LA is not a threat because he's been a good teammate. Wiggins is not a threat because LA was a good teammate and sat on Wiggins' wheel and lost time himself instead of carrying him back to the group.
Lance's presser explains why he didn't accelerate early with Contador.
He was praised for his team work in "slowing" Wiggins down, but sounds like if he had it early he may have chosen to compete with the leaders.
"I couldn't find my acceleration to go with the other guys," Armstrong said. "I was there stuck with Wiggins. I had to wait until it got steeper, when you knew you could definitely go away.
"I probably should have gone with the early acceleration," he said.
On his Twitter feed, Armstrong wrote that the stage from Bourg-Saint-Maurice to Le Grand-Bornand was "No fun!!" and that he "had some cramps at the end." He repeatedly shook out his 37-year-old thighs on the final downhill.
Also, there's no two ways about it - Contador dropped Kloeden and just happened to get away with it. The rest of the team have pretty much said as much. It's not as if Contador would've stayed with him no matter what. If he couldn't hang with the regular pace of the group or with a Schleck bros. attack, then so be it. It was Contador's move that dropped him though - it was unnecessary, outside the manager's plan and really not smart on his part because he opened up no time on his main rival while isolating himself against him and his teammate. What if he got caught out by an acceleration (unlikely given his form, but still). What if there were a mechanical problem?
This may have been quoted earlier but it seems that Kloden gave him the go ahead for the attack, believing he could stay with Contador and the Schleck's.
Contador said he discussed attacking the Schlecks with team manager Johan Bruyneel by radio, who then advised him to take it up with Kloeden.
"He told me, 'Go for it,'" Contador said later. "Andreas told me that he could attack without problem -- but then the Schleck brothers surprised me a lot, and when I saw that it would be hard for me to make a gap I stopped.
"I'm not at all happy with what happened to Kloeden," he (contador) said.
Armstrong will not be on Astana next year - and neither will virtually anybody else of importance who's currently on the roster. That team was created expressly for Alexandre Vinokourov, who is currently serving a suspension for doping. His suspension ends after the TdF, and Vino & the Kazakh government have stated in no uncertain terms that he will be the leader of the team upon his return and he has no use for Bruyneel & his riders, who were brought in to "clean up" the team in the wake of the mini-scandal that nabbed Vinokourov.
