To be fair, none of this year's Tour contenders stood out. Evans lacks the arrogance of many Tour winners, and seems fragile. Menchov is too unlucky. Frank Schleck, too weird. Even Alejandro Valverde seemed an unlikely Tour winner this year. His inability to chill negates the patience necessary to survive a three week tour.
Here is the key to Sastre's win this year. It was a matter of patience, waiting seventeen stages before letting go his Tour winning escape. Some pundits will talk about his team creating a smokescreen of skinny Luxembourgers to confuse the others into complacency, but the performance of Denis Menchov shows what really happened. He initially attempts to hang with the Spaniard, but is dropped. He blows up so hard trying to hang on that the other contenders ride through him. Phil and Paul called it 'Menchov's bad day', but he would recover and finish with the rest of the shelled elite. A bad day is when you get dropped and lose minutes after getting a bad massage. Menchov didn't have any bad days, every day as solid as any isolated team leader. It was Carlos Sastre's effort that made him [and the others] look bad. Even if he hadn't had the Schlecks, his plan would have been the same. He's been using it his whole career. Sit in and wait for your time.
Now, I have to sit in on some crow. No cranberry sauce. No gravy.
2 comments:
I, too, have sat with my plate of stewed crow. Studies show however, that crows tend to prefer English walnuts over black walnuts, the prior having a higher energy content (and are more easily cracked). It could be said then, that ultimately, eating crow may in fact provide a positive and measurable benefit for an aspiring Journo World Champion. Your plate please? And buon appetito.
Suzette
Great to see you up in the Blog-o-sphere!!
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