Once again the organizers of the Tour managed to put the most exciting stages on the weekend. And once again Team Discovery, the supposed best team in the tour, managed to get caught flat footed on the first climbing day after a couple of flat days, just like last Friday. And once again, Lance Armstrong proved himself capable of answering any attacks from the other Big Men of the tour, and dishing it back.
Saturday, T-Mobile’s three biggest names broke tradition and actually worked like a team, leaving Lance alone, surrounded by enemies, when Vinokourov launched an attack, Ullrich and Kloden latched on his wheel, and Discovery just sat their grinding out the same pace they’d been doing, missing the break, with just Popovich and Armstrong paying attention. Then a little while later Ullrich and Basso were up ahead of Lance with a gap, he looked around, realized that the people around him weren’t going to drag Ullrich and Basso back, and launched himself and bridged the gap, dragging a couple of other rivals with him. And my heart was pounding with the excitement. If I were a sportscaster, I’d probably say that my heart was “literally” in my throat, but I’m not.
A little while later on the last climb, the OLN commentators Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwin where having a field day with the fact that Vinokourov attacked the group, and it appeared that Kloden and Ullrich dragged the bunch back to him. They saw it as a terrible breach of team tactics and ettiquette – you don’t bring enemies up to a gap that contains your team-mate. But reviewing it in my head and on TiVo, I don’t think it was that simple. I think Vinokourov at that point was a spent force – he’d dropped on the previous climb and had clawed his way back on the descent, and it was only a matter of time before he dropped again. If they’d let Vino go, somebody else would have jumped them and passed them. Instead, I think Vino was trying to launch them both, but they were slow on the uptake, and so instead of being able to use Vino as a launch pad to get a time gap on the rest of the Groupe Armstrong like they had on the previous climb, they instead wasted his effort. And sure enough, he dropped soon after.
I’ve got to say, though, that while Ullrich eventually dropped out of Groupe Armstrong leaving just Armstrong and Basso in the last few kilometers, I haven’t seen Ullrich this fit and working this well in the mountains since the year of “the look”, which I think was 2002.
Sunday saw Discovery working better as a team, but with an unusual tactic for them. George Hincape thought he was feeling good enough to go in the early break-away, and he just sat on the back of the break-away not doing any turns up front all day, right until 250 metres to go when he sprinted past the last remaining guy, the guy who’d done most of the work all day, and took the victory. All’s fair in love and bike racing, but to me that’s a bit cheesy to grab a victory like that without doing any of the hard work. Meanwhile, back in Groupe Armstrong, Lance had some team-mates to help for a change, and managed to stay up with Basso and Ullrich, and put a slight time gap into the surprising Rassmussen.
Tomorrow is a rest day, and Tuesday’s stage has a wicked climb in the middle, but lots and lots of downhill afterwards for any break-away to be brought back in. Wednesday is flat, so hopefully Discovery won’t repeat their same mistake when the next day it kicks back up sort-of hilly again for Thursday and Friday. I think this will be a week of Lance marking and matching anything that Ullrich, Basso and Rassmussen do, but otherwise he won’t worry much about winning stages or attacking, and then it will come down to the individual time trial. Ullrich could be ready to take a minute or so on Armstrong, because the course is flat enough to suit him. And Basso is a better time trialist that he’s ever been in his career.
Interesting times ahead.