Valverde Wins Tour de France Stage 17, Froome Shows Strength

Alejandro Valverde of Movistar crosses the finish line to win Stage 17 of the 2012 Tour de France. (Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)

Movistar’s Alejandro Valverde has announced his return to the top of professional cycling with his fourth Tour de France stage win.

The Spanish rider joined a 25-rider breakaway 20 km into the 143-km stage, attacked it on the Hors Categorie Port de Balès, and maintained his lead up to the Cat 1 mountaintop finish to Peyragudes, crossing 19 seconds ahead of the first two General Classification riders, Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome of Sky.

“I have been waiting a really long time for this victory. I really wanted this win, in this very hard and important stage, and we could take it,” Valverde said on the Movistar website. “I came to this year’s Tour in really good form, but had much bad luck with crashes and punctures at the start of the climbs, so we had to give up GC aspirations and focus on a stage win.”

Valverde made it look easy, but he was working hard. “It was a real suffering—the stage was hard from the start. We never had a big advantage and the pace was strong all the time. I was a bit scared about the finale; I was a bit out of energy and the my rivals were coming strong behind. I crossed the finish exhausted, but really happy.

“I want to thank all the team. Rubén, Rui did an amazing job at the break, but also the rest of the team and those who were supporting from home after their injuries. This victory is also dedicated to everyone who has supported me, my family and my kids.”

Valverde, whose promising career was interrupted by a two-year suspension for his involvement in the Operacion Porto doping scandal, proved that however he might have succeeded in earlier races, he certainly has the will and talent to win riding clean.

Valverde never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, but bags of blood for transfusion with his name on them were found in the laboratory of the doctors supplying several riders. Only he knows if or what he used, but now the whole world knows that Alejandro Valverde can ride with the best on a very tough mountain stage, and win.

The initial breakaway was already fragmenting when the Spanish rider sent teammate Rui Costa up the road three km into the Port de Balès climb. When no one responded, Valverde joined, then passed his teammate, and soloed the final 35 km.

Christopher Froome escorts Sky team leader Bradley Wiggins up the climb to Peyragudes to the finish of Stage 17 of the 2012 Tour de France. (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

Froome Outpowers Wiggins

Chris Froome could have won the stage—as he could have possibly won other stages in this Tour, had he not waited for his team leader Bradley Wiggins. Froome and Wiggins accelerated 2.4 km from the finishing line, riding away from the rest of the leaders; several times in the final climb Froome had to ease up and urge Wiggins to catch up.

Even with the pauses The Sky pair cut Valverde’s lead by three-fifths. Froome played the role of teammate perfectly as he has throughout the Tour, always electing to stay with Wiggins instead of pursuing personal glory.

Alejandro Valverde climbs to Peyragudes ahead of the field at the end of Stage 17. (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

Probably Chris Froome could not have won the 2012 Tour de France if given his head. Though better than Wiggins in the mountains, the younger rider is not as good in the time trials, and this year’s Tour has more than sixty miles of time trials. Next year will start a new chapter.

Cadel Evans stayed with the lead group most of the way up the final climb; considering every other rider got dropped as well, he rode quite a respectable stage, and even advanced one spot in GC to sixth. This Tour showed that even one of the world’s greatest could be brought low by uncooperative legs and a simple stomach infection; all the training and experience Cadel Evans brought to the Tour availed him nothing.

His teammate Tejay Van Garderen did his part to uphold BMC team pride, preserving a healthy lead in the Best Young Rider classification. He will cement that lead in Saturday’s time trial—only a major crash and retirement will keep this young American from wearing the white jersey in Paris.

Van Garderen moved into fifth in GC, 2:37 behind Lotto’s Jurgen Van Den Broeck. It is quite possible van Garderen, and excellent time trailer, might advance one more spot by the end.  

Vincenzo Nibali held onto third place overall, though he lost a few seconds. The Liquigas rider had obviously planned a major attack on the final climb. He massed several riders at the head of the peloton starting at the day’s second climb, the Cat 2 Col des Ares, and kept the pressure on over the next three climbs. Ivan basso took the final turn at the front, pulling for Nibali, but could not crack the Sky riders surrounding Wiggins, and Nibali did not have the strength to attack on the final climb.

