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Official Tour de France thread.

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Oh8ch

Oh8ch

Cognoscente of Omphaloskepsis
Staff member
Wow! Talk about stepping up to the plate.

Armstrong just passed the man in front of him in the time trial. If that ain't enough - the man in front of him was Ullrich - his #1 competitor and a man who has never been passed in a time trial.

Incredible start but a hair short of first in the event. I wonder if he was gunning to hold yellow from start to finish this year.
 
Yeah, you wonder if that slip on his pedal at the start cost him a start to finish yellow. I would be surprised if he wanted the yellow jersey the whole race, since he has relinquished it at various stages in previous tours. I would say he definitely sent a message that he is going out on his terms, not because the race has passed him by.
 
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I was looking for the official 'Tour de Freedom' thread - I guess this is it.

Armstrong was once again very impressive. I'm also impressed by those announcers, Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, whom I've been watching for a few years now. That race could very easily be a bad sporting event to watch on live TV, but they do a very good job of making it fairly interesting most of the time, and sometimes pretty exciting.
 
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I think he dialed it back a notch once he passed Ullrich. He's looking at the big picture, and that's to take time out of his main competitors. He knew that he had done that, as well as dropped the psychological hammer. The yellow jersey isn't that big a deal at this point.

By the way, did anyone see the pre-stage show where Chris Carmichael predicted (without hesitation) that Armstrong would win this one by his biggest margin yet? At this point, maybe that's what we should be vBetting on rather then who will actually win.

Lance is looking as strong as ever, and on paper, so is his team (even without Ekimov.) This could get ugly.

It was a strong show in the time trial for the US - four of the top six are Americans. Great ride by Zabriskie as well. Congrats to him!
 
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It was amazing watching him just blow by some of the competition. If that is any indication as to what the rest of the tour is going to be like it could be a long race for everyone that is chasing lance this time
 
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Armstrong was once again very impressive. I'm also impressed by those announcers, Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, whom I've been watching for a few years now. That race could very easily be a bad sporting event to watch on live TV, but they do a very good job of making it fairly interesting most of the time, and sometimes pretty exciting.
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Last year is the first time I tried watching any of the race and I thought it would be boring as all get out. Now I record it so I don't miss anything. It is their constant and interesting banter that makes it work.
 
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You guys are right - Liggett and Sherwen are excellent. I could do without Bob Roll. He's a jackass. He's ok when the other guys are making fun of him, but when he speaks, he somehow seems to make a fool of himself even when he makes a good observation.

Oh yeah - the new OLN logo looks like shit. The old one was pretty sharp - probably one of the best on TV. It's a shame.
 
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jlb1705 said:
I could do without Bob Roll. He's a jackass. He's ok when the other guys are making fun of him, but when he speaks, he somehow seems to make a fool of himself even when he makes a good observation.
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His finger pointing would be a great drinking game, but no one would be sober by the end of a stage the way he waves and points. I hope Robin Williams is there again this year. He was just ripping Roll last year with his impersonation/taunting.
 
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Lance finished 63rd today, but the Peleton finished as a group so everyone had the same time and results are no different than yesterday. I do like his quote from yesterday's time trial.

"My legs were terrible," Armstrong joked. "Actually, I feel pretty good. I figure the faster I pedal, the faster I can retire."
 
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The team time trial was today. Teams of 9 riders leave at 5 minute intervals, and everybody in the team's lead group gets the same time as long as there are at least 5 guys in the group. Lance's Discovery team left next to last, and Zabriskie/Basso's CSC team was the final one to go.

When Discovery finished, they had set a record for team time trial speed, but CSC was 2 seconds ahead of them at the final checkpoint on the road. With 2 kilometers to go, the CSC team had to average about 60kph to win, which was tough because of some curves. With about 1 and a half kilometers to go, Zabriskie bumped wheels with the teammate in front of him and crashed! His team kept going since nobody else went down, and they finished 2 seconds behind Discovery. That meant that Zabriskie and Armstrong would have been tied overall, but since he finished 1:26 behind his team, Zabriskie dropped to 9th and Lance now has the yellow jersey.

It was a tough break for Zabriskie, because if he had crashed in the last kilometer, he would have been credited with the same time as his teammates, but he went down a little farther out than that.
 
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The funny thing to me was that everything I read about the team time trial today was that Lance was not as confident as he had been in year's past of his team's chances. What do they do? Go out and set the fastest average speed for a team record. Impressive to say the least...

I guess Zabriskie really tore himself up in that crash. He tore up the yellow jersey and had blood dripping on the ground as he finished the race. Tough break...
 
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A time trial is where each rider is racing individually against other riders' times, rather than racing head-on at the same time. It's kinda like qualifying in auto racing.

The team time trial, which was today's discipline at the Tour de France, is a time trial where each team rides in a group against the times of the other teams. It's an amazing thing to watch, simply because of all the teamwork and orchestration that is necessary to be fast, aerodynamic, and competitive. The rules for this discipline are that the time that each team member gets is the time of the fifth rider from the team (out of nine). Teams can drop riders who can't hang on the whole way, and some of the lesser teams did that. Teams of course don't want to drop riders, since that increases the number of turns each individual rider has to take at the front, working against the air. If you get a chance to watch, it should be on OLN right now, and again during the late-night time slot. They do a much better job of explaining it in the telecast, anyway.

By the way, I'm happy that Lance is in yellow, but I hated to see it happen the way it did. Zabriskie seems like a quality individual, and it's a shame he wrecked.
 
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