Jul 9, 2005
Jour de Merde
That is how Lance described today’s first mountain stage. Armstrong’s powerful Discovery Channel team was nowhere to be seen in the final kilometers of today’s stage while T-Mobile and CSC had good numbers up front.
Vinokourov delivered on the promised attacks and helped to put Discovery in trouble along with an unexpected attack from Jan Ullrich and the ultimately successful attack from Kloden, who placed second in today’s stage.
The T-Mobile triad worked well together by launching several attacks that helped to thin out any Discovery Channel teammates out of Armstrong’s group. On one of Vino’s several attacks you could see that Lance and teammates could not catch Vino very easily. Salvodelli had trouble bridging back to Vino and eventully dropped back to the next group. Hincapie did not have his usually tremendous climbing form and Popovich could not keep up the pace. The result was Lance by himself on a climb, while CSC and T-Mobile had several teammates. T-Mobile launched several attacks, while CSC held back. Armstrong should be happy with that result.
The significance of today is the fact that teams are strong enough to launch attacks against Armstrong instead of folding from the devastating precision attack of USPS/Discovery. Past first-moutain stages had Discovery Channel controlling the pace and launching Lance up the mountain. This time we saw a much different situation as Lance was alone and stuck on the wheel of Jan Ullrich, who Lance thinks is the biggest challenger.
The first mountain stage does not always determine how the rest of the Tour develops. Riders are just getting used to the different pace of going uphill instead of climbing. Discovery Channel looked bad today, but they will be having some serious discussions tonight to determine what exactly went wrong. Look for Discovery to bounce back, unless some of the Discos are sick or injured or tired from the first week.
CSC look formidable as they have several riders in the top ten and look to have placed Ivan Basso in a very good spot. T-Mobile will have plenty of confidence after today’s display of “good legs”.
So the Tour is heating up and it looks like this “may” be close. Look for Lance and Disco to bounce back tomorrow, and for continued attacks from T-Mobile. Ivan Basso may make a move on Sunday. CSC is already breathing down the neck of Armstrong, but Lance is best when there is adversity.
Finally, some other riders to watch are Chris Horner and Stefano Garzelli. Garzelli mentions that he would like to go for the Polk-Dot jersey, and Horner may go for the win in tomorrows uphill finish.