VeloNews has published an interview with 1988 Tour de France winner Pedro Delgado. Delgado lays into the current crop of racers and organizers, and I found this bit on strategy in the grand tours very much on target:

In cycling there are the downhills as well. The race is in the feed zones, on the downhills, these are the places to attack. In my time, we lived under a constant tension; the race was always on the edge. Laurent Fignon would attack in the feed zones, he would always try to fan the race out in the wind by making echelons, and he would attack on any day. Stephan Roche was another. He was one that would often attack going downhill. Everyone and anyone would attack at any time and at any place.

Now this is not the case. It is like a rule that has been established – you make your time in the time trials or in climbing the mountains, and the rest of the race is simply of no interest to the greats, to those who are in contention.

He is absolutely correct. Since Miquel Indurain began his domination of the Tour de France, the peloton has been ruled with an iron fist (Armstrong, of course, was an absolute dictator), and we have been given the impression that anyone who does not bow to the wishes of the patron is somehow cheating. This is flat out wrong. Why, in a race like the Tour de France, should the GC riders be prohibited from racing? Of course, stronger teams, especially ones like Armstrong’s Discovery mates, would force the pace and likely cripple any chance the attacker had, that is still not a reason to forgo the attacks (I remember saying last year that T-Mobile should have decided its goal was simply to dethrone Armstrong–with three fine cyclists in Ullrich, Kloden, and Vino they could have worn down the Disco boys).

Posted on 22 November 2006