Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

(Levi warming up from flickr)

The Tour of California is the dominant cycling news at the moment. The second edition of the race is a mix of excitement and controversy. There was great action on stage 3 with breaks happening all day, and a great victory by Jens Voight who was in most of those breaks. Small controversy arose with the Stage 1 crash and the decision to neutralize the race since most of the field was caught up in a freak crash.

Team Slipstream is having a great Tour of California.
Danny Pate of Team Slipstream powered by Chipotle is on one of the Teams numerous attacks. With the success of Jason Donald Team Manager Jonathan Vaughters must be very pleased.

Prologue

Photo from Yahoo News

Levi Leipheimer wins it for the second straight year in a row. The race up to Coit Tower in San Francisco required that Leipheimer beat his previous time by a few seconds to get ahead of upstart Jason Donald of Team Slipstream. The newest American cycling star Jason Donald surprised everyone with an unextecpted performance in the prologue.

Stage 1

Stage 1 Crash Photo from Yahoo News

Sprint victory goes to Rabobank’s Graeme Brown who took the hectic field sprint. Team Slipstream continued to animate the race putting riders in breaks and making the argyle pattern look cool.

Stage 2

JJ Haedo Wins With a Dominant Sprint Photo from Yahoo News

CSC starts its run of domination? Maybe, as the first CSC by former Toyota United sprinter JJ Haedo was so dominant that it was embarrassing to the other sprints. Haedo had a few bike length lead thanks to a masterful leadout by Stuart O’Grady.

Stage 3

Jens! Photo from Yahoo News

Jens Voight was the star of the day which featured the indefatigable rider power at the front and stay ahead with a decisive break. The most animated stage of the Tour so far had 17 riders off the front at the start of the stage which featured the toughest climbs of the Tour. Leipheimer said that this stage was a real bike race since riders were constantly going off the front attacking and coutner attacking. The stage was fun to watch especially at the end as the peloton was barreling down on the lead trio.

Stage 4

Bettini in photo finish Photo from Yahoo News

Paolo Bettini gets a stage win ahead of new sprint sensation Gerard Ciolek. The sprint came down to a photo finish.

Next up is the individual time trial in Solvang, California. The town is familiar to Discovery Channel and CSC riders as they both spent long training camps in that town. Leipheimer is well positioned and seems to have the best form at the moment. However, watch out for several riders who are proficient enough at time trials to give Leiheimer a run for his money. Fabian Cancellara could vie for the stage win, but he is not in a position to take anything away from Levi.. Jens Voight and Chris Horner may be able challenge Levi. Voight has a strong engine that could challenge Leipheimer. Horner is not a TT specialist, but being so early in the season anything can happen. It would be difficult to see Leipheimer not do well in the time trial since he had such a poor performance in the same event last year and seems determined to perform better this time around.
Other riders to look out for would be Rory Sutherland and Michael Rogers.