Tour de France 2007

Pretty good stage today. I'm surprised the big boys let Rasmussen get so far ahead. He's going to be very hard to drop in the mountains. Usually, a guy will give back time the day after a long break away, but tomorrow being a rest day, Rasmussen should be recovered by Tuesday. They'd better smash him in the time trials since Rasmussen is a woeful time trialler. He claims that he's going for the G.C., so I wouldn't be surprised if he's worked on his TT a bit.

The big boys better also hope that Vino and Kloeden aren't slowly recovering because they lost a big chance to put some time on them. Moreau tried, but he couldn't get anyone to work with him. He seemed like the strongest climber beside Rasmussen. Watch out for Mayo and Contador - those two didn't seem to mind the slopes much either.

By the way, anyone have any idea why Lampre was leading the peloton on the Roselend and Hauteville climbs? The best GC threat is Valjavec, but come on, they can't be serious.

Tuesday's stage has some big climbs, but doesn't finish on a climb. I think Valverde will win it sprinting from a small group of elite climbers.

The Alps aren't that bad this year, but the Pyrennees will be vicious. It's going to be great!

Rasmussen is a terrible time trialer and he probably will lose 5 mins on each TT - but not to all of the favorites. Kloden is undoubtedly the best time trialer among the GC contenders. Evans and Leipheimer are expected to be strong as well, but people like Valverde and Sastre have only shown good TT skills when they were fighting for their podium places on the second-to-last day when most other riders had stopped caring.

I wouldn't expect Rasmussed to lose more than 2 minutes to Mayo, Valverde, Contador, Schleck, etc. and he has that buffer already. So let's say he's 4th after Saturday, trailing Kloden by 2:30 and with Evans and Leipheimer or Evans and Vino inbetween. Then he's got 3 tough Pyrenees stages after that to regain yellow and a buffer to defend it. That could be an amazing showdown.

I have doubts about Rasmussen's durability, though. He's shown vulnerability in the Pyrenees before (last year on Tourmallet he tanked) and dominating both mountain ranges is very hard to do. That said, his victory today was so much more impressive than any of his previous ones.

This is hard to predict, but it's certainly gotten more interesting after today. Thanks to MR for opening the race and showing some balls while all the other favorites were just sitting around checking out each others' tanned calves...

I'd love to see Rasmussen win the GC, largely because I generally identify more with a pure climber, especially one who is tall, skinny, pale-faced, and geeky. I'd also like to believe that he's a "clean" rider, although other great climbers (Pantani, Heras) have disappointed me in that regard, and I now have doubts whether anyone on the Tour in recent years has been clean.

I'm not one to throw around drug accusations on this site, but I do wonder if the lackluster performances of some of the favorites this year have anything to do with tighter controls now. There seems to be a bit more caution, a bit less aggression, and some genuine weakness that is a bit surprising at this point in the Tour. But we'll see. Maybe the real contenders are just eyeballing one another right now.

Anyway, it's good to see some different faces among the leaders. And I hope that Rasmussen's performance in Stage 8 will inspire him to go all out for the GC title.

?

What lackluster performances? Sunday's stage was the first real stage of the tour. The GC contenders don't win on the flats because the peleton finishes within seconds of the hulking sprinters. All of the GC contenders are there 2-3min back from Razzy. They are thinking Razzy will tank in the TT and tire in the later mountain stages as is his MO.

Razzy did have a 4+minute lead until he slacked off and the chase group closed to 2-3 minutes. I think he needs to learn to drop the hammer. As a mountain specialist he's a bit too cautious. They will ride to the top, win points, calm down, ride to the top again, win points, etc. I think for him to win the GC he'll need to drop the hammer a la Lance or Landis.....that and gain some muscle, learn to TT..:)

Alan

Yeah, Rasmussen should have dropped the hammer like Landis. Now where's that damn soigneur with the syringe...?

On Sunday's stage, Christophe Moreau who is a French rider and now 36 years old looked better than he ever has. He is a great cyclist, but he was easily matching some of the world's best climbers on their own turf. Considering his size and age, his climbing ability seems a little suspect. Are the French so sick of the Americans winning the last 8 TDFs that they are willing to allow one of their own to dope and then protect him so he will not be caught in order for a French rider to win?? Maybe so...

It's suspect for a 36-year-old Frenchman to be riding well, but not for a 30-year-old American who spent nine months on chemotherapy...

Hey Arch, what did you think of Bob Roll's comment about what they'll do on the rest day today.

He said something like all the teams are going to need to out for very hard rides today "to help get that lactic acid out of their systems".

