Tour De France 2005

I'm still a Lance booster though - he's just a freakishly good cycling assassin.

Lance and his band of Cycling All-Stars are looking untouchable right now. We're not in the mountains yet and his serious rivals are all trailing him by 1.5 - 2 minutes. In past years, he's blown the race apart in the first couple of days in the mountains, but right now his lead over the GC contenders is large enough that he can bide his time, gauge the strategy of the other teams, and make a move if and/or when he feels like it (keeping in mind that he's also dominated the TT's in 2004-5, with only Ullrich coming anywhere close to his level).

Lance will win it on stage 11 methinks - it looks an absolute killer.

No sign of Beloki coming good again though :( and Euskatel did very badly but maybe Iban will come good round stage 10/11

At this moment, it looks like we're headed down the same path as 2002 and 2004, with DiscChan driving the pace in the mountains while everybody else keeps pace for as long as they can, wondering when Lance is going to attack and hoping that they can stay with him when he does. They've got to throw a wrench into Lance's plan or else this race might as well be over right now.

I thought last year was fairly exciting, just to marvel at Lance's incredible performance (particularly after a rough 2003). 2003 was the shit, yes. 2001 was also great because the Ullrich-Armstrong battles were so compelling. 2000 and 2002 were a bit boring and predictable. 1999 was good as Lance surprised everyone by winning. 1998 was very exciting, but for the wrong reasons. 1997 was Ullrich's coming out party, and before that you had the bleh Indurain years, etc.

Armstrong's going to - ha ha - walk it this year.

Plus which the feller that does the cycling on the BBC isn't very good.

That TTT was deeply unsatisfying for me. Not like I knew Zabriskie was gonna crash, but after watching Disco go through the chicanes in town, I was pretty concerned that something would go awry for somebody either on Disco or CSC. Fast, fast, fast.

While I wait for Armstrong to have a bad day, there's plenty of storylines to follow. What stage will Horner try to slay in order to grab back some of the 5 minutes he's already trailing? When will McEwan time his move properly to get his stage(s)? Will the French win a stage this year (christ, they look TERRIBLE)? Will T-Mobile rally to Vinokourov instead of Ullrich? If Ullrich pulls himself into contention, will he do the proper thing and punch his sorry-ass boss Godefroot in the mouth? This is why the Tour is great--it's like all the storylines of the Superbowl, times 9 teams times 20 days.

One of the stages this weekend (July 10?) is reputedly the sort of long-breakaway stage that Virenque used to always exploit.

I'm not sure I'm buying all the "turmoil within T-Mobile!" doomsayers -- the press is having a field day with this stuff and I can't be bothered to try separating the facts from the rumours. We certainly won't know anything until the mountains, just like last year with Kloeden/Ullrich.

He, or at least his name, makes bicycles.

After the crash with 3 km to go, it's possible that the pack took it a little easier through that nasty turn later on.

Did you see how fast Hushovd looked to be coming on? Exactly what Itchy and Scratchy Cooke and Eisel were doing was unclear. Weird leadout, lack of firepower from the back, but also no clean lane given.

Yes, this was very strange. The leadout from FdJ was there in the last 500m but the sprint from Cooke and Eisel never happened. IIRC, Boonen was also trapped near the rails during the leadout, but managed to swing out closer to the middle for the sprint, so maybe Itchy and Scratchy were cut off, I don't know.

Did anyone catch the pre-race interview with Armstrong explaining his attempt to forego the yellow jersey? It was like, all the right words were coming out, but the delivery was so unconvincing. The body language was all wrong. You could see his jaw muscles clenching (hard) as picked his way through the explanation. I don't think he believed a word he said. I don't think he's eeeeevil, but if he wants to do politics, he's got to learn how to sell a nice story better.

?!

Oh shut up. I'd like to see someone give him a run this year, but this kind of "hate the winner" sorta stuff is just stupid.

Would the Tour be improved if it was made open i.e. all drugs permitted if declared? Racing cyclists lose ten years of life on average, medicated or not, so who exactly is being protected here.

