He’s done it! Floyd Landis caps a magnificent come back gets some time in the individual time trial today and reclaims the maillot jaune.
Landis, who finished the Tour’s second race against the clock in third place at 1:11 behind Gontchar, now has a 59-second lead over Spaniard Oscar Pereiro ahead of Sunday’s final stage over 154km from Sceaux to Paris.
Amazing!
And I thought that his chances were finished, but Floyd Landis rides a phenomenal 17th stage to claw back into contention for the maillot jaune. He now sits third just 30 seconds back of the leader and with only the individual time trial left, he has a good chance of extending the American streak at Le Tour to 8 straight years.
He broke the contenders backs very early in the stage upon the first climb of the day. His team set a steady, but quick, pace up the Col des Saisies from which he launched his attack. The peleton let him have it thinking that he couldn’t ride at speed all the way to the finish. Yet, at each successive mountain, he would retake time back from the leaders until finally the fabled Col de Jeux Plane awaited where he rode the lone remaining cyclist off his wheel and into legend.
Now the tour takes a breather out of the mountains and a transitional stage awaits for them tomorrow. Can everyone get there legs back in time for the final time trial? I can’t wait.
The tour has been spectacular. It probably hasn’t been this good since the 80s. No more Lance Armstrong and his bossing of the peleton or Big Mig taking time in the time trials to sit and wait to win. This year’s been great to watch and hard to predict because there seems to be no one strong enough to win it except for Landis. I feel that since there is no one dominant team or dominant cyclist that the peleton doesn’t know what to do. It has been great.
Allez Floyd! Allez!
This has been an amazing Tour. What seemed to be Floy Landis’s time came to an abrupt and stunning end on the top of La Toussuire. This was the first time that the Tour had visited this particular climb, and it will now go down as the scene of carnage.
I haven’t seen the footage, but I can hear Paul Sherwin proclaiming, “This is an utter disaster for Landis.” It must have been something to see. Oh! What could’ve been.
There is still tomorrow’s final mountain stage and with the crowd at the top of the leader board it is still anyone’s race. If it’s not decided tomorrow, then the individual time trial on Saturday will definitely sort things out.
I am bummed out for Floyd Landis. He looked so promising. This is one strange Tour, but exciting.
The name says it all. The Yankee Stadium of cycling, the Orange Bowl of cycling, l’Alpe d’Huez. Franke Shleck takes it at the pinnacle.
Landis makes it back into yellow.
This is just the beginning of a good final week. Two more days in the Alps and a penultimate individual time trial will decide things. Who knows if Landis can keep it especially with the next two days in the mountains.
What a day of racing! An American sandwich of Landis and Leipheimer surrounding the eventual stage winner Menchov. He outsprints Leipheimer to get the stage win, but Landis gets the maillot jaune.
I mistakenly thought that yesterday the GC contenders let it slip away, but they waited until today to, once again, shake things up. It was 6 hours of hard racing, up 5 mountains, and finishing on an uphill climb. The main group destroyed by the hard charging of team T-Mobile, up the Col de Portillon, but they couldn’t maintain the pace which was picked up by Rabobank (I fly their team colors on my helmet!). Team Rabobank lead out the eventual winner of the day. And the race is once again on.
Unfortunately, it looks as if team Discovery Channel have come crashing back to earth. George Hincapie getting dropped early on the Portillon and finishing well back. Popovych finishes later as well. The team that was so good with Lance Armstrong as the leader has broken asundered and will now have to settle for stage wins. Armstrong was their motivator and without him they are struggling. They have regressed back to being spectators in this race. Perhaps, a stage win later, but they are not the monster team like years past.
It always amazes me that men on bikes can average 19mph up mountain passes. I can’t even maintain that for 10 miles on flat land with a tail wind. These dudes are amazing.
That’s it for the Pyranees. Some flatter stages ahead and next week, the Alps. It has been a surprising Tour.
Stage 10 was the first mountain stage of this year’s Tour. And what a Tour it has become.
There are no clear favorites, yet, and today’s stage produced a long breakaway with the finishers climbing right up the podium and into contention for the maillot jaune.
