There are 5 Summit finishes this year. After the Tour is finished, if the results show that all 5 summits were climbed slower than years gone by, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that this year’s elite won’t have been from “the top shelf” (for want of a better description) - although to be fair, that would still be a subjective interpretation of a small data sample.
Conversely, if we are to assert that this year’s “elite” (the Top 7 say on GC) are as good as any Top 7 ever assembled, then by extension, we must also assert that Thomas Voeckler is now also amongst the greatest climbers of all time - and historically, his results in the Mountains don’t support this view.
Given that Voeckler’s time on the Plateau de Beille was 45:43 or thereabouts, given that Contador did the same climb in 2007 in 44:03, in my view, we can surmise that Basso is at, or near his all time best form, both Voeckler and Evans are at their all time best form, and Contador is approximately 5% below his personal best form.
This then leaves the Schleck boys and Sammy Sanchez. These are the jokers in the pack because Sammy Sanchez has a very similar climbing style to the two Schleck brothers, and Sanchez is only 1:30 behind Andy Schleck on GC at the time of writing, with the Alps yet to come. The Schleck one-two counter punch only works when they’re hitting guys who are IN FRONT of them on GC. But it works against them when they’re being hounded by a similar counter puncher who is really close behind them on GC - if you’re that latter guy, you mark your time on the climbs… you let the Schleck one-two go off three maybe four times and then BAM! You counter attack yourself and all of a sudden the Schlecks are exposed, totally in oxygen debt and now they’re fighting for all their lives to hold off losing vital podium positions to a guy who has hit 'em from behind.
At the same time, if you’re higher up on GC, you’re laughing… you don’t have to chase because you’ve still got time up your sleeve. And THAT is the dillemna now for the Schlecks - they have to inherently curtail their favourite one-two counter punch for fear of handing a podium position to Sanchez. Sucked in!
Indeed, as intimidating as it is, the Schleck one-two in many respects is a one-trick pony. To this day, I have yet to see either Andy or Frank absolutely dominate, and ride away from, the elite riders in a Grand Tour mountain stage - as in, taking minutes out of their immediate rivals. Last year, Andy seemingly tried to do that on the Tourmalet stage against Contador and quite frankly, he never once looked like he was going to succeed. Of course, this too is also historically true of Cadel Evans. As much as we can look to Evans losing 13s to Wiggins on the final Mountain stage in the Dauphine, it’s last year’s Zoncolan against Basso that I can’t forget. He went down the GC like a bobsled on that stage.
However, what I really do like about Cadel this year is that seemingly, he has more “punchiness” than ever before - not Phillipe Gilbert levels of punchiness (he is currently so much my hero) but certainly impressive nonetheless.
