Know why I’m not psyched about Cyclingnews getting bought up? See the lead headline on ProCycling? As excited as I am about bikeradar.com, I think readers might be a little more into this thing they do each July called the Tour de France? And no whining about the time change – Future Publishing is UK based. At any rate, it was Fabian Cancellara taking his second TdF prologue honors today. Dissapointed was 3rd place George Hincapie, who claims he has no one to fear over this distance. 23 seconds back? In a 9 minute race? Call me a wuss, but that sounds like something to be afraid of.
GC impact – Andreas Kloeden (2nd, :13 back) gets a leg up on everyone, perhaps most significantly on “teammate” Alexandre Vinokourov (7th, +:30). Other team leaders causing their DS to lose sleep tonight include Levi Leipheimer (+:40, 4th on his team), Alejandro Valverde (+:43, 3rd on his team) and Carlos “Di-” Sastre, who manged to finish behind as many teammates as he beat. Lucky for him his most likely rival for team leadership, Frank Schleck, managed to finish a second further back than he did, not even making the top half of the field. Is it too late to call in Bjarne Riis?
Still, that victory champagne shouldn’t cause too much intestinal distress at the CSC table tonight. The sick time gaps Cance managed to open up on the sprinters puts the yellow jersey almost entirely out of their reach – at least until the race returns to France. Indeed, it looks like the World TT champ has more to fear over losing his Rainbow fleece rather than his Golden one. Gotta love the levelheaded German approach to this sort of thing – “We will not devote any money to a sport associated with doping” – and yet they still send athletes to the Olympics. Let’s hope Kloeden doesn’t crash out in tomorrow’s stage to Canterbury, if only to try and keep the German government in a giving mood.