Interesting article today in The Roar about the Tour Down Under's flat parcours. The author sat in the Vacansoleil team car and heard some of the following from Michel Cornelisse:

If I designed the route, the riders would be sorry... I’d make it open and hard so it wasn’t always the same story. It wouldn’t be a sprinter who wins every day.

...

I would make the riders do [Willunga] three times. It may be the first race of the season and it may be really hot here in Australia, but it’s the ProTour. It should be hard.

...

What use is it if people don’t race and let Cavendish win seven times? If more people rode like my riders the races would be more interesting. You can’t refuse to race and then be surprised when Cavendish or Greipel wins. Unless teams try something different the outcome will always be the same.

And there's a bit of back-and-forth about Thomas De Gendt's breakfast. Worth a read.

There have been posts praising Thomas Voeckler and Jonathon Hivert in recent days, and no doubt now there will be several that praise the born-again attacking spirit of Andy Schleck, pulling one out of the hat, old-school style.  I don't feel the need to eat humble pie about Andy's turnaround last night (although I'm happy to confess that I didn't expect it, and it was a damned fine ride).

So, instead, I'm going to write a post in praise of grinta generally, as my thinly disguised way of praising Cadel Evans for his performance last night.

Others deserve praise, certainly: Voeckler for valiantly hanging on, Monfort for one of the great domestique efforts in memory, even Bookwalter for gamely trying to keep Evans in the game when he was clearly shot in the legs.  I'd be delighted to hear other nominations.

You can criticise Evans (and the rest of the peloton) for letting Schleck go, although you probably need the retrospectograph to see whether it's a bad idea.  But that is to talk tactics, and I want to talk grinta.

Evans today, faced with the Tour riding up the road, took on responsibility where none of the others would.  After his first incredulous turn on the front, and then the typically ineffective attack, he simply got down to business and worked his tail off, never asking for help, and riding supposedly better climbers off his wheel.

It might not have quite been Indurain at La Plagne, 1995, with Zülle up the road and the pack being blown away, but it had echoes of it.

Others have said it before, and better.  But I thought it should be said again.

Mikel, not Miguel.  Why not?

Why he will win

Name a race that Mikel Astarloza has won… Can’t think of it?

Exactly.  If ever there’s a fellow who’ll slip under the radar, he’s your man.  Like Oscar Pereiro before him, he’s finished top ten in the Tour but never threatened to win.  And like Oscar, he might just benefit from a brain-fart from the then yellow jersey team that gives him and say, Jens, a half-hour break on the field.

The brain-fart in question will be because one half of the team is so busy chasing down the other half’s attacks, that they’ll just let the unthreatening looking Spaniard up the road without so much as a second thought.  Is there such a divided team in Tour this year?  Well, Dorothy, since you ask, there is.

Ah, you’re saying, surely that Bruyneel chap will step in before it gets out of hand.  You're forgetting something.  No radios!  Target a nice, flat, radio-free stage, Mikel, and the Tour is yours!  There will only be Frenchmen chasing, so you're home free.

Why he will not win

Name a race that Mikel Astarloza has won… Can’t think of it?

Exactly.  It’s the Tour Down Under.  Sure Luis-Leon Sanchez won that thing, and people rate him.  But so did Simon Gerrans, and he apparently isn’t fit to carry Hayden Roulston’s water bottles. [NB: For all you serious people out there, that was a dig at Cervélo, not at Gerrans.]

And he wears orange.  At the Tour, people in orange tend to either get drunk and shout in Dutch on mountain-sides, or fall into pitiful career-ending heaps on gravel corners.  Neither wins the Tour.

Oh, and he might just not be good enough, either.

Conclusion

Get on board, people.  He's due.