This would probably change nothing as they're all on drugs anyway.

OTM.

"Suffering" could be (very roughly) defined scientifically in terms of %age of maximum output. Due to drugs, the maximum output (in Watts) is larger, but the %age of maximum output at which they cycle can remain constant.

The other thing with EPO is that it supposedly really speeds recovery, which is so key in a SR-- or in a period of intense "crashing" for SR training.

Has anyone experimented with placebos?

I'm sure the clients paying the Dr. Ferraris of the cycling world would be pretty pissed to find out they're not getting the good shit.

Anyway... todays stage looked great. I think if I'd been Kloden, losing by a pixel I'd be just a bit gutted. Lance did well keeping up with all the attacks, but can he keep that up for the next 2 weeks without some help from his team?

Horner, whom I think usually is one astute mofo, commented "I mean let's just sacrifice two guys on the front and bring 'em back and go for the stage win. Or just sit up and let Lance lose the maximum time. Hey it's one or the other. You either play for the win, or one or the other." Of course, the former woulda been great for him, he is a decent finisher. Tomorrow might be a good stage for him to try and stick something to the finish.

At one point Ligett noted Boogerd's presence and stated that he'd be a hopeful for a sprint and I thought "oh, Phil, even with a bunch of climbers, he'd mess it up."

They felt they'd made their point via all those attacks on the ascent, once the group of ~ 40 made it down the descent without catching the leaders their only concern was finishing with Lance.

Despite Kloeden's great performance, today's stage still reinforced the notion that he's a distant third in the T-Mobile pecking order. Vino looked like he had the legs to win today but obviously there was no chance he was getting away.

We ended up getting a long breakaway win after all -- sort of ...

Anyhow, this was not only the best stage so far this year, but it might have better than any stage last year ... FINALLY, the race is on with 10-12 riders lining up to attack Lance and fuck shit up. Where was Disco on that climb -- they were in total disarray, the exact opposite of nearly every major climb in last year's Tour.

Sastre tried to attack, but the pace was too fast for him to get anywhere. Nobody even flinched when he tried it. Once the next Disco rider drops back then somebody needs to attack again.

That happened last year too, on the route to La Mongie ... the entire peloton was shelled, including several GC contenders, by the time Hincapie's turn at the front was done. In fact, today's stage was almost an instant replay of that one from 2004, right down to Armstrong dropping his rivals one by one and getting outsprinted at the finish for the stage win (last year it was Basso).

Rasmussen was amazing -- keeping up with Armstrong only two days after his 160km+ breakaway win. Can he possibly keep riding at this level?

Nearly as amazing -- Disco chased the breakaway during the flats leading to Courchavel, trimming an eight minute lead down to about three in only about half an hour, and they STILL had enough in the tank to shell the entire peloton on the climb.

The pace on the climbs wasn't as fast as yesterday, but a) today's climbs were longer, b) Disco had already taken serious time out of their rivals the day before and had the luxury of coasting on that lead. That said, I started getting the feeling that a lot of guys are just trying to keep pace with Lance and protect their top 10/top 15 position on GC. T-Mobile and Phonak are excused because they had guys up the road, but where were the other teams on the Galibier? What was CSC doing? Why were all of these guys content to climb at George Hincapie's pace rather than move to the front or attack -- at the very least, to keep Lance on his toes and make his team do a bit more work?

Is this true? What has he been doing for the last ten years?

Eating
Tanning

here's a question. if you ran the disco team, who would be your leader next year?

So, you're Horner at 900m, what do you do when Chavanel starts flicking his elbow and easing up?

Horner really didn't have a choice. Chavanel hadn't been in the break and was about 100x fresher. He had no chance to win unless Chavanel led him out. They needed a 30-second lead, not an 8-second one.

