Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

(pic from Eurosport)
Jan Ullrich was shown no love by T-Mobile management. After lying about his relationship with Dr. Fuentes and the cloud surrounding Operation Puerto, T-Mobile have given the boot to Der Kaiser. Jan Ullrich is now out of a job and he is PO’d about the way in which T-Mobile informed him of the [...]

Legendary, Gutsy, Superb, Awesome, Possessed, Man on a Mission, Crazy, Spiteful, Revenege Seeking, Man on a Mission, Mr. Excitement, choose you moniker, adjective, whatever. This is the gutsiest move by any Tour contender in the modern era. Bernard Hinault was known for similar type moves, but nothing like this. From a complete crack yesterday to [...]

It’s been a long, long time since a Yellow Jersey favorite has cracked so badly. Not since Jan Ullrich in 1998 or Miguel Indurain in 1996, or Lance Armstrong in 2003 or when…who knows. Floyd Landis looked very strong on L’Alpe D;Huez and previously in the Pyrennes. Even tough the Phonak team was not [...]

Frank Schleck is not a name that would have been on the lips of many folks venturing to guess who would win the stage to L’Aple D’Huez. Schleck added his name to the legends of L’Alpe D’Huez making it two stage wins for CSC and a third second place for Lampre as Damiano Cundego just [...]

It’s extremely easy and you might get some help too. Point is that with so many people walking around it is easy to do whatever you want to and not have anyone do anything about it. This video was made well over five years ago as you can tell in the end.

(pic from Yahoo!)
Eddy Merckx is riding with the Phonak team since his son Axel is part of the team. Here is a nice pic og Axel and Eddy riding together. Eddy Merckx lost lots of weight recently and now looks like he could race again if he wanted. What is odd is the fact that [...]

(Pic from Yahoo! Sports)
Yaroslav Popovych was finally unleashed today with a fine stage win. After the four pronged GC experiment finally failed with poor performances by everyone on the Discovery Channel, the team was allowed to “just go for stage wins”. That change in strategy worked better than expected as Popovych vaulted up the GC [...]

(pic from Yahoo! Sports)
Bobby Julich is writing for ESPN.com about the Tour de France. Since his crash in the Time Trial Bobby J has been healing up at home in Nice. He wrote about his Stage 11 impressions including some gentle words about George Hincapie’s GC intentions.

George Hincapie
I don’t know whether George’s injury from earlier [...]

(pic from Yahoo!)
The Tour de France finally had a major shake up that revealed the top contenders for the Maiilot Jaune. The top guys included Floyd Landis who is now in Yellow, Denis Menchov and Levi Leipheimer. The first major mountain stage provided some surprises as T-Mobile collpased after a very dominant first week [...]

(pic from Yahoo Sports)
Iban Mayo has yet again abandoned the Tour de France on the first serious mountain stage. The Basque rider was once thought to be the one to beat Lance Armstrong. In 2003 he putthe hurt on Armstrong and won the stage to L’Alpe D’Huez. Ever since then, Mayo has not been anywhere [...]