The Cruelty of Expectations

Covering the financial industry as a journalist taught me how expectations can change a story. Company A says profit doubled: that's good news by itself but the forecast was for a fivefold gain, so the results are disappointing. Company B says sales fell 20 percent, signaling problems. Because revenue was predicted to drop 59 percent, its investors might still be pleased. The same goes in sports, and last week at the Tour de France, French cyclist Thomas Voeckler fell victim to rollercoaster expectations: his own and those of an entire nation.

Voeckler unexpectedly took the lead of the Tour on July 10, with 12 stages remaining. The 32-year-old rider, who finished 76 out of 170 in 2010, wasn't among the favorites: a French TV commentator described him as ``not the most talented rider of the peloton, but a fighter who never gives up.'' The French public, starved of victory since Bernard Hinault won the Tour in 1985, embraced Voeckler as a national hero.
The race leader's yellow jersey, or ``maillot jaune,'' for Voeckler wasn't a total surprise for those who follow the Tour -- which is about all French older than one year. The hard-working rider became the public's darling in 2004 by staying 10 days in yellow, before Lance Armstrong crushed a nation's dream and won his first of seven Tours.
Meanwhile France was still waiting for its next Bernard Hinault, a fixture of the Tour who gives away the winning jerseys at the end of every stage during the podium ceremony: yellow for the overall leader, green for the best sprinter, white for the best rider under 25 years old and, my favorite, polka-dot for the ``king of the mountain.'' Once in a while a young rider is heralded as the new Hinault and his career is promptly torpedoed, crushed by pressure and unrealistic expectations. (The same goes in tennis: the last French winner of Roland Garros, the French Open, was Yannick Noah in 1985.)

 (Voecler in yellow surrounded by his team mates in the Pyrenées. Photo by Mathias-S.)

Voeckler was realistic about his chances to stay in yellow on July 10, candidly setting the expectations low. He said in interviews after the stage that he would fight as hard as he could to keep the lead but didn't expect to survive the Pyrenées mountains.

Voeckler is a ``puncher-barouder,'' the type of riders who break away abruptly from the peloton and ride alone or in small groups for hours to try to win a stage. They fight against a peloton of about 180 riders organized in teams who take turns drafting each other to catch up. But to win the 3,430-kilometer (2,130 miles), three-week Tour across France, you need more than kamikaze breakaways: you need to be good at climbing mountains and at time trials too -- not Voeckler's forte. You also need strong teammates who can protect you, bring you bottles of water and help you up the climbs; Voeckler's team was considered weak.

Everyday Voeckler stayed in yellow that week was as sweet as it was unforeseeable. In France, we say that the ``maillot jaune'' can give you wings, and that's what happened to Voeckler in the Pyrenées. There he was, ``our'' Voeckler, keeping up with the leaders in the mountains with panache. In his characteristic style, bouncing around out of the saddle, he looked comfortable amid Andy Schleck, Cadel Evans and Alberto Contador, the three Tour favorites. He fought like a lion and couldn't believe he was able to follow the ``cadors.'' French commentators started saying that Voeckler may have underestimated himself and should revise up his ambitions. After the Pyrenées, France started to dream in yellow: can Voeckler win the Tour?

``Everybody's talking about it,'' Voeckler said in an interview with a French newspaper on July 19, the day before the two most difficult stages in the Alps. ``It's premature. But I start wondering whether I'm right to give myself zero chance to win, or whether you do well to think I may win. Since my last yellow jersey in 2004, I know how it works and I know the French like to think that a French can win."
The seeds of high expectation were planted, even though Voeckler, in the same interview, repeated that he wasn't going to win.

(See video of Voeckler keeping up with the cadors in the Pyrenées here.)

Like a French movie, the story doesn't end well. In the first Alpine stage, Voeckler took risks on a descent and veered off onto the concrete courtyard of a house, losing time. Two days later, after starting the stage with a lead of 15 seconds, Voeckler made what a teammate called a ``small error'' by trying to follow two favorites in the lower portion of the Galibier pass. He should have waited for the third one, Cadel Evans -- the eventual Tour winner. It's the kind of mistake Voeckler wouldn't have made without the yellow jersey on his shoulders.
``We knew Thomas had very little chance to win. He lost more time than we had estimated,'' because of the tactical error, Anthony Charteau, the teammate, wrote in Le Figaro. ``There was so much pressure on him.''
Voeckler lost the lead later that day at the Alpe d'Huez, a legendary climb on the Tour. He was fuming when he crossed the finish, accusing a TV motorcycle of staying too close in front of Contador and allowing him to draft during the ascent of the Galibier. Voeckler's anger was a sign he had begun to believe he could win, in spite of himself. We made him believe it, and now he was crushed. After the following day's stage, the man who was France's hero for 10 days was seen riding his bike alone to his team's hotel. He finished fourth overall.

(View from the Col du Galibier.)

France has already turned its sights to its next big hope: Pierre Rolland, a 24-year-old team mate of Voeckler. Rolland helped his team leader for 10 days, then won the Alpe d'Huez stage after receiving Voeckler's permission to leave his side. He was the first French winner of the coveted stage since...Bernard Hinault. Can Rolland, who won the white jersey for the best young rider this year, be a future Tour winner? That will be France's question, and the cycle of hope -- and the hope of its cycling -- will continue.

