NTSF 102: Final majors of 2010 in cycling and tennis, soccer’s tournament cycle begins anew and more…

Wow… seems that the beer my wife bought me last night really did a number on me. As I sat in front of the computer on Wednesday, digesting the 22 ounces of Bourbon County Brand Stout by Goose Island Brewery (13.0% alcohol by volume) and trying to finish up stage recaps from the Vuelta and musings from the U.S. Open and yes, this column as well, I instead felt my eyelids falling, falling, falling…

Meet the culprit that kept me from finishing this week's NTSF on time... and don't hesitate to grab one of your own!

A shower couldn’t snap me out of it. I kept staring at the computer screen, nodding in and out, punching incoherent phrases into the computer that would have to be deleted every time I snapped back to it. I set myself down on the couch for a catnap, but that ended up becoming a full night of sleep (six whole hours for this insomniac!) — and thus you get this column as an evening feature today instead of a morning fix. For those who have become addicted to your Thursday-morning pick-me-up on all things non-traditional, I sincerely apologize for the tardiness.

It seems I’ve been incredibly comatose lately. On Monday we had friends in town and decided to take them out for a nice Italian dinner. So what do I do? After ordering a massive plate of fettuccine and ravioli that must’ve weighed in at three or four pounds’ worth of pasta, I now know how a competitive eater might really feel following a gorging session. (I don’t understand how Kobayashi’s twisting motion actually does anything after trying it to alleviate my pressure.) Everyone except my wife seemed to go overboard… the house was one puddle of lethargy as soon as we returned from the restaurant. (And our plumbing still shrieks following its mistreatment by a quartet of overstuffed males.) That kept me from getting out early coverage of the Vuelta and U.S. Open, the last two main events in cycling and tennis for which I’m doing daily recaps this year.

And then there was that beer last night. Who would’ve thought that less than two glasses could possibly have done in this well-conditioned drinker? I guess when your bottle has more alcohol in it than most red wines, though, you shouldn’t be too surprised when you wake up in a pool of drool on your keyboard. So with a head still a little foggy from the booze, there’s no time like the present to dive in to this week’s belated edition of A Non-Traditional Sports Fan in America…

CYCLING TAKES ON A SPANISH FLAVOR FOR LAST GRAND TOUR…

Last Saturday the Vuelta a España kicked off its 75th anniversary with a nighttime start in Sevilla. Not every rider loved the team time trial in the streetlight, but by and large the quarter-million fans along the 14.4-kilometer route were giddy at the spectacle. Since then we’ve seen sprint finishes, wicked climbs, and more. We’ve seen the passing of a cycling legend. Through all of this past week and in the weeks to come, I’ve been following the race stage by stage here at Sports Nickel; below are excerpts along with links to all the daily coverage:

• STAGE 1 (Sevilla TTT): The only team left with any hope was Rabobank, looking to place their contender (and the only former champion in this year’s race) Denis Menchov into a strong position heading into the Vuelta’s first week. But the longtime standard-bearer for Dutch cycling teams has never been that strong in the team time trial discipline, lacking the engines to drive the echelon a la Columbia or Garmin or Saxo Bank or Liquigas. Finishing 18th out of the 22 teams, they forfeited 36 seconds on the road to the leaders. In the process, Menchov begins the rest of the race already down 26 seconds to Kreuziger and Nibali, 24 seconds behind the Schlecks and 23 seconds from Carlos Sastre. It isn’t an insurmountable gap, but it is a wider margin than the Rabobank leadership had hoped to see. Once the dust settled into the Spanish night, no team had managed to come within ten seconds of Columbia’s winning time, and Cavendish wrapped himself in another leader’s jersey after his team also won the team time trial at the opening stage of the 2009 Giro d’Italia….   READ MORE HERE
• STAGE 2 (Alcalá de Guadaíra to Marbella): After their head-to-head battle on the Pruna, though, the three remaining riders off the front returned to their cooperative effort in hopes that they might still be able to stay away to the finish line long enough so that they could battle for the stage victory amongst themselves. The heat started to take its toll, though, the mercury in Spanish thermometers spiking near 100 degrees in the region through which the cyclists were riding. The leading trio started to fracture, as each man started to form visions of a solo ride into Marbella. The scrambling and dysfunction up in the leading group allowed the peloton to reel the gap in, teams like Columbia and Garmin and Lampre preparing for the big finish. The long downhill stretch did little to energize the flagging chances of Delage, Ramírez and Walker, minutes melting away from their lead as their hopes of a stage win began to look more and more futile with each passing kilometer. And thus the catch came, 12 kilometers from the finish in Marbella….   READ MORE HERE
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  The Columbia squad, with its heavy firepower lined up in Sevilla, captured the first lead in the 2010 Vuelta with their masterful performance in the nighttime TTT in Sevilla...

