An opportunity to watch a pro bike race live on the TV instead of the computer today. Since the VS channel does show the Tour live. Granted I have been around a couple hundred hours of local races so far this year.
It is good to see a nice sunny day in London, and real racing. Hopefully it will be as good of a race as the Giro was. The Giro was a far better race while it was going on then it is in retrospect. While the Giro was occurring it we wondered if Di Luca would crack at any point.
Last year the obvious favorite for the Tour at the start was Valverde due to most of the other favorites not being starters. This year there is a group of riders that could be called favorites including Valverde, Vino, and Klöden. Despite not winning much this year my pick will be Valverde. The reason I don’t like Vino is because he always seems to have 1 or 2 poor days in the longer stage races. Last year at the Vuelta Vino was able to overcome his poor early stages with a strong final week. Normally in the Tour you can’t have any “bad days”. By bad that means finishing well behind a group of riders that you would normally finish with. Last year was the only time I can think of when all the top riders had at least one bad day.
Watching the race I did not think that anyone could come close to Klöden, but Cacellara put in a huge effort. For a sub 10 minute TT to see a more then 30 seconds difference between the top 10 is very unusual. Really the gaps are bigger then I would expect for such a distance on course that was neither demanding nor that technical.
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