bicycle.net -- cycling news, product reviews, original essays, podcasts & video :: beijing olympics 2008

Last year, the mountain stages at the Tour de France were all about three guys: Rasmussen, Contador, and Soler. Everybody else, including riders and audience alike, were left to hold on for dear life as these three attacked, trumped, and attacked again. The fallout of their energetic bout of one-upsmanship was that the presumed Tour favorites (Evans, Leipheimer, Kloden, etc.) got pushed deep into the redzone trying vanely to stay within sight of these three men.

But you couldn’t seem to break this trio, and they didn’t seem to break each other, either. Instead, Rasmussen looked all but unbeatable in the mountains right up the moment he was lifted by the scruff of his neck and shuttled off into oblivion, leaving the other two with prestigious jerseys that arguably neither would have copped had they not been duking it out with Rasmussen. Obviously, Contador got the pretty yellow one for the overall tour win, and Soler got the man-of-the-mountains award by a ridiculously overwhelming number of points.

Going into the 2008 tour, I’ve got to say that I wanted a last minute invite for Astana in part so we could see if Contador would repeat as Tour champion, but even more so to see what amount of fury he’d bring to the mountains to ensure his win. If I were Cadel Evans, I would have been losing considerable amounts of sleep envisioning those days ahead trying to stick to Contador’s wheel in the Alps and Pyrenees. But that wasn’t to be. And of course, we knew almost a year ago that the Dutchman Rasmussen wasn’t going to make an appearance at this year’s tour, so that leaves/left Soler as the man I was expecting to dole out great heaps of punishment to the rest of the peloton once the roads sloped upward. Maybe he’d have the Schleck brothers and possibly Sastre and who knows who else trying to keep him honest, but I expect Soler would be the joker in the deck that would frustrate everybody.

Now, Soler is in question, and we’ll possibly know tomorrow if he is to continue or not. I haven’t seen him as a great GC threat, notwithstanding my great respect for the man and his Barloworld teammates. Maybe a top 10 in the GC, but to me that wouldn’t be his greatest possible contribution.

Rather, I hope he’s able to continue and to perform relatively unfettered by two very sore wrists, because he brings gunpowder and unpredictability to the mountain stages ahead, and is a wonder to watch when he goes at it.

So as we go from Stage 1’s highlights and lowlights into tomorrow’s stage 2, I’ll be hoping for some positive news about the Colombian climber Mauricio Soler.