posted
To Scoop Hobbes Lance made a move today and came in 2nd on the stage, and is now 2nd overall he put minutes between himself and the rest of the GC contenders!
AJ (maybe now that loathesome Trautwig will stop talking about the "real" tour de france!)
Posts: 11265 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Yah, well if you scoop me, I'm going to keep reminding you that I sat home and watched the entire stage Live! And boy was it exciting! *Goes off to change title*
posted
Side Note--I caught a few minutes of a show on TechTV/G4Tv. It was a French programmer complaining. He had developed a cycling game, a real race sim. However, since this sport is so under-appreciated in English speaking countries, he doubts it will be a financial success.
It looked interesting, and I could follow some of the strategy thanks to this thread.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Well I predicted tomorrow would be the gc moves. Guess I was off by a stage. But stages are also about seizing opportunity which Lance did in the weather conditions.
Do you think the whole thing going on between Lance and Greg Lemond is basically sour grapes on Lemonds part?
posted
nope I'm really surprised Hamilton cracked today.
AJ
Though it is possible he [Tyler] peaked too soon in his pre-Tour short stage races where he was riding very well. Lance did that last year and had to struggle more as a result. His [Lance's] dramatic crash last year was actually the blessing in disguise he needed to dig to his mental toughness rather than physical weakness. Tyler rode last year with a broken collar bone. I don't know what that did or didn't do to his mental toughness, the results weren't quite as obvious as the fire we suddenly saw in Lance's eye after Lance's crash.
posted
Yah, I was surprised too! He's typically a better climber than Ulrich, though it did make me feel better when Ulrich cracked too (Hamilton lost just under a minute Ulrich, and is now only a few seconds behind him in the GC). Everyone except Armstrong and Basso looked bad today.
Tomorrow will be a stage for GC moves as well, everyone's going to have to try something now, Armstrong has almost 4 minutes on Hamilton and Ulrich!
Ohh, and I was incredibly impressed with Voecler's preformance, what a champ!
posted
I don't know, he looked pretty on form in the team time trial, and it's not all that unsual to have one bad stage in the mountains for a GC contedner, especially when it's one of the first stages. I think we'll see tomorrow if Hamilton and Ulrich just were off their game, or if they were really not up to it.
I think more important than his early peaking may be the fact that due to those other races, he hasn't had a chance to train in the mountains like he should've.
If Ulrich and Hamilton don't get it back tommorow it's quite possible that the team leadership could pass off to another rider on the team, which would be a real blow to both of them.
Description:Before we began, I just want to say that I could sit you (the reader) down In front of the television for the entire last hour of this race, talk at you constantly, and still not hit on all the exciting things that happened. My summary would probably only take me a few minutes to read (I’m not sure exactly since I haven’t written it yet) so you wont get a full account from me.
This stage had a very interesting profile, it had a slight ramp up all the way to the first big climb, which was a category 1 climb, a monster. After this there was a descent and then another big climb and that was it. Very simply and straight forward, and like any mountain stage, pure hell to ride.
There was a break-away early on, a few men not overall threats to the GC nor really, that great of climbers. Their advantage never grew to that much, and when USPS started helping at the front of the peleton, they got wiped out before the first climb.
Now one thing you have to know about this climb is that the road on it is very narrow, not as much as the cobblestones, but narrow none the less. So all the favorites were worried about hitting the start of the climb late and not being in the front of the peleton. On a climb like this the peleton is guaranteed to split into many, many parts, and if you’re at the wrong end you can pretty much say good-bye to staying with the leaders.
So the teams were all jostling to get there first, and just like with the cobblestones, USPS won. The other big contenders were all there though, no one was going to get caught out. Well USPS started by setting a tremendous pace up the mountain, so much so that two of their strong climbers had to give up the ghost on the way up and let the team carry on.
Towards the top, one rider broke off the front and tried to make a full-blown break-away. He pushed his lead up to about 30 seconds by the top of the climb, which all the favorites (and the yellow jersey of Voeckler, who is having an absolutely fantastic Tour) arrived at together. Then there was the descent, it was narrow, it was windy, and it was raining. In other words, it was incredibly dangerous.
