Roll On, Columbia!
by Chris Fontecchio on Jul 10, 2008 4:15 PM EDT
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[Obectivity alert: I've ordered a jersey.]
I could rank the teams right now, but as notable performances go, the World's Number One team is the biggest story thus far. Yes, they're still third in a tight three-way race for the team classification with CSC (yawn) and the Gar-Men (yay!), and yes the GC teams will soon have their say, but no other team has exerted its influence the way Columbia has.
First and foremost are the array of jerseys: three of the four now. And the blink of an eye away from yellow numbers as well. Toss in a stage win, on the signature sprinters' stage, while you're at it.
Speaking of that stage, Columbia ruthlessly poached the win, letting the day's most motivated chasers (Gerol and Credit Ag) tow the otherwise indifferent peloton to within a shout of the break before unleashing a dominant last-10km performance. This was great tactics, which is what happens when a team deals from strength. Credit Ag had to reel in the breaks in order for Thor Hushovd to get max points and maybe take the Green Jersey... from Kim Kirchen. Columbia could thus afford to let the break win and protect Kirchen's green fleece, but once it was hauled back, they could flip to plan B, the stage win.
Such clear tactics is the hallmark of the new team, a dramatic break from the T-Mobile days where they would flood the field with talent but no apparent plan, or at least not a smart one. That team will be remembered for its great individuals and its ability to shepherd Erik Zabel into green in the early years... as well as for its complete inability to get out of its own way from about 2001 onward. Nobody fielded less underachieving squads, and that's before we contemplate the talent left rotting back home (Evans, Savoldelli, etc.)
Still, you can't discuss improved tactics without addressing a closely related subject: cohesion. It's always a little startling in sports when the whole turns out to be much more (or less) than the sum of its parts. Tactics are what makes a team successful, but cohesion is what makes tactical execution possible. For me, the signature moment for this team in the Tour was the sight of Kim Kirchen leading out Mark Cavendish for the win yesterday. Kirchen lost his green jersey (momentarily) that day to Hushovd, presumably because he didn't tend to his own cause exclusively: he came in 45th. I don't know what he said about the experience, but actions speak loudly, and he, Bernhard Eisel, Gerald Ciolek and George Hincapie all dedicated themselves to Cavendish (who, for his part, lavishes praise on his mates). All of these guys are sprinters and could make a case for their own interests on that stage, but once again it was teamwork that won the day. Eisel is a special case: rarely does a top sprinter openly embrace the set-up role like he has.
Of course, we might not be able to say this were it not for the results. Apart from sports' worst egos, everyone's a happy camper when the team is winning. But winning -- or the chance to do so -- wasn't enough to knit together T-Mobile's most recent Tour squads. Jan Ullrich was the shaky foundation on which the team was built. Alexander Vinokourov couldn't handle working for his softer teammate, and ultimately the squad wound up chasing him on the roads of France... the franchise's lowest (non-doping) moment. This was simply a matter of incompatible personalities. The younger reincarnation of T-Mobile, sprinkled with classy vets like Hincapie and Pinotti, have no such internal hurdles.
An odd sidebar: are they becoming America's Team? Their HQ and sponsor say "USA", but as compared to homegrown Garmin-Chipotle, Columbia still sorta seems like the orphan baby that was abandoned at our doorstep. We're taking them in, and it sure isn't hard to appreciate them for who they are. But their history in Germany is long and storied... and not that far in the past. We'll see.
Anyway, it's been a brilliant first week. Probably won't end as gloriously, since Kirchen will need more than cohesion to get him over the Alps, but Columbia have shown that they can take advantage of where their real talents lie. Over and over again.
Finally, how is this not the team theme song? Maybe Stapleton has mixed feelings about hydropower.
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Nice piece!
I wonder if Columbia would get this kind of love if we still called them Telekom?
Brooklyn Chewing Gum: Vlaanderens Mooiste
on the day
that the telecomms get immunity for tapping our phones? Somehow I think sportswear is a better image.
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Jul 10, 2008 4:44 PM EDT up reply actions
Woody Guthrie is my hero...
After a hard day of watching a Tour stage, I like to unwind with Verbotene Liebe
I'm
down with that.
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Jul 11, 2008 1:43 AM EDT up reply actions
I learned the Northwest rivers from that song, and it was an extra thrill when I saw them in person.