Nibali lost touch with the lead group three kilometers from the finish; by that time only four riders could match the pace set by Sky’s Chris Froome: Pierre Rolland, Jurgen Van Den Broeck, Thibaut Pinot, and Bradley Wiggins. When Froome and Wiggins attacked, no one could hang on.

Winners Decided

Thomas Voeckler of Europcar (L) defends the King of the Mountains polka dot jersey against Fredrik Kessiakoff of Astana Pro Team on the Port de Balès during Stage 17. (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

The winners of the 2012 Tour de France are basically decided now, barring catastrophe.

Sky’s Bradley Wiggins will win the General Classification, probably by three of four minutes after the kind of time trial he can ride. His teammate Chris Froome will be second, three or four minutes ahead of Vincenzo Nibali of Liquigas.

Tejay Van Garderen of BMC will win Best Young Rider by three or four minutes over Ag2R’s Thibaut Pinot. The 20-year-old Frenchman shows incredible promise—he has several years before he even reaches his full strength, and already he was almost able to catch Wiggins in the closing meters of Stage 17.

Thomas Voeckler will take the King of the Mountains jersey. The Europcar rider fought hard on every climb in the Pyrenees, winning every one except the last, and he still beat his nearest rival, Astana’s Fredrik Kessiakoff, to the top on every climb.

Voeckler won the jersey in a head-to-head fight on the final mountain stage—he chased and passed Kessiakoff on the first climb, broke early and dropped him at the second peak, and on the third climb both chased and caught Euskaltel’s Jorge Azanza; then Voeckler kicked again and took maximum points.

Peter Sagan of Liquigas had the Points classification sewn up by Stage 14. The 22-year-old Slovakian champion couldn’t match the pure sprinters on flat finishes, but his overwhelming power gave him the edge on anything even slightly uphill, and with so many of this Tour’s “sprint” stages including a handful of categorized climbs, Sagan had more chances to amass points.

Sagan sealed the deal with an amazing ride in Stage 14, climbing a Cat 2 and two Cat 1 ascents in a stage which saw all the points contenders easing home in the autobus, the survivors’ peloton which forms at the very back of the race.

What a Race Next Year Will Bring

The 2012 Tour gave Bradley Wiggins a chance to make up for 2011, when a broken collarbone sidelined him in the first week in what looked to be a race he could have won.

The Tour also has introduced a lot of future greats to the world. Tejay Van Garderen has come into his own. he is climbing and time-trialing with the best in the world. Grand Tour wins should be in his future.

The same can be said for Thibaut Pinot. Twenty years old, riding his first Tour, Pinot offers French cycling a hope for a return to the top such as it hasn’t seen in two decades. Pinto could well be the next French Tour de France winner.

Next year, everything changes. Sagan, Van Garderen, and Pinot will be stronger. Chris Froome will be contesting the GC, either for Sky or for another team.

Andy Schleck will be back from the broken pelvis which took him out of this Tour, and his older brother Frank will hopefully have resolved the failed drug test which forced him to withdraw halfway through.

Both will likely be riding for another team, as Radio-Shack Nissan is going through a lot of troubles right now, and the future doesn’t look at all secure.

Chris Horner will have ridden his last Tour, as will George Hincapie. Jens Voigt might stick around for a couple more Tours to equal Hincapie’s record of 17; why not, given the way Voigt has been riding this year? But he too will likely need to find a new home.

More momentous, Alberto Contador’s suspension will expire in August. Stripped of one Tour win, the Spanish champion will be 30 years old—right in his prime. With the rest of 2012 and the first half of 2013 to hone his form, Contador might return to the Tour in better shape than ever in his career.

That’s all in the far future. More immediately, Stage 18 is another nominal sprint stage with a handful of cat 3 and 4 climbs, which will probably be won by a breakaway. Stage 19 is a time trial, which is to say Bradley Wiggins will win easily.

And Stage 20? Sky’s Mark Cavendish has announced that he wants his record-setting fourth win on the Champs Elysées, and with the whole of the Sky team finally free to support him, it is hard to imagine that he won’t get it.

Of course, Lotto’s André Greipel will be going all out for the win, and his team has consistently shown the best coordination in its lead out, and Liquigas, having nothing else to gain, can throw all its weight behind Peter Sagan, to try to get one more stage win. Whatever the outcome, the process will be explosive.

Those are my predictions. Your mileage may vary. Enjoy.