The leader out front is a good descender, and pushed hard, the rest of the pack were also going pretty fast down hill. Armstrong, who is considered an excellent bike handler, didn’t want to risk it and went slower than all the other big guys. At the bottom of the climb he was behind the main contenders. But his USPS team was there and they helped him catch back up.
Once again USPS set an incredibly hard pace, and the break was swallowed up. All of a sudden, on the climb that wasn’t supposed to be much (unless you asked me <insert predictive bragging here>) the favorites started to crack.
It began with Hamilton, he showed signs of weakness, and then fell off the back of the small group being lead by USPS. Then Ulrich, highly touted as Armstrong’s main competitor, fell off two. Only a few guys remained, technically they are GC threats, but not compared to the magnitude of Ulrich and Hamilton.
The last USPS man left was Azevedo, and he is putting in the hardest work he can. Armstrong wasn’t trying to attack, but his team set such a high tempo that now they’ve cracked all the big contenders, so they push on. Sastre attacks and Armstrong has to take up pace making as Azevedo cracks.
The Armstrong group splinters further, and Ulrich and Hamilton continue losing time. Finally Armstrong does a mini-attract to break everyone but Basso, and the two work catch Sastre out, and pass him.
Armstrong and Basso work all the way to the finish, were Basso leads them over the line. It was an attack that nobody, including Armstrong expected, but it’s one then put 2 and a half extra minutes on Ulrich, and 3 and a half on Hamilton (those two are now incredibly close in the GC, with Hamilton trailing by just a few seconds). An absolutely amazing stage, one for the ages.
Km 42.5 - Col des Ares - 4.0 km climb at 4.7 % - 3e Cat
Km 64.0 - Col du Portet d'Aspet - 4.4 km climb at 9.8 % - 2e Cat
Km 99.5 - Col de la Core - 14.2 km climb at 6.0 % - 1e Cat
Km 131.0 - Col de Latrape - 5.6 km climb at 7.7 % - 2e Cat
Km 146.0 - Col d'Agnes - 9.8 km climb at 8.2 % - 1e Cat
Km 155.0 - Port de Lers - 3.8 km climb at 5.7 % - 3e Cat
Km 205.5 - PLATEAU-DE-BEILLE - 15.9 km climb at 7.8 % - H.C. Cat
Notes about the stage:It’s the big one, 7 climbs including the end climb which is HC (impossible) and two category 1 climbs. Continual up and down, and not so much rolling hills as continuous mountains. Pure and unadulterated hell for all of the riders. It’s long, and it’s steep, and it’s going to be great fun for us!
What to Watch For: This was billed as the big stage of attacks, decision, and revelation. With today’s stage now over and decided, I have to predict that this is more likely than ever. Except for Ivan Basso, everyone lost time, significant time, to Armstrong today, and they all know they’ll have to make it up. This was going to be the stage where everyone tried to attack and get that time back, they’ll be forced to now.
So I’m not predicting any particular attack, just more of a kind of ATTACK! going on, should be great fun! Who knows which climbs someone will try to launch themselves on, who will be up to the challenge and who will be to out of it. I’m looking forward to getting up at 6:00am tomorrow for one of the few times in my life.
HCs are, for the average mortal, almost impossible. Alp d'Huez, for instance, will probably take the winners this year about 30 minutes (a little more actually) to ascend. A good recreational cycler is more likely to come in at around 2 hours. It's 9 miles at about an 8% gradient on average.
My work is 9 miles away, it's a little bumpy but more downhill than uphill, and when I race it, I can get there in just under 30 minutes. So me racing on flat to downhill is almost the same as these guys going up 8%!
Great stage today, very, very similar to yesterday, and lots of people lost (Hamilton abondended, Mayo lost 37 minutes, Heras lost 27 minutes, Ulrich lost another 2:40, the only GC contender that was pretedicted correctly is Lance Armstrong).
I've been trying to parse this sentence fragment, assuming horrible spelling, and I still can't do it. What is "abondended"?