La Madeleine: my Tour de Proust

A ``madeleine'' is a little, spongy French cake shaped like the shell of a scallop. The cake was immortalized by Marcel Proust, in ``Du Côté de Chez Swann,'' when the delicious taste of a madeleine soaked in tea revives the narrator's senses and brings back a childhood memory. As I was cycling up the high-mountain pass col de la Madeleine in my native French Alps last month, I had a Proustian reminiscence: the taste of the lemon-flavored madeleines I used to eat as a child.

(Scallop-shell shaped madeleines de Commercy. February 2007. Source: Bernard Leprêtre.)

I've made it a tradition while vacationing in my parents' home in the Alps to climb at least one of the passes classified as ``hors catégorie,'' or beyond classification, that were included in that year's Tour de France. These are the most difficult climbs in the world's most difficult bike race. I rode Alpe d'Huez, probably the most famous climb in the U.S., last year, and col du Galibier, one of my favorites, in 2006 and 2007.

I had no choice this year because the Alps were short-changed in the Tour de France: three stages, out of 20, and only one hors catégorie pass: col de la Madeleine -- which wasn't named after the cake. None of the mythical Alpine passes was included in the 2010 edition: no Alpe d'Huez, no Galibier, no Iseran and no Mont Ventoux. Meanwhile, the Pyrénées mountains in the southwest of France got five stages and five hors catégorie climbs.

The Tour's riders climbed the col de la Madeleine on July 13, the fifth and final pass in the 204.5 kilmeter (127 mile) ninth stage between Morzine-Avoriaz and Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne.

A few days later, my parents, my husband and I drove to the bottom of the col for our own, more modest, ride. Ahead of us was a climb of 26 km, with an average gradient of about 6.4 percent and peaks at more than 10 percent: for every 100 meters you ride, you gain 10 meters in elevation. Overall, we were about to gain almost 1,600 meters in altitude. My husband would reprise his precious role as ``voiture balai,'' which can be translated as ``sweeping broom car.'' It's French cycling jargon for the mini-bus that follows the last riders in the Tour and picks up those who drop out the race. Except my husband drove ahead of us and waited at the top: there was no dropping out possible.

(The road to col de la Madeleine, with view of Mont Blanc in the background.)

My parents, age 62 and 63, had come back the day before at 5 a.m. from a weeklong cycling trip in Corsica. They averaged 100 km a day under temperatures that topped 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahenheit). A week before leaving for Corsica, they'd come back from their annual cycling ride from their home in the Alps to their apartment in Nice, climbing hors catégorie passes such as Mont Ventoux and carrying their own bags.

Since the start of the cycling season, my parents estimated they'd cycled about 3,000 km. I had mainly trained on a stationary bike, with the exception of a hilly 30 miler around our Pennsylvania home and a few climbs up my favorite local mountain in the Alps, col du Granier. Training on the stationary bike had worked to prepare for the Galibier, so I figured it would work for la Madeleine, which is shorter and easier.

The climb started off with 3 km of steady slope averaging 8 percent to 9 percent: there was no time to warm up. I discovered a novelty in my mountains: an increasing number of roads -- especially those leading to famous Tour de France passes -- have signs every kilometer announcing the average gradient of the following kilometer. It can be both a blessing and a heart-breaker: I was relieved when I saw a 4 percent sign after the steep slopes of the first few kilometers, and crushed in the second half of the climb when encountering several signs for 9 percent or more in a row. There was a downhill section around kilometer 10, and an easy slope at kilometer 19, which allowed my legs to recoup before heading to steeper sections.

(There's no train to col de la Madeleine, but cows get to watch cyclists passing by.)

As I approached kilometer 16, I recalled the TV coverage of the Tour at the same spot a few days earlier: I went up in the saddle, pretending I was one of the riders. I could hear the voice of Laurent Fignon, a former professional cyclist and now a commentator of the Tour on French television. Fignon, who won the race in 1984 and 1985, was diagnosed with intestinal-tract cancer last year. This year, he was still commenting on the Tour live, in a raspy voice altered by a tumor affecting his vocal folds.
Andy Schleck, the young rider from Luxemburg, should attack if he wants to leave behind Alberto Contador, the 2009 race winner, I remembered Fignon saying. That's what Schleck did a few moments later, but Contador went up in the saddle and stayed in his wheel. Schleck took the lead of the race and the yellow jersey at the end of that stage, but he lost the overall race to Contador 1 1/2 week later by 8 seconds.

I didn't attack anyone. In the final kilometers, a cyclist in his 40s or 50s, passed me. I expected him to go faster, but he slowed down, so I went up in the saddle and passed him back. At the top, I was greeted by the clinging bells of a herd of cows after a two-hour ride. My father followed about 20 minutes later and my mother about 10 minutes after that. After taking pictures, I decided to add a solo ride down the other side of the mountain, adding about 10 kilometers and visiting another place of my childhood: Saint Francois Longchamps, a winter resort where I used to ski.

(The cycling family reunited at col de la Madeleine.)