A tight, crash-heavy parcours, riders dropping off the pace left and right, a symbolic surge to the line by a snubbed favorite, and frantic, split-second calculations after the last team’s finish.
Stage 4’s Team Time Trial has delivered on what is rapidly becoming one of the most exciting TdF first weeks in recent memory—and a certain Twitterer promises more fun to come.
I can’t say much that hasn’t already been said about today’s stage, so I’ll just highlight a few figures that caught my eye:
Every Second Counts
<1 – Seconds by which Lance Armstrong missed retaking the Yellow Jersey
0 – Number of seconds separating Armstrong and Fabian Cancellara on GC.
0 – Number of bonus seconds available in tomorrow’s stage.
Pour le Maillot Jaune
14 – Number of days Cancellara will have in yellow after tomorrow, a new Swiss record
83 – Number of days Armstrong’s been in yellow in his career
10 – Number of years since Armstrong’s first day in yellow
10 – Longest spread, in years, between a rider’s first and last Tour wins (Gino Bartali, above)
Keeping Up With the Armstrongs
0:18 – Time lost to Astana, today’s stage winners, by second place Garmin-Slipstream.
5:21 – Time lost to Astana by last-placed Skil-Shimano.
11:37 – Amount of time a rider could have lost before being eliminated.
40.27 – Speed, in kph, needed to avoid elimination (just over 25mph).
The Bottom Line
$9.8 million – Official budget of Astana.
$33,750 – Minimum salary of a rider on Skil-Shimano.
$900,000 – Bank guarantees presented by BBox Bouygues Telecom, second-to-last in today’s stage, to guarantee a spot in the Tour de France.
$628,380 – Prize for the overall Tour de France win.
I’m sorry, but the TTT is a travesty. It’s hard enough to win the Tour de France with a weak team, and the addition of this stage makes it impossible. Why on earth would you add a stage that takes a guy like Evans, who has shown himself to be potentially the second strongest of the big GC contenders, and then penalizes him 3 minutes for being on a second-tier team? Why engineer things so that the peloton arrives at the mountains with 4 minutes separating the big favorites instead of :45 seconds?
Because cycling is a team sport?
In every picture of Gino Bartali I’ve seen, he looks like he’s crying.
Everyone had plenty of time to recon this stage. Even if they didn’t have this stage, it wouldn’t really change much for Cadel.
“Because cycling is a team sport?”
Um, I think that the “real” stages emphasize that enough. The TTT transforms a race in which being on one of the 2-3 strongest teams is a decided advantage into a race that you can’t win unless you’re on one of the 2-3 strongest teams. I’m not sure why anyone would want that. As I said: it amounts to a time bonus for people who don’t need it, and a time penalty for those who can’t afford it.
“Even if they didn’t have this stage, it wouldn’t really change much for Cadel.”
Weak.
It’s true that Evans lost major time today which he wouldn’t have as a solo time trialer.
That said he lost 40 seconds yesterday because he wasn’t watching what was happening around him and no amount of strong team can help that.
Last year he was used an abused by the Schlecks and then polished of by Sastre because he didn’t have a strong enough team.
The same happens in all sports. Think how many all-star players never get a Super bowl ring or World series championship because they don’t play for a strong enough team.
They all knew months ago that this was on the agenda. Some teams took that into account and others didn’t.
In fact the ttt was a major factor in Armstrong’s string of wins and this is just getting back to what it has usually been.
This, coming from a newcomer (my first year watching), and perhaps a bit off topic:
I understand, having watched the last few days, how important the team is in tactics and strategy, and how an individual can’t win without team support. But if cycling is a team sport, then why are all the headlines about individuals?
Team sports highlight teams:
Montreal Canadiens: 24 Stanley Cups
New York Yankees: 26 World Series
Individual sports highlight individuals:
Roger Federer: 15 Grand Slams
Lance Armstrong: 7 Tour de France victories
How many people outside the cycling community know which team has won the most Tour de France titles? Do they even keep track? They’re not really teams, are they? Just sponsors who come and go.
WAS THAT A TIME TRIAL OR A COMEDY SHOW??
Has Bernard Hinault been fighting with errant visitors ‘s to the podium again?, because that is a big bandage on his elbow.
Paul Sherwin “they can’t lose too many more riders” err yes, Paul your right, Garmin have only got five now!
