Well, unless Lance Armstrong is lying, he said that today’s results were far from planned and not at all welcome. Let’s pray that it happens again tomorrow.
Horner attacks… almost 5 minutes down on the GC… should he even chase it down?
Ullrich keeps on Lance’s wheel, but bam, there goes Kloden again. 1’50", should he chase?
Ah, fuck, there goes Vinokourov, Landis, Jullich, Basso, and a dozen other riders in succession, gotta chase them down…
And finally, Ullrich just powers off the front and sails over Armstrong in the GC.
I slept on it. I won’t be watching today’s race until the coverage on OLN tonight so I’m going to avoid this thread.
I think that Disco and Lance are playing possum. Lance couldn’t afford to lose the lead and therefore didn’t drop back like the rest of his team did. But he just wanted to stay at the front and test the legs of his major competitors in the days and weeks to come.
I wanted to touch base with the LeMond - Armstrong: who brought more Americans into the TdF or Cycling debate.
I think it needs to be mentioned that when LeMond did all his riding and winning, cable Tv was either non existant or in its infancy stages.
Now, it is everywhere and the entire concept of sports and promotion has changed nearly 100% along with news stations ( local US & global) reporting on the race daily, if not hourly. It is the same race, but not the same world.
Us Yanks, due to the saturation of TV and Instant News Now!!!11!!!, have been programmed to only root (heh)…I mean Cheer for the Yanks and everyone else is invisible. I hate that more than I can elucidate. The sappy Life Time Stories of Heartbreak and Courage background stories that are now apart of all of our sporting events. (The number two reason I don’t watch the Olympics anymore.) are so freaking irratating and, I feel, puts more pressure on the rider and probably more distracting than anything to his main goal.
I hate, hate, hate the biasedness (is that a word?) of American Station coverageof any sport, and I really enjoy the OLN coverage and their lightening fast pronunciation of all the French places in a mumble and the even faster pronunciation of the riders last names. They don’t (seem) to talk down to you like you are a dumbass .
That said, this is my third year watching the tour nearly full time and I am still grasping at straws about the entire concept of it all. I Love it.
I would love to see Ullrich go from Bridesmaid to Bride, but also like all the possibilities of catastrophe and doom could be around any corner.
Now, my burning question: do women have something equivalent?
I’m late to the thread (though I noticed another Lily is already here! wave)
I watched the first few stages on Eurosport in Sweden (only their evening highlights). Lest you think that only Americans root for the home team, the Swedish commentators were sure to fill us in on the 2 Swedes riding. They also gave us shots of Sheryl Crow and Robin Williams. :rolleyes: As an American, it was funny to actually see commercials for some of the European sponsors, like Phonak and Skoda. Maybe some Europeans can answer this – why are the Eurosport highlights so crappy? When they’re editing, couldn’t they edit out the static and camera losses?
Anyway, I haven’t watched since coming home, so I’m planning to try to catch up on things soon. In the meantime, a girly question: why did Discovery design a uniform that is so bland and unidentifiable? I’m having a hard time picking them out of the pack (is it just me?). On the other hand, at least they don’t have “No 1” on their butts! (Sorry, Rabobank.)
I just bought the Tour de France 2005 Companion which in the first bunch o 'pages is seemingly to be All-Lance in it’s Yellow Section, describing bits and peices of Da Man.
The first chapter breaks down the Tour and what day the riders are where and the grade of the course. It all makes sense to me now. [size=1] Yes, this info is on line, but(t) one cannot study this info online and sit on the toilet, hmmm.
I am now on page 9 and it seems to be getting on with the sport, which is what I wanted.
Ummm… yeah… well there used to be a Tour de France Feminine but I’m not sure if it still gets held. Certainly it was a big deal 20 years ago but organising a 2 week stage race requires incredible resources - and that translates to a need for seriously big amounts of money and manpower. Transfers have to be planned. Each start point and finish town needs to be planned. Accomodation needs to be planned. Traffic routes need to be planned etc etc. The three Grand Tours for men, as they currently exist, are astonishing logistical achievements each and every year. Sadly, it’s impossible for women and men to race the same routes over the same distances - unlike the Grand Slam tennis tournaments for example.
The men tend to average 180-230km a day in the Grand Tours and women seem to average 80-140km a day. To somehow overlap a 3 week Grand Tour for men with a 2 week Grand Tour for women is essentially impossible, hence, the women’s events have to stand on their own.
Personally, I love watching women’s road racing. I really dig it especially if there are some full on “Jens Voight” kinda riders. But it’s an expensive sport to organise, so the major stage races are thin on the ground sadly.
Well today is a rest day,but yesterday was wild. Rasmussen was a monster in a solo break. Wow what a ride. Voight and Moreau acted like they were on the same team once again, and are now one and two in the GC for the yellow jersey. Lance has dropped to third, 2:18 back. The commentators acted like this was not expected, and did not reresent a problem for Armstrong. Time will tell. Tomorrow’s stage is in the mountains, and is forcast for cold and rain, Armstrong favors this weather, so it may work to his advantage.
So will Lance take the Yellow back tomorrow? Or will he sit back and let the other teams battle it out, and attack later?
