Lest Ye Forget.... Lanterne Rouge 2011!
 

It's been a brutal, crash-riddled 9 days of racing. So which noble rider is leading the Race For Last Place?

178. Addy Engels, Quick Step Cycling Team, at 1:13:16
179. Gert Steegmans, Quick Step Cycling Team, at 1:21:28
180. Vincent Jerome, Team Europcar, at 1:28:50

As a reminder, last year's Lanterne Rouge was Adriano Malori of Lampre, whose average for the entire race was only 1.1mph slower than Contador....

You must realize that this person finished the race in last place. Granted he is last, there are many, many riders who dropped prior to him. I'm not going into why they dropped (mostly injuries), but they did not make the race. Hell if i got the award, i would still be proud that I made it to the end of the race.

Getting last place in the Tour de France is probably harder than winning 99% of all other sporting events.

Slow and steady completes the race.

I wouldn't call a 23mph average over 2,275 miles "slow".

Neither would I--but then, neither of us are riding the Tour de France :D.

I :love: the Lanterne Rouge. Even the last place rider in the TdF could kick the butt of 99.9%* of the cyclists on the planet.

*This is a made-up statistic. Still, it's probably a bit low, since it implies 1 rider in every 1000 could beat the Lanterne Rouge to the top of L'Alpe d'Huez...which I pretty much doubt.

"Le Tour idéal serait un Tour où un seul coureur réussirait à terminer l'epreuve" - Henri Desgrange, founder of Le Tour de France


Translation: "The ideal Tour would be a Tour in which only one rider survived the ordeal"

Actually, I get something more like "The ideal Tour would be a Tour where a single racer succeeded in finishing the test." Basically the same thing, with not quite such bloodthirsty overtones :D. [ETA: Not a native French speaker, so if you are I bow to your knowledge and translation.]

Kind of like when Phil or Paul says "so-and-so is no longer with us," meaning they're out of the race, not that they died.

Heh I know nothing about French, used someone elses translation :)

Stage 11; no decisive moves yet.

175. Vladimir Isaichev, Katusha Team, at 1:28:46
176. Gert Steegmans, Quick Step Cycling Team, at 1:33:10
177. Vincent Jerome, Team Europcar, at 1:35:50

There was a French film about a lanterne rouge in the '60s or '70s and the publicity about him - anyone remember it?

Jerome is still in the "lead," while losing lots of time overall:

173. Vladimir Isaichev, Katusha Team, at 2:01:01
174. Gert Steegmans, Quick Step Cycling Team, at 2:05:25
175. Vincent Jerome, Team Europcar, at 2:08:05

Big shakeups in the back of the field today (Stage 13)!

Both Isaichev and Steegmans are out of the Tour, whilst Jerome hangs in.

169 Fabio Sabatini (Ita) Liquigas-Cannondale 2:07:02
170 Vincent Jerome (Fra) Team Europcar 2:09:52
171 Andrey Amador Bakkazakova (CRc) Movistar Team 2:14:45

168. http://www.letour.fr/img/drapeau/ITA.jpgSABATINI Fabio 97 LIQUIGAS-CANNONDALE 63h 37' 09" + 2h 32' 59"
169. http://www.letour.fr/img/drapeau/FRA.jpgJEROME Vincent 185 TEAM EUROPCAR 63h 37' 48" + 2h 33' 38"
170. http://www.letour.fr/img/drapeau/CRC.jpgAMADOR Andrey 82 MOVISTAR TEAM 63h 45' 42" + 2h 41' 32"

No change in rankings today, it seems.

If Jerome attacks on Alpe D'huez from the base all the way to the summit, it'll catapult him into 179th. I'm rooting for him.

Oops, I spoke too soon.

Wouldn't that be a trip for Europcar to take both the yellow and Lanterne Rouge in Paris next week? Anyone know when that was done last (I assume it has been done)?

I knew there was a reason that Quick Step wanted Steegmans back!

Should rename this as the Wim Vansevenant trophy, as he managed the feat 3 three years in a row.

Depends who you include in the class "cyclist", but if you take just road racers, 1 in a 1000 might be a reasonable estimate. For ~200 TdF racers, they would be 1 in a 1000 if there were the elite among 200,000 road racers world wide. There are 40,000 licensed by US Cycling alone, so maybe 200,000 worldwide is a good ballpark number,

Of course, that leaves out all the serious recreational riders who don't race. and it leaves out the mountain bike racers, etc..

I like this thread, I think its far more interesting than the one for the lead!

I was thinking about this, as the LR thread has consistently been one of the most entertaining over the last few years, and WV was such a protagonist. But then I began to wonder if he was going to be stripped of his title for the usual reason...

More data:

From a recent Cycling News article titled Inner Ring: Spare a Thought for the Gruppetto http://www.cyclingnews.com/blogs/inn...-the-gruppetto (bolding mine):

"The slowest schedule for Stage 19’s stage across the Galibier and up to Alpe d’Huez predicts the winner will take 3 hours 18 minutes and my calculations put the cut-off at 26 minutes. So let’s call it 3.44 for the slowest permissible time on the day. In fine weather last week, and with fresh legs, more than 7,000 amateurs tackled Stage 19 in the Etape du Tour cyclosport race and. Only four of them managed to beat the Tour de France cut-off time."

Stage 16 Results:

168. Danny Pate, Htc – Highroad, at 2:36:04
169. Fabio Sabatini, Liquigas-Cannondale, at 2:43:40
170. Andrey Amador, Movistar Team, at 2:53:29

I didn't see any abandons listed for stages 15 or 16, and the back of the field doesn't seem to have lost huge amounts of time since stage 14.