Wow…never really listened to the long version with the “indian verses” included.
The “official folksong” version keeps the “Sheridan’s boys” verse (which is about a battle with indians) but magically lost the following “hung all the indians with fire in their guns” verses.
I notice it also picks the “water the land” over “old uncle sam” lyric. No wonder the actual text is included in the “official folksong” declaration! Wouldn’t do to have a political incident over someone pulling up this version.
Even if you google text from those verses, you don’t pull up a transcript, so here it is (if anyone can make better sense of the blank bits, please do so]:
our loved ones we lost there at coals little [?] store
by fireball and rife a dozen or more
[???]mary and soldiers she bore
remember the trial when the battle was won
the wild indian warriors to the tall timber run
we hung every indian with smoke in his gun
year after year we had tedious trials
fighting the rapids and cascades and downs
Indians rest peaceful on Mamelou [?] sound
Amazingly, these lyrics are NOWHERE on the internet, which I why I bothered to transcribe them here, despite it being…kinda…off topic.
recent research suggests that in mice, mental stimulation and exercise delay onset of Huntington(s) disease
Makes me want to re-read “bound for glory,” and feel good for every bit of hard-scrabble life woody had to dig or lift or walk his way out of.
I was thinking this morning how odd it was to hear Phil and Paul going on about the two American teams, when Columbia still seems like such a German team to me in so many ways. But I’m sure it makes it easier for them to promote the “American” aspect of the team with Hincapie on the roster. He’s one of the best known US riders, and even casual fans associate him with Lance and an American team. It’s an easy angle for the mainstream press to promote “experienced American vet who helped with 7 TEDF wins helping his new team of youngsters”.
"Jan Ullrich's influence was the rotten foundation on which the team was built."
Is that really a fair statement?
I expect not many believe that Jan was influencing events at Telekom and later T-Mobile. He was more like a pawn. A sweet, gifted, slightly dim pawn. Whom I still miss.
Poor Jan.
boy i agree with that
regardless of his judgemental transgressions, Jan ALWAYS made the Tour interesting. I hope he’s somewhere sunny eating a huge eclaire right now.
OK...
I’ll try again.
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Jul 10, 2008 6:50 PM EDT up reply actions
Struggling for the right words
I liked Jan, but he wasn’t the right guy to build around. Uncertain motivations, chaotic life, ever-shifting program. I would imagine he was more of a distraction to the team in the last few years than anything else. And that’s before we question whether he was a creation of the lab… the usual, unanswerable question.
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Jul 10, 2008 6:54 PM EDT up reply actions
Better, Chris.
I think of Jan’s situation at Telekom/T-Mob as akin to that of some of the models who went to Hollywood. Hollywood is about beauty, and these models were so incredibly, so breathtakingly beautiful that producers kept casting them again and again—forgetting that looks are only 80% of the package. You have to be able to act. And you have to want it
In Hollywood, many people can act, and even more badly want it. Beauty - true heartstopping, gift-of-God nobody-can-disagree beauty - is rarer. When it’s your business and a perfect specimen of what is rare comes along, it’s hard to be entirely sensible.
As to whether Jan was a creation of the lab, I’d say emphatically, No. Assisted, aided and enhanced—yes, sure. But everything I’ve ever read, heard or seen about him says he was something physiologically special.
ze lab
I think well of him, but (grrrrrrr) you just never know anymore. At least with the guys from that era. There’s no question he was a great talent; with or without enhancement he was going to be great. And he was… sometimes.
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Jul 10, 2008 7:54 PM EDT up reply actions
tend to think
I tend to think that he would not have climbed as well without the help. There is some consensus among close observers of the sport that the passisti were helped a great deal in the high mountains by the “preparation” techniques of the ‘90s.
That’s one of the things that always bugs me about that era of cycling though, we don’t really know how talented those guys were or who might have won big races under other circumstances. In some cases, the results would likely have been the same, in others, not so much.
translated page
hope this works
From italian Wiktionary. If you don’t like to click links, it start out, “In cycling a passista is an athlete capable of maintaining a speed sustained for a long time.”
