Sorry for being away folks. The holiday period proved hectic in the Galloway household. Heres the Show Notes for the latest TWiCH. As with any other year, in 1999 many of the Tour de France contenders were finalising their preparations for the Tour at the week-long Dauphine Libere in June. It was during this race that the highlight of Christophe Bassons’ career took place. Bassons is known now for being a cyclist who refused to dope. He was part of the Festina team in 1998 but was known as Monsieur Propre by team-mates such as Alex Zulle and Richard Virenque. He refused to submit to the team’s organised doping practices and was openly mocked by his team-mates for his admirable stance. Asked about joining the Festina team in 1996 and did he know that riders on the team were doping, Bassons said the following in an interview with Bicycling magazine: “I knew right away what was happening; everything was out in the open within the team. When I signed I had a three-year contract. In the beginning [general manager] Bruno Roussel said, “You’re a young rider, so in the first couple of years we’d prefer that you don’t do any heavy doping with EPO or human growth hormones. But you can you lighter things such as cortisone.” So from start I saw it. The doctor was always present, taking blood tests to see our hematocrit levels [red blood cells as a percentage of total blood volume]. Everything was in place.” And when asked if he took any banned substances, Bassons replied: “No, nothing. I made it clear I wasn’t interested in doping—not in the heavy stuff or the light stuff—and I think that actually comforted Bruno. But the thing was, each winter at the training camps I had the best numbers, so they saw me as a potential Tour de France rider. However, I was clear with them that, although I might have the physical capacity, mentally I was not the kind of cyclist who could handle all the pressure. I preferred working for others. They understood that, but still the pressure increased…..When it came time to renegotiate my contract in June 1998, they proposed two entirely different contracts. The first was for 30,000 francs a month; they also offered a second contract of 300,000 francs a month if I would go on the EPO program.” Bassons took the 30,000 francs a month. By 1999, Bassons had moved on to the Francaise des Jeux team and was taking part in that year’s edition of the Dauphine Libere. Mixing it up with the likes of Laurent Brochard, Lance Armstrong, Jonathan Vaughters and Alexander Vinokourov – impressively, riding clean as usual, Bassons won the final stage from Sallanches to Aix-les-Bains in a solo breakaway. Bassons had the following to say about that win, in his recently published book ‘A Clean Break’: “My success was immediately interpreted as a message from the gods, as a triumph of virtue over vice. Was Bassons victory one of the most important of the season? asked Philippe Bouvet in L’Équipe. I remember something else this passionate journalist once wrote - that its the riders we want to admire, not their doctors. “Some people didnt see it this way and were more sceptical. They felt my rivals had let me win to demonstrate the sports redemption. You will easily understand that I didnt want to subscribe to this interpretation. I was five minutes ahead with 50 kilometres remaining and had just one minute in hand on the line; my rivals had therefore ridden with the intention of catching me. Had they gone flat out? A doubt remained in my mind. “I learned a little more about this episode many years later, in 2012 in fact, when reading through the report put together by Travis Tygart, head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). According to the testimony of Jonathan Vaughters, Lance Armstrongs team-mate and winner of the overall classification at the 1999 Dauphine Libere, Armstrong had wanted to lead the pursuit behind me that day. Lance did not like Bassons outspokenness about doping, and Lance frequently made fun of him in a very merciless and venomous fashion, much like a playground bully’. “Vaughters had managed to dissuade him from expending his energy in this little revenge mission, arguing that I was a long way down in the overall classification. Lance Armstrong did, however, finish second on that stage. But the American was simply warming up before the Tour, a new target that would be far more rewarding. As for his anger towards me, it wouldnt be long before it poured out.” *********** Recent book, but not-so recent. Only in English The cynicism required for the peloton to gift this victory His subsequent column and its self-perpetuating nature Felt like he was just a number – Cloud Atlas reference Bassons, Patrice Halgand, Sebastian Medan, Thierry Laurent, Laurent Lefevre named by Willy voet Talk at the London Book Festival – Bassons new job His meeting with Armstrong in a hotel recently “Permanent balancing act between reason and passion” – Bassons on speaking with fans. By 1912, the Tour de France had become rather established and was slowly beginning to turn peoples’ attention away from six-day racing on the track and toward what seemed to be an entertaining and viable alternative