Nice stage today and really interesting for a flat stage. Lots of interesting flat subplots with one pissed off Hincapie. Columbia is a hell of a team that’s for sure, people say they may have blown their TTT chances with the work they did today but I don’t think so.
Heads up riding by Lance, Spartacus, Gerdemann, and others.
Also, Spartacus did’t even look winded after the stage. These guys are incredible.
Great stage today - Cav is simply imperious, and there’s a possibility of the Old Man taking yellow tomorrow.
All this talk of Contador v Armstrong is funny and good for drama, but there’s nothing in it IMO. We’ll see who the Astana ‘leader’ on the road as things play out, it won’t be a problem for them either way - I’d be shocked if Lance is in the frame come Paris and expect Albert to hit the bricks come the mountains.
Let’s not kid ourselves who’s in overall charge though; Tell us Lance, you’ve won the Tour seven times, who’s your team leader? 
Albert’s serving the pasta and staring at his shoes when Lance sits down to dinner.
Yeah, I agree. I suspect Contador isn’t sweating things at all. In fact, if Lance does get Yellow tomorrow it will be good for Alberto because this way he doesn’t have to defend the damn thing all the way to Paris. It appeases Lance and he gets to be the man until (presumably) Friday or maybe Saturday and it allows AC to relax a bit.
The thing is, the tour is an interesting one and there doesn’t seem to be as much as there is in previous years for the mountain guys - which ironically I think could be a bit of a problem for Armstrong because now he has to contend with mountain specialists such as the Schleck brothers, Sastre, and to a lesser extent Evans attacking any time they see a hill near the finish of any kind. This means Contador has to follow and that Armstrong eventually gets dropped.
I’m going camping Friday so I miss this weekend - but I’ll be excited to watch all three sunday night. Tomorrow should be pretty interesting too…
Yep, I’m not kidding myself: the answer is Johan Bruyneel. LA can consider himself king of the heap all he likes, but JB is in charge.
Cancellara basically rode an individual time trial today…wow. That man always impresses me.
When sorting out the team leader of Astana, it’s best to keep in mind realistic race goals for each:
Lance Armstrong: Former Tour winner, but no longer dominant in the time trial or in the mountains. Still very talented.
Race goals: wear the yellow jersey for a few stages, if possible. Win a stage or two, if possible.
Lance is going to be looking opportunistically for ways to achieve those goals.
Alberto Contador: Former Tour winner. Extremely talented, strong in the mountains, very strong in the time trial. By far the favorite to wear the yellow jersey into Paris.
Race goal: Win the TdF.
With those in mind, the decision yesterday by Bruyneel makes perfect sense. It put Lance in a position to maybe wear the jersey for a few days (although, not tomorrow), in keeping with one of his race goals. It also causes the peloton to have to focus on more, different threats, which can drastically weaken the other teams when the time comes to put Contador in the lead permanently. In addition, with Columbia having placed so many strong riders in the break away, it was vital for Bruyneel to have some strong riders up there. The opportunity arose for one of them to be Armstrong.
With 4 Astana riders now in the top 5, Bruyneel can now run the Tour in favor of his riders as he sees fit. He’s in the perfect position to get Amstrong some time in yellow as well as a possible stage win, and to set his chess pieces in place to overwhelmingly favor Contador for the final GC victory in Paris.
Bruyneel’s tactics are brilliant as always. Nothing that happened yesterday has anything to do with a conflict over the team leadership. Remember that it works in Contador’s favor to have the peloton be confused (for a short time) about who is really going to be the Astana leader.
But, really, there’s no doubt that Contador is the team leader. If Armstrong were the team leader, he would never have been in that break yesterday without another obvious GC contender up there. He would have stayed in the peloton. If there was someone they considered a threat in the breakaway, the peloton would have hauled them back with Astana organizing the chase. It’s pretty obvious that Astana is so strong, they can run the race however they want, and more importantly, chase down anyone if they need to.
