Tour 2009

[Davydoff]

Van Hummel in de NY Times:

VITTEL, France — The Dutch cyclist Kenny Van Hummel could feel the large white van, known as the broom wagon, looming close behind as he rode the final stage of the Pyrenees in the Tour de France.


Kenny Robert Van Hummel, a 26-year-old rider on the Skil-Shimano team, is 1 hour 59 minutes 32 seconds behind the leader, Rinaldo Nocentini.

The van, a vehicle of mercy, sweeps the back of the peloton, looking to pick up riders who want to quit the Tour midrace because they have suffered enough. It is big enough to carry about 12 people.

But Van Hummel, a 26-year-old sprinter on the Skil-Shimano team, would not have any of that. He was last in the standings Sunday, but he refused to give up.

Though his back ached and his legs felt as if they were aflame, Van Hummel pedaled faster, making it to the top just inside the time cut, which is a percentage of the winning time that changes from stage to stage.

“I know I’m in last place, but this race is very long and difficult,” Van Hummel said Thursday, four days after surviving that Pyrenean ascent. Although he finished Stage 12 on Thursday in the main pack of riders, he was in 166th place — out of 166 riders. The Tour started with a field of 180.

Van Hummel’s overall time is 1 hour 59 minutes 32 seconds behind the leader, Rinaldo Nocentini of Italy and the AG2R La Mondiale team. Last year, the last rider in the Tour, a three-week competition, finished nearly four hours after the leader.

“I did two hours more cycling than the leaders,” Van Hummel said, “so maybe that shows that in my head, maybe, I am really strong.”

Finishing last may be an embarrassment at other sporting events, but at the Tour it is an unofficial honor.

The last rider in the standings earns the title of the Lanterne Rouge, or Red Lantern, a moniker that comes from the red lantern at the back of a train’s caboose. Years ago, the Lanterne Rouge grew into a cult hero and often earned financial gains from the title. At a time when rider contracts were not as lucrative as they are today, the Lanterne Rouge received contracts to race in post-Tour events, just as the Tour winner would.

“It used to be quite a big deal to be the Lanterne Rouge,” said Paul Sherwen, the Tour commentator for Versus and a former pro rider. “There were a number of battles to try to finish last over all. We had stories of guys hiding in cornfields to finish last, and not actually second-to-last.”

In the 1980s, Tour organizers ended the folly of riders deliberately finishing last. They began eliminating the last rider in the standings after every stage, until the final few stages of the race.

But at this Tour, where three more riders abandoned the race Thursday — one with digestive problems, another with respiratory problems and the other because of multiple falls on previous stages — the plucky Van Hummel remains.

“It’s not like he’s last in the New York City Marathon or last out of 9,999 people or something,” Jonathan Vaughters, the team director of Garmin-Slipstream, said. “He’s still one of the best riders in the world, trying to finish one of the toughest races in the world. You’ve got to respect that.”

As a sprinter, Van Hummel is naturally not as good at climbing. So with the 2,150-mile race heading into the Alps in a few days, he faces even more excruciating rides. But that is what his team expected, said Iwan Spekenbrink, the managing director of Team Skil-Shimano.

The team weighed Van Hummel’s ability to sprint — he won five races in May — with his inability to climb, and they determined that having Van Hummel on the roster was worth the risk. They were right.

Two days after he climbed alone in the Pyrenees, Van Hummel finished seventh in a flat stage.

“It is really a mental fight for him to get through the mountain stages, where he could suffer all day long and still not make the time cut,” Spekenbrink said. “For him, we cannot talk about Paris. We just talk about day to day.”

Even if Van Hummel finishes four hours back at the end of the race, he will probably be only about 4 percent slower than the winner, which means he is not a bad rider — just the slowest among the world’s top cyclists who manage to complete the Tour de France.

His struggle reveals a side of the competition that most people never see. He is not Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour winner who is in third place, eight seconds back. Or Alberto Contador, the 2007 Tour winner who is in second place, six seconds back.

He is a cyclist, though, who earns respect from his peers simply by hanging in there. Other riders can empathize. Kurt-Asle Arvesen of the Saxo Bank team rode more than half of Stage 11 with a broken collarbone because he wanted to avoid the broom wagon.

Van Hummel still would like to finish better than seventh in a stage. The final sprint is likely to take place in Paris on July 26, the last day of the Tour. He has vowed to make it there. Until then, the fans will continue to hover around him to sneak a peak at the man who is, for now, the Lanterne Rouge.

“If I stop the race, I will be in all the newspapers and everyone will know about it, and that would be really terrible,” Van Hummel said. “From now until then, it’s really heavy, but I’ll try to survive. I will look at every day and say, ‘O.K., I made it,’ then look at the day after that. Day by day, with a lot of pain, I will make it to Paris.”

NOTES

Nicki Sorensen of Denmark won the 12th stage Thursday, his first Tour stage victory. He finished 48 seconds ahead of Laurent Lefevre of France.

Levi Leipheimer, who is fourth over all, crashed with about 2.5 kilometers to go and sustained contusions to his right wrist and back. He said he miscalculated a turn, lost control and hit a curb. Leipheimer hoped to continue racing Friday.

Also on Thursday, cycling’s international union overturned its ban on earpieces, allowing riders to use electronic radio communication for the 13th stage Friday.