played out on the road. The French race had very much been a French affair for its first nine years. The Luxembourg rider Francois Faber had intruded in 1909 to etch his name on the winners list, and a Belgian named Alois Catteau had landed himself a podium spot in 1904 after a spate of disqualifications. But other than that, every other rider to have finished on the podium of the Tour so far, was French. For the tenth edition of the race, the Belgians had a plan to put a stop to the French domination. Their quest was coloured by a number of quirky rules in place in 1912, as Feargal McKay explains in his giant history of the race – The Complete Book of the Tour de France. “Writing in L’Auto in the aftermath of the 1912 Tours eleventh stage, Henri Desgrange was in a bad mood. He complained that the riders had put pressure to the pedals for barely half of the stages 379 kilometres. He complained that the riders in the pack were being sucked along as if on a sofa. He complained that the riders had completed the stage without fatigue. Is there any remedy? he asked. Are our races seriously threatened with decadence by this infernal invention? The infernal invention Desgrange objected to was the freewheel. “The freewheel had been available since 1869 and, since it was incorporated into the coaster brake by some manufacturers at the turn of the century had seen widespread uptake among ordinary cyclists. Racers, by and large, still preferred the fixed wheel, but some began to toy with the free. And that included racers at the Tour. In the races first edition Pierre Desvages is known to have used a freewheel. In later years, Emile Georget is known to have been a proponent of its use: when he won the stage to Grenoble in the 1907 Tour the freewheel had enabled him to distance Francis Faber - on a fixed - on the final descent. “For reasons that are now unclear, there seems to have been widespread uptake of the freewheel in the 1912 Tour. This may, perhaps, have had to do with the fact that teams were limited to five riders. Even though teamwork was technically forbidden, this still meant that competitors had fewer allies in the peloton and so needed every advantage possible. “While Desgranges ire was aimed at the freewheel, the real problem seems to have been the fact that the riders were sticking together on the road. And this was clear just by looking at the results of stages. In the previous Tours, a bunch sprint for the stage win was made up of four, five, maybe six riders. In 1912, on the road to Perpignan just ahead of the Pyrenees the bunch at the finish was more than a dozen strong. On the other side of the Pyrenees, on the road to La Rochelle - the stage that upset Desgrange so - it was a dozen and a half. Not quite the pell-mell of a full-on field sprint, but not the sort of thing that pleased Desgrange much, who wanted to see riders suffering alone.” A further rule in place in 1912 was that the race was decided on points rather than accumulated time. The rider would be assigned a points value at the end of every stage according to their finishing position. And the rider with the lowest points total at the end would be deemed the winner. This is the last occasion on which the Tour was decided this way, but it suited the Belgians in their quest to keep the race relatively controlled and have Defraye finish in as high a position each day as possible. However, the Belgians were not all riding for the same team and such collusion amongst them was strictly against the rules. As Bill and Carol McGann write in their own history of the Tour de France, not everybody was pleased about it at the time: “Lapize, disheartened by the authoritative way he was dropped and the collusion between the Belgian racers helping Defraye, abandoned the Tour midway into the stage. This collusion was strictly against the rules. But Defraye profited greatly from help from the other Belgians, no matter what their trade team affiliation was. How can I fight in conditions like these? Everybody is working for Alcyon. The Belgians are all helping Defraye whether they belong to his team or not. Ive had enough of it and Im pulling out, Lapize said when he talked to reporters on quitting the Tour. That evening the rest of Lapizes La Française team, angry at the wholesale breach of the rules by the Belgians, also quit the Tour. “The French riders continued to ride individually and suffered accordingly.” Defraye did end up winning the race on points ahead of Eugene Christophe to give Belgium its first Grand Tour winner. Defraye would ride the Tour again on five subsequent occasions, twice before the Great War, three times afterward, but he never again managed to complete the race. ************ Defraye, first Belgain winner – and there hasn’t been many! (Bastille Day) Built the track at Izegeme – first an Inn, track, demolished, now bears his name (with Sercu) Freewheels, points systems and rule changes – why complain now? Who would have won that Tour? Differing accounts A few words on FMK The Tour Down Under, positioned as it is at the very start of the season, has an unbalanced amount of build-up and expectation attached to it. But