The Invisible Champion

Cycling is a sport that lends itself to greatness.

Although many sporting events around the world claim to weed out the weak in their various disciplines, few, if any, do it as well as the Tour de France.

There is a little taste of poison for everyone. For sprinters, there are the mountains, where cracking can mean losing as much as an hour of time in a single day. For climbers, there are the time trials, where the inability to maintain power through long-distance sprints can result in valuable minutes lost. And for cheaters, there are the drug tests, where a positive sample will result in two years lost.

Cope with each of those things and you’re just getting started. Three weeks is a long time, and 2,000 miles is even longer. There is the possibility of heatstroke, an ill-timed equipment breakdown, or perhaps most underestimated, a fan encounter gone wrong.

There are no barricades at the Tour de France. Just ask Eddie Merckx, who lost the Tour in 1975 when a fan stepped into the road and punched him in the stomach. Lance Armstrong nearly suffered a similar fate in 2004, when his handlebar got caught on a spectator’s handbag, flipping him to the pavement during a critical mountain stage.

Because of all these factors, it takes a very special man to survive and win. Few such men exist. Sporting events that share this toughness also often experience repeat winners.

For example, Pete Sampras and Roger Federer have each won Wimbledon seven times. Harry Vardon has won the Open Championship six times, and Tom Watson five.

The Tour de France is no different. It has produced four five-time winners and a seven-time winner.

The next great champion has already arrived, though you wouldn’t know it.

Alberto Contador won the Tour in 2007. He didn’t win in 2008, but he also didn’t compete in 2008, the year in which his entire team was banned for something in which he had no part. Focusing his attentions elsewhere, he instead won the other two of cycling’s three most prestigious races, the Vuelta a Espana and Giro d’Italia. Doing so made him only the fifth rider (and the youngest ever) to win all three of cycling’s Grand Tours.

He returned to the Tour and won again in 2009. Perhaps most astounding is that his four victories (two Tours, the Vuelta, and the Giro) are the only four Grand Tours he’s raced in since 2006. Undefeated in four years.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but here’s guessing he keeps winning. And winning. And winning.

He is a fantastic champion for the sport. He is currently regarded as the greatest climber in the world. His ascents to mountaintops often look effortless, and the effect grows even more when looking at the pain of his fellow competitors. In 2007, he was a weak time trial rider, and it nearly cost him the Tour. He has eliminated that flaw, however, and in 2009 he finished second in the opening time trial, first in the team time trial, and first in the time trial on the Tours penultimate stage. In short, he is unbeatable as of right now and there is no denying his greatness.

And yet he remains entirely underappreciated.

Part of that is due to unlucky circumstances; his first victory came during the height of the Tour’s post-Lance hangover as well as a tumultuous time in terms of public trust, the previous year’s winner having been discovered a cheater and wiped from the record books. And of course, his second victory came during Lance’s return to cycling.

As such, every story continually opened not with the amount by which Contador led, but by the amount Armstrong trailed. Contador barely existed in the context of the race, and when he did, he was painted as the villain to his teammate, Armstrong.

Armstrong did all he could to insinuate that Contador is a bad teammate, perhaps the most laughable assertion of all.

Some background: In cycling, the other eight riders sacrifice their own ambition to work for the best rider on their team, the leader. As a leader, Lance was generally regarded as the most demanding of all. He expected, and received, perfect soldiers engineered for one purpose – winning him the Tour.

Joining Team Astana in 2009, he continually ducked the question of whether he would work for a stronger rider, saying he preferred to let it play out in the race. What a sudden change of philosophy.

Continually bested by Contador, Armstrong finally conceded the leadership role mid-race. Although he may have worked for Contador here or there, it was marginal effort at best and completely useless at worst, the race already being well in Contador’s grasp.

Armstrong finished 3^rd, and attacked yet again, saying Astana would have put three riders on the podium had it not been for Contador’s selfishness.

Here’s an interesting bit of information, however: In the last 20 years, only three times has a team put two riders on the podium. Two of them were in the years Contador won, and the third was wiped from the record book when the winner confessed to using three different performance-enhancing drugs and the rest of his team confessed as well.

So if you’re unwilling to admit he’s a good teammate, you must admit he’s had the worst teammates, because in both years he’s been undermined by teammates trying to get the win for themselves in a most serious breach of Tour etiquette that, given the evidence above, seems to almost never occur.

But of course, the story isn’t about Lance, and it isn’t about Contador’s disposition. It’s about what happens on the road.

Alberto Contador has won two Tour de France titles at an age younger than when Lance won his first. If he can stay healthy, he will almost certainly challenge Armstrong for the record of seven titles.

Whether you like him or not, you must admit he’s the best – quite possibly one of the greatest of all time – and that alone should be worth a second look, and a deeper appreciation.