Gilberto Simoni will not be at the Tour as was originally thought. The Lampre team was at first going to
use Damiano “The Kid” Cunego as the team leader. A bout of Epstein-barr syndrome knocked “The Kid” out of contention for the Tour and explained his bad form for the Giro. Gilberto was half heartedly seen as the next obvious leader, but Gilberto has no love for the Tour, since Le Tour don’t love him. So GS is sitting at home for the month of July saying that he has still not recovered from the Giro where he placed second to Paolo “Il Falco” Salvodelli.
“Il Falco” of course will be riding support for some guy named Lance who thinks he has a good shot at winning the race yet again.
Stage 1 is mostly flat with a short bump at the start. It is going to be a stage where the top contenders may show their cards. Being a 19km TT it could open up some gaps and give riders like Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso some time over riders such as Iban Mayo and Roberto Heras. It is a stage where some top contenders are going to find themselves already behind. So you can’t win the Tour on Stage 1 but you sure can pave the way to losing it.
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Le tour website has some quick interviews that I assume they are doing for each team. Seems like they are filling it out today as I hit refresh the Domina Vacanze dispatch appeared as did a side menu.
Some notes: Beloki on Liberty Seguros, Denis Menchov on Rabobank, and Levi Leipheimer on Gerolsteiner.
Check out the link
Just in case you did not study up on the Tour map last October when it was first released, the AP News wire has a refresher of the Tour map. It is a city by city list, and does not mean much unless you have a map of France and the topographical profile of certain stages.
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Watched the first show of Discovery’s Lance week, the “Science of Lance”. The show details what Lance and his team dubbed “F-One” go through during the season to prepare for the Tour Day France. We get to see Lance in the wind tunnel with Steve Hed and Johan Bruyneel and many others.
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The Tour de France starts Saturday with no prologue, but a 19km time trial. That is around 13 miles to us Americans. With the stage being this long there will not be the usual close time gaps where someone like Lance Armstrong can simply give up the jersey. So what would Lance, Jan, Ivan or other contenders do for the first stage?
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