Watching TdF yesterday up to Ax-3-Domaines raised a lot of thoughts inside. Andy Schleck was really riding pathetically in the yellow jersey caring of nobody else but Contador.

The climbs in this year's Tour are anything but vintage so far. They left the Alps without doing any of the big classics. Neither Morzine Avoriaz, nor the Col de la Madeleine impressed me. Furthermore, they had the Jalabert climb in Mende, which with it's 10% gradient is the steepest climb in this year's tour.

On the contrary, the riders had to climb the Zoncolán during this year's Giro. Which one is the harder?

Also, I was looking for some more eventful TdF races. So here's the story from 1971 (source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_Merckx):

Merckx chose a different preparation for his third Tour de France in 1971. In order to arrive fresher and as well to be in better condition in the autumn, Merckx choose not to defend his title at the Tour of Italy and instead rode two week long stage races, the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré and the Grand Prix du Midi Libre, both of which he won the first stage and held on to the lead of both races until the end. Merckx arrived at the start of the Tour which began that year in Mulhouse to the pre-Tour hype which was summed up by former winner Jacques Anquetil who, speaking on French television program Les Dossiers de l'Ecran the day before the race began, said he wished that Merckx would be defeated. The only rider of the period to shake Merckx was the Spaniard, Luis Ocaña, who lived near Mont-de-Marsan in south-west France. Ocaña cared little for Merckx's reputation and attacked him on the Puy-de-Dôme, dropping him but not taking the yellow jersey. Three days later, Ocaña attacked when the race reached the Alps. By Orcières-Merlette he had taken 8m 41s out of the Belgian. By then resentment had built at the way Merckx was winning everything. Chany wrote that

There was a feeling that it would be good for cycling if he lost.

The title on the front page of Paris-Match was: "Is Merckx going to kill the Tour?" A rider at the Grand Prix du Midi Libre was quoted as saying: "When you know how much Merckx is earning, you sometimes lose the will to make an effort if you're paid in loose change [rabais]." The resentment left Merckx to chase Ocaña without help. One rider, Celestino Vercelli, said:

Merckx never let anybody break away. But that day... we don't know.... The start was on an upgrade and he wasn't that brilliant in the beginning. Maybe he was still warming up and his adversaries, Luis Ocaña, Joaquim Agostinho, Joop Zoetemelk, noticed that and decided to break away immediately. It cost him dearly because the stage was long and very hard and there were four or five climbs. He took it badly, because it had never happened to him to be behind and lose so much time. Usually he was the one who was nine minutes in front the others!

A rest day followed and then a stage from Orcières-Merlette to Marseille. It started with 20 km downhill, followed by 280 km along a valley. Merckx and his team attacked from the start, led by Rini Wagtmans, immediately gaining several minutes. But the speed downhill and the heavier braking needed for bends led rims to overheat, melting the glue that held tyres to the rim. It happened to several riders and Merckx lost some of his teammates as a result. Vercelli said:

Merckx needed to recover the nine minutes he lost and he meant to do so by arriving in the valley with several minutes' lead with a good group of about eight riders. This way it would have been very difficult for the rest of the peloton behind to catch them in the 280km of the valley. In the 280km of flat road he personally pulled the group for 250km on his own! And of course the peloton behind him went very fast. There were all Merckx's adversaries and they were all interested in catching him. They all worked together for that. It was basically Merckx alone against all the others.

Merckx got to Marseille half an hour faster than the fastest expected time. The entire Kas team finished outside the time limit but were reinstated. Only 1,000 spectators were at the finish early enough. Among those too late was the mayor of the city, Gaston Deferre, who decided to see the finish at the last moment but arrived after the riders had left for the showers and the officials for their hotels. He forbade the Tour to return to the city for the rest of his career. It next stopped in Marseille in 1989, three years after his death.

Despite a stage that averaged 45.4kmh, Merckx cut Ocaña's lead only to 7m 32s. He waited for the Pyrenees. There, on the col de Mente, hail and rain flooded the road. Pierre Chany said:

... [Merckx] attacked in a rage several times, out of the saddle and bent over his bars, Ocaña in his wake. He multiplied the attacks, changed from one side of the road to the other ceaselessly to get Ocaña off his wheel, but in vain.

Unable to shake off Ocaña on the way up, Merckx tried to do so on the way down. The storm broke at the summit. Pierre Chany said:

... worse than a storm, ... a cataclysm. ... "hail fell, visibility was zero, brakes no longer worked; riders were taking the descent with their feet on the road to slow them."

Merckx missed a bend, hit a low wall and fell. He got up straight away but two spectators had gone to help him. Ocaña ran into them, crashed heavily and was hit by Zoetemelk and then two other riders who had been following by a few seconds. Merckx who was descending the mountain fell a further two times before hearing what had happened behind him. Ocaña's fall had took him out of the race and gave the yellow jersey to Merckx, although he declined to wear it next morning in respect for the Spaniard. Merckx won the Tour by 9m 51s over Zoetemelk and 11m 6s over Lucien van Impe. After the Tour, the Belgian Cycling Federation named the team for the world championships and despite his wish to have several trade teammates on the team, Merckx would only have one trade teammate. In response, Merckx re-arranged his post-Tour schedule and trained with complete resolution to win. On a challenging circuit in Mendrisio, Switzerland Merckx attacked several times and broke away with Felice Gimondi who he beat in the sprint to take his second rainbow jersey.

As I'm quite psyched up about the antiques of Eddy Merckx, I will write about him next time.

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