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Tour de France update thread...

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The team time trial just finished and guess who is now wearing the yellow jersey?

If you get a chance to watch any replays of this particular stage it is remarkable how different the postal team (the Blue Train as they call them on tv) looks compared to other teams. All teams are in a line, but Postal is in a perfect line every second of the way.

An amazing performance. Postal was the last team out and before they finished there were only a few seconds separating each place (6 seconds between 1st and 2nd, 4 seceonds between 2nd and 3rd). Then Postal comes in over a minute faster than anyone else.

Also, you see all the negative articles on Armstrong coming out of Europe and I always wondered how popular he was with the racing fans over there. Today's broadcasters said those writers should talk to the people and that he was "the most popular man in France".

And finally, a bit of trivia. Looking at past winners I noticed that only two men have ever won the Tour who were not from either France or a country that directly borders France. Both Americans - LeMond and Armstrong.
 
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US Postal Just won the Team Time Trial... by 1'07" (2nd)over Phonak (Hamilton) 1'19" (4th) over T-Mobile (Ullrich)... but because of the Stupid "Maximum Deficit Rule" in this time trial, he'll only gain 20 seconds on Hamilton and 40 Seconds on Ullrich.

Armstrong will start stage 5 in Yellow.
US Postal also will have the 2nd,3rd, 4th, 5th, and 7th place riders in the GC

Hamilton "36 8th
Ullrich "55 16th
Heras 1'45" 35th
Mayo 5'27" 92nd
 
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Dihard,

If you think the 20 second rule is bad.... wait till you see what they did for the mountains where Lance really turns on the heat...

I think it will be funny if Lance wins after they basically tried to do what they could to lessen the time bonus's and such of his strong suites...
 
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Okay, will someone please explain the 20 second rule to me.

I am stuck at work too and the OLN site would not come up for a while today, so I turned here for updates. Much faster information here at the Planet. Thanks for the updates. Now I just need to watch it tonight.
 
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20 second rule basically states that the maximum time difference recognized between 1st place, 2nd, 3rd and so on is....20 seconds....
so...even though team postal won the trial by over a minute....armstrong only gets a 20 second bump on the second place team....
he was screwed out of 40 seconds.....
 
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The 20 seconds rule stinks and was put in for the first time this year to make the tour more competitive (?).

They also facilitated everybody else, other than Lance, by making l'Alpe Duez climb a separate stage, while in the past it was part of a much longer and grueling stage, where the big mountain climbers separated themselves from the rest.

The frogs are making it difficult for Lance, but he knows the new rules and he'll have to beat them inspite of the added obstacles.

I certainly would have liked to see Lance race with the likes of Merckx, Indurain, Anquetil and Hinault just for the purpose of comparing these great athletes. Not because he is an American, but I believe he could have beaten them all, with a little reservation for Eddy Merckx.
 
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After the Prologue, Armstrong finished second, 1.65 secs. behind the leader Cancellara. Hamilton and Ullrich finished in the mid-teens. Armstrong has thrown down the gauntlet!!!!!

Hamilton was a bit surprising but Ulrich has always been known as a poor bike handler (he often loses time to opponents on descents). I would have expected him to lose time in a Prologue with tight corners and cobblestone (especially after some earlier riders fell).

An American dominating in France just has to kill them...I love it.

As Greg LeMond was in the 80's Lance Armstrong is loved in France. Both speek fluent french.

Hopefully, he can dominate the mountain stages again and not let this one be as close as last year

Where Armstrong lost by far the most time to Second Place finisher Jan Ulrich last year was in the first time trial (1:36) which is what made it much closer than the previous years.

More importantly, he gained a psychological advantage on his rivals by laying down a superior run.

Psychological advantages in the tour will come in the mountains and in the individual time trials (not really in the prologue).

In my opinion, to avoid last year's very close struggle, Lance will have to attack hard on at least one the flat stages before the hard climbs in order to set-up Ullrich and others on the mountains.

It would practically impossible and futile for a podium contender to attack on a flat stage as no one rider or even small group of riders can defeat a peleton that wishes to catch him/them. This all changes in the mountains when the peleton ceases to exist.

I know this may sound like conspiracy theory run amuck, but I heard that they had redesigned the course again this year taking aim at Lance Armstrong's strengths. I'm sure the frogs just hate an American winning their race 5 times in a row and it'll kill them if he gets #6.


