Hammer’s and Nails

I’m not a big fan of moral victories. I’m not even a big fan of “1st-runner up’s” and second places. Miss Universe, NBA Finals, Wimbledon- as they say, 2nd place is the first loser.

When Frenchman and Tour de France hopeful Romain Bardet crossed the line ahead of Chris Froome in the last mountain stage of this years Tour the other day, he manage to shave only 4 seconds, being down a 27sec deficit to 23. Listen what he said amid the media scrum, "Nothing is decided yet but the Tour is already a success. I responded present in the mountains. I've confirmed what I did last year”.

Well, I don’t know about Bardet’s success. If winning a stage is a success then this Tour is a success for him, but I’m sure that he and his team didn’t come to this Tour aiming to win a stage. They wanted to win it all. If this is his mentality then he should go into other sports where majority of the participants just aim to finish and get an action photo for their FB profile pic.

All I know is that no Frenchman has won their own race since the great Bernard Hinault in 1985. With 3/21 stages left to go before the end in Paris, stage 18 was the only realistic stage that Bardet and Rigoberto Uran could have taken over a visibly weaker Froome compared to the previous years. But they did not and could not. It seemed that a weaker Froome is still better than a fit Bardet and Uran.

Bardet did one attack and for a  moment, Froome looked like he had a hard time closing the gap but he did and when he did, he launched his own, and had it not been for the chase made by Uran, I doubt if Bardet could have gained those 4sec. In the end, Bardet was able to move from 3rd to first-runner up, which could be the reason he said what he said.

Stage 19 should be for the other riders so the top three overall could take it easy and prepare for stage 20, the 23km individual time trial. Of the top three, Bardet is the weakest in that discipline while Iran was known more of a time-triallist than as a climber. Froome of course is top 3 or top 5 in the world.

Bardet’s proclamation of a successful Tour was probably more in tune with appeasing sponsors, fans, the French public, for his own ego and for leverage during contract signings. Unless Froome and Iran crashes (God forbid, this Tour has lost so many star riders), Bardet’s chance of winning is nil to nothing.

Froome is still the biggest hammer out there this year and the next year or two and for the moment, Bardet and Uran are just nails. No one remembers moral victories, and these victories sometimes gnaws at your soul.