Thanks, JFS
From the description passista sounds like a rouleur. But the examples they give are interesting:
"Great passisti in the history of cycling were Learco Guerra, Fiorenzo Magni, Rik Van Looy, Jacques Anquetil, Roger De Vlaeminck, Francesco Moser, Greg Lemond, Miguel Indurain, in the current period are strong passisti Fabian Cancellara, Jan Ullrich, Peter Van Petegem and Alessandro Ballan."by NE Observer on Jul 11, 2008 11:40 AM EDT up reply actions
Hm, sorry...
Only part of it copied out.
Indurain was given as an example from the past, and Cancellara, Ullrich, van Petegem & Ballan in the present.
Just struck me as an odd grouping.
by NE Observer on Jul 11, 2008 11:42 AM EDT up reply actions
re Models
Fair comparison, BTW…
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Jul 10, 2008 7:55 PM EDT up reply actions
I'd agree fully with it
if Jan Ullrich meant ” JU + entourage” . Having a clique like that within the team was clearly the root of many if not all their troubles.
Yes, I agree, but the question would be
whose doing was it? What I imagine is that there were first the grabbers, who wanted to maximize their human “pot of gold,” and then the defensive wagon-circling group-within-a-group, possibly in reaction, of people Jan was comfortable with.
Pevenage in both categories.
And Godefroot the look-the-other-way enabler. (Although, if doping was a team program in the 90s, as it now seems, maybe he just had his nose out of joint because of being shut out.)
I used to find the presence of Stefan, Jan’s brother, as mechanic on the team a touching example of fraternal camaraderie. Which it likely was. But then there was the report from Puerto that 9 (I think it was 9) blood bags matched Ullrich’s DNA—or the DNA of someone closely related to him.
(Remember the talk about Vinokourov’s father having arrived at the Tour last year?)
by NE Observer on Jul 11, 2008 11:57 AM EDT up reply actions
Ullrich
seems like a passive guy who has let his strange life happen to him, and paid the price.
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Jul 11, 2008 3:00 PM EDT up reply actions
Columbia targeting Europe?
Well I don’t know how German the team is anymore – more international Holm and Aldag are German as DS’s. English, Benelux, Italian, US, German, Scandinavian and Australian on the Mens side. Listening to Stapleton the other day I think Columbia might well like it that way. They are looking to get into Europe. Nothing like having Cavendish in England or Kirchen in the Low Countries, Pinotti in Italy, etc.
Yup
It’ll be interesting to see what they do with their roster this offseason, now that they’ve moved and changed sponsors and all. They still have Burghardt, Ciolek and Gerdemann, very prominent and popular Germans, and a handful of others. Milram or whoever scoops up Gerolsteiner may come calling. But I can see them building around Cavendish, Kirchen, Lovkvist, and keeping some of the Germans too (Klier, Ciolek?) to make a fully international team.
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Jul 10, 2008 6:59 PM EDT up reply actions
well....
i assume that’s why they’re sponsoring a cycling team. if they wanted to reach the american audience there are far smarter ways to do that.
i do hope they keep their roster to the extent they can – there may be some switching around by riders who want to strike out on their own or whatever, but i like the combo they have going there.
If I was the suit who convinced Gert Boyle that she shouldn't worry about
the bicycle team being associated with drugs in any way, I’d hope she never caught wind about this thread.
I think that Bob Stapleton should be getting a lot of the credit for the teams success because he's the one who has created the climate that has allowed the team to evolve into winners. He has given himself the role of the guy who enables the riders to be as good as they can be. He's made the effort to talk to all the guys and gals and made sure that they are able to take advantage of everything the team has to offer them. Anybody who's ever worked some where that they felt like they were a part of the bigger picture knows that when your efforts are appreciated you are going to be happier and you are going to produce at a higher level.Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. - G. Marx
But
they’ve turned that page. No worries Gert! Who besides Gerdemann is still even on the roster from the old Mob?
"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."
by Chris Fontecchio on Jul 11, 2008 3:03 PM EDT up reply actions
Let me try that again...
I think Bob Stapleton should be getting a lot of the credit for the teams success because he’s the one who created the climate that encouraged the team to become winners. He has taken on the role of the enabler, he’s made the effort to talk to all the guys and gals to make sure that they are taking advantage of everything that the team has to offer. As a result everyone on the team feels that they are part of the bigger picture and they know they are appreciated. Anyone who has ever worked for an employer like this knows that they are going to be happier and produce results at a higher level.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. - G. Marx
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