The TV coverage today quoted Cadel Evans as saying that the course for this year's race is designed in such a way that the race was settled in the team time trial. Certainly Evans lost his chance to win in that stage and he may be right about the rest of the contenders as well. I looked at the rest of the mountain stages and there just aren't going to be many opportunities for the field to gain on the Astana riders. The mountain stages in the Alps include only one mountaintop finish. The other stages look like today's, a climb or two over some pretty severely difficult mountains but always 50 or 60 kilometers to the finish after the final mountain summit. Presumably Astana will do on those stages what they did today, ride tempo, controlling attacks on the climbs and then using the strength of the team (if necessary) to bring the group back together on the run in to the finish.
We shall see. Of course, there IS that one mountain top finish (Stage 15, next Sunday), a time trial (Stage 18, the final Thursday) and the mountaintop finish on Mont Ventoux on the last Saturday of the race, the day before the parade to Paris. There will be SOME opportunities, but it looks to me like there will be lots of stages that resemble what we saw today.
We left the house for a ride about 30 minutes after the first finishers in France. Had we been a little more anxious we could have been riding the streets of Minnesota before the God of Thunder finished riding the roads of France. Hushovd and Cavendish finished together in a group timed 24:57 after the stage winner.
It was cool and cloudy and the grey skies over the eight lake tour didn't really provide much in the way of photo opportunities. But we were diligent in our attention to our required tasks and stopped at the edge of the corn field.
The guest rider is in there somewhere although she isn't providing much in the way of perspective. Maybe it's comic relief again.
3 comments:
Today's stage was disappointing, though I got to explain some things about bike racing to TJ. He asked good questions. Isn't there a TT in there yet, somewhere? Or is it one of the two remaining mountaintop finish stages?
I like the corn pictures even if you can't see Mom anymore. Excellent comic relief. :-)
So, I'm still just catching up from 10-day computer breakdown...Perhaps GRider could hold one of those long flags from a bicycle trailer (for hauling children--we have one). You could affix it to your bike (you do like ORANGE, don't you?) and just pop it off for the photo op.
Just an idea. jilrubia
Post a Comment