Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

This could be one of the defining moments of this years Tour, already just a day old. The sheer act of passing a rider in a Time Trial is nothing new, but when the riders involved are the top two riders of the Tour for the last 8 or so years, that is news.

The time gap is not that big and nobody would not call the Tour over at this point, yet for Jan it just might be. Lance struck a major psychological blow to Jan, one that will test Ullrichs fortitude in the next key stages.

Jan was not outwardly feeling any ill effects from a crash with his team car yesterday, and by all accounts he did put in a good time overall. The sheer act of having you main rival come up behind you in a TT just has to put all of the positive hopes and aspriations in the gutter.

One curious fact that was not brought up, or I did not find a good answer to was about the time gaps for the TT. Usually riders go off at 1 minute intervals, and for the last 20 or 10 riders the time gaps go up to three minutes. Does this only happen for Time Trials later in the Tour?

One fact that does not look good for Jan and Vino is that Discovery and CSC have several riders in the top placings of the first stage, while T-Mobile have only 2 riders in the top 50. T-Mobile may be in for more time losses when the Team Time Trial rolls around. CSC and Discovery look like the teams to beat for that round.

Now back to today’s Stage. When Lance set of the start ramp and slipped out of his pedal, I was thinking that this is the start of the end. Just a small cue into a string of mishaps and problems that would lead to Lance Armstrong not winning this years Tour. Yeah, I thought all of that in one moment. Instead as the TT went on I was reminded of the interview that OLN had with Chris Carmichael, one of Lance’s chief trainers. He said that he feels that Lance will win this year by the biggest margin yet. Every year, Chris’ comments have been very accurate, after all he always predicted that Lance will win, and he was right Anyway, I would not call the Tour over yet. There are many more stages to go, and I hope that the next few flat stages give us some of the excitement that we saw during the Giro’s first week.