The 3 Times Mountain Bikers Stole the Show at the Tour de France
The Tour de France began in 1903, over seventy years before mountain biking's pioneers began drifting around corners in Marin County. Steeped in history and controversy, the Tour attracts millions of viewers every year, many who don't follow any other aspects of cycling, or even own a bike for that matter. Perhaps that's what makes it such a prime target for mountain bikers trying to snag a piece of the media coverage pie. Like a streaker running across the outfield during the World Series, every so often a mountain biker creates a splash during the Tour de France, shifting the attention for a brief moment onto the knobby-tired side of cycling. Here are three memorable moments where mountain bikers stole the show, at least for a few minutes.
2003: Dave Watson's Road Gap
Dave Watson's huck back in 2003 is probably the most notable stunt, captured by the cameras of Freeride Entertainment as he launched over the peloton before getting bucked into the rubble below. He emerged without any major injuries, and earned himself a place in mountain bike history.
2013: Encho Rage Road Gap
The road gap the Encho Rage crew built over the course of several months may not have had as scenic of a back drop as Dave Watson's attempt, but the rider, Romain Marandet, managed to take off just as the race leader rode by in his yellow jersey, landing without incident on the other side of the road.
2014: Wheelie Man
Vincenzo Nibali was the winner of the 2014 Tour de France, but it was the helmetless guy riding a wheelie alongside the racer that pulled viewers' eyes away from the road bikers on the final day of the event. There aren't many details about the mystery rider, but his bike had disc brakes, wide tires and riser bars, so we'll add him to the tally as another mountain biker who shared the screen with the peloton.
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2003: Dave Watson's Road Gap
Dave Watson's huck back in 2003 is probably the most notable stunt, captured by the cameras of Freeride Entertainment as he launched over the peloton before getting bucked into the rubble below. He emerged without any major injuries, and earned himself a place in mountain bike history.
2013: Encho Rage Road Gap
The road gap the Encho Rage crew built over the course of several months may not have had as scenic of a back drop as Dave Watson's attempt, but the rider, Romain Marandet, managed to take off just as the race leader rode by in his yellow jersey, landing without incident on the other side of the road.
2014: Wheelie Man
Vincenzo Nibali was the winner of the 2014 Tour de France, but it was the helmetless guy riding a wheelie alongside the racer that pulled viewers' eyes away from the road bikers on the final day of the event. There aren't many details about the mystery rider, but his bike had disc brakes, wide tires and riser bars, so we'll add him to the tally as another mountain biker who shared the screen with the peloton.
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I think the bar for entry to the snob club is a huge paycheck (as displayed by the carbon with enve components and lots of lycra, even it is a 5 mile ride) and that attracts alphas who are very competitive on the fitness front. The high finance clique comes to mind. Guys who would be golfers, but have recently switched to single track.
In particular we saw a group of guys in park city last week who were rude to the slowest climber in their group. Who invites a guy to go riding just so they can treat him like crap? The answer is uber competitive alphas. Competition is cool when it is the top performers in a group trying to get an edge on each other, but when it is the best riders being bullies to the worst they are just dicks, and that behavior has no place on the hill. We watched them act like dicks, and then saw as every one of them took the easy trail down the mountain.
Bunch of egotistical dicks. We should have invited the other guy to ride with us.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMgzQUfN8DU
For me Watson's gap is still the most awesome one.
At about 2:10 here www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck9PMIsu3ks remember he's doing about 40 km/h when he does this
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHM6JtEdHp8
He's fun to watch, especially when he's winning stages with a Sprint finish.
When I pass anybody on a mountain bike I get waves and smiles, you pass a road bike and you pretty much get them same as wheelie man.......
the money is just not there
there is to so much more old money pushing road racing
it happens to us all we get older and wiser and mountain biking stars to lose it's appeal
i.imgur.com/8oNPhcn.gif
Then consider that Fabian Cancellara (yellow jersey) broke two vertebrae in the pile-up, got back on his bike, and rode the remaining 60 km to finish the stage.
Or that, in the 2002 Giro d'Italia, Tyler Hamilton crashed, broke his shoulder, but finished the race in second, having ground almost a dozen of his teeth to the roots to fight the pain.
I have a lot of respect for elite level roadies. I think they are hardcore on an entirely different level than Lacondeguy, Semeniuk, and Zink.
I have nothing against the average roadie, all bikes are rad, and while I think they are dumb for wanting to ride on the road with idiot drivers, to each their own. But it blows my mind that you guys can respect anyone racing pro in the UCI after its been proven what a bunch of drug using, money hungry d-bags they are. But again to each their own.
see: Lance Armstrong, for about a good decade of his career.
Just because people get *caught* doping isn't a legitimate reason to put down a sport. The "drug using d-bags" are going to be found at the upper echelons of any sport, pro or not.
XC and enduro, riders have certainly been caught using EPO, diuretics, etc., since they would take more easily caught drugs. The UCI uses the same anti-doping controls as the WADA, aka, it's a total joke. You get three strikes to make it to a "random" test if you're called upon to have an out of comp screening.
Therefore, you can be sitting at home doing a cycle of testosterone/halotestin/primobolan (for the sake of argument, testosterone levels are easy to manipulate, so biological passport testing is useless, and halo/primo are steroids with an incredibly short half life which give pretty stellar strength gains with little to no size...therefore you could have a heavy cycle right up to the first race and "piss clean", so to speak.) You can even run low dosages of the steroids between races for recovery and an edge on the next WC, and it'll still be out of your system. And, you can make mistakes with your cycle, miss an appointment with the UCI, and be totally fine. Steroids aside, blood doping and EPO is difficult to find, even with a highly structured biological passport on every rider (riders aren't sending out blood samples weekly).
So, the real takaway here isn't "hurr durr DH bikerz haven't been caught doping so roadies are doping 24/7 and it's a dumb sport", it's that it's incredibly easy to cheat in DH, and it would be highly effective in terms of race time reduction...so do you really believe that there aren't DH riders out there doping?
Really??? 0%??? So riding at 60km/h in a packed peloton involves 0% skill and control? Riding down some of the massive descents in the Giro or the Tour involves 0% bike control? Come on man. Yes, it may not be as high as a 3 km DH in terms of pure control but high end road biking requires massive bike control and skill.
I've ridden in a few local rides with small pelotons and the amount of concentration and control required is huge. I can't imagine the pro's.
But these same riders will also crash as soon as they have to avoid someone by going off the road into the grass next to it, while even cyclocrossers can ride through grass. Also you can't learn how to fall / crash decently / safe your ass when it goes wrong if you only fall once every 2 years. Most of the crashes downhill riders would only end up having some minor scratches, where road cyclists slam into the group as a bag of sand and break their bones. Also they can't even hop up a curb, even not with spds. So they do lack major bike control.