Well I had a nice post written up and Blogger decided to eat it for lunch. Nice. And people think that web 2.0 will replace desktop apps. Not likely.
The story of the day is clearly that Landis hit the wall. He was doing well until the final climb although he did show some signs on the 2nd to last climb that maybe all was not well. The dependency of Armstrong isn't there for Landis. His tour hopes are now gone. And I suspect if riders like Basso, Ullrich, and Valverde are riding next year, they are gone for good. He sits in 11th place and over 8 minutes behind the GC leader. The GC leader amazingly is Pereiro who rode like a champ today. He may be unstoppable. Behind him sit Sastre and Kloden, both of whom looked great. We still have a time trial to go but I think those 3 riders will probably be on the podium.
One wonders what kind of shape Ullrich would be in if he was racing. His team is the strongest out there right now. He could have made mince meat of all the riders today. Don't do drugs kids.
What a great race. Many had pegged this stage to be the one that decided the tour and I think that analysis was dead on.
2 comments:
I bet T-Mobile, CSC, Davitimon-Lotto, AG2R and Rabobank are kicking themselves for not taking some control of the peleton back on Stage 13 when Floyd and Phonak let Pereiro make up his time and steal the yellow. They had as much to lose as anyone at the time and now in retrospect were the biggest losers that day now that their guys are 2-4 minutes behind in GC as a result. They didn't need Phonak pulling to take a few minutes out of the break away. I guess Phonak's complacency caught them flat footed when it got critical. I didn't have a problem with Floyd giving back the yellow to suit his purposes. But the other teams shouldn't have put their own fates into another team's hands.
I almost suspect that 7 years of tour wins by Lance has made other teams complacent. It led to them letting Pereiro go out far too much in the early stage. And I also think it led to CSC not attacking today when Landis looked weak. I think what happened today will change the character of the tour for years to come. It will become more aggressive again.
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