T-Mobile has the Three Musketeers or three blind mice, or three angry siblings. Anyway you look at it T-Mobile will be a force for Lance to reckon with in the Tour. But cycling has a way of producing the unexpected.
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Check out the full map details of this years Tour Click for map
Christian Vandevelde writes a good entry in his Velonews diary about what this week is like for a pro cyclist about to race in the Tour.
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Who are the top contenders for the 2005 Tour de France?
Lance gives No Gifts
First is of course the six time champion Lance Armstrong. Lance comes into this race with not much success this year. He admittedly started his prep late. There is word that they usually start working for the Tour in December, but this year, did not decide on aprogram until the end of January. The late prep showed in some early season appearances. Lance struggled badly in Paris-Nice, epecially in the cold and snow. He did not have a great showing in the Tour de Georgia, where he helped Tom Danielson to overall victory.
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Performance Bike has a simple Fantasy Tour de France game on their site.
Click here to find out more
Plus, cyclingnews.com has a more extensive game, but you have to pay to play.
A good overview of Lance’s career results in the Tour
Looks like the swift Italian justice system has come down on Raimondas Rumsas. You remember Raimi? The guy who came out of nowhere in the 2002 Tour to take third place. On the final day of the Tour Raimi’s wife was caught on the French Italian border with enough EPO and assorted drugs to stock a small hospital in Nigeria. The excuses was better than Franck Vandebroucke’s excuse, but not as convincing. They said the drugs were for the sick mother-in-law.
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Gilberto Simoni will not be at the Tour as was originally thought. The Lampre team was at first going to
use Damiano “The Kid” Cunego as the team leader. A bout of Epstein-barr syndrome knocked “The Kid” out of contention for the Tour and explained his bad form for the Giro. Gilberto was half heartedly seen as the next obvious leader, but Gilberto has no love for the Tour, since Le Tour don’t love him. So GS is sitting at home for the month of July saying that he has still not recovered from the Giro where he placed second to Paolo “Il Falco” Salvodelli.
“Il Falco” of course will be riding support for some guy named Lance who thinks he has a good shot at winning the race yet again.
Stage 1 is mostly flat with a short bump at the start. It is going to be a stage where the top contenders may show their cards. Being a 19km TT it could open up some gaps and give riders like Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso some time over riders such as Iban Mayo and Roberto Heras. It is a stage where some top contenders are going to find themselves already behind. So you can’t win the Tour on Stage 1 but you sure can pave the way to losing it.
Le tour website has some quick interviews that I assume they are doing for each team. Seems like they are filling it out today as I hit refresh the Domina Vacanze dispatch appeared as did a side menu.
Some notes: Beloki on Liberty Seguros, Denis Menchov on Rabobank, and Levi Leipheimer on Gerolsteiner.
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