Phil Ligget “who’d of thought we’d be thinking the unthinkable today” in relation to Lance Armstrong wearing yellow again. Emm, I normally spend a lot of time thinking the unthinkable, but usually only come up with a blank.
Obviously someone’s PA pulled a lot of strings to get Ben Stiller presenting the yellow Jersey. They should have put him in a yellow dress though and he would have been more in character. It was like someone was playing a joke on him, With his quizzical/confused/ bemused facial expression, “Who’s his guy? Where’s Lance? Where’s Lance? .. I was promised Lance! We are at the TDF aren’t we? And Who’s that guy in yellow over there!?
Yes finally it was Raymond Poulidor in yellow on the TDF podium, 40 years too late but only as a dignitary.
sebastian – I’ve heard dummer things, but that’s up there.
cyclocosm (what the fock is that anyway?) – budget of 9.8 million USD or EUROS? big difference, what are you a 5th grader?
Hi Harry, you must be new.
I think there’s a definite case to be made against the TTT. They haven’t had one in a few years for a reason.
Also, my budget stats: https://www.cbssports.com/cycling/teams/page/ast.
7 million Euros; at today’s exchange rate, 9.8 million USD.
One thing I didn’t hear from Paul and Phil was why it seemed like all the teams were having such a hard time with the course. Can you only mount super high pressure, low rolling resistance slicks on aero wheels? Or is it more fundamental to the geometry of time trial bikes that they just handle like trucks?
And they tried to reduce the severity of the TTT by keeping it so short. And then they ran it over the least decidedly TTT friendly course they could find within 4 days of Monaco. *sigh* One step forward, two back. I think the TTT is something of a crowd favorite because it shows the importance of a solid team in a much more dramatic fashion than the slow death of 8 domestiques climbing up a HC wall, but I agree that it tends to penalize the good GC candidates who don’t have the luck to be on a solid overall team. On the other hand, hasn’t the TTT been basically a dead heat between top teams in prior years, and the sole benefit the time bonuses?
That said, this is the most interested I’ve been in the first week in as long as I can remember, and I don’t know how much of that boils down to the return of the king. Cavendish’s performance, Columbia/HTC’s bravado in breaking away (and pulling it off!), the number of podium finishing names on Team Astana and the inevitable shakedown that will occur, the lack of tour ending bad luck accidents? Gotta be good for the ratings.
Well, after a four-year absence I don’t think we will see the TTT be part of next year’s version after this display. If it does come back, it will be done with the previous timing system.
Whatever argument you care to make about “team sport” or “individual sport”, the bottom line is that this TTT has taken a lot of the potential interest out of this year’s edition.
The guy who finished second the last two years is 3 minutes down and virtually out of the competition for the jersey or the podium. And much the same for last year’s winner. I am not saying either Sastre or Evans would have won this year, but it at least would have been more interesting to see them in the chase.
The TdF in a vain attempt to become as interesting and varied as the Giro has been the last couple of years has clearly gone outside their comfort zone and dropped the ball on this one. Imagination is not Prudhomme’s strong suit.
Speaking of numbers, when was the last time the Tour had four previous winners in the race? Sastre, Contador, Pereiro and Armstrong.
Over the past decade or so, it’s been more common to have no previous Tour winners: 1999, 2006, 2007, 2008.
Ummh…Pereiro, who you cite as a tour winner for this year’s tour, you neglect for last year’s tour. Okay, he crashed out, but he was in the race up until Stage 15.
Touche`. I knew I’d get burnt by going only from memory and not using the Ethernets! Scratch 2007 and 2008 from my above list.
Good point, though. I wonder what Tour had the most former Tour winners at the start line?
Josh — the Tour that contained the most previous winners, at least in recent memory, was 1992, with five: Indurain, Lemond, Delgado, Roche, Fignon.
As for the TTT format, I think the Giro tends to do a good job of keeping the pleasing spectacle while preventing it from killing the GC drama early: a 10 or 15 km team parade on the opening weekend.
Maybe Cadel being 3 minutes down will make him actually attack for once.
Man, I cant believe Lance missed it by so little! But the Astana team still killed it! Did you see those glasses that Armstrong was wearing, the Oakley ones? I think canvendish has them too, anyways they are cool and I found out this store called N3L is giving a pair away for free! How cool would it be to have the same glasses that multiple people wore in the tour!? Check it out, I think this link should work: http://www.n3loptics.com/sweepstakes.
did you see those glasses lance was wearing! so cool!