By Bruce Hildenbrand
Photo: Pascal Guvot/
AFP/Getty Images
It's a common misconception that the fastest rider wins the Tour de France. In reality, it's the slowest rider who ultimately wears yellow in Paris. OK, that's a bit misleading; clearly you have to be fast to win. But the point is that in a three-week race, it is the rider who conserves the most energy and uses his energy the most opportunistically who will stand atop the podium on the Champs Elysees.
Does this make any sense? Are you starting to question Lance Armstrong's work ethic as unnecessary? Not to worry, Big Tex was a master at conserving his energy and unleashing it at just the right moment. Armstrong's first win in 1999 was not the dominating performance we began to expect in his later victories. He fought tooth-and-nail in the mountains to protect his advantage in the time trials and it paid off. But once he proved he could win the Tour, his team's strategy and tactics changed dramatically.
A good example is how Armstrong's domestiques rode in the mountain stages. In 1999, riders like Tyler Hamilton continued to ride hard over the final climbs in the Alps and the Pyrenees even after Armstrong had attacked his rivals. Armstrong was not a proven commodity and his U.S. Postal Service team was hedging its bets if the cancer survivor blew up. Hamilton rode well enough that year to finish a very respectable 13th.
In 2000, Hamilton finished 25th overall. He was as strong as, or stronger than, the previous year, but team orders dictated that when Armstrong attacked and left his teammates, Hamilton and his buds were to shift into their lowest gear and slow-pedal to the finish. The object of the soft pedaling was to allow Armstrong's domestiques the opportunity to conserve their strength so they could shepherd their team leader with the same effectiveness the next day and the next day and the next day, etc.
Conservation of energy is one of the laws of physics, and it's the key to that all-important third week of the Tour where, like Double Jeopardy, the stakes are doubled and the scores can really change. Take the case of Isidro Nozal, who came out of the starting gate at the 2003 Vuelta a Espana like gangbusters. The Spaniard rode so strongly in the first week of the race that just about everybody thought the race was over. Everybody, that is, except Johan Bruyneel, the director who orchestrated a certain Texan's seven wins in France.
When asked about Nozal, Bruyneel pointed out that instead of waiting for his teammates on the first mountain stage, he had chased down the lead breakaway all by himself. "We will have to wait and see how he is performing in the third week of the race," he opined. Sure enough, by the third week, Nozal was pedaling in a bigger and bigger gear, a sure sign of fatigue. In the final time trial, Nozal cracked in spectacular fashion and Bruyneel and his team took the victory.
While there is no doubt that conserving energy is a good thing, sometimes it's not practical. In the Tour's opening stages, when the riders are keyed up and nervous, crashes occur with far too much regularity. It is critical to be up front to minimize the chance of being taken down--which means putting one's face in the wind more than usual. While this may seem contrary to the wisdom of energy conservation, because of the ebb and flow of the 200-plus rider pack, being near the front actually conserves energy.
Noted power guru Allen Lim evaluated power data from races in the United States and found that the riders at the front of the field had a much smoother power output that was also a lower overall average than a rider at the back of the pack. This result is explained by the "rubber band" effect observed as riders negotiate corners, climb small hills and pass through roundabouts. It seems counterintuitive, but the power data is quite revealing.
The next time you're wondering why the guy standing on the top of the podium in the yellow jersey can hold that Mondrian vase and bouquet of flowers so high in the air, the answer is simple: conservation of energy.