Here are the standing for the first 12 places after stage 9
1 028 VOIGT Jens CSC GER
2 101 MOREAU Christophe C.A FRA 01' 50"
3 001 ARMSTRONG Lance DSC USA 02' 18"
4 057 RASMUSSEN Mickael RAB DEN 02' 43"
5 019 VINOKOUROV Alexandre TMO KAZ 03' 20"
6 023 JULICH Bobby CSC USA 03' 25"
7 021 BASSO Ivan CSC ITA 03' 44"
8 011 ULLRICH Jan TMO GER 03' 54"
9 026 SASTRE Carlos CSC ESP 03' 54"
10 004 HINCAPIE George DSC USA 04' 05"
11 014 KLÖDEN Andréas TMO GER 04' 08"
12 066 LANDIS Floyd PHO USA 04' 08"
A couple of things I forgot. Bob Roll said this about Rasmussen “In mountain biking we called him chicken because of his skinny legs. It was the Europeans that named him that, cause all the Americans ever saw was him disapearing over the top of the next hill.”
Also here is part of Bob Roll’s report on stage nine where he digs out his crystal ball.
Full report from each of the OLN comentators here.
The D boys were back in full force and controlled the peleton setting the pace. I think there were out to show that stage 8 was just a hickup not a prediction.
Tomorrow should be fun to watch.
Yeah, but who cares if they managed to get six of their riders to the finish line in the group. There were 60 at the finish in this group compared to 27 on Saturday, and even people like “Jaws” Popovych blew. When Mr. O’Grady makes it to the line for the bunch sprint, more than half of a strong GC rider’s team sure as hell sould be there too.
If I were T-Mobile, I would absolutely have at least one major attack on tomorrow’s first climb, either with their strongest non-podium finisher or send Kloden on another attack. PErhaps this might be a good time to make some friends with Landis, Julich, Botero, Horner, or anyone else that doesn’t have enough pure strength to go up against Disco directly, but can pose just enough danger in a break that Disco will implode again. Discovery *has * to chase it down, and if they show the same weakness as last Saturday, Ullrich and Vinokourov can tag team Armstrong to hell and back on the final climb. Stage 10 must be close… I’m getting a hard-on.
You do realize that 6 is more than 1/2 of nine?
As far as what I wrote about the D boys controlling thepeleton, it is not just my opinion
So people that are way more into this than I am seem to think that the Discovery team is doing OK. The mountains should be fun to watch that is for sure.
I first met Chris Carmichael at Los Angeles '84. We met a number of times after that, although he probably doesn’t remember me - who knows?
My recollection of Chris was a guy who talked out of his ass a lot. I’ve known a lot of American cyclists over the years, and almost to a man they’ve been modest, humble, and extremely gracious regarding the traditions of the sport. But not Carmichael… something about the guy always rubbed me the wrong way for some reason.
Still, in the interests of fairness, it has to be said that Hincapie and Popovych rode a fantastic final stage in this year’s Dauphine. A 180km two man breakaway if I recall. So the strength is there in the team. And Salvodelli won the Giro, let’s not forget.
Nonetheless, Stage 9 was a bullshit stage. Even though it “looked” like Team Discovery were forcing the pace the whole way, the reality is that they were only riding a comfortable temp after having done an average of 200km per day for the previous 8 days and there were tired legs all the way through the peloton. Everybody knew that Jenzy had done a bolter, and everyone knew that he was deliberately being allowed to ride for Yellow for a day. Everyone also knew that a rest day was to follow, and everyone was quite happy to let Team Discovery do the work and take it easy.
After Jan Ullrich did his multi somersault thing on the first descent of the day, Team Discovery deliberately sat up and the whole peloton agreed to let Armstrong run the show while Ullrich and T-Mobile caught back up again. It was at that point that Rasmussen got his big lead for the day. I doubt he would have stayed away otherwise because he would have been within striking distance of other opportunists. In many respects, Jenzy and Rasmussen going off up the road neutralised the stage and Team Discovery were left with the task of setting the pace, due to lack of interest as much as anything else ironically. It was their job to do that. It had nothing to do with trying to supposedly restore their collective grip over the peloton or some such nonsense - it was their job. Nothing more, nothing less. Armstrong was happy to let Jenzy go, but just not too far.
It’s weird how it happens sometimes. Nonetheless, I personally maintain that T-Mobile are currently most ideally poised to ruin Armstrong’s party. They’ve got 3 peas ready to go, at any time. Team Discovery have all their egg’s in just one guy’s basket (although I suspect that Salvodelli might get a crack if Armstrong falters) and Team CSC are openly gambling on just one guy in Basso.
Team Gerolsteiner are the dark horses for mine. Watch for Leipheimer and Totschnig.
I asked in my own thread, probably should’ve asked here: does anyone know if there is an RSS feed anywhere for the tour updates (not daily, but the “live” stage updates) that you can get at the TdF site
What a stage! Can’t wait to get home and watch it this afternoon. Valverde rode a very smart stage and I think Lance set out to absolutely crush everybody else.
Hey all. I don’t have cable right now, and so haven’t really been following Le Tour this year. I haven’t seen any mention of Ivan Mayo anywhere, is he competing? He was my favorite rider in 2003 and I thought he was being hyped as one of the superstars of the future. What happened to him?
And how about Beloki? Did the spectacular crash he had that year permanently retire him?