there’s no escaping the fact that it has been the stage for some of the sport’s most high profile introductions to the sport of cycling. The biggest of all of course, was a re-introduction, that of Lance Armstrong in 2009. A year later, with much much fanfare, saw the debut of Team Sky. As always with the Tour Down Under, it is preceded by a criterium race, formerly the Cancer Council Classic, now dubbed the People’s Choice Classic. In 2010 it was won by the new Team Sky squad, through Greg Henderson who was delivered to victory perfectly by the sprint train to grab, impressively, Sky’s first win in their first ever race. But a more interesting scene had developed earlier on in the race with the identities of the riders which made up the most prominent breakaway of the day. After about 20 of the scheduled 51km, a break was initiated after the third sprint prime of the day. The break contained five riders – two Frenchmen, Mathieu Perget and Mikael Cherel as well as two former Tour de France winners. Oscar Pereiro the inheritor of Floyd Landis’s 2006 victory. And Lance Armstrong, back at the race for the second time since his comeback and clearly in much better shape. The fifth rider in the break was taking part in his first ever race as a professional cyclist. In his first ever race, in his first ever breakaway, alongside two Tour de France winners – was Peter Sagan. The break obviously didn’t make it to the finish, it rarely does in criterium style races such as this, but Sagan slotted right in amongst the sports’ elite immediately. Armstrong said about the breakaway: I had a small desire to be in a group like that, but that one stayed away longer than we all expected and longer than I saw last year. Everybody was completely going for it, no talking and only a little bit of looking around after the corners to see how close [the peloton] were. In terms of the mix, it was a nice balance, everybody did their work. Some guys started to taper off at the end, but thats to be expected, we get out there and dont expect to be out there that long. Sagan went on to finish 3rd and 4th in two of the proper road stages of the Tour Down under, challenging the likes of world champion Cadel Evans and Luis Leon Sanchez. His potential was obvious. In his debut season he went on to win two stages of Paris-Nice, two stages of the Tour of Califonia and a stage of the Tour de Romandie. He is now one of the top riders in the sport although a win in the big classic races still eludes him. His career thus far is perhaps summed up by a passage from Ned Boulting’s latest book 101 Damnations where he describes his interaction with Sagan during a Tour de France in which he was struggling to win a stage. Boulting writes: “The next morning, at the start line, I decided to seek him out again. The profile listed in the road book for Stage 7 looked decidedly Saganian. That word denoted a certain type of stage which suited his characteristics: punchy climbing and recklessly fast descending. It had the requisite Saganian short sharp climbs in the closing kilometres which should have presented no great obstacle for him, but, in theory, might have been sufficiently difficult to drop the massive bulk of both the big German sprinters (Kittel and Greipel), and, withltuck, the huge frame of Katushas increasingly threatening-looking Norwegian Alexander Kristoff. “ “Good morning, Peter.” He had emerged from his lime-green Cannondale team bus into the watery sunlight of Epernay; blinking and shy when confronted with the standard gaggle of gawkers, autograph hunters and selfie junkies who had gathered around his themed bike that bore the number 51. Then there was me. I assailed him with some questioning. ‘ “How are you?” “I am still alive” - The man could write his own headlines. “Todays stage is a Peter Sagan stage” - I decided that, since he often referred to himself in the third person, I would too. That way we cut out any need for either first or second persons to intrude on the conversation. “Every stage is a Peter Sagan stage.” He lost the stage. But he lost it by an impossibly small margin to Matteo Trentin. The photo-finish revealed that after 245.5 kilometres there was no more than the width of an outer tube between first and second place. And it was no surprise whose wheel was the wrong side of that split. That day, I simply didnt know what to say to him. So i think I kept it brief. “Peter. Bad luck.” “Always I have unluck” ‘Unluck: a word he had invented on the 2013 Tour when he suffered from a fair amount of it in the early stages of the race. Now it had descended on him and smothered his every effort to break free of such a remarkable losing sequence. ‘Unluck’ was the perfect word for where he was right now. *************** Obvious with hindsight! Interesting to look back on where these guys first came to prominence. (1977 worlds) Hasn’t won a classic but shouldn’t be worried His Tinkoff-Saxo team for the classics. Tinkoff spewing nonsense about Contador He has come so close to winning monuments but has lost for a variety of reasons. Ebb and flow of a career
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 21:38:16 +0000