Third week a mystery for Contador

By Andrew Hood

Alberto Contador (Astana) survived another slugfest Wednesday and took a giant step toward winning his second Tour de France in three years.

Despite his seemingly insurmountable lead of 2:26 over Andy Schleck (Saxo Bank), questions remain, however, about Contador’s durability in the third week of the Tour.

Add the pressure of the yellow jersey and sometimes the final week can crack even the strongest of riders.

So far, Contador has proven to be quite resilient, resisting both pressures from within the Astana and the attacks from his rivals on the road.

“I have to watch every detail, measuring every step of the way, drinking enough, eating enough, recovering well,” Contador said. “I know my rivals are waiting for me to make a mistake. I just have to make sure I don’t make any.”

Andy Schleck said his only hope of beating Contador is if he struggles like he did during Paris-Nice, the weeklong race in March that Contador was leading until he struggled on a key stage and ended up finishing fourth.

Contador shrugged off suggestions that he cannot hold muster in the final run to Paris.

“That’s the way cycling is. There are days when riders can suffer a bad moment, just like what happened to me at Paris-Nice,” he said. “If that happens during the Tour, everyone will be trying to take advantage of it. I’ll do everything possible from giving them the chance to do it.”

Contador is clearly in the driver’s seat, easily staying with the Schleck brothers during Wednesday’s five-climb stage across the Alps.

But the third week of a grand tour is when the cracks begin to appear.

Allen Lim, Garmin-Slipstream’s team physiologist, said holding up in the third week is the key to winning a grand tour. He said every rider deals with it differently. And it’s often every man for himself once crunch time hits.

“When they get to the third week, obviously the main problem is fatigue. Everyone deals with in a different way. That fatigue is relative. Every rider is tired, it’s whether or not they’re more or less tired than their competitors that makes the difference,” Lim said. “Even the guy who is tired, if he’s doing better than his rivals, their morale tends to be higher that allows them to get through the last week.”

Lim said riders rely on mental toughness to “literally grit their teeth and get through it” as well as trying to stick to the normality of their routine despite the extreme limits at which they’re pushing their bodies.

Another element of surviving the third week is matching up peak strength with the most important week of racing.

With this year’s Tour front-loaded with two important time trials and the first summit finish at Arcalis, riders needed to be in good form in the first week of the Tour.

But with the back-end loaded with four brutal climbing stages and the final time trial, peaking with top form in the third week is critical to winning this Tour. Riders such as Lance Armstrong and Bradley Wiggins have been getting stronger as the Tour progresses, simply by using the race to gain strength and then recover to be able to perform in the key moments.

Once someone shows a crack, that’s when the rivals will pour it on. And when the cracks become visible, it’s usually in the third week when someone just cannot hang on anymore.

That’s what Pedro Delgado — the 1988 Tour winner — said he saw in Sunday’s stage when Armstrong couldn’t respond to accelerations from Andy Schleck and Contador. When rivals smell blood, they tend to gang up and go for the kill.

“That respect that they had of (Armstrong) when he was on top is no longer there. When you saw the attacks coming (Sunday), everyone was attacking him, one after another. You never saw that before,” Delgado said. “All the little dwarfs started to believe in themselves, enemies were coming out of the woodwork. If one goes, then another, and suddenly Armstrong looks beatable. It wakes everyone up.”

Armstrong, however, is still right in the hunt for the podium. And it’s mental toughness, one of Armstrong’s most lethal traits, that often sets champions and runners-up apart.

Riders who are struggling or have other problems tend to give up the chase than riders who have something to race. That’s painfully evident with Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto), the two-time runner-up who lost more than two minutes to the favorites Tuesday and conceded defeat.

Evans lost even more time Wednesday, sinking to 32nd at 37:06 back.

“I just don’t have it this year,” Evans said. “It’s over for me, at least trying to finish on the podium.”

And with Mont Ventoux looming on the penultimate stage, everything is still possible.

And for any rider with their back against the ropes, the prospect of the geant du provence standing between them and Paris must be daunting at best. The long, grinding climb offers no place to hide. Add wind, heat and an unrelenting gradient, and Ventoux could be the race-breaker that the likes of Carlos Sastre have been waiting for.

“That’s always a source of motivation in knowing that the other guys are hurting. If you think you’ve got a little bit of an edge on another guy and you push that much harder, at some point, someone is going to say ‘uncle,’” Lim said. “When someone does, that could be minutes of time, especially like a climb on Ventoux.”

Denis Menchov (Rabobank) — a rider who obviously burned up all his matches in the Giro d’Italia — said the Ventoux stage changes everything going into the finale of the Tour.

“Usually the final mountain stage is around Wednesday, meaning you try to hang onto your form until then and then have a few days of flat stages and the final time trial before Paris,” Menchov said. “This year, everything is different. Ventoux comes on the second-to-last day, and just those few days make a big difference when everyone is at the limit. People could lose minutes.”

That’s just what Frank Schleck — third at 3:25 back — is hoping for.

“Contador is very strong and it’s going to be hard to beat him,” Frank said. “But he’s a human being and we all make mistakes, so we’re just waiting for him to make mistakes and hope we can take advantage of it. We have to believe it, or we just would stop here. We will keep on attacking.”

If Contador doesn’t crack, he has the 2009 Tour in the bag.

Follow Andrew Hood’s twitter at twitter.com/eurohoody.

FILED UNDER: News / Road / Tour de France TAGS: Tour de France

Andrew Hood

Hood cut his journalistic teeth at Colorado dailies before the web boom opened the door to European cycling in the mid-1990s. Hood's covered every Tour since 1996 and has been VeloNews' European correspondent since 2002. He lives in Leon, Spain, when he's not chasing bike races.

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