Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

ERIC DE PAEPE/AFP/Getty Images

Alberto Contador is exciting to watch. His high cadence pace and aggressive attacks in the mountains have made him one of the more entertaining cyclist in the Tour de France. This weekend ’s stages were among some of the more exciting stages in the past few years. The trend we can see developing is that Alberto Cpontador is a true contender. Perhaps he has been the secret contender for Discovery Channel all along. No one can doubt that Coontador has the skills necessary to win if not this year then next year and probably a few years after that.

FRANCK FIFE/AFP/Getty Images

The stage up Plataeu de Beille featured a mono-a-mono battle between Rasmussen in the Yellow Jersey and Contador in the White Jersey. Lots of talking and possibly sniping going on between the two racers. They probably both agreed to put as much time as possible into their rivals namely Cadel Evans who was working on his own pace up the insanely steep climb. Contador with Johan Bruyneel’s direction was able to force Rasmussen to make the pace and stay in second position going into the final kilometers to get the stage win. A small extra time bonus helped to close the margin slightly to Rasmussen to boot. The display of confidence and the ability to follow through successfully on a high pressure stage were a big boost to Discovery Channel who now look like a formidable team.

Discovery Channel finally started to do some coherent team work. Sure the racing in the Alps had all the Disco men all over the road in breaks, in the peloton and pretty much everywhere. There was no cohesive teamwork that marked the days of Lance Armstrong’s victories and the Blur Train of US Postal. Today George Hincapie was seen taking up the pace along with Yaroslav Popovych. They worked for the true team leader Alberto Contador with levi Leipheimer providing an extra tactical card to play just in case. Levi is not as explosive as Contador or others, but he did well for himself leap frogging into fourth place and looking pretty good for a possible podium.

Meanwhile Cadel Evans still has some chances to make up time and get back into contention. He lost a few minutes today, but can stl make things up in the mountains or the TT. Alexandre Vinokourov sealed his Tour motives yesterday by winning the individual time trial. Today he finished 20 minutes behind the leaders. he can stil be a valuable helper to Andreas Kloden to get a high placing. Alejandro Valverde collapsed this weekend. First he placed amongst the “just riding through on a day off” Time Trailers. His placing was so bad that he was caught and passed by Michael Rasmussen of the meltdown TT of 2005 fame. I would imagine that either Valverde will be spending a great deal of time in the wind tunnel this winter or trying to figure out what the heck happened to make him ride so badly. Today’s mountain stage puts Valverde further behind but not totally out of contention.

The next two stages in the Pyrenees are just as challenging, so we can probably see another duel between Contador and Rasmussen play out. If Contador keeps up his smart aggressive riding, he could find himself in Yellow before we get to Paris.