The course changes every year and always has. There will always be mountain stages and there will always be individual time trials and whoever emerges from these stages as the most succesful and consistent will win the overall tour. There were rumblings that the Tour had an anti Indurain design the last couple of years he won it. You know what, he never lost until it became obvious he wasn't the best cyclist anymore.

Also, you see all the negative articles on Armstrong coming out of Europe and I always wondered how popular he was with the racing fans over there.

The European Press accuses every top cyclist of using illegal enhancements (and probably rightly so). My extended family is very invovled with bicycle racing and I have heard over and over from them that every professional or olympic cyclist (100%) uses banned substances and everyone within the cycling community knows it.

And finally, a bit of trivia. Looking at past winners I noticed that only two men have ever won the Tour who were not from either France or a country that directly borders France. Both Americans - LeMond and Armstrong.<!-- controls --><!-- / controls --><!-- message, attachments, sig --><!-- post 32840 popup menu -->

Off the top of my head I can come up with 3 since 1980

1997 Bjarne Riis - Danish
1987 Stephen Roche - Irish
1980 or 81 Joop Zoetemelk - Dutch

If you think the 20 second rule is bad.... wait till you see what they did for the mountains where Lance really turns on the heat...

I personally like the 20 second rule. You don't want to see someone eliminated from competition simply because there team doesn't have the depth of another team. The range of team budgets varies greatly in cycling and the overall winner shouldn't be determined in the team time trial. Personally I think the team time trial is stupid and prefer years when they leave it out all together.

As far as what they did in the mountains I'd love to hear your opinion of what you think they did that disfavors Lance. If you are referring to the mountain time trial it's not the first (94', 97') or the last time you'll see this in the tour. The last time they ran a mountain time trial (97') the highest positions occupied by "climbers" where 10th and 11th at 3:09 and 3:25 respectively. Also Indurain had to race such a time trial on his way to winning in 94 (and he was considered less of a climber than lance).
 
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I must be slow but I did not know he was doing Cheryl Crow. This might appease some of you wondering how the race is going but not having access right now.


Champ Back In His Favorite Color
Phil Liggett: Armstrong all smiles tonight as he takes over the yellow jersey.

By Phil Liggett
July 07, 2004



Lance Armstrong (US Postal) kisses his girlfriend Sheryl Crow at the end of the team time trial in the fourth stage of the Tour de France.
©AFP/Getty Images



Stage 4
Minutes

Daily Reports

Info & Map






Lance Armstrong, the American winner of the Tour de France for the past five years, assumed the lead today when his US Postal team raced a near-perfect team time trial to win the 40-mile race between Cambrai and Arras in northern France.

The Texan who is proud of his well-drilled team of five different nationalities, kept eight of the nine riders together as they won the fourth stage ahead of Switzerland's Phonak team by a massive 67 seconds.

"The team were awesome today," said Armstrong, who broke out into a broad smile even before they crossed the line in the cobbled square in Arras, knowing that victory also assured him of his 60th yellow jersey since he started winning the Tour in 1999. Only five-time winners, Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault have won more.

Armstrong has always played down the setting of records and still refuses to discuss the possibility of becoming the first rider to win the 101-year-old race for a record sixth time. He plans his battles day-by-day as he, above all, knows that the real race for final victory in Paris will not start until the race goes south to the Pyrenees next week.

Even so, it has been a tremendous two days for both him, and his team. On Tuesday, crashes and delays caused two of his three main Spanish rivals to lose almost four minutes and today the trend continued as Iban Mayo and Haimar Zubeldia lost more time and are now 5-27 and 5-33 back respectively.

Armstrong leads four of his team mates in the overall classification, with Spain's Jose Enrique Gutierrez the nearest rival he has, sitting in sixth. However, only a minute covers the top 18 riders which, in the mountains can be measured as about 200 yards.

Many teams experienced problems, with the weather causing a number of riders to fall and others to puncture, and there were few others smiling as they arrived at the finish line.
German Jan Ullrich, who has three times finished second to Armstrong in Paris and feels that this year he has his best chance of success, finished with his T-Mobile squad in fourth best time.

Other teams excelled despite atrocious bad luck, such as Denmark's CSC team who slowed to help two punctured riders and also waited after three others who crashed on a slippery right-hand turn when the rain was at its heaviest.

