BMC Maybe no team came in with higher expectations and underdelivered as much as BMC. With the 2011 champion Cadel Evans, the 2012 Best Young Rider Tejay van Garderen, and World Champion Philippe Gilbert, BMC was stocked—so much so that Thor Hushovd and Mathias Frank didn’t even make the roster. But Gilbert was invisible even in his rainbow jersey, and Evans looked exhausted still from his third place at the Giro d’Italia. Even van Garderen, who rallied in the race’s third week to try to salvage something from a Tour that hadn’t gone his way, had little explanation for his poor early showing. In the end, someone’s head had to roll, and it was lead director John Lelangue, who Monday morning parted ways with the team for “personal reasons” and “will be pursuing other opportunities and challenges.” Alberto Contador (Saxo-Tinkoff) As little as three years ago, Contador looked to dominate the Tour for years. He had three Tour victories to his name, was climbing explosively and time trialing with the best and few could challenge his complete skills. Now, a year after sitting out the race from a doping positive that erased his 2010 victory, he seems entirely mortal: good but not great in the TTs and lacking the power to establish leads on climbs. France After several years with multiple stage wins, jersey winners, and promising top-10 finishes, the home nation had little to be happy about in 2013. In fact, had Christophe Riblon not won on Alpe d’Huez four days before the race ended, French fans might have had nothing to cheer about at all. Indeed, Riblon and his Ag2r teammates did their best to salvage France’s Tour; but as for the race’s four other French squads, there was little to write home about. Europcar fell flat as both Pierre Rolland and Thomas Voeckler failed to win a stage or score a high overall finish. FDJ, a team traditionally known for its aggressive riding, was virtually nonexistent and its best GC contender, Thibaut Pinot, abandoned the Tour after the second rest day. As for Cofidis and Sojasun, it’s abundantly clear that were they not French teams, they wouldn’t be participating in the first place. Everyone has a bad Tour now and again, but after several seasons of consistent progress, the French took a serious step backward. New Product Rollouts Any number of bike equipment makers offered splashy debuts for new gear. Look even flew its 695 Aerolight to the media introduction by helicopter. But that was as visible as most of the stuff was as riders were loath to try out new gear in the world’s biggest race. The Aerolight was confined to the top of the Cofidis team car where it’s sat since Paris-Nice. Focus’s new bikes went to the back of the equipment truck. And SRAM, which made much of Mark Cavendish using hydraulic rim brakes on Stage 1, was left to explain why he shunned them the rest of the race. One notable exception: Orbea’s new Orca was the exclusive choice of the Euskaltel riders even though they had the older machines on hand. Lampre-Merida Because it is one of the sport’s 19 World Tour squads, this Italian team receives an automatic invitation to the Tour de France. But after yet another season in which the team has failed to make an impact, one has to wonder if there might not be a way of changing the system to ensure that the teams that do participate take the race seriously. Of course, Lampre’s not the only WorldTour team that put forth a sub-par showing: Vacansoleil-DCM and Euskaltel-Euskadi both failed to win a stage. But those teams at least tried to reverse their fortunes by sending riders in each day’s long breakaway, winning intermediate sprints, and in Euskaltel’s case, trying to win the polka-dot jersey. In the end, Lampre’s only headline came when it was announced that several current and former members of the team had been indicted as part of an ongoing Italian doping investigation. When you’re fighting for relevance, those aren’t the kinds of headlines you’re looking for. Breakaways Outside Jan Bakelants’s late flyer on Stage 2, no breakaway succeeded in the Tour until Dan Martin and Jakob Fuglsang’s move on Stage 9 in the Pyrenees. It wasn’t until Matteo Trentin’s win in Stage 14 that the race saw its first instance of the early break making it to the finish ahead of the chase. In the end, only six of the 18 road stages went to breakaways.
