“2003 Tour de France, Stage 15”

I'm so glad that NPR wasn't able to spoil stage 15 for me. What a race! With only six miles left in the stage, Armstrong was counter-attacking in response to a weak attack from Iban Mayo. As has been widely reported already, Armstrong crashed (video) when a kid by the side of the road snagged his handlebars with a bag of food (a musette), and was immediately transformed into a human anchor for the Good Ship Armstrong. Down he went. (If you watch the video, look for the yellow bag to go flying as Armstrong falls. It's hooked on the right of the handlebars, the left side of the movie.)

Then, as he was starting to catch up with the leaders again (the group he'd been in front of moments before), his cleat disengaged and he almost went down again. As Paul Sherwen put it, "he almost lost his manhood." Now he calmed down, reengaged the cleats, and turned on the juice. He didn't just catch the group, he rode right past them and finished the stage about 40 seconds ahead of Ulrich.

Now, the commentators are giving Ulrich a lot of credit for slowing down and waiting for Armstrong. He did slow down, that's true, and it's true that Armstrong did the same thing a couple years ago when Ulrich rode right off the side of the mountain and into a stream.

Bupkus. I watched the stage. Ulrich doesn't get any credit for this. He narrowly avoided Armstrong's fall, turned to look at him, and then very clearly got back to the business of riding.

The only reason the whole group of leaders didn't ride away from him at full steam was that Tyler Hamilton -- that super-human freak who's riding with a broken collar bone -- rode out in front of them and TOLD them all to slow down. You can even see him waving his arms, clearly making gestures to slow down and wait. Ulrich hung his head and slowed, along with everybody else. (Here's a video where Frankie, at least, makes it clear that they slowed down because of Tyler's efforts.)

Ulrich's a good, strong rider, but that doesn't make him "chivalrous" as they reported on NPR this morning. Hamilton deserves the credit for this honorable gesture, for shaming Ulrich into doing the right thing. All the newsies keep repeating the same stupid line, "there's an unrwritten rule that you don't attack the yellow jersey due to an accident or a mechanical," but the point is that this is an unwritten rule. Ulrich would have been within his rights to take off as fast as he could, but that wouldn't have made it right.

I certainly understand what Ulrich was thinking, though. "Wait for him!? I know that look. His strength is clearly back, and he was leaving us in the dust. Now I'm supposed to wait for him so he can do it again?" Honestly, though, I think if he had kept going he would only have saved himself five seconds.

Hamilton's riding and pain tolerance are impressive, but I'm more impressed with his personality. He did the Right Thing. I'm not going to get all mushy about him like Kirsten does every time she says his name, but I have to admit she could have picked a less deserving object for her affections.

But wait, that's not all! One more impressive moment on the ride: after Lance had left everybody else behind, he caught the man who had led the stage the whole way, the lone surviving breakaway, and gave him a "good job" pat on the back on his way by. It sounds sarcastic or insincere, but you had to see it... this guy had led for the entire day, and Lance was almost sorry he had to take the stage win away from him.