Carlito’s Way: The Tour’s Improbable Winner
Carlos Sastre has a reputation of being a cool customer under pressure.
After 11 seasons as a pro, nothing rankles the 33-year-old veteran too much.
From doping scandals that nearly toppled his CSC team after captain Ivan Basso was implicated in the Operación Puerto doping scandal to the death of his brother-in-law, José María “El Chaba” Jiménez in 2003 at just 32, he’d seen it all.
But just hours before his defense of the yellow jersey in Saturday’s decisive time trial at Saint-Amand, you’d think he would feel the pressure. Wrong. After recon'ing the course, Sastre took a nap before preparing for the time trial of his life.
Six hours later, Sastre was crossing himself at the finish line, all but secure the yellow jersey was his.
“Sastre is a cool customer,” said CSC-Saxo Bank boss Bjarne Riis. “He’s never nervous, he doesn’t panic. That’s his strong point. At the end of three weeks, there’s no one who’s stronger than Carlos.”
In two great performances in the two most decisive days of the Tour, Sastre left behind a career of near misses and unsung consistency to become just the seventh Spanish rider to win the Tour.
After finishing fourth no less than three times (he was bumped to third in 2006 following the doping positive of Floyd Landis), Sastre was considered a long shot for victory this year.
At 33 and after a quiet run up to the Tour where his best result all season was seventh in the time trial at the lowly Vuelta a Murcia back in March, everyone expected Riis to throw his faith behind the rising prospects of the Schleck brothers.
But Sastre was Riis’s joker, his ace in the hole.
While Frank Schleck took yellow at Prato Nevoso in stage 15 and stepped happily into the spotlight, no one seemed to notice as Sastre disappeared up the road to chase Bernhard Kohl in a late-stage attack in what was the first time the Spanish climber had lifted his head during the entire Tour. Sastre finished sixth in the stage and took 47 seconds back on Evans.
At Alpe d’Huez, Riis was ready to play the Sastre card. If the Spanish climber could get enough time on superior time trialists such as Evans and Denis Menchov, he might just be able to win the Tour.
Riis sat down with Sastre and Schleck in the team’s hotel the night before the decisive stage. He outlined his strategy: Schleck would sacrifice his yellow jersey for Sastre. It was the team’s best and only hope.
Many couldn’t believe it when Sastre attacked on the second switchback up the 21 lacets on cycling’s most famous climb. It was too far, too late, it wasn’t going to work.
The Schlecks held up their end of the bargain. Frank sat in as his teammate rode away with his yellow jersey while Andy Schleck, winner of the best young rider’s jersey and arguably the strongest climber in the final week of the Tour, sucked wheels to neutralize half-hearted counter-attacks from Alejandro Valverde, Evans and Samuel Sánchez.
When the dust settled, the gregario-turned-GC leader pulled a dramatic double, winning at the Alpe and taking the yellow jersey.
Sastre couldn’t smile just yet. Evans was lurking at 1:34. Most didn’t believe that Sastre could fend him off. In all their Tour time trial showdowns, Sastre had only beaten Evans once — that was in the 19km time trial to open the 2005 Tour when Sastre took nine seconds in what was the Australian’s first Tour. Since then, Evans always took time on Sastre.
Evans took time on Sastre, but not enough. Sastre crossed himself as he slipped across the finish line to secure the yellow jersey. After a career largely in the shadows, Sastre was grateful.
As the third straight Spanish winner, Sastre is an overnight sensation 11 seasons in the making.
Sastre isn’t someone who actively searches out the limelight so newfound attention might come as a shock.
A father of two, Sastre married Jiménez’ sister and still lives down the street from his parents and in-laws. He’s discreetly been working with under privileged children and will visit a cancer ward Tuesday morning before an appearance in a post-Tour criterium in Belgium.
The team’s staff and mechanics call him “Carlitos.” Alejandro Torralbo, a former wrench for such riders as Tony Rominger and Abraham Olano, says Sastre is a class act.
“Everyone speaks about Carlos the racer, but it’s the man I appreciate more. He’s someone who’s gentle, friendly, honest,” Torralbo told AFP. “Saturday night after dinner, he came out to see us (mechanics) at the bus to visit with us. He had just won the Tour and it wasn’t something that was required. He doesn’t forget people. I don’t think the yellow jersey will change him as a person. He will always be Carlos.”
Sastre hails from El Barraco, a small village nestled in narrow valley on the north side of the Gredos mountains of central Spain. It was a dead-end kind of place where kids were turning onto drugs and vandalism when the economy collapsed in the years following the fall of the Franco regime.
Sastre’s father didn’t want his sons to follow in the same footsteps and formed a cycling club to bring in troubled teens. Put them on a bike and they won’t cause any trouble; that was the thinking at least.
Sastre and future brother-in-law Jiménez were the two diamonds in the rough of the club. Jiménez was the more charismatic and productive of the two. El Chaba was the star, Sastre was the gregario.
Jiménez went on to become a Spanish version of Marco Pantani. In the 1990s, there was no climber as exciting or as unpredictable as Jiménez, but like Pantani, Jiménez fell to the demon of drugs and died of an apparent heart attack in 2003 at 32.
Sastre was a promising climber on ONCE, where he learned about passion for racing from Laurent Jalabert. Not good enough to make the Tour team, the squad sent him to the Tour of Burgos, which he promptly won.
In 2002, he joined CSC, but other riders, first Tyler Hamilton, later Basso, always overshadowed him.
“When I came to this team, I was a leader in parenthesis because I was always behind either (Tyler) Hamilton or Basso,” Sastre told VeloNews earlier this year. “I now have the respect and support of my team and this has helped me recover this little spark that you need to fight, to work and to keep going. This is what the most important thing I’ve pulled from the past two years.”
Sastre now speaks of “balance” and “tranquility” in his personal life that allowed him to fully dedicate himself to the full-time job of preparing for the Tour de France.
“It’s just in the past two years, in 2006 and 2007, that I’ve finally been able to become the rider that I believed I could be. This rider that attacks and who isn’t afraid of what comes before or after. This rider who can turn a race upside down,” Sastre said. “Things didn’t always go as I would have liked, but things haven’t gone too bad, either.”
The world got their first glimpse of the “real” Sastre in the 2006 Tour, when Basso was unexpectedly ejected from the Tour due to his later-proven links to Puerto.
Sastre was like a bird set free from its cage and he attacked with a vengeance in the Alps, almost riding away with the maillot jaune when he was arguably the strongest rider in the final week of the 2006 Tour.
Like 2006, Sastre shone in the final week but settled into fourth yet again in 2007.
This year, the secret plan was to spring Sastre in the final week. This time, it paid off.
