You wanna know why I don’t write race previews? I think this little Evans vs. Kloden piece is a good example. Biggest bit of pre-competition vaporware since Dan vs. Dave. Yes, both Evans and Kloden maintained their positions, but the real stories of the day – Vino rebounding and Rasmussen maintaining – had nothing to do with either of them. It may sound strange, but The Chicken’s 3-minutes-back, 11th place finish may go down as one of the great rides in Tour history.
Zero points for you in the office pool if you had three Astana riders in the top four. They’ve stacked the high end of the results sheet in so many TTs this year that I’m not even gonna bother hunting down the links. I might give you a little credit for prognosticating Moreau’s collapse; despite what Carmichael says, you can’t really cite the inconsistency of a rider who hasn’t had chance to be consistent in nearly a decade. For me, Valverde’s utter detonation was the real shocker – yes, his chrono abilities have always been a gynormous question mark, but he was only 19 seconds behind Vino’ at last year’s Vuelta. Today? Over 6 minutes down.
Well, the bright side, for the winners (Vinokourov), losers (Valverde) and fans (allegedly, that’s us) is that lots and lots of people have incentive to attack, and put out or get out time begins tomorrow. I feel like Disco will finally be working for Contador, who, as much as I like Leipheimer, is the squad’s best shot at victory. This is important, because despite his earlier confidence, Johann is hurting for a new sponsor; putting his man in yellow would be a good first step. Although considering that the current yellow jersey shouldn’t have been allowed in the race at all, the allure of that storied garment may be considerably dulled.
I love Levi1 and I so want him to do well…ok I want him too win but I would first like to take him to a local pub and buy him a pint of aggression, then a pint of emotion,then get him really good and pissed on a shot of reality that this might be it and he had better be ready to do more than just sit in the front of the main group!!!!
It’s hard to have a favorite this year given the past 12 months of bad press. I personally blamed the French and the media for making the doping allegations bigger than they were, but it’s obviously an issue. Let’s just hope whomever wins does so cleanly. One more tainted TdF and the sport is going to descend even further.