Armstrong's girl friend, the pop singer Sheryl Crow, postponed her departure for her European concert to see him pull on the race leader's yellow jersey saying, "Lance was so up for this. He came back from training with the team to weeks' ago and was so happy, saying to me, 'the boys are ready'."

Armstrong will not try to defend his lead when the race resumes today en route for Chartres, but will continue to watch the moves by the men he considers his challengers - Ullrich, Tyler Hamilton (Phonak) and Roberto Heras from Spain.

He has built a 55-second lead over Ullrich and this compares with the 38 seconds he held last year at the same stage when he went on to beat the German by 61 seconds in Paris. Hamilton, whose team finished with only the obligatory five left after the teams suffered a number of punctured, lies best of the challengers in eighth place, 36 seconds behind.

Last year, Hamilton finished fourth with a collar bone broken in the first week. He remains a serious threat to the Texan, who has never been a man to accept victory until the sun has set over the Arch de Triumph after the finish on July 25.

Australian Robbie McEwen, who led by a second overnight, as expected, fell away after his Belgian Lotto team finished only 18th. The Queenslander, who leads in the Green jersey points competition, will now return to his favorite pastime of winning the flatter stages of the race.

Today, with more rain weather forecast, the 183 survivors head south to Chartres along flat roads. Armstrong after two days of considerable gains, will try and hide in a field pre-occupied by the thought that, if you cannot win the race, then the next best thing is to win a stage.
 
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They also facilitated everybody else, other than Lance, by making l'Alpe Duez climb a separate stage, while in the past it was part of a much longer and grueling stage, where the big mountain climbers separated themselves from the rest.

If Lance is in his usual form this year I can't imagine a stage where he would be a bigger favorite in. This stage combines his two strengths. If anything this stage hurts Ulrich's chances.

I certainly would have liked to see Lance race with the likes of Merckx, Indurain, Anquetil and Hinault just for the purpose of comparing these great athletes. Not because he is an American, but I believe he could have beaten them all, with a little reservation for Eddy Merckx

Lance would be competitive with all of them for sure but I think it would go back and fourth with many of them. I think the best of that lot would be Mercx and Indurain. I think you can also add Greg LeMond and Laurent Fignon to that list. LeMond won three and was the best cyclist in four. In Hinault's last win LeMond as his team mate didn't challenge him for the victory which many feel LeMond could have easily taken (much like Ulrich could have over Riis in 96). Also had Lemond not been shot in the hunting accident he may have won 6 or 7. Fignon won 2 and lost 1 to Lemond by only seconds in the closest finish ever. He was phenomanal in his prime but lost interest quickly due to his love of night life and the loss from the sport (from getting shot) of his great rival LeMond.
 
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Off the top of my head I can come up with 3 since 1980
Click to expand...

I guess I wasn't clear. I was using the French map from the days of Napoleon when France bordered Ireland and Denmark.

Thanks for the correction Buckem. Just went back and looked at the same list I used originally and those names were right in front of me. My bad.
 
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Buckem:

excellent posts! but after watching the tour for the last forty years I must respectfully disagree about a couple of points.

It is not uncommon for strong riders, even for favored to win riders, in the past, to have successfully attacked the peleton with 20 to 25 KMs to the finish line and gained a 30 to 35 seconds advantage. I mentioned this point in my orginal post because the stages this year are different in their composition and interpretation as it is common, but there are less opportunities to separate from the competition other than in the mountains and the individual time trials.

I particularly emphasized l'Alpe d'Huez to make this point, because last year for instance, as in previous years, this stage which normally starts at Sallanches and ends at l'Alpe summit is 200 KMs long, comprising of 3 difficult climbs, two very dangerous down-hills and culminating with the 13.5 KMs of near vertical climb to l'Alpe D'Huez. This stage normally separates the contenders from the others. However, this year the Tour organizers have decided to limit just the last 15 KMs climb to l'Alpe as the individual time trial stage. I think that it will be highly unlikely that Lance will be able to break Ullrich and others in 15.5 KMs, while he would have had a much better chance to totally break him over the normal previous 200 KMs stage with the help of his team-mates.

True, he will have his opportunities on the Pyrennes, but normally the Alps have greatly contributed to the weakening of the stronger climbers. I would have preferred that stage to remain at 200 KMs.
 
