On Bastille Day at the Tour de France, Alberto Contador’s fall and the rise of a new guard

PARIS, France -- The somewhat overlooked history of the French Revolution is that the aristocracy played a hand in its own demise. The conventional narrative, briefly, is that the third estate -- comprised of everyone who wasn’t in the church or nobility -- revolted against those who had stymied social mobility. This led, through several steps, to the storming of the Bastille and then, another century-plus of revolts later, something like the democracy France enjoys today.

Which is all true, but also incomplete if it assumes the nobility as a unified block. The Second Estate had in fact become fractured, as the historian David Bien pointed out*, with many former commoners becoming ennobled by purchasing lofty, work-light titles from a cash-strapped state. This sparked a blowback from the old nobility. The Ségur law, enacted in 1781, required all potential army officers to prove they had four generations of nobility on their father’s side. It had been understood by historians as a check to keep the Bourgeois from gaining greater standing, but Bien argued this wasn’t entirely the case, and suggested, rather, that the old nobility was beating back the new. In the process, Ségur created a significant portion of nobility who, if they didn’t outright participate in the revolution, were not as fearful of its consequences as they should have been because they stood to benefit in some way.

Now, 234 years later, France has things like bread and wine and bad movie title translations like Sexy Dance 5. On Bastille Day, Paris didn’t feel like a particularly revolutionary place, but for a few gendarmes tasked with standing in intersections while wearing pristine white uniforms, and a lot of impressive-looking military vehicles roaming the streets with nothing to do. There was a military parade up and down the Champs-Élysées, but you couldn’t get within 50 yards of the street, at least where I was around the Place Charles de Gaulle and the Arc de Triomphe. No, the best display of revolutionary esprit was a bike race.

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Thibaut Pinot climbs to the finish on Bastille Day (Photo: Doug Pensinger, Getty)Midway through 161 kilometers of mortal hell, Alberto Contador fell on a reckless descent, and then abandoned the Tour de France. With him went the race’s last remaining favorite and only chance at a repeat winner. A Frenchman -- Tony Gallopin, just 26 years old -- proudly wore yellow on the day, though his assumption of the top spot on the general classification was as much a result of his hard work as it was Vincenzo Nibali and Astana’s decision to relinquish it. Wearing the Maillot Jaune makes one a literally marked man, and Nibali preferred to ride relatively incognito for the Tour’s turning point.

Entering the Tour de France, Nibali was in position to challenge Chris Froome’s perceived dominance even before the Brit crashed out. Nibali finished third in the 2012 Tour de France, but at a significant distance back from Froome (+2’58”) and winner Bradley Wiggins (+6’19”), and then took a hiatus from France to win the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España last year. Unfortunately for Nibali, Froome’s abandonment meant he wouldn’t be toppling Team Sky entirely on his own merits, but thus far Nibali has dominated the competition. With a 2’23” lead over Sky’s Richie Porte, he is threatening to turn the rest of the Tour into a procession leading up to his coronation on the Champs-Élysées.

Lurking behind Nibali, Porte and faithful old-hand Alejandro Valverde are three young, promising frenchmen. Gallopin, in fifth, is the eldest, and is flanked in the standings by Romain Bardet, 23, in fourth place and Thibaut Pinot, 24, in sixth. Gallopin’s palpable disappointment at giving up the yellow jersey should not cloud what was a banner day for Pinot -- who finished second, just 15 seconds behind Nibali -- and Bardet, who took fifth on the stage and now holds the white jersey as the leader atop the young riders’ classification. Pinot is second in the classification.

Carnage has been the overarching storyline, producing spinoff talking points about Nibali and the French youth movement. Contador joined Froome, Mark Cavendish and 16 others who abandoned before they were ready, making 19 riders lost in 10 stages -- that’s before the Alps and the Pyrenees, mind you -- and putting the Tour on pace to finish with well fewer than the 169 finishers at last year’s race.

Contador’s exit is good fortune for Nibali, who had already recalculated once during the Tour when Froome went down, and will do so again with the Spaniard missing.

“Since Arenberg [stage 5], we have always controlled and I was expecting attacks from Contador, so in the next stages, I’ll look at controlling again but without him,” Nibali said during his post-race press conference. “I’ll try to keep the yellow jersey but I won’t be left without rivals. Richie Porte and Alejandro Valverde are up there. I’ll have to handle my advantage.”

Nibali spoke like a man with some idea that his biggest threat, at this point, is himself. You can take that as acknowledgement of the disastrous turns for Froome and Contador, or as a bit of well-earned hubris. He wouldn’t be wrong to assume that the Tour de France is his to lose. Along with that assumption, however, is the question of whether he should be more scared than he is.

*Since I can’t hyperlink it properly, see: ‘The army in the French Enlightenment: reform, reaction and the French Revolution’ by David Bien, published Nov. 1979 by Oxford University Press. I didn’t do near enough justice to the immense effort and research that went into his article. David Bien is a premiere French historian, as well as my grandfather.