Lumping It All Together

Forgive me for my less than steallar posting of the past few days. I was out of town and did most of my posting from my Iphone which is less than ideal. This is a post to tie the last few days together and prepare for the home stretch of the Tour.

Sunday's stage 15 to Verbier was a classic....unfortunately my wife's Aunt doesn't have the Versus channel so all I saw was the highlights :( All I saw was Contador attack and no one else able to go with him.

The rest day saw Alberto Contador in yellow for the first time since 2007 and Lance Armstrong in second 1:37 back,with the big surprise of this year's Tour Bradley Wiggins 2 seconds back in third.

Stage 16 has two large climbs but also has a 30km decent to the finish which should allow anyone dropped on the climb to get back or limit their time losses to a minimal amount.

You Can Be Competative Without Being A Douchebag

Stage 14 on paper looked like it would be a day for the sprinters and everyone expected a Cav/Hushovd/Farrar shoot out at the finish line. As with every stage the breakaway went and everyone expected them to be chased down, however something interesting happend. Big George Hincapie was away in the break and at one point was the Virtual Leader on the road. Everyone who follow cycling knows the career of George and how he was a faithful lieutenant to Lance on all 7 of his Tour wins. It look at the 10km mark like there was no way that the peleton was going to close the gap and George would be in Yellow. Then a funny thing happened. Garmin-Slipstream put three guys on the front for no real reason to do tempo in the last few k's of the race. For Garmin there was no tactical advantage nor was there a strategic mission for them to do work on the front of the peleton, other than to keep George from getting Yellow. Ag2r had already done all the work they were able to do and had shredded their team in the process. The gap still was at 6+ minutes when they pulled off the front so they weren't going to pull the time back on their own. Columbia still had intentions of leading out Cav for the 13th place points but were holding back as much as possible to protect George's lead. I don't know who made the call for Garmin to get on the front (Matt White or Jonathan Vaughters) but it was a douchy move to put guys on the front for no reason. I have lost alot of respect for Garmin who are the "we do it right we do it clean" boys. Well guess what...you didn't do it right today.

Mountains start tomorrow!

So I Was Wrong....

The rain and cold pretty much neutralized today's stage. The temperature hovered around 50*F all day with heavy rain at times. No one really seemed to want to race in the slop the breakaway was sucessful and Heinrich Haussler was able to solo to a 1st career Tour win.

Tomorrow looks like a day for the sprinters.

The Calm Before the Storm

Stage 12 was another low key stage. According to George Hincapie's Twitter "there were alot of tired legs out there today". The stage started quickly with the peleton covering 48 km in the first hour. Several small groups tried to get away but were brought back by the group until one group at 80km in managed to get some separation. The stage was lumpy enough that the sprinters teams didn't want to come to the front and close the gap, AG2R either couldn't or didn't want to bring back the group so the advantage swelled to over 6 minutes where it stayed until close to the finish. Nicki Sorenson attacked the break and was able to solo the last 5km and take the stage win.



The fight for the Green Jersey was exciting today as Mark Cavendish went out for intermediate sprint points on the course with Thor Hushovd right behind. Cavendish was also able to outsprint Hushovd and Farrar for the remaining points at the finish. With a lumpy stage tomorrow and the Alps starting on Saturday the chances for Sprinters to pick up points are dwindling.

I expect some shennanigans on tomorrows stage with a few Cat 2 and one Cat 1 climb in store. The GC men should come out to play on tomorrows stage.

It's Groundhog Day Again

It's Groundhog Day again! Another day another Cav win.

A Stinker In Every Bunch

Every year there is at least one stinker of a stage in the Tour and today happened to be that day. A 4 man break went early but never really got away and the peleton rode a very easy race until the last 20km. In cooperation with the UCI the Tour banned the use of two way radios during today's stage as an experiement to see if it would spice up the racing. Well from my perspective it didn't change the stage in any way, shape, form, or fashion. Cavendish won in a bunch sprint which was pretty much a foregone conclusion at the beginning and the GC remained unchanged.

Let's hope for better racing tomorrow!

Rest Day...What Have We Learned?

Lucky you (yes you there drinking coffee and surfing the net) today is your lucky day. Two posts for the price of one!

Today is the first rest day of the '09 Tour so let us take a few moments to reflect on what we have witnessed over the past 9 days of racing and look forward to what we can expect over the next two weeks.

• Armstrong is back! Any doubts about his form or how his body would respond have been answered during the first week. He was able to stay with everyone on all the climbs and has even chased down a breakaway on his own.
• Cav is unbeatable in the final 200m of a sprint. 2 stage wins already and a stint in the Green Jersey. I expect at least one more win this week with a couple of flattish stages on the menu.
• The Tour is pretty much over for Evans, Sastre, and Menchov. Their teams really let them down in the TTT and it has buried them so deep that barring a catastrophic occurance by Astana and Garmin they basically have no shot at even being on the podium.
• Astana really is as good as advertised, now can they keep the internal power struggle from imploding the entire team. The way I see it Contador's bush league attack on Stage 7 only helped to solidify the team behind Armstrong. Going in you could divide the team into Lance, Levi, and Popo on one side and Contador, Pauhlino, and possibly Zubeldia on the other side with Kloden, Murayev, and Rast being Neutral. Now I honestly don't know if anyone other than Pauhlino is on Contador's side. If push comes to shove it will be interesting to see how things work.
• Christian Vande Velde and Brad Wiggins are having great rides and I really hope that it continues for them both. Garmin is a great team and it is good to see them doing well.
• The French have to be ecstatic about how the Tour has gone for them so far, 3 stage wins, a KOM jersey and a Maillot Jaune (albeit an Italian rider on a French team).
• I am still sticking by my prediction that Levi will end up on the podium and could possibly still win the Tour. If Lance and Alberto are marking each other don't be surprised if Levi goes up the road and steals some time.
• Week 1 is in the books and no doping scandals (I hope I didn't just jinx it).

What to look forward to next week

• The semi mountain stages on Thursday and Friday (Stages 12 and 13). If Evans, Sastre or Menchov want to get back into the Tour these stages could be fun to watch. Also you could see Armstrong or Contador for that matter launch an attack to steal some time before the Alps start this weekend.
• More Cav wins. Tuesday and Wednesday should be bunch sprints.
• Stage 15...the Alps...mountain top finish...Verbier. Nuff Said!
• Another week of clean racing (could we be so fortunate?)

Thanks for reading my posts over this first week of the Tour, I have really enjoyed writing each of them and I hope that you come back for what is sure to be an exciting Week 2.