  STAGE 3 (Marbella to Málaga): It was bound to be a day when Mark Cavendish finally lost his hold of the red jersey as race leader, with first- and second-category climbs spiking up out of the route as well as a punishing last two kilometers that ramp up to pitches well into the double digits in grade. Cavendish, a pure sprinter, would have been fine without the finishing ramp added into the finale. Instead it would be another man gracing the podium on the day, the Manxman enjoying his two days in the sun and now left to try to regain his points jersey. By the end of this stage, one man would assert his dominance on this particular chunk of roadway. Philippe Gilbert, the Belgian classics specialist who has conquered the Het Volk twice and the 2009 Giro di Lombardia and this spring’s Amstel Gold Race along terrain similar to Stage 3, basically conquered everything in his path, ascending the podium thrice on the day….   READ MORE HERE

• STAGE 4 (Málaga to Valdepeñas de Jaén): The mood at the start in Málaga was solemn as the peloton and assembled media, fans and team and race personnel learned of the passing of two-time Tour de France champion Laurent Fignon. Remembered more by fans — and especially American fans — as the blond-haired, granny-spectacles-wearing Frenchman who turned a 50-second lead heading into the final-day time trial at the 1989 Tour into an eight-second deficit at the finale than one of the most dominant stage racers and all-around powerful cyclists during the 1980s, Fignon lost a long battle with cancer and passed away at age 50 in Paris. Fignon was a rider whose candid tale of what drug use really meant back in those pelotons twenty, thirty years past and how their use of chemicals of ever-increasing potency might just have led to the ultimate breakdown of their bodies to damage no drug nor level of endurance can mend. “In those days everyone was doing it,” he explained in his recent book We Were Young and Carefree. “But it is impossible to know to what extent doping harms you. Whether those who lived through 1998, when a lot of extreme things happened, will get cancer after 10 or 20 years, I really can’t say.” It is a rough wake-up call of the fact that even the best of champions, whose natural abilities would have them far ahead of the pack regardless of the situation, feel the same need to “keep up with the Joneses” as any other athlete (or us fans, for that matter)…   READ MORE HERE
• STAGE 5 (Guadix to Lorca): It was a day where GC leader Philippe Gilbert, after muscling his way to the stage victory and the red jersey on Monday and keeping grip on it Tuesday despite a second straight leg-busting uphill finish, could finally sit back in the pack with his Omega Pharma-Lotto teammates and preserve his strength and his jersey. And with absolutely no categorized climbs on the stage, Serafin Martinez (Xacobeo Galicia) didn’t have to worry about hitting any summits and could likewise sit back and relax. Instead it was Cavendish’s prime chance to capture his first individual stage victory of his career at the Vuelta. He was forced to freelance his way to the finish line, though, as his lead-out man Matthew Goss lost contact in the final five kilometers and left the Manxman on his own. It would be a recipe for disaster, as Cavendish opened up his sprint with half a kilometer still left to race. It would prove about 200m too early…   READ MORE HERE