I think the main contenders (Landis, Hincapie, Kloden) let today’s break gain too much time. They are minutes off the lead. It may be too much to regain that and today we may have seen the winner of the Tour.
Tomorrow more climbing!
Tomorrow’s stage is the first individual time trial of the Tour. It is expected that the main contenders for the Maillot Jaune are to make their moves. They’ll try to gain as much time tomorrow and then hold off and onto that time during next week’s mountain stages in the Pyrannees and the Alps. Good luck to them.
Yet, it has been interesting so far. The most surprising is the fact that a world chanpion, Tom Boonen, is in yellow. This hasn’t been done since Greg Lemond did it a long time ago. Booned is a sprinter. He’s in yellow. He has not won a stage yet. Today should’ve been it, but he lost again to the mad Austrailian sprinter, Robbie McEwan. McEwan leads in the green jersey race on points. He’s already won a stage at this year’s tour in a big bunch sprint. He looks and moves phenomally fast. Sprinters are the scariest mothers in the peleton. No fear just go fast. Anyway, Boonen missed being a yellow jersey stage winner, and tomorrow he may just lose the yellow. He’ll just have to settle for working to get the green off of McEwan.
The rest of the tour is going as planned. The days are flat, there’s a breakaway, it’s chased down and then the sprint to the finish. Except for stage 3, Esch-sur-Alzette to Valkenburg. This “flat” stage had a cat 3 hill at the end of 200 km of riding. The Caulberg is only 800 meters, but has a 7% grade. Steep. And it probably hurt the sprinters, because a surprise winner of the stage was Matthias Kessler.
It’s been amazing so far. A tour without Lance. It’s been interesting and hopefully the next two weeks will be awesome.
Not much to say about the first stage of this year’s tour. George Hincapie, an American, from Team Discovery Channel, a team mate of Lance’s during his 7 year reign is in yellow at the end of the day. I liked how Phil Liggett put it as Hincapie gains a few seconds in an intermediate sprint to claim the maillot jaune, “Cheeky.”
Anyway, the big news is that yestarday’s proluge winner who started out in yellow goes down with a bad laceration after the bunch sprint. It looked nasty on tape as there was a lot of bleeding for Thor Hushovd. I hope he’s okay and can continue with the race tomorrow and contend in the next three weeks.
Here’s some links to some blog commentary for those who need it:
Velo Gal’s blog
Caroline Yang Photography
Oh and if you can find it, pictures of the podium girls are well worth it. They are some hot french babes. My favorites are the girls that present the stage winners, because they wear white tops, navy skirts and nice heels. MMMM. Podium girls, I salivate over.
It’s the Friday before the Tour de France prologue and news is not good. The top two contenders, Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso have been suspended from their teams for being included in the Spanish doping scandal. This is unfortunate and makes this year’s Tour even more uncertain. Jan is old in cycling years and this would’ve been his best chance to win a second yellow jersey since before the Armstrong era. Basso would’ve been trying for a Giro-Tour double which hasn’t been done in awhile. This is unfortunate news and is a dark mark on the sport of
cycling.
I am winding down on my reading for the year and have finished last week, A Significant Other: Riding the Centanary Tour de France with Lance Armstrong by Matt Rendell. This book is part of some of the books I have read about cycling. I am slowly winding down on being interested on the topic. Pretty soon I must stop reading and start riding.
The topic of this book was following Victor Hugo Pena as he was a domestique on the US Postal squad standing guard for Lance Armstrong in the 2003 Tour de France. That Tour was Armstrong’s toughest tour. He lost a time trial to Jan Ullrich, spectacularly went off roading as Joseba Beloki crashed out in the melting asphalt, toppled to the ground by a spectator, and won it with the least time between him and his competitors in any of the seven he’s won. The book focused on the 15th stage where he fell off his bike then sped on to victory.
What should’ve been a gripping story was ruined by disjointed story telling. Rendell switched from telling Pena’s tale to the history of the tour to Armstrong which made the book not so compelling. I was bored with it hoping to catch some insight to that tour. I wanted to relive the moments of that great tour, but it wasn’t to be. Rendell was telling the wrong story.
C
