Alberto Contador has been low profile since the start of the Tour but is ready pounce and is made of the same traits found in all champions, according to our analyst (Photo: Sirotti)
With the first section of the Tour de France complete and the riders now facing their opening mountain test, Paddy Doran of Peak Endurance Coaching outlines why he believes Alberto Contador is the ultimate Grand Tour champion.
He looks back at Contador’s overall win in the Giro d’Italia in May and teases out the qualities that make champions like him.
With the first nine stages of the Tour de France done and dusted and the rest day now behind the riders, the general classification battle begins for many with the first summit finish of the race on today’s stage 10.
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For some who harboured hopes of winning the race or even making it to the podium in Paris when the event started in Utrecht last Saturday week; those dreams are already shattered with the time losses in the crosswinds of the opening days.
Chris Froome of Team Sky holds yellow as the race hits the Pyrenees and it will take something very special to dislodge him.
Another real contender; Tejay Van Garderen of BMC Racing is in 2nd place, just 12 seconds down.
Of the other big guns, Alberto Contador of Tinkoff-Saxo is next; in 5th place and 1:03 off yellow. But he is ahead of all of the other contenders.
Rigoberto Uran of Etixx-QuickStep, for example, is one place behind Contador and 15 seconds off his time.
Alejandro Valverde of Movistar is 7th, some 47 seconds behind Contador, followed by general classification dark horse Geraint Thomas of Team Sky, who is another two seconds back.
Finally, Nairo Quintana of Movistar is 56 seconds down on Contador and defending champion Vincenzo Nibali of Astana is 2:22 off Froome and 1:19 off Contador.
Contador was put under real pressure on the unpaved roads up to Sestriere on the penultimate stage of the Giro d'Italia but retained his leader's jersey to wrap up another Grand Tour victory (Photo: Sirotti)
The Spaniard has been low profile in the first nine days of racing; conceding time to Froome in the time trials but going into the mountains with his hopes of the yellow jersey intact.
And if his ride when winning the Giro back in May is anything to go by, he will push Froome hard; both mentally and physically.
During the three weeks of the Giro, Contador was taken to the edge of his physical capacity.
He crashed and sustained painful debilitating injuries but overcome them. He was sometimes left exposed in groups where his competitors’ teams had numerical superiority.
Sestriere
On the penultimate and hardest stage of the Giro to Sestriere, he was alone with no team mates for support.
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He was then dropped by his main opponents and still overcame his difficulties to retain his pink jersey of overall leader.
And while he was taken over the edge in physical terms during the race - especially on that Sestriere stage - he never seemed to go over the edge psychologically.
He remained calm and resolute; eating and drinking during the bad phases and pacing himself until he came around and limited his losses by controlled climbing efforts.
I admired Contador’s performances so much during the Giro as he demonstrated what it is to be a champion, irrespective of the sport’s past problems and Contador’s difficulties in anti-doping in the past.
Components of a successful Tour performance
When I am looking at bike races, especially Grand Tours, I am watching out for those elements that make cycling such a great sport; the physical conditioning and the bike skills, whether descending or sprinting.
The tactics are also essential as are the mental qualities of patience, focus and riders being able to adapt their approach and switch between aggressive and defensive riding as the stage unfolds.
Lots of riders displayed some of these qualities during the Giro and it made for great racing.
But what is the difference between emerging from a Grand Tour as winner, or as a nearly man, especially when there are now only tiny physical differences between the top riders?
What the research says
Research from other sports suggests that great champions display a number of psychological traits.
The following research project results from the Journal of Applied Sports Psychology by Daniel Gould, Kristen Dieffenbach & Aaron Moffett are very interesting.
Their study focused on ten US Olympic gold medalists who won 32 Olympic medals between them
“Ten US Olympic champions (winners of 32 Olympic medals) were interviewed, as were one of their coaches, and a parent, guardian, or significant other. A battery of psychological inventories was also administered to the athletes. It was found that the athletes were characterized by: (a) the ability to cope with and control anxiety; (b) confidence; (c) mental toughness/resiliency; (d) sport intelligence; (e) the ability to focus and block out distractions; (f) competitiveness; (g) a hard-work ethic; (h) the ability to set and achieve goals; (i) coachability; (j) high levels of dispositional hope; (k) optimism; and (l) adaptive perfectionism”
We can clearly see from this research that whenever he crashed, punctured was dropped, or was on the attack that Contador displayed all the psychological traits of a champion right throughout this year’s Giro.
We can now look forward to a fantastic battle between Contador and the small number of others in this Tour capable of greatness.
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