Now lets set aside Bob's obvious ignorance of the basics of exercise physiology, do you or anyone honestly think that these guys are going out hard today on their REST day? That seems completely stupid to me but Roll was a cyclist right?

Why would an elite guy who has been killing himself in this tour for days (and in the mountains for the last 2) and who has many more 200+ kiliometer days still in the mountains with deadly climbs -- why would someone like that go out hard on his REST day?

Is Roll as completely out of it as I suspect? I don't know cycling very well so I'd sure like to understand what's going on with this.

They'll ride today, but not hard.

If you had trials and finals at a championship meet with a day between them, you would run easy that middle day. It's the same principle.

Anyone watch Leipheimer get pushed back up to the peloton at about 75km/h?

Certain nations always think they're above the law.

The top contenders will ride 100-120 kms on the rest day, with lots of climbing but without going hard. The riders for whom it's just about surviving the mountains will go just an hour or so to stay loose.

I can't give you the physiological rationale behind a 4-hour training ride on the rest day, but it's not something Bob Roll made up. My guess is, it's just a rhythm thing. They train for that long or longer every day. They even go for a few hours after the time trials. It's just what their bodies are used to.

It used to be that they had to go ride several times a day just to keep their blood flowing. Back in the 90s when they were all on EPO and their blood had the consistency of heavy cream. After all, that's why the journalists started going through trash cans at the team hotels and the whole Festina scandal started rolling. They saw the riders rolling around on their bikes at 2am inbetween stages and started asking questions.

moosehead wrote:

Anyone watch Leipheimer get pushed back up to the peloton at about 75km/h?

Certain nations always think they're above the law.

What nation was pushing him?

A 36 year old frenchman rides better now than he did five - ten years ago when he should have peaked.

Either the guy has freakish DNA that goes against everything we know about aging, or he is really named Armstrong and is in disguise, or he is chemically enhanced.

Sorry, sue me. I'm a skeptic.

I assume Belgium? (i.e. Johan Bruyneel in the Discovery team car)

Wailing Fungus wrote:

What nation was pushing him?

Belgium. The entire country came out and literally pushed him out the mountain. It was a bit of a tight squeeze but they were all there.

True story.

ilgatrado wrote:

A 36 year old frenchman rides better now than he did five - ten years ago when he should have peaked.

Either the guy has freakish DNA that goes against everything we know about aging, or he is really named Armstrong and is in disguise, or he is chemically enhanced.

Sorry, sue me. I'm a skeptic.

How do you know Moreau is riding any better now? It's not like he is riding for time on a precisely measured course. He appears to be riding better, relative to the competition--but maybe that is because the competition is slower. Maybe the sport is actually getting cleaner and everyone else is slowing down to Moreau's speed.

Remember that Vaughters-Andreu conversation, in which Vaughters expressed his surprise that when he joined Credit Agricole, the team was actually clean?

"When I was at Crédit Agricole, all the teams were supposed to receive 25 injections per day... Well, at Crédit, there were zero!" said Vaughters according to the article, to which Andreu is reported to have replied: "You're saying that no rider received any injection? That's crazy..." Vaughters: "That's when I realized that Lance was really fooling us when he said that everybody was doing as we did... Believe me, as crazy as it may seem, Moreau didn't take anything, his hematocrit was 39."

Finally, one good day does not make a Tour champion. Moreau has always had good days--we'll see if he is still there at the end.

Oh come on, he was getting his seat adjusted.

They just happened to finish the adjustment the instant they saw the ref car.

Just like the "sticky" bottle, but a little more severe - I see no problem.

You're not a skeptic, it's called a polemic.

Lots of cyclists peak in their 30s. Look at the age distribution of Tour winners down through history.

Moreau started out as a track cyclist and he was one of the best. He started focusing on the road about 10 years ago but primarily as a time trialist and one-day classics rider. It takes a long time to become a good stage race competitor, and just because he has one good day in the mountains doesn't mean he is "peaking" this year.

Wow, quite the Cycling News article...Of course it is all heresay and inuendo but that's all we've got for now. Maybe Discovery will crack like Telecom did...You know, looking back and putting the pieces together makes it pretty hard to believe anything anymore. If Moreau was truly the only clean rider he may become the Shirley Babashoff of cycling... I still would like the focus to spread a little deeper into the past and not just stop with Lance. I'd vote for amnesty if everybody came clean this year or something to that effect. I'm sure that blood doping has been around since Lasse Viren's days and stimulants before that...Amnesty would be predicated on the Body Building argument for allowing drugs - If everybody is taking them then the champion is a true one. The problem with that is there may be a few Moreau's out there...So far the racing seems pretty good, just a little less agressive. Reminds me how much fun cycling is to watch...