Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

The Tour is a cruel mistress. Valverde's out due to a crash and I guess this counts as the favorite that the race has claimed as its own this year. It's a shame but not unexpected. It's one thing to finish the Giro or the Vuelta but the Tour is more. In all ways. More speed, more pressure, more fans, more crashes, more risks, more... Valverde got tired on a long, hot, hilly stage and lost his concentration in a bad moment and it was over. He'll learn and train and return probably to win one year but for this year he is the sacrifice to the race that requires the pain and suffering of the men who would dare to claim the glory of finishing this inhuman endeavor of riding that hard for so many days. Not just the race but all the training and other races that leave their indelible marks in the mind of the combatant. Others lost include Erik Dekker who would have wanted to ride his last Tour to Paris and Freddy Rodriguez. Stuart O'Grady, Sandy Casar and Chris Horner were also injured. O'Grady has fractured a vertebra in his back and will try to start anyways. Whether he finsihed or rides the next day will be seen but as he said in an OLN interview, "it's my back and I only have one of those, so we'll see..." Stuey's finished more Tours than most and the repeated trips to the well of exhaustion have hardened him.

Speaking of suffering, I'm about to make my offering to the cycling goddess who demands nothing less than the twisted faces and screaming muscles of her worshippers. Today I'll "Stay at Home, Ride the Tour". I was supposed to do it yesterday but it was time for a recovery ride after three days of hard efforts so today I will go to the mountain and offer my sacrifice. Chris Carmichael will be the high priest of pain and I expect he'll have no mercy as he drives me beyond myself. I will seek succor in the words of Bob Roll and he will laugh manically at my pleas and explain to me that true cyclist lives on creosote and bourbon and the bitterness of being dropped by those stronger than you. He will mock my pain and remind me of the pain of those who ride from Belgium back into France today with broken fingers and vertebrea. And I will hang my head in shame for my weakness and push through the last hill sprint interval even though I will want to puke and pass out. then the goddess will have mercy and the beauty of my own endorphins will carry me to the promised land of a morphine-like euphoria.

Speaking of those riding today, it will end up as a sprinter's stage again. Sonner or later the World Champion will have to catch a little luck. The finish today will be contested by the same names we've been talking about with an addition that no one had mentioned until looking at the points standings from yesterday: Daniele Bennati. He lies sixth overall and second in the points. If the Tour has penalized and exacted it's price from the others, she has lifted up this Italian to the place next tot the World Champion, the Pocket Rocket and the Thunder God. With top fives in all three road stages, Bennati has to be considered to win sonner or later. I predict that the World Champion will finally put it all together today inspired by the Yellow Jersey and the adulation of all Belgium.

Boonen
McEwen
Hushovd
Bennati
Freire

On an unrelated note, I got a chance to hear a group called the Wailin Jennys in a braodcast of Prairie Home Companion. Wow! Three beautiful female voices singing beautiful folk melodies. Check it out. Really. You won't regret it. The harmonies are perfect enough to raise goosebumps and make grown men weep.

Now to the suffering and the pain and the purity of a soul purged clean in the crucible of lactic acid.

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