What it Takes to be a Winner: The 2006 Tour de France

So I was thinking about the Tour de France this morning over breakfast. That's usually not a good sign, by the way, because the Tour de France is not a good thing to think too much about. It's a bike race, for starters, and with a bike race, thinking often gets in the way of understanding. It's a bunch of guys blasting down the road day after day, pushing themselves to the limit of what human species can do, crashing like so many pinballs. It's completely great, but thinking about it and expecting it to make sense is kind of like expecting the circus to make sense.

The European fans completely get this phenomenon, by the way. They don't go to bike races expecting to watch them. In fact, they go to bike races in order to not watch them. They travel for hours, hike up mountains in many cases, elbow for hours to keep their spot – and all for the sake of a 20-second blur of jerseys, a blur in which it's all but impossible to gain any meaningful information. The key is, they don't go to watch it; they go to feel it.  (Either that, or they just like standing together alongside the road drinking.)

Being an American, however, I'm trapped into trying to figure this sport out, and there's no more spectacularly useless time to try to figure than the week before the Tour de France begins. So with that in mind, on the eve of the first Lance-less (Lance-free?) Tour de France in seven years, let me set out a few predictions.

You see, I have a secret weapon: a personal, highly subjective method called the Barroom Brawl Theorem. It goes like this: You can pick the winner in the Tour by imagining who would beat the others in a no-holds-barred, down and dirty barroom brawl. Not one like in Roadhouse; more like something with John Wayne. Lots of broken chairs and bottles; not so much Patrick Swayze. 

If the theory works (and I'm not promising anything. It's just a theory – you know, like evolution) it's because the Tour is simply the planet's toughest event.Three weeks, 2,500 miles, constant psychological and physical pressure. It's Darwinian in the most Darwinian sense of the word. Historically, the guys who have won have possessed several key attributes  

1)    Size. Winners are usually fairly tall, rawboned guys. They are not little dudes. They are big guys who are slimmed down in order to climb well. Clint Eastwood-types. Also, it helps to have larger liver, stomach, kidneys, etc, since all those things are tested so severely.

2)    They can go a little psycho when the have to. The sport requires a willingness to go way beyond what's required that naturally favors people who might have some anger management issues. (Like five-time winner Bernard Hinault, who came upon a protester blocking the road. Hinault ran up and punched the guy in the face. Just like that. And oh yeah—this latest incident happened this past March, and Hinault is 52.) 

3)    They have tactical smarts. In a bar and at the Tour, you have to pick the right fights.

4)    They're on good teams. (Yes, there are teams. Each team has nine guys, with a designated leader. It only seems like they're winning alone, but the team does a lot, which is one reason why the winner's half-million-dollar check is traditionally divvied up to the other eight guys).

To test-drive the BBT by looking historically:

Armstrong is a good example of the BBT's utility: He would have absolutely killed his contenders in a barroom brawl, smashing heads with whiskey bottles (while first taking a sip), then tipping over the card table and stomping them into submission. With cowboy boots. 

Marco Pantani, who won in 1998, is a terrible example. He was a tiny climber who tried to affect a bad-ass persona, even getting a nose job and insisting that he be referred to as "Il Pirata." He could not have beaten Mini-Me in a bar fight. Then again, he only won once, was later suspected (with mucho evidence) of doping (and sadly died of a drug overdose in 2004) So, overlookable.

Miguel Indurain, who won five Tours in the 90s, is a pretty good fit. He was simply bigger and tougher than everyone, the kind of implacable strongman who would stand and let the little guys punch him ineffectually on the chest, yawn, then pitch them through the swinging doors.

And so here are the top five contenders for this year's Tour de France, each rated from one to five stars in each of the four BBT categories.

                                                    
Size      Psycho Factor   Smarts    Team

Ivan Basso                         3              3                    4              5

Jan Ullrich                          5              3                    2              3

Alexandre Vinokourov       2              5                    3              2

Floyd Landis                      4              4                    3              3

Alejandro Valverde            4              3                    3              2

So, on July 23, it will definitely, positively look like this:

 
Winner: Basso (15 stars). The Italian for CSC is clearly the favorite, having won the season's other big race, the Giro d'Italia. He's tough and strong, though his weakness might be the psycho factor. He's an exceptionally nice guy (warning bell!), and he looks just like Jude Law to boot. Which adds up to this: If it's close, he might not be able to close the deal.

 
Second Place: Landis (14). I'm probably biased for the Pennsylvanian, (and not just because my daughter wears his Phonak jersey around the house). He's a Mennonite kid who escaped on his bike, works harder than anyone, never makes excuses, and is on the verge of becoming the Next Big Thing in American cycling. He's also hilariously funny.

 
Third Place: Ullrich (13), The German who's always overweight and undermotivated, actually looks good this year, winning a big race last week, which probably isn't good for him—he seems to thrive only when he's got one foot on a banana peel. But on the upside for him, he's 32 and is talking retirement. This is probably his last chance to win—maybe he'll make the most of it. But I doubt it.  

 
Fourth Place: Vinokourov (12). Borat aside, this guy is the original crazy Kazakh—I nearly gave him a 6 for Psycho Factor. He attacks all the time, he has no regard for his personal safety, and he's the only rider to have the support of an entire nation. When his team sponsor of Liberty Seguros bailed because his coach got caught up in a doping scandal (if "caught up" can mean getting arrested outside a Madrid doctor's office with a refrigerated bag of full of stored blood and $70,000), the Kazakh government patriotically stepped in to sponsor the team. If Vino wins, he'll get all the horsemeat he can eat for life.

 
Fifth Place: Valverde (12). The Spanish rider is young, he's seemingly good at everything. But at 26 he's never finished a Tour before. I see Valverde doing spectacularly well for awhile, then going down in flames.

 
One guy who reportedly won't be showing up is Armstrong, who's said that he's too crazy busy with cancer fundraising and hosting the ESPY Awards show. Though I wonder if he'll sneak over anyway—he can never resist surprising people.

One last prediction: It's going to be the closest, most entertaining fight in the last seven years.

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Thanks for reading,

Dan