2008 Tour de France: Stage 16's Mighty Mountains

Mighty Mountains

By James Startt

Jausiers, France:

It was supposed to be the day of the great siege. With only two climbing stages left, the Tour's best climbers were preordained to highjack the race from the overall riders. And everyone expected the mighty CSC team to maximize two of the Tour's highest climbs as Spaniard Carlos Sastre and race leader Frank Schleck knew today's stage from Cuneo, Italy to Jausiers provided them with one of the last opportunities to cushion their position prior to the race's final 53-kilometer time trial on Saturday.

Schleck, who grabbed the yellow jersey by a handful of seconds on the Prato Nevoso climb into Italy on Sunday desperately needed to transform his slight lead into one of minutes; he must if he hopes to hold off Australian Cadel Evans or Russia's Denis Menchov in the final race against the clock. And he has these two days to do it, these two final days in the majestic Alps.

In the end, however, the two daunting climbs-the Lombard Pass, that bridges Italy and France, and the Bonette Pass, which is simply the highest road in Europe-stunted the CSC game plan. Both passes were over 25 kilometers long. Both passes were well over 2,000 meters high (the Bonette tops out at 2,803). And on this day, both passes simply proved too much for even the best laid plans.

Rather than driving the pace from the first climb, like they did in the Pyrenees, CSC sent to key riders, Jens Voigt and Kurt-Asle Arvesen, off in the early break in order to help the leaders once caught on the final climb.

And from the early ramps of the mythic Bonette, Andy Schleck did a "brotherlode" of work, driving the pace and shattering the field.

So far, so good.

American Christian Vande Velde, who started the day in third, was the principal victim as he lost contact early on. "He had a bad passage for about two kilometers and that was enough," said his Garmin team manager Jonathon Vaughters. "We did two 25-kilometer climbs today. That's nearly twice the distance of a lot of climbs in the Alps. For Christian, who is not a true climber, that is a lot. But he actually stabilized his gap after that. By the summit he was only a minute behind. He took all kinds of risks on the descent to get back to the leaders, but ended up crashing."

By the finish in Jausiers he was four minutes and four seconds behind the stage winner Cyril Dessel of France.

The group of favorites that included the Schleck brothers as well as teammate Sastre, plus Cadel Evans, Spaniard Alejandro Valverde, and Austrian Bernhard Kohl also managed to drop Denis Menchov on the harrowing 23-kilometer descent.

The Russian, who had yet another "lapse of concentration" in this year's race, lost 31 seconds to his competitors, almost as much as he lost back in stage three when he was caught behind a spit caused by the wind. In a race that could likely be won by only seconds this year, such errors will likely be fatal.

But while they did manage to corner several of the contenders, the big CSC offensive never occurred. And although they outnumbered key rival Evans three to one, they could do little to shake the Australian.

"There was just too much wind to attack on the Bonette," Schleck said afterwards. "It would have been suicide."

Now time is running out. Frank Schleck lost over two minutes to Evans in the stage four time-trial in Cholet. By all estimations he needs a three-minute advantage going into Saturday's 53-kilometer race. Currently he only holds an eight-second margin over Evans, a noted specialist in such an effort.

Austrian Bernhard Kohl, who is currently in second place at seven seconds behind Schleck, is focusing on the best-climbers prize as he too is a poor time trialer.

That leaves Wednesday, the final climbing stage. It will be the crucial mountain stage for everyone as the race ventures over the legendary Galibier and Croix de Fer climbs before finishing on the mythic Alpe d'Huez. Rarely has the Alpe d'Huez played such a key role in the race as it is the last major climb of the Tour. When the riders hit the first abrubt inclines of the climb made famous by its 21 switchbacks, the fatigue of the climbs in the previous two days could force large time differences.

For Frank Schleck and his CSC team it has to. On this day, the men must be mightier than the mountains.

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