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It is not uncommon for strong riders, even for favored to win riders, in the past, to have successfully attacked the peleton with 20 to 25 KMs to the finish line and gained a 30 to 35 seconds advantage. I mentioned this point in my orginal post because the stages this year are different in their composition and interpretation as it is common, but there are less opportunities to separate from the competition other than in the mountains and the individual time trials.

I have only been following the Tour since the early eighties so I can't speek for the time before that but I can't think of one single flat stage where a Tour favorite even attacked another Tour favorite none the less gained any time on him unless you are talking about sprint time bonuses. I have seen flat stages affect the overall GC in only two ways. One is a crash (Zulle in 94? 95? or Mayo this year). The other is when the Peleton miscalculates and lets a non Overall contender get too far ahead. I am sure there are more examples but two stand out in my mind. The first and most significant is Italy's Claudio Chiapucci who in 89 with a group of other riders was allowed such a big break away that the gap combined with his pesky climbing allowed him to finish second with only LeMond being able to regain all the time lost to him. Another one is in the the 90's (One of the years Indurain won it) on a grueling hot day a group of riders were allowed to get almost an hour ahead when one of the team directors realized that a seldom thought about rule which disqualifies anyone whom doesn't finish within a certain time limit of each stages winner was in danger of disqualifying the entire Peleton. The whole Peleton had to ride like crazy to close the gap to 34 minutes. Laurent Jalabert which was the most well known of the breakaway rode that gap to a top 10 finish.

If you can prove me wrong I give you props but I'd be very surprised if you can give me an instance in the last 25 years where 30 to 35 seconds where won or lost by Tour Contenders on a flat stage without a crash being invovled. It's just to hard to crack a tour contender on flat road and trying would cause you to waste valuable energy.

I particularly emphasized l'Alpe d'Huez to make this point, because last year for instance, as in previous years, this stage which normally starts at Sallanches and ends at l'Alpe summit is 200 KMs long, comprising of 3 difficult climbs, two very dangerous down-hills and culminating with the 13.5 KMs of near vertical climb to l'Alpe D'Huez. This stage normally separates the contenders from the others. However, this year the Tour organizers have decided to limit just the last 15 KMs climb to l'Alpe as the individual time trial stage. I think that it will be highly unlikely that Lance will be able to break Ullrich and others in 15.5 KMs, while he would have had a much better chance to totally break him over the normal previous 200 KMs stage with the help of his team-mates.

Unless Lance loses his form he really only has one real contender and that's Ulrich because none of the other contenders have ever proven that they can time trial with him. Even a Mountain Time Trial will favor a strong time trialer over a pure climber. Gaining seperation from riders other than Ulrich and maybe Hamilton isn't that important in the Mountains because if he has his typical form he is going to take 3:30 - 7:00 minutes on each on of them in the 55km time trial on stage 19.

I envision three ways in which Lance could lose. One is he just doesn't have it anymore and he just gets worked, like Indurain did in 96 (at the same age mind you).

Another is where his bad day in the mountains (which he is proned to) is really bad and a climber takes a large chunk (6-8 min from him ala Pantani from Ulrich in 98) or Ulrich/Hamilton takes a significant chunk from him (2-4 minutes). The first of these two may already be impossible with Mayo already so far behind.

The last possibility is Ulrich hanging with him in the mountains and beating him in the Individual time trials which I think has always been Lance's biggest worry.

In my mind the mountain time trial has little affect on the the first two scenarios and is a posibble advantage to Lance in the third.

I guess we'll find out. Regardless It's cool to be having a cycling discussion with you.:)
 
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buckem....good stuff...

first...it is said the tour cannot be won in the early stages....only lost....thats why the teams of lance, ullrich and hamilton put the gauntlet down on mayo when he went down.....losing 3 minutes on a flat stage is the death knell of your tour...

two....three ways lance could lose....all you mention are possible...but these are my two worries...illness and horrible luck.....the reason i say this is that the postal team appears SOOO strong right now (places 1,2,3,4,6) that lance doesnt need to be his best....

the thing people forget (not saying you) is that the tour is the ultimate team sport....it just has a figurehead to the team....and the posties showed they are the best "team" in the race today.....thats why i think lance can win this tour unless he suffers a major breakdown...much worse than indurain...indurains team fell apart the year he finally failed to win the tour...leavinig indurain alone to try to win it....that doesnt happen anymore...
 
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