Cobblestone Causalities

The 2010 Tour de France has been most interesting. Multiple rider crashes, blood, broken bones. General Classification favorite Frank Schleck suffered a broken collar bone and withdrew from the Tour. Stage three of the race included eight sections of cobblestone road. The greatest causality of the cobblestones, Lance Armstrong. While Lance Armstrong was getting a wheel change, Alberto Contador, Alexander Vinokourov, Cadel Evans, and Andy Schleck hammered to gain time. Indeed, the Lance Armstrong flat tire in the Arenburg Forest (the most difficult section of cobblestone road in the world) was lethal. Armstrong will never make up enough time to win the Tour de France; this is not 1999 and his incredible luck seems to have vanished.

Amaury Sport Organization has, once again, lost their collective minds. Everyone knows that early stages of the Tour de France has skittish, nervous riders, and the early race is accident prone. To include a stage three that contains eight sections of cobblestones, after the probability of bloody mayhem of the first two stages, is a feat of bad planning comparable only to sadistic acts of cruelty once enjoyed by loathsome miscreants; Henri Desgrange or the Marquis de Sade.

In the old days when riders used to carry their spare tires around their necks, begged housewives for provender, when riders shared bottles of wine while riding the road, when the stages were hundreds of kilometers long, when the mountain roads were unpaved single track, when bicycles were so heavy that they had to be pushed up hills, when saboteurs who wished to influence the outcome of the race threw nails into the road, when new inventions like the derailleur were promptly banned by L'Auto and the brake was attached to the front wheel; and when the riders had to perform their own bicycle repair; Henri Desgrange was considered a man who could teach the Marquis de Sade how to make people suffer.

Well, in 2010 the fans are more sophisticated than to throw nails into the road; but very little else has changed. Amuary Sport Organisation still loves to make riders suffer with cobblestone roads in the early part of the race; when bloodied and bruised riders are trying to recover from broken bones, road rash, and sleepless nights. In addition to the above trauma, cobblestone roads make life miserable for riders and teams in other ways; flat tires, broken bicycles, lost time in repairs. Viva le Tour!

ASO says that the fan loves a bloody spectacle, like feeding the lions warriors at a Roman coliseum. Grand, but a hundred riders on the ground from multiple falls and some eliminated from General Classification contention after three stages; what a bore.