Speaking of thrilling -- what I'm watching NOW is thrilling. The layout of this stage was reminding me of the route to Luz Ardiden in 2003. Then, Ullrich attacked on the 2nd last climb and shelled the peloton along with several GC contenders. However, a lot of the top guys rejoined him on the descent, and on the final climb, Ullrich couldn't (or wouldn't) attack. Armstrong and Mayo crashed, Armstrong got good and pissed off, won the stage and essentially the Tour as well.

Thus far, this stage has been an instant replay of Luz Ardiden (nobody has crashed though).

Poor Totschnig has had about five seconds of face time today :(

I'm surprised Hinault didn't slap him in the face as he cried on the podium and tell him to get a fucking grip.

Who had Hincapie in the Stage 15 pool?

Ullrich exploded in the last two or three km, just like yesterday, which might have cost him a spot on the podium. But Basso and Armstrong have clearly been the class of the Tour.

I suspect Rottgut is right that after his armchair ride, Hincapie could have wasted Peirero 3ks earlier, had he wanted to do. We'll never know.

Watching Der Kaiser blow the pack apart during the past couple of days has been loads of fun.

I suspect there's no GC guy who knows better how to ride right on his limit as Leipheimer, but boy, it makes him the least dynamic racer ever. He's like the anti-Vino.

Keep wanting someone to adjust Vino's saddle for him. He always looks uncomfortably low to me. Makes him look like a duck. Rides like one too, the way he keeps bobbing back up.

It was annoying how OLN kept trying to project the finishing times of the riders based on their split times -- illogical and totally innacurate.

Sherwen was on strange form too: twice he claimed Armstrong was riding all the corners "without changing his trajectory". Wuh?!? Barry, is that at all possible in physics? I want a diagram! And all that "not a blip on the horizon" stuff I didnt understand whatsoever. Was he having flashbacks to being a U-boat captain? Still, I think he might just have redeemed himself when he said that Rasmussen would have "a tough sandwich to eat" when he looked back at his ride later on.

I could swear that Sherwin used the line "he's all over his machine" to describe a good ride and a bad ride, but I believe he does that a lot.

I was impressed with how agressively Armstrong attacked some of those corners, even in the latter third of the race when he knew that the yellow jersey, if not the stage win, was sewn up. Then again, Lance probably rode that TT route about 20 times over the winter.

I'm interested to see ASO's accounting of its action. I think that an extension of the 3k rule would have been a logical course of action, but I'm looking at the the Tour regulations and they say that the 3k rule operates as follows:

"In the event a rider or riders suffer a fall, puncture or mechanical incident after passing the “red flame,” and such an incident is duly recognised, in the last 3 kilometres, the rider or riders involved are credited with the same finishing time of the rider or riders they were with at the time of the incident. They are attributed this ranking only upon crossing the finish line."

Now, this is not at all what was described in the media reports that I've seen. The official Tour website Newsflash states:

"Jean-Francois Pescheux, the Tour’s sporting director, has just announced that the time for the general classification of the final stage will be taken on the first pass of the finish line.
The peloton will still complete the eight laps of the Champs Elysees circuit but that is just to determine the stage winner.
This decision has been made because it has been raining in Paris and the organizers fear for falls in the closing kilometers of the race."

The rule book only states, "If the road surface of the Champs-Elysees has become slippery before the riders reach it, then the [finishing] times may be taken for the first crossing of the finish line.... [R]iders and Sports Managers will be informed immediately. In any event, riders must complete all of the circuits of the Champs-Elysees to be ranked at the final finish." With respect to bonuses, the rules book states that "bonuses are awarded at all in line finishes," and that the race mgmt "reserves the right to move or cancel some intermediate sprints for which bonuses are awarded." It does not allow for the cancellation of finish bonuses explicitly, at least by my quick reading.

This is obviously very different to the 3k rule, crediting a fallen/waylayed rider with the time of his group. Since the rules state that the intermediate bonuses may be scrubbed, but that all in line stages get finish bonuses, I'd say that Leipheimer was treated fairly. Furthermore, if they had any doubt about the rule, they should have thrown everyone up there to try to avoid what occurred.