CHAOS THEORY
While much of the pre-Tour speculation has revolved around Chris Froome and his perennial runner-up Nairo Quintana, the only other rider in the current peloton to have won the yellow jersey has been lurking in the shadows
W hen Vincenzo Nibali crossed the finish line of Milan-San Remo, his arms high in the air and the snarling onrush of thwarted sprinters swamping him just metres later, he continued a winning streak that is unique in cycling right now. Some riders collect multiple editions of a small number of races that suit their specialisation, like Chris Froome at the Tour de France or Alejandro Valverde at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Flèche Wallonne. Nibali, on the other hand, has approached the building of his palmarès in the opposite way – he rarely wins races more than one or two times, but the spread of victories is as wide as San Remo’s Via Roma. He’s the only rider in the peloton who has won a grand tour or a monument every year since 2013 (and the last time he didn’t achieve at least a podium in one of these was in 2009).
Even more unusually, Nibali is a Tour winner who wins monuments. Froome hasn’t come close to winning one, while the only other Tour winner since 1985 to have done so was 2010 winner Andy Schleck, who also won Liège. (The World Championships road race is kinder to Tour winners – both 2011 yellow jersey winner Cadel Evans and 1986/9/90 Tour champion Greg LeMond won it.)
Nibali’s collection of wins includes the Tour, the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España (he’s one of seven riders to have won all three grand tours in the history of cycling – six if Froome loses his Vuelta crown to his adverse analytical finding for salbutamol), plus Milan-San Remo and Il Lombardia. He’s come within a kilometre of winning Liège-Bastogne-Liège, his 2012 solo break having been snuffed out on the final long drag to Ans.
Perhaps the ability to win so many different races – all the grand tours, San Remo, Lombardia – has made Nibali less faithful to the French race. Froome, after all, has based his season around the Tour every year since 2012, but Nibali hasn’t focused on it since 2015.
For a former winner of the race, Nibali has a diffident relationship with the Tour. Since 2010 he’s ridden four out of eight editions and in his last outing, in 2016, he came an unambitious 30th, having already won the Giro that year. Even in 2015, when he came fourth overall and won a stage in the Alps, the perception was largely that he’d underachieved, having conceded a morale-battering four-and-a-half minutes to Froome in the first Pyrenean stage at La Pierre Saint Martin.
Nibali finished sixth in the 2009 Tour at the age of 24. He’d have won the white jersey if it hadn’t been for Andy Schleck, seven months younger than Nibali, coming second overall. But he missed a couple of Tours when his Liquigas team leader Ivan Basso pulled rank and led in France, while the management pushed him towards gaining experience in the Giro and Vuelta. Even a third overall in the 2012 Tour and subsequent win in the 2013 Giro didn’t change the perception that he lacked the X factor necessary to win the Tour. His Tour win eventually came in 2014 when he took the initiative early, with a win on stage 2 in Sheffield and an extraordinary ride on the cobbles of northern France three days later. While Froome and Contador crashed out, and with Nairo Quintana absent, Nibali dominated the race, winning at will in the mountains and eventually putting 7:39 into runner-up Jean-Christophe Péraud.
While most other recent winners have been in the climber-rouleur mould of the classic Tour champion, Nibali is different. His record in the Classics, and the way he navigated his way through the hazards of 2014 while others could not, demonstrate that he thrives in chaos. His 2016 Giro win was forged in the fog of war which descended on the race just three days from the end – he’d been unable to crack longtime leader Steven Kruijswijk on the climbs, so he broke his resolve on different territory: the downhills.
Nibali’s problem is this: the Tour is not normally so chaotic, especially in the era of Team Sky. However, the organisers and institutions of cycling are on his side – the UCI’s decision to reduce team sizes and the traps that ASO has laid in the form of hilly and cobbled stages in the first 10 days of the 2018 Tour will suit him. Other riders may be more favoured by the bookies, but that was the case in Milan-San Remo, and look what happened there.