Stage 5 - Kind of Like King of the Dipshits
Stage 5 of the 2008 Tour de France is the longest stage of this year’s suffer-fest, and given the relatively flat profile of the 232 KM/144 mile route from Choulet to Châteauroux, it promised to be a showcase for the sprinters.
In cycling stage races, of which the Tour is one, sprinters are kind of like base stealers. What they do is very dramatic in comparison to the rest of the action, consumes a huge amount of team resources in execution, and often nets the team nothing more than a dirty shirt and evidently, in the case of Tim Raines and the best sprinter in the world Tom Boonen of the Quickstep squad, a love of Bolivian marching powder. Since Boonen was busted for nose dusting before the tour, the title of top sprinter – leading to the green jersey – on this year’s tour is as wide open as Joe Perry’s septum.
Here’s the thing about big time cycling. To explain how it works to people who aren’t interested, we who are use a whole bunch of team sports metaphors. See the second paragraph. But what people don’t really get about it is that even though these guys all look alike on their bikes, they are highly specialized. If you take a look at a baseball or football team, it’s fairly obvious who is there for speed, who is there for strength and who is there to host floating sex parties. These differences are much less obvious in a cycling line-up: they are all (more or less) rail thin, they are all gluttons for punishment and they all look good in spandex short shorts and a great many meatheads assume they are bitches.
Which is why Briton Mark Cavendish’s victory at the line today was such a statement. The best of the rest outside of Boonen – Thor Hushovd, Erik Zabel and Robbie Hunter – were signposted by the 23-year old from the Isle of Man’s all-out, sustained burst of speed to take this stage. And since the green jersey competition is often the only one that is contested right up until the final day, showing that you can win a stage is key.
And before you ask “why?” or “how else do they gain points?” or “do they do anything to prepare their nuts for three weeks of pounding?” let me tell you something – it doesn’t fucking matter. Watch the race, see the lovely French countryside, appreciate the sacrifice of years of nut smashing with a ball peen hammer and learn as you go.
Tomorrow, the Tour goes 192 kilometers/119 miles from Aigurande to Super-Besse crossing the huge fucking pile of volcanic rock in the middle of France known as the Massif Central. The stage contains two category 2 climbs – which to you and me translates as mountains so fucking big your university car would never make it up them.
Until then.