Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

Tour de France stage 4 provided lots of excitement and a bit of disappointment.
This one came down to the last few kilometers as CSC was cruising through the finishing curves at 60km/h. It was already looking extremely close when Dave Zabriske clipped the barriers and crashed. That is a major disappointment for the man from Utah as he looked completely crushed as he crossed the line with the yellow jersey showing black skid marks from the crash. Overall, it is a record TTT. Earlier Liberty Segouros set a record time at over 56km/h for a TTT. Then Discovery upped the record to over 57km and hour.

Liberty Seguros provided a surprise result (not a surprise to Velochimp readers) in finishing 4th while Phonak provided disappointment at finishing 5th.

The overall standings are dominanted by CSC and Discovery. The closest GC challenger to Armstrong is Ivan Basso. Basso lost two seconds to Lance, but has moved into tenth place at 1:26. That is not too bad of a deficit to Lance as we get closer to the mountains.

Jan Ullrich lost a few spots to slip down to 14th place at 1:36. This is not as good for Ullrich who cannot really attack Armstrong in the mountains, but is still in contention.

Vinoukorov is in 7th place at 1:21 and is still in a good position to disrupt Lance’s run for 7th.

The only non-Discovery riders in the top 10 are Jens Voight, Bob Julich and Dave Zabriske and Vino. The next few days may see an attack by Jens Voight or Bobby J to get Discovery to work a little. I don’t think that the 2 second loss and the crashing out of the yellow jersey sits too well with CSC. Look for a little revenge, or they may choose to save their strength for an Ivan Basso attack when we hit the mountains in a few days.

Discovery will find a great deal of help from the sprinter’s teams just as CSC did in the last few stages. Tom Boonen will want to pad his lead for the Green jersey as the mountains loom.

Hope Zabriske’s doesn’t feel too bad about crashing out of the Yellow Jersey. It is not the best way to lose, and his team may or may not have won if he did not crash. But he did have a few great days in Yellow and he fought hard to keep his lead.

Now that Lance has the Yellow he will not be too eager to part with it. Could he keep it until Paris 2 1/2 weeks away? For the sake of the Tour I hope not, but for Lance and his record I hope so. Hopefully we will see the contenders attack and make this a memorable Tour. There are lots of bruised egos and sore muscles and this is only the 4th stage.