In Praise of Contador

Much like his native Spain’s World Cup victory, Alberto Contador’s 2010 Tour de France wasn’t pretty or overpowering. However, it still produced the winning formula, and a ceremonial stroll down the Champs-Elysees to claim his third Tour de France is all that remains.

He will ride through the streets of Paris, drinking champagne and savoring the ultimate prize – one final yellow jersey ceremony. He won’t cross the line first, but it won’t matter. He has yet to claim a stage victory over the course of three grueling weeks (the first champion since 1990 to be shut out), but his dominance still shone through when it mattered most.

That ability to seize the moment when it came before him will surely be of comfort during future struggles; this was supposed to be a preordained win, yet his chances often seemed to rest on shakier footing than the cobblestones upon which he rode.

He struggled to a sluggish sixth-place finish in the opening prologue and then bled out time before reeling in 2009 runner-up Andy Schleck. Even his seizure of the yellow jersey left more questions than answers. His attack in stage 15 coincided with a Schleck mechanical error that Contador (perhaps rightly) claimed he never saw. He endured his fair share of criticism for the supposed breach of Tour etiquette, but few pointed out the minute of time that Contador lost when Schleck attacked in stage 3 with many of the favorites impeded by a crash pileup.

The eight seconds that separated them set the stage for the most significant stage of the Tour, a torturous “Beyond Category” climb up the Col du Tourmalet in stage 17. Schleck all but conceded beforehand that he would need to take back the yellow jersey plus a minute of cushion to fend off Contador in the time trial of the Tour’s penultimate stage.

The five-hour long stage featured more foreplay and time killing than “The Decision,” but unlike LeBron’s snoozefest, the last hour produced some of the most compelling drama in the race’s 97-year history.

With roughly six miles to go, Schleck made his move, driving forward and bringing Contador with him up the misty mountaintop. The scene was nearly primal – no barriers to contain the masses of costumed fans who crept dangerously close to the pair as they churned onward. Flags waved, horns honked, voices screamed and the fog grew so thick that it forced cameramen to repeatedly wipe their lenses. If ever there was a place to decide a championship, this was it.

Contador didn’t need to win, but he couldn’t afford to be dropped. Schleck, on the other hand, was in go-for-broke mode, emptying his arsenal in an attempt to crack the defending champion and leave him broken on the mountainside.

For ages they stayed together, Schleck surging forward and varying the pace. At one point, Contador attacked, but it was more speculative than aggressive. After Schleck quickly chased him down, the Spaniard seemed content to sit on his foe’s wheel for the remainder of the ascent.

And so they arrived at the summit, locked together, a victory for Contador and a huge blow to his challenger. Contador, in a show of sportsmanship, allowed Schleck to take the stage win, perhaps as an apology for the incident that occurred only days before. It was a sporting gesture, and certainly repayment enough.

Just as suspected, Contador dug further into the lead in Saturday’s time trial, gaining 21 seconds on Schleck and locking up his third title.

Sunday’s ride will be a coronation that will offer up an unspoken challenge to the sport’s gold standard: Armstrong’s seven titles.

Contador is 27 years old and just now hitting his stride, three Tours in hand. For some perspective, Armstrong won his first at age 28. From 2007 to present, he has entered five Grand Tours – three Tours de France, one Giro d’Italia and one Vuelta a Espana.

He won them all.

Armstrong, meanwhile, owes his former teammate an apology. He spent the 2009 Tour whining like a petulant schoolchild, had Contador carry him to a third-place finish, and then pulled the stunt of stunts to form his own team.

Where’s Lance?

40 minutes back. One year removed from a spot on the podium.

Cycling is a sport increasingly prone to… cycles. Indurain won five Tours, as did Merckx, Hinault, and Anquetil. Armstrong won seven. And now Contador has won three.

That kernel of knowledge lives in Andy Schleck, and will surely haunt his dreams. For every Affirmed, winner of the 1978 Triple Crown, there is an Alydar, who finished second in all three races by a combined margin of less than three lengths. For every Lance Armstrong, there is a Jan Ullrich, who owns five second-place finishes in the Tour.

This was Contador at his weakest, and he still found a way to haul himself up the mountains and grind through the time trials. He did it when it mattered.

Can he get eight?

Don’t bet against it.

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.