Category: Older stuff

Prologue

With so many of the big names out, I would put Floyd Landis as one of the favourites. But not if he has bad luck like he did today in the prologue. The prologue is a timed start, and you get used to seeing riders in the start house while you hear “bleep bleep bleep bloop” and the rider starts off. But when it was Landis’ time, you heard “bleep bleep bleep bloop”, with no Landis. A few seconds later he rides up into the start house, looks around, and finally realizes he’s supposed to have started and rides off. The announcers figure he lost 7-9 seconds. And then ended up finishing 8 seconds behind the leader. That 8 seconds isn’t going to be significant for the GC. After the race they announced the reason he was late is because he got a flat tire riding to the start house. Bad luck.

The winner of the prologue is Thor Hushovd, the Norwegian sprinter, former green jersey winner and one of my two favourites to win the green again this year (with Tom Boonen).

Second place by 0.73 seconds was Discovery’s George Hincapie, who rode with Lance Armstrong for most of Armstrong’s career.

George is a sentimental favourite, he deserves to win for all the work he’s done for Armstrong, but I didn’t think he’s really got the talent for it. Maybe this Prologue is a sign that I’ve underestimated him.

Spoke too soon

Ok, so yesterday I was speculating on whether it would be Basso first and Ullrich second, or maybe the other way round on the podium in Paris. I didn’t really think there could be any other result.

Now it turns out that neither of them is going to be there. Ullrich, Basso, and a host of other top riders have all been suspended because of the Operacion Puerto busts.

It makes you wonder if there are any clean riders left. It also makes you wonder about the heroes of the past, which is the saddest part.

Le Tour!

The prologue is this Saturday, and then the real separations in the standings start with the first major time trial a week after that. First mountain stage is on the 12th. First mountain top finish is the day after. L’Alpe D’Huez is the 18th, starting three days of hell, and then another individual time trial. Can’t wait.

The course this year was designed to have fewer mountains and put more emphasis on overall performance – I’m surprised they didn’t do this the last couple of years before because having the race decided almost entirely on HC climbs favoured Armstrong over Ullrich, and as much as the French press and public hates the Germans, they hated Armstrong more. (Of course the organizers loved Armstrong because he brought the tour a lot more attention and money.)

So the question on my mind is whether Basso burned himself out winning the Giro, or whether his time trialing has improved to the point where he can not lose too much time to Ullrich or even beat him against the clock. He’s certainly got a monster team around him – Julrich, Zabrieski, Voigt, Sastre – and they’re not going to split their attention between the GC and the sprint points like they have in the past.

The other big question is the current doping scandal, and which teams it will touch. There was even some rumours flying that Ullrich might be caught up in it. Of course, it being Tour season, Greg Le Mond showed what an attention whore he is by making his annual spate of crazy accusations against Lance Armstrong, including accusing him of being an attention whore. Looked in a mirror much, Greg? Armstrong said it best on the Daily Show when he said that he figures he’s going to be dealing with these accusations for the rest of his life.

Well, I’ve got the season pass on the TiVo, the cyclingnews.com “live” site bookmarked on my Treo, and I’m all set.

Basso!

Ivan Basso’s performance on this year’s Giro d’Italia leave no doubt in my mind who the real inheritor of Lance Armstrong’s mantle is. It looks like he’s going to try for the impossible – back to back wins in the Giro and le Tour, and if anybody can do it, he can. In a way it amazes me that a team from Denmark of all places can be so dominant in the mountains, but Basso had much better support in the mountains in the Giro than Armstrong had in last year’s Tour. Last year it seemed that whenever there was a mountain stage after a flat one, Discovery would get caught flat footed when the peleton broke up, leaving Armstrong alone without support. But Basso always seemed to have another rider or two until the crux of the stage.

It’s not as good as watching it on TV, but I’ve been following the race thanks to live.cyclingnews.com, and when away from the computer, using their WAP equivalent on my Treo. I think next year I’m going to spring for the money and get OLN’s webcast version. I didn’t do it last year because it was just the bare tv feed with no commentary, and because it required a Windows computer. This year they seem to have added commentary, and it works on Macintosh computers, but I didn’t go for it because I wasn’t sure if it was worth the money. But I’ve spent more for less, so next year I think I’m going to try it.

Ouch

Paris-Roubaix. The Hell Of The North. One of the most classic of the one day Spring Classics. Long stretches of “pave” (cobblestones) that test man and machine. You expect crashes and you expect upsets. And this one didn’t disappoint.

First you had race favourite and defending champion Tom Boonen isolated in a 15 man break-away with no team-mates, but all his big rivals there, including George Hincape who had two team-mates with him to help. Things were looking good for George Hincape, until suddenly you saw him sitting up with his hands not on the handlebars. Of course he crashed – you can’t ride no-hands on pave. Then they showed the replay and it was obvious that the reason he didn’t have his hands on the handlebars is that they’d broken off!

Then that leading group broke into chunks, and Boonen wasn’t in the lead group of one, or in the chasing group of 3 (which included Hincape’s two Discovery team-mates). But then another disaster for Discovery – a train crossing barrier dropped in between the single leader and the group of three. But they obviously had their eyes on the leader rather than the rulebook, because they went through the barrier. The race mashalls stopped the next group with Boonen, which is just as well because the second they stopped the train went through.

Boonen was fuming about the stop, but it was probably the best thing that happened to him in the race, because after the finish they disqualified the three who went through the barrier, and so Boonen ended up second.

Well, that’s bike racing.