The Tour starts with a bang
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- July
- 4
This morning I faced a difficult choice, watch the tour live or ride a fast 50 mile WCC A ride with Joe Gasperino. I choose to not sit on my sofa and ride and catch the Tour on VS in rerun. Glad I did, great ride and good company. The climbs and workout made the watching the Tour just that more enjoyable.
The tour has started with a bang in Monaco as expected. The expectations for the 96 the Tour de France has
been high with the return of the only seven time winner, Lance Armstrong. His team-mate Alberto Contador winner here in 2007 and the only active rider to win all three grand tours at the young age of 27 took second today and staked his claim as the leader of the Astana team. And what a team, they placed four riders in the top ten, the only team with more than two.
Of course this just adds to the intrigue inside the Astana team bus. At yesterday’s pre race press conference only team manager Johan Bruyneel and Alberto Contador made an appearance, while Armstrong twetted to the masses. While Bruyneel was making it clear that his team leader is Contador with this quote, “When we made the selection of the team, we made it very clear that Alberto would be the leader of the team at the start of the race,”
Lance told this to L’Equipe,”It would be better to be open and honest. If you say that there’s a leader, that’s it, then everyobody works for him. But this discussion never took place… Most people consider Alberto as the favorite and I think that he is the best stage race rider. But you shouldn’t forget Leipheimer.”
Maybe now with a tenth place finish (his worst Tour Time Trail finish ever) Lance understands the peaking order in the team and what he needs to do for the team to win.
Fabulous Fabian Cancellara won in impressive fashion. He’s been the best time trailer for the past two or three years now, but this year he’s doing it with less weight and the same power. He was only seven seconds slower then the best climber in the world Contador on the steep starting climb and then took 25 seconds back on the descent and flat to win by 18 seconds.
The surprises today included Bradley Wiggins of the US team Garmin-Slipstream in third with a chance to pull on yellow in the coming days. The other big surprise was watching Cancellara pass Giro winner Denis Menchov the big loser of the overall contenders.
Sunday’s stage starts with a nasty climb out of Monaco but should finish with a show for the sprinters.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, July 4th, 2009 at 10:34 PM by Randall Wolf. 
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