PeteFree.comTeam Sky and this Year’s Tour de France — Presented an Uplifting Contrast to the Behavior that Characterizes the World’s Political and Financial Elite
© 2012 Peter Free
22 July 2012
Theme — ethics in road cycling’s preeminent 2012 race exemplified what happens when people with integrity overcome their slash and burn instincts to retain the sport’s integrity
One wonders why much of the world’s political and financial sectors have so much difficulty doing the same thing.
2012’s exceptionally fine Tour de France
Team Sky’s Bradley Wiggins won the Tour this year. He comported himself as one of the most mature “Maillot Jaunes” that I have ever witnessed.
He and his teammates, especially Chris Froome, put on an inspiring demonstration of cycling ethics.
For non-cyclists — what is the Tour de France?
“Tours” are multi-day road cycling races. The winner is the person who completes the tour in the fastest time.
The three-week Tour de France is the most demanding cycling (and arguably athletic) event on the planet.
Televised, it is also the most visually appealing. The French do an extraordinary job of showing the landscape, as the race wends through some of the world’s most beautiful terrain and towns.
Cycling tactics — ultimately determine cycling ethics
Most road cycling racing tactics are dictated by the fact that large groups of tightly packed cyclists (called the “peloton”) can ride more aerodynamically, and therefore faster, than individuals or small groups.
Road racing is, therefore, a uniquely complex combination of individual and team effort.
Teams form around a leader, who is someone so talented that he (or she) is expected to do well against the leaders of other teams.
The team then assigns other riders to support the leader’s effort to complete the multi-day race in the shortest overall time.
This usually means that teams’ non-leaders go as fast as they can, for as long as they can, taking revolving turns at the head of their teams.
This tactic breaks the wind for the top riders and reduces the total amount of energy that they have to expend during the race’s entirety. In essence, non-leaders sacrifice themselves for the leader and the standing of the team.
These “domestiques” also go back and forth from team cars, carrying food and drinks forward to the rest of the team. And they often serve to pack their bodies around the leader, so as to protect him (or her) from crashes.
Complex competition
The Tour de France adds complexity to this simple “sacrifice for the leader” concept by awarding colored jerseys each day.
The overall race leader wears a yellow jersey for as long as he continues to lead the race. Other categories include the sprint champion, king of the mountains, and best young rider — respectively green, polka dot, and white jerseys.
There is also a category (without a jersey) for the most aggressive rider. This is the person with the courage and stamina to repeatedly try to ride faster than the peloton, without the benefit of the peloton’s aerodynamic advantage.
To make these categorizations work, each day of the Tour is broken up into multiple segments with defined sprint and/or mountain endpoints. Riders collect points (and money) for the top few places at each segment’s end line.
The practice of awarding jerseys (and monetary prizes) for different achievements makes the Tour more exciting. And it dictates a complex interplay of team and individual tactics.
Days where team tactics do not matter much
The only place where team tactics do not matter is the Tour’s usually few individual time trials. Here, each racer sets off by himself against the clock over a timed course. The fastest person wins.
Time trialing at the Tour is not entirely fair because wind and weather change throughout the race. Given that the 2012 Tour began with 198 riders (and ended with 153), you can see that sending riders off, spaced one after the other by 1 to 2 minutes, takes a long time.
What is at stake — money, cycling prestige, and future offers
Winning the Tour de France is the ultimate accomplishment in road cycling.
Winning even one Tour de France stage is a prestigious achievement. As is winning one of the category jerseys for the overall Tour.
The conflict between individual ambition and sacrifice for the team good is where the ethics of road cycling enter.
Ethics — as exemplified by Team Sky, Bradley Wiggins, and Chris Froome
Britain’s Team Sky organized around Wiggins, a time trial specialist, this year. The 2012 Tour had more kilometers of time trialing than predecessor years.
One of Wiggins’ Sky teammates was the immensely talented Chris Froome, who is a significantly better mountain rider than Wiggins. Before the Tour, Froome arguably had the talent to win. After the Tour, there was no doubt at all that he did.
However, throughout the race, the plan was for Froome to sacrifice his ambitions on Wiggins’ behalf. That meant leading Wiggins through the mountain stages, when Team Sky’s other immensely dedicated riders could no longer keep up.
What resulted was one of the most impressive displays of one team’s dominance of the Tour that I have ever seen. Team Sky was unstoppable because it combined athletic ability with absolute dedication to the team’s mission. Namely, getting Wiggins into the yellow jersey and keeping him there throughout the race.
Most inspiring was seeing Chris Froome repeatedly back off to wait for Wiggins, during the mountain stages. If ever there was a visible sacrifice of sheer talent to the team good, this was it.
Equally moving was seeing Wiggins, in the maillot jaune, twice lead his team out to benefit the team’s sprinter, the unequalled Mark Cavendish. Given that the sprint lead-out position requires expending enormous energy, the yellow jersey virtually never does this in the Tour.
Wiggins did it twice, including the final day (today). This latter has reportedly only been done once before during the Tour’s history. It was a thrill to watch. And then to see Mark Cavendish, who had done volumes of work in the mountains that sprinters almost never do, win the last stage with his incredible power.
The day of Team Sky’s most visible sportsmanship
Arguably the most moving day of this year’s Tour came when some criminal idiot sprinkled carpet tacks on the mountain road surface in the Pyrenees.
Last year’s Tour winner, Cadel Evans of the BMC Racing Team, flatted at the top of Stage 14’s Mur de Peguere climb, under circumstance in which his team car was too far back to do him any good.
When word of Evans’ misfortune reached Wiggins, the maillot jaune slowed the race, so that Evans could catch back up. When Evans flatted twice more and Team Europcar’s Pierre Rolland tried to race ahead, Team Sky chased him down and slowed the peloton a second time.
Meanwhile, BMC had regrouped around Evans, forming cycling’s most impressive sight — a train of identical jerseys, riding at absolute top speed. BMC’s red and black uniforms made an especially powerful statement, as the team brought Evans back to Wiggin’s slowed peloton. In essence, the entire team was sacrificed its energy reserves on Cadel Evans’ behalf.
On the final day, a tribute to George Hincapie, BMC’s manifestation of the ultimate team rider
George Hincapie has ridden 17 Tours, more than anyone else. He stands as an example of the ultimate teammate. Talented, devoted, self-sacrifing and wise.
Today, Team Sky and the Tour honored George Hincapie’s announced retirement by sending him to the front of the line, as the peloton first entered the Champs-Élysées (where the Tour ends each year).
For me, George Hincapie has always embodied cycling ethics and sportsmanship. Today’s gesture of respect from 152 other riders signaled that the cycling world knows it.
The moral? — Even in elite competition, ethics can survive
So, why can’t we have the same display from the world’s political and financial elite?
The cynic in me knows the answer. But sometimes, I still wonder.