Posts: 1423 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
OK, so I’m an awful speller but I think I’m going to blame part of that on the whole waking up way too early thing…
Here’s an actual version of what I posted.
quote:By the way, I actually got up at 5:30...
HCs are, for the average mortal, almost impossible. Alp d'Huez, for instance, will probably take the winners this year about 30 minutes (a little more actually) to ascend. A good recreational cycler is more likely to come in at around 2 hours. It's 9 miles at about an 8% gradient on average.
My work is 9 miles away, it's a little bumpy but more downhill than uphill, and when I race it, I can get there in just under 30 minutes. So me racing on flat to downhill is almost the same as these guys going up 8%!
Great stage today, very, very similar to yesterday, and lots of people lost (Hamilton abandoned, Mayo lost 37 minutes, Heras lost 27 minutes, Ulrich lost another 2:40, the only GC contender that was predicted correctly is Lance Armstrong).
Description:OK, I’m exhausted and this was incredible stage so there’s no way I can do it justice, so I’m going to just try and hit the highlights.
Complaining of sever back-pain, and emotional pain due to the death of his dog, Tyler Hamilton drops out
Voeckler goes off the back of the peleton on every single climb of the day, but whenever there’s downhill and flat afterward he re-integrates into the peleton proving to be perhaps the most heroic rider of this year’s tour.
Heras crashes, and due to this and previous crashes comes in 27 minutes behind the winners
Mayo cracks completely, and tries to abandon, but his team and the spectators convince him to get back on his bike; he finishes over 30 minutes behind the leaders
Ulrich does the best of the main contenders, but still looses another 2:40 to the winners and concedes team leadership (I don’t know officially, but certainly in reality) to his teammate Kloden.
Ivan Basso stays with Armstrong all the way to the end again, becoming Armstrong’s biggest contender this year.
Armstrong uses is team identically to yesterday, saving Azevedo for the knock-out punch at the end and then leads with Basso to the line, only he takes the win this time.
A great day in the saddle, Armstrong proves to be the only big competitor who actually lived up to his pre-race hype, Ivan Basso also looked very strong. It was a shame to see Hamilton abandon and to see the struggle for Mayo to work so hard just to get the line 30 minutes behind. Voeckler is now a hero for all of France, and for me as well. He doesn’t have the training, the stamina, the body, the tactics or the team to what he’s doing, he’s pulling out these rides on pure courage and will-power, and he fully deserves to be in yellow today. Hats off to this great man-child of France.
quote: Mayo cracks completely, and tries to abandon, but his team and the spectators convince him to get back on his bike; he finishes over 30 minutes behind the leaders
Hobbes -- what do you mean by this exactly? What happened to Mayo?
posted
Mayo fell way behind Armstrong in the middle of the stage, he was beaten and emotionaly drained. He got off his bike and tried to leave the race in the team care, but his team, his coach, and the spectators surronding him convinced him to get back on his bike and finish the Tour.
This is a rest day btw, so that's why there haven't been any updates by me yet.
posted
btw the reason why Hamilton abandoned was not because of fitness issues but because of an extremely painful lower back bruise he got when he crashed on one of the earlier stages.
I'm guessing the lower back bruise hurt more with every turn of the pedals than the broken collarbone did last year, simply due to the location of the injury. They showed some footage of him getting in the vehicle when he left the race and his shirt was off and the amount of gauze bandages on his back was quite disturbing.
AJ
(I belive it was this more than the death of the dog, though I am the first to acknowledge how badly a beloved pet's death hurts)
posted
When you watched Hamilton going uphill you could see that he barely moved his back at all, as he said "try climbing a hill without using your lower back". It's a real shame to see him go, but I fully expect him to be a huge force in next year's tour.
posted
Basically the only communication between the riders is the team manager constantly shouting at them. In Mayo's case, most of his team was surronding him physically when he tried to leave.
posted
Yes they do have ear peices to listen to the team manager. (You can see it clearly in pictures of Jan Ulrich when he has his helmet off because he actually tapes his in.) Lance has one too. I don't know how much they can communicate the other way back to the team manager. There are also small signals and code words, that the team members use to each other, if they don't want the other teams to notice, much like signal calling in baseball though they are generally extremely subtle.
posted
AJ's right, most of the teams do their shouting in wireless form. Voeckler actually took his earpiece out on one of the climbs because he couldn't stand one more minute of his team manger shouting in his ear.
