Bradley Wiggins won’t be defending his Tour de France crown. According to team SKY, he is suffering from chest infection and knee problems that he can’t train properly. However, I think it’s about his timid performance in the Girod’Italia and the opposite rise of his talented teammate, Chris Froome, that led to management deciding one and for all that Froome is their man.
Unlike basketball, there is no place for the Big Three in cycling. Even a Big Two, with Wiggins and Froome in the same roof. Two superstars in the same team in the 80’s, Greg Lemond and Bernard Hinault, didn’t work out as planned. On the other hand, when there is a unanimous leader, like Lance Armstrong at Postal, there is no place for a coup.
In last years Tour, Froome was clearly the stronger rider than Wiggins and that led to uneasiness in team SKY. But management stuck with the plan of having Wiggins as the leader.Froome, did his part grudgingly working for Wiggins, still,finished second, to show how good he was.
This season, SKY announced that Froome would lead the Tour while Wiggins would go for the Giro, but it was clear that there was something brewing in the team when Wiggins said he would be doing the Tour also. While Froome was winning almost all the early season races he joined, Wiggins wasn’t and it finally came to Giro to decide what’s best for the team.
Another team that that has the same problem with SKY is the US based outfit, BMC. BMC had signed Cadel Evans in 2011 and was rewarded with a Tour win. But last year, Cadel’s teammate, Tejay Van Garderen, showed that he was better than Cadel, in fact, he finished higher than Cadel in the overall. This situation has put BMC in a conundrum, especially when Van Garderen won the Tour of California convincingly. At the same time, Evans, also showed “consistencyâ€, by placing third behind VincezoNibali in the Giro, but he was far from being that Cadel in 2011.
But BMC has finally decided to announce Cadel as the team leader ahead of Van Garderen based on the Giro. Besides, as one Aussie commentator said, BMC is paying Cadel a tour salary so they have no choice. The same commentator said that when Cadel won the Tour, he was 34yo, and he was sure that Cadel wasn’t getting any faster at 36! I’m sure Van Garderen is fuming at this decision, although he is toeing the company line at this point.
With less than 4 weeks before the Tour start in Corsica, the race is heating up. With Giro champion Nibali foregoing the Tour, this year’s edition is a toss up between Froome and Alberto Contador.
I’ll make my pick on June 29.
FINALLY, Congratulations to the newlyweds, Lulay and SankxOntanillas! I wish you both bliss and happiness the rest of your lives!......It’s great to know that there is a law against driving under the influence but what about the rights of the pedestrians that these drivers maim and kill when these drivers are under the influence or otherwise?......I stand on my opinion that we don’t need bike lanes in Cebu for now. What we need is honest-to-goodness implementation of traffic laws, and we won’t even need those bike lanes.