Alberto Contador scares the crap out of me.
Remember how in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” Robert Patrick was made of liquid metal, so when they shot him in the face it would only slow him down for a few moments and then his head would reconstitute and he’d resume full speed?
Well, that’s how Contador is riding, and clearly his face came back together during the rest day. Last week, it seemed like he was mortally wounded, but today he had that relentless bounce in his cadence again as he attacked repeatedly on the final climb. When Contador is at his best, he looks uncannily like Robert Patrick when he’s running after a car. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Contador is also made of liquid metal, and that he’s switched from beef steak to tuna steak to take advantage of the high mercury content.
Meanwhile, Andy Schleck rode less like mercury and more like gefilte fish jelly, or some other sort of clumpy liquid that clings to stuff and takes its time getting downhill. It’s certainly hard to blame him—the final descent was the same treacherous one that more or less ended Joseba Beloki’s career back in 2003—but his inability to match Contador on the climb coupled with his trepidation on the other side of it, cost him over a minute to Cadel Evans.
As for Cadel Evans, he and Samuel Sanchez were the only ones able to match Contador, and in fact Evans did him one better by then attacking on the descent and gaining some time. He now moves up to second place overall, and if he can actually do when the road goes up what he does when the road goes down—which is to say attack—then CadelMageddon could very possibly come to pass.
And what of Thomas Voeckler, who says he has a “0%” chance of winning the Tour de France? Well, he’s going to have to do better than he did today (or worse, depending on how you look at it) if he wants to lose the yellow jersey. Sure, he wasn’t able to stay with the Contador move, but he was able to match a number of accelerations and he ceded only a minimal amount of time in the end.
Really, all Voeckler has to do is the same thing again, repeatedly, over the next three days. Sure, those three days are the hardest of the Tour, and Stage 18 in particular looks hard enough to melt your face no matter what it’s made of, but if he really roots around in that suitcase of courage. maybe he can find a yellow jersey clean enough to wear on the podium in Paris.
Meanwhile, Thor Hushovd continued to polish the Tour de France with his gigantic rainbow jersey by winning a second stage out of a breakaway. However, unlike Lourdes, today he had a fellow Norwegian for company in the form of Edvald Boasson Hagen. He also had a teammate, Ryder Hesjedal. The finish was actually a bit uncomfortable to watch, since you knew that with a teammate Hushovd was going to work Boasson Hagen over like he was Biff Tannen and Boasson Hagen was Marty McFly, but sometimes you’ve just got to sit back and let nature take its course.
Thomas I. Mendez Joseph L. Braswell George K. Conner Vernon T. Showers Elaine A. Blizzard Tammy C. Israel
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