I don't think there are any ways to communicate with the team manager electronically because whenever the riders want to talk to the manager (most of the time around 30 kilometers out a rider in a break-away will do this) they actually drop back to the team car to have a chat. Even if they do have equipment though mostly the riders are too exhausted to try and talk much.
posted
the ear peices are valuable in giving information on time gaps etc and who is in the breakaway etc though.
And on the time trials when the team car follows every individual rider (though I'm not sure how they are going to do this on L'Alpe d'Hues) what cracks me up is there is always at least one manager leaning out of the car with a bullhorn yelling "Venga, venga, venga!" at the rider slaving away.
posted
My Dad said that at the Prologue most of the team mangers were pretty reserved through the whole thing, except for the Gerolsteiner manager who shouted at the top of his lungs literally constantly at each rider the whole time. You could see him doing this on stage 13 as well to the one Gerolsteiner who came in third.
posted
Ulrichs attacking over 50 kilometers from the fnish. He had announced that he turned race leadership over to Kloden but now... it's so exciting! It's the Tour Baby!
posted
Reading the live reports aparently Kloden had a pretty bad crash at the beginning of this stage. This could have turned the leadership back to Jan.
posted
A wonderfuly exciting and fun stage, one which will be written up by at some point even though I'm a complete slacker. Tomorrow's time trial up 9 miles of 7.9% is going to be ever so exciting!
quote: Armstrong earned bonus seconds for winning the stage, extending his lead on second-place Basso to 1 minute, 25 seconds. If he can hold that advantage for two more days in the Alps and in a time trial on Saturday, Armstrong will pedal into the history books when the three-week cycling marathon ends on the crowd-packed Champs-Elysees in Paris on Sunday.
Armstrong said his team manager, Johan Bruyneel, was yelling into his radio-linked earpiece that he had to beat Basso.
"Johan was screaming in my ear that I had to win because of the time bonuses," Armstrong said. "Every second counts."
posted
And Robin Williams was riding in Armstrong's support car today. Can you imagine the possibilities of that? Posts: 2454 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Know how I said I would summarize it? Well I will, but due to complete lack of sleep it'll be short.
A breakaway made it out early, no one in it was a threat to the GC to it was let go. However, two climbers put the hammer down and split the break into many pieces, while launching themselves forward. Still this was not a big issue, those climbers weren't threats either. But then, Jan Ulrichc launched off in front of Armstrong and started to put in big time. USPS took control of the pace and whipped it up at the front. A CSC rider who had been in the break in front was brough back, and CSC (Ivan Basso's team) kept the pace high. Ulrih eventually got caught after a long, tiring break-away, still with a good way to go to the finish. The last of the orginal break was reeled in and Armstrong, Basso, and several other riders were now leading the stage.
Azevedo and CSC kept the pace high and the race together. The group up front began to break up a bit as a couple riders really brought the tempo to bear, but the big rider (Ulrich included) stayed with them. Armstrong was feeling great (he says) and when the end came, he handidly won the sprint finish to the end with Basso coming second. Which means that between the 20 second first place bonus and the 12 second second place bonus Armstrong gained another 8 seconds on Basso heading into tomorrow's time-trial up the mountain.
One thing of interest, with an expected attendtance of over 1 million people tomorrow (one of which will be our Rabbit ) the estimation is that for every 1 meter of road, there will be 30 people. Wow.
[EDIT: The current title refers to what Armstrong told his team director durring the race, he felt strong enough to garuntee a sprint win]
posted
btw "Ace" in the "Tell Ace to keep it together and I'll win the stage" comment to Johan Bruniel refered to Jose Azevedo, Lance's teammate who led him out until near the end.
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*Goes off to change title*![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
Have fun and enjoy your well earned rest! ![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)
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Can you imagine the possibilities of that? 
