Saturday, July 4, 2009

Thoughts on Stage 1

Stage 1 is in the books and the GC is looks like this

Tour de France Standings—Through Stage 1

1. Fabian Cancellara 19:32

2. Alberto Contador 19:50 @ 0:18

3. Bradley Wiggins 19:51 @ 0:19

4. Andreas Kloden 19:54 @ 0:22

5. Cadel Evans 19:55 @ 0:23

6. Levi Leipheimer 20:02 @ 0:30

7. Roman Krueziger 20:04 @ 0:32

8. Tony Martin 20:05 @ 0:33

9. Vincenzo Nibali 20:09 @ 0:37

10. Lance Armstrong 20:12 @ 0:40

My inital thoughts are that I am very impressed with Alberto Contador. His Time Trialing ability has greatly improved over the last few years and I see no one in the field that can rival him in the mountains (possibly Sastre). Second thoughts are that I wouldn't have thought that Lance would be the fourth best placed rider on his own team. I am not sure if the early start time and not having a time to chase was a factor or if he simply doesn't have it anymore. Time will tell.

Stage 2 tomorrow should see our sprinters come out to play.

2 comments:

blindsey said...

I have enjoyed your blog but I have two point to make. One I believe lance viewed stage one as a difficult TT and that max effort would effect later performance. I also think that the early start did effect his time.

Brian said...

Lance's strategy was to race early as there was a threat of rain for the latter part of the stage. If it did indeed rain then that would have provided him with a time advantage given the technical course.