With a little more than a week to go for the Tour de France, cycling news and cycling blog sites are getting a bit overzealous with their pre Tour analysis. It is a long two week run from the end of the Tour de Suisse to the start of the Tour de France next Saturday. In the meantime speculation about duels between Bjarne Riis and Johan Bruynel are running wild.
Podium Cafe a fine news/blog site has some overanalysis based on the most recent issue of Cycle Sport.
..has Bruyneel been using the entire season to lay a trap for Basso and Riis at the Tour? Consider, the two biggest weakness for Basso are his never having been in yellow (and taken responsibility for it), and his need to expend himself in the Giro. For his part, Riis had never won anything much before this year as a DS, and had blown his first real shot at a grand tour in last year’s Giro… to Discovery.
Meanwhile, Discovery are being extremely cagey about their own plans, giving Riis no real target to aim at. They have four plausible leaders, with little leaks aimed at giving the impression that Hincapie is their first choice. Could they be playing possum again? Is Popovych — whom nobody talks about — quietly building his form for the real run? Did Savolodelli back off in the Giro, claiming “allergies,” when in fact he was holding back from a futile effort to save some strength for the Tour, a course that suits him?
Not bad points at all, but consider that Popovich has not done very well in any Grand Tour overall. Lance Armstrong at least had a test run at the 1998 Vuelta before deciding to win the Tour de France. Popovych still needs to experience riding as a team leader. The Tour de France is not the place to learn, but the wide open competition could give Popy an opening. I don’t believe for a second that Hincapie is a GC contender. I agree that he is mostly a prop. One mountain stage win does not make you ready to take over as GC leader. Jens Voight gave away a victory to Juan Manuel Garate in the Giro’s toughest stage, but you don’t see Voight talking of going for a GC win in the Giro next year.
Salvodelli is probably the secret weapon in the Discovery stable. Bruyneel mentioned during the Giro that the Tour fits Savoldelli abilities better than the Giro. Savoldelli has been very low key since the Giro and he does know how to handle the role of team leader.
Next Pez Cycling News a very fine cycling news site has a different take on the Ullrich TT win in the Giro.
But Ullrich’s win had many astonished cycling fans overlooking an important detail – Ivan Basso actually beat Ullrich in both of the last two time checks clipping 14 seconds off Jan in the final 22 kms. Did Ullrich lose form in the second half of the TT? Or did Bjarne Riis, knowing that Basso had the Giro won, have something up his sleeve? Something like giving Ullrich a false sense of confidence with respect to Basso’s TT abilities, setting Jan up for a takedown in July?
The process for the change of sponsorship from Liberty-Seguros to Astana has cleared the investigation by the UCI. This allows the team of Alexandre Vinokourov to be allowed to participate in the Tour de France. This is a big relief for Vino since there was a very real possibility that the team would not be cleared by the UCI thereby rejecting the ProTour license. That would make it easy for Jean Marie LeBlanc to reject Vino’s team from the Tour.
Now Vino and his Spanish climbing support team can relax and get ready for one of the flattest Tours in recent memory.
These jets are made for radio controlled airplanes and helicopters. But no one said you can’t strap them onto an old mountain bike? These turbines cost around 3k each. Not a bad price considering a sweet carbon bike will run you about as much. You will leave the competition in your after burners when you show up at the next criterium with these strapped to your road bike. Ale Jet stands no chance against a real jet.
Downhiller Dave Watson jumped over the Tour de France in 2003 on the climb up to L’Alpe D’Huez. The jump was setup just as a breakaway was riding through. The Downhill daredevil seemed to be an urban legend as word of the jump could not be verified and it seemed as though the Tour Organization ASO tried to confiscate the video. Now a few years later, the video is up on YouTube.
Some background:
“We kind of wanted to tie the evolution of cycling into the 100th year of Le Tour,” explains freerider cyclist Dave. “And jumping over the peleton seemed the best way to do it.”
Wow, YouTube and other video sites do have quite a bit of footage. Interesting to search the sites and find out what you can dig up.
Check out the footage from 2003 when Lance Armstrong caught a mussette and went down. The crash caused his frame to crack which later caused Lance to unclip from his pedal and almost take out his other testicle.
