Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

Boonen won in a dramatic sprint today after a day long break that included Lazlo Brodogi who was one minute back on GC and Tomas Voeckler. I was hoping for the break to succeed as I am participating in the Performance bike fantasy contest and have Sylvain Calzati on my team. I still made out since I also picked Tom Boonen and Robbie McEwen.

Lazlo Brodogi moved up a few spots to third place overall, but he will probably not be allowed to grab the yellow as there is an interesting battle going on for first and second. Lance Armstrong came in second on the first stage, but there is rampant speculation that he let up just enough and take second. The thinking is that he could save his team the effort of defending the Yellow Jersey for a few days. Problem is that the Yellow Jersey is a member of CSC which contains one of Lance’s cheif rivals Ivan Basso. Plus, CSC is no slouch in the TTT featuring riders such as the much improved in the TT Basso, Jens Voight who is a motorcycle, Bobbyy “Eliptical chainring” Julich and the “New Fastest Man on Two Wheels” David Zabriske. CSC is probably the biggest challenger to Discovery Channel in the TTT and they have an advantage by going last and gauging the performance of the Discos.

It will be interesting to see if Lance will try to go for an intermediate sprint to take the yellow for the end of the day and then have his team go last. CSC did not have too much trouble defending the yellow jersey as they let a small break go out and build a lead before all of the sprinters teams such as Quick Step and Davitamon started the chase, so things are working out for CSC overall.