Ha! Of course there is doubt now. LA has won the thing seven times and is a cycling God. Contador might be great, but at this moment he is a demigod comparatively. If Lance has the ability to put it all together – and chooses to – whatever the wishes of AC and Johan Bruyneel, they will be moot. Neither has the presence relatively speaking to challenge Armstrong’s wishes – again if he has the ability. If he doesn’t, then the events that have transpired thus far will simply fall by the wayside when Alberto wins the TdF.
This is a major hijack, but I have a few questions. I’m a complete newbie when it comes to cycling, so I was wondering how the concept of teams work in cycling events like the TdF? How can there be such a thing? Armstrong before was a team leader, and I see he is somewhat competing to be a team leader now, what benefit does that bring? What is in it for the other members of a team to even race, and what do they actually do? Is there any strategy involved in how a team cycles together and what choices they make? All I can think of is that other team members get in front of competition and slow down. Thanks anyone who takes the time to fight a little ignorance. 
The Leader (TL) is supported by the other team members in a number of ways. if there is only one bottle of water in the team car, TL gets it. If TL flats and there is no wheel available, TL will take one from a team mate or even the whole bike. If TL needs to stop, the whole team will shield him from the wind and get him back to the peleton.
Everyone sacrifices, if needed, to support TL’s bid to win the Tour.
These riders are referred to as domestiques.
These riders are paid to ride in this role and they must be strong riders for the Team Time Trial along with keeping up with TL, won’t be much good in your duties if you’re a kilometer back.
There are numerous other ways but I think you get the idea.
This is going to sound like sour grapes, but too bad. I think what yesterday highlighted was a fundamental weirdness about the sport. It’s a team sport, but it’s not. The winner of a stage or the GC is a single person, and yet they have a team behind them. Usually, that’s a side issue, but having a TTT brings the issue into high focus.
We have yet to see how it plays out, but the gaps between times of the teams in the TTT are such that the TTT could quite likely decide the whole event. It is easily possible that the winner of the tour could be someone who finishes in the bunch with or slightly behind another GC contender on every individual stage of the race, yet wins the GC purely on the basis of *their team’s *TTT effort. It just doesn’t seem right.
Of course, road racing has always had a team element, but that element is limited. The lack of a strong team can catch a good GC rider out, but most of the time the strong riders can work off the back of other teams. Cadel Evans for example has always had a crap team, but despite that he has done very well. Last year he just hung onto and worked off CSC, and he didn’t win not because of the lack of a strong team but simply because he couldn’t motor up the Alpe as fast as Sastre, which is fair enough.
My opinion: get rid of the TTT, or make the Tour a team sport properly, but don’t sit on the fence.
Whoa, Astana is mad studly. 4 of the top 5 spots! I didn’t watch yesterday’s race where Lance snuck in there. All that experience paid off. Well here’s to Cantador, Lance, Klöden and Leipheimer. May the best man win.
I’m still waiting for Garmin-Slipstream to have a GPS glitch and end up taking a wrong turn up some canyon or across a cow pasture. Hey, I think we took a wrong turn somewhere!
Well, their current standing is mostly because of the TTT. There’s no denying, however, that Astana has an incredibly strong team. In addition to Tour winners Armstrong and Contador, Leipheimer and Klöden have both finished on the podium in past tours.
You’re not alone. Every Cadel Evans supporting Australian is suffering from sour grapes today 
Team Time Trial is teh sux0r.
It’s always been a problem; a way the richer teams can buy time.
In 2004-2005 the organizers tried to fix it with that “set time penalties” nonsense, which didn’t help much.
Then in 2006-2008 they got rid of the TTT altogether, which was a bloody good idea.
Why the hell did they bring it back?
I think we should be careful not to underestimate the importance of a team. It is not just in team time trial that this plays out, but maybe even more so in the other stages. Last year was a great example when Evans was probably the strongest (and most looked at) rider, but without teammates in the mountains. In thye mountains the CSC (now saxobank) team had three title contenders (the Schlecks and Sastre) and some back up. The CSC guys just attacked one after the other and let Evans do all the work in getting the attacker back; in the end he just couldn’t do it anymore. Also last year there was a stage where - between two mountains - Voigt and Cancellara brought their teammates back to the leading group by doing a sort of teamtimetrial for 30 km, and thus saved the yellow jersey.
