only the second rider in history to win professional cycling’s triple crown.
Pedro Delgado, who had dropped out of the 1986 Tour de France following the death of his mother, would go on to experience some additional bad luck. Delgado won the 1988 Tour de France but his victory was clouded in drug controversy after testing positive for probenecid, a steroid masking agent that had not yet been banned by the UCI. Delgado then showed up 2 minutes and 40 seconds late for the prologue time trial in the 1989 Tour de France. A poor nights sleep due to his anger at missing the start resulted in fatigue that cost him an additional 5 minutes in the team time trial the next day, effectively ending his race before it even really began. In 1990 he was on the same team as Miguel Indurain and helped insure Indurain’s victory in the Tour de France. He continued to do so until he retired following the 1994 racing season.
Look, it’s very simple. There are two Christmas holidays. One is the secular holiday, decreed by the federal government to be a national holiday, which is celebrated and marked with festive displays of trees, lights, fat guys with beards, and elves, along with lots of shopping and the giving of gifts. The other holiday involves a celebration of the birth of the Messiah, and is celebrated with religious rituals and displays of nativity scenes and other religious imagery.
Public displays of secular Christmas imagery? fine.
Public displays of religious Christmas imagery? less fine.
Christmas trees in airports? fine.
Baby Jesus scenes in airports? less fine.
Yea, it’s all simple and stuff. But simple does not sell lots of books to disturbed wing nuts.
I wish the MCF would stop and think about how to better suit the racing community all summer, i.e. urge promoters to stop with the super early races and plethora of Opus and other weeknight events. Racing should occur in June-August in my opinion.
Yea! Let us examine the draft calendar for 2007:
April – 5 road events
May – 9 road events
June – 6 road events
July – 7 road events
August – 2 road events
September – Cross season begins
I did not count time trial events in this list.
So, almost 70% of the road racing season is done before the first of July. That’s crazy.
Race promoters have the right to run their race when ever they want to. But the back end of the road racing calendar is historically sparse. Why is this?
Are people burned out on road races after the 4th of July holiday? Are promoters all excited about the early season and want to capture as many racers as possible? I used to promote a late summer Opus series and had tons of people come out and race. I am skeptical that racers pack up their season in July. Look at the results from the Gluek road race from August 26th, it seems like there are plenty of people still interested in racing.
Is it easier to promote a road race in May versus August? I don’t know why that would be.
Beats me man. What do you think? Why does the road season start to dry up so early in the summer? Does cyclocross season really need to start in September?
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