Now checkout the 2000 Tour de France the year that Lance had to prove that his 1999 win was no fluke. Here he rides on Hautcam and duels Marco Pantani who was still the worlds best climber. Although Marco was not at his peak, he did go mano-a-mano with Lance a few times.
The Tour de France is almost upon us, and it is time to kickoff the excitement with some videos in French of course. First up is a look at L’Alpe D’Huez and Lance Armstrong with some footage taken from OLN and Lance’s Reality show.
Next is a profile of Jan Ullrich from 2004. Take a behind the scenes look at Jan with his baby and having some coffee.
The RAI Click website has an archive of the entire Giro D’Italia coverage as seen on RAI. Relive the domination of Ivan Basso and listen to some great Italian commentators too. The Processo alla Tappa program is also available and that is worth seeing too.
Click on “VENTUNESIMA TAPPA – 28/05″ (the 21st stage) to view the confrontation between Gilberto Simoni and Ivan Basso at the start of the final stage. Ivan Basso says to Simoni to not tell lies to which Simoni replies to Basso “you don;t exist to me any more, go away”. Forward to the 8:00 mark to view the rare moment of an emotional confrontation between cyclist. Watch Basso keeps his cool while a weasally Simoni waves his hands telling Basso to go away.
Jan Ullrich is looking strong on the roads of the Tour de Suisse. Although he had a strong sixth place finish in yesterdays first hilly stage near the front, the true climbs will come today where Der Kaiser hopes to test out his form a bit more and possibly go for the overall win:
This Tour de Suisse is very tough especially as I am close enough to think of the overall win. Certainly this race will help me understand where my climbing condition is at the moment. To do this I will not take the last day lightly.
For the upcoming Tour de France Jan sees Basso and a few others as the big contenders
The big favorite is Ivan Basso, he is the man to beat. The only question is if he can maintain his extrodinary condition that he had in the Giro? Its possible that he could have already reached his peak form. I am also not overlooking Floyd Landis and Alexandre Vinkourov. It is true that they weren’t in top form at Dauphine Libere, but Landis was very strong in the Time Trial. Believe me, those that want to do well in the Tour need to save themselves in the Dauphine.
Comunidad Valencianna (formerly Kelme) are now uninvited to the Tour de France as a result of the Operation Puerto investigation. No surprise from this announcement as it was already seen as a done deal. Jean Marie Leblanc has stated previously that no other team will be invited in place of CV. No surprise there either since at 22 teams there would be a record size for fields at the Tour de France. Plus, it would be a bit late to send out another invitation to a team such as Unibet, Barloworld, LPR or Panaria.
Today, the UCI will look at the proposed switch of sponsorships for Astana, a Kazak conglomerate to take over for Liberty Seguros. If the UCI does not approve of the switch then the currently named Wurth team could be denied a ProTour spot which would guarantee that LeBlanc and Prudomme will promptly send out another uninvite to the shattered Spanish team. Prodhomme has stated that they will not replace any team no matter how many teams get involved in the Operation Puerto scandal. He mentioned that the Tour could run with 15 or 16 team if necessary. There has not been much word on other teams being involved, perhaps Prudhomme knows some insider information, but with only two or so weeks to go, it would be dificult to imaging the UCI pulling the license of other teams.
With the smaller peloton, riders such as Levi Leipheimer might be relieved that crazy Spanish guys aren’t clogging up the road like in 2003. That is the year that Levi went home after a mass pileup that also say Tyler trudge through the Tour with a broken collarbone.
Manolo Saiz finally stepped down from being the Director Sportif of Astana-Wurth, to simply being involved with Active Bay which is the management company that runs the team. Good news for Saiz to step away as his continued presence as DS was very detrimental to the team.
Surprisingly though, Alexandre Vinokourov is not jumping ship from the Astana-Wurth formation. Sure, his presence helped bring in the new sponsor which is a conglomerate of Kazak sponsors. If the UCI does not approve the sponsor switch then Vino will be left on the sidelines only weeks before his major season goal. Does Vino have a backup plan? I couldn’t imagine Vino’s agent would not be trying to secure a backup ride with a team like Saunier Duval or Agributel. Getting on a small French team would guarantee Vino’s presence in the Tour. Only problem would be that he might not have enough support, but at least he would be in with a chance of riding. So Vino, get on the phone to Agributel right away before its too late.