The teams are also important for the sprinters. Team Highroad is spending a lot of time at the front of the peleton to catch breakwaway groups and then also have to position Cavendish for the last 200m. The reason all of the team where in the forward group in the third stage (as well as the 6 skil riders) was because the team was already working and positioning for the sprinters. The need for a team for sprinters depends on the sprinter tough, Freire for instance can usually find his own way, but still it only works if breaks get tracked back. Pettachi on the other hand needs to be delivered by a ‘train’ of about 5 people to have the best chances of winning, that means more than half the team. Highroad is now probably the only team that will work for his sprinter as Cavendish seems to be unstopable; we already saw this in the third stage and this will probably remain the same until someone else wints a sprintfinish.
I personally am not sure Armstrong isn’t thinking about an 8th win. Especially the way I perceive the internal team relations (altough they were a brilliant unity yesterday) seems to indicate most riders are on Armstrong’s side rather than Contadors; some riders Contador wanted as domestiques were left at home, while Lance’s reccomended riders are all there (according to a teammate that didn’t get picked). I guess we will see what happens when either contador or Armstrong will need help in th Mountains.
Astana have huge strength, looks to be Contador’s race to win or lose. Of course anything can happen, and I’m hoping it does, but as long as he can mentally keep it together through the Lance circus he’s got to be odds on to win.
Just checked the bookies and he is in fact odds on at the mo, 4/5 with most.
Evans supporter that I am I disagree. We debated this last year, and I have never heard any explanation that makes a jot of sense as to how Cadel having a great team would have got him up the Alpe any faster, nor how Sastre’s great team helped him to the top any quicker since he rode away solo. If Cadel had been able ride up the Alpe as fast as Sastre he would have just done so and there is nothing that anyone on Sastre’s team could have done to slow him down.
And for what it’s worth, **Boo Boo Foo **(who doesn’t seem to post here any more) who is or was the board’s only (former) professional bike rider as far as I know, and who is Australian and has every reason to support Cadel, agrees with me.
As far as Cadel is concerned, what CSC did last year with their great team was blow off all the almost-but-not-quite-good-enough GC contenders, while Cadel rode on their coattails. Unfortunately for Cadel, when it came to the final showdown he was beaten by the better climber. It’s that simple.
If you look back at the TTT’s from the early 2000’s the Postal/Discovery Channel team often had most of the top 10 spots after the TTT, as has been said, this is not unusual. If you look at the 2005 race, after the TTT, the top 10 was owned by Discovery & CSC with Vinokourov being the only interloper. But by the end of the race, the closest Discovery guy to Lance was 12th and the second fastest CSC rider to runner-up Basso was 17th…so obviously supporting the GC contender tends to take a toll on the overall team standing as time goes on.
But the TTT surely did ruin the Tour for a bunch of guys…here’s hoping the Schleck brothers can make the race interesting and Vande Velde is a littler stronger than last year or else this is Astana’s race to decide amongst themselves…
This is Contador’s race to lose if Armstrong is smart. I think there are two class climbers in the field - Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador. Andy will have support in the mountains - although not as much as Alberto. Andy is also closer than I’d hoped when i was doing the math last Friday at 1m40. I figured Saxo would lost by a little more to Astana than they did.
Astana having four people in the top five with a few contenders (Evans, Saster) a ways back is gonna mean A LOT of attacks in the mountains.
We still can’t be certain about lance’s form in the mountain and I’m reasonably confident he can’t contend with Schlecks but Contador can. What all this means to me is that Armstrong is probably gonna have to let Contador go to mark Schleck. Maybe Armstrong can snag a podium, maybe not.
Fairly new to the sport here, and a Cadel Evans supporter for some reason. I guess I like an underdog. I’ve been really disappointed by his team so far. Maybe in a normal year the Lotto team would be considered stong but Astana and and others are just stacked with so much talent. I think there is still some drama to onfold on the Astana team, as they decide who is the real leader, that may leave an openning for Evans, probably in the mountains. It has been a disappointing couple of days though.