If you want to see some amazing pictures from the Tour de France right now check out this site: The Big Picture
I really like them for all the pictures they do and to see a selection from the Tour was a pleasant surprise.
July 17, 2008
July 08, 2008
Tour stage 4 Expectations met and not met
Expectations were high for Cancellara. Everyone (at least myself and lots of others) thought he would win the TT and the only question was if he would take the yellow jersey. So his 5th place (results) in the TT was not expected.
Schumacher was a surprise, but that is because he is so inconsistent. He rips out a performance today, the Giro 2 years ago, or Amstel Gold last year, but then goes into hiding for a few months until his next surprise. If it wasn’t for the Dauphiné Libéré TT a few weeks ago and his win there then
Valverde’s ride today would be about where most would have expected him. So like Cancellara the expectations were higher then what he delivered.
Evans met expectations and did what he had to do. Really the TT did very little maybe put a little more pressure on Evans as now he looks like the favorite when after stage 1 it was Valverde. That is what makes this so fun.
July 05, 2008
time gaps in stage 1
In today’s first stage of the Tour de France there were two good examples of how time splits are done between groups of riders. I don’t know how they exactly determine the distance in the Tour, but the local stage races I have worked at the timing people have always looked for a full barrier to be visible between riders to give a different time. Certainly with the timing and camera equipment available today it is possible to determine when a 1 second gap is there, but having a visual rule certainly helps if there is any dispute.
The 1-second difference today between Valverde and Gilbert is easy to see. The six second gap between 13th place Carrara and 14th Sastre is a little trickier. There clearly was a gap between the two riders, but only a second or two. Since a new time was given it was the real time so the 7 seconds is the time back from Valverde. If they could have closed the 1-second gap it would have saved the 30 plus rider group 6 seconds. In flatter stages with a large field there is a chance for even bigger time differences. A small gap allowed at the end of the race can mean a 10+ second difference since it takes so long for a pack of riders to roll through the finish.
Tour stage 1
The Tour has not been very experimental for many years. The biggest question in the past decade about the course has been if there is a TTT and what the rules would be for it. This year they showed a little more creativity with no prologue TT and did a road stage that actually had a challenging finish. This sort of finish is common in the Giro, but for the first week of the Tour we are usually stuck with stages that the last 30 km are dead flat so the only reason an overall contender appears in the top 10 is that he was riding at the front just to stay out of the way. In today’s stage the results looked like what you would expect from Liege-Bastogne-Liege in April with many of the over all contenders being in the top including stage winner Valverde.
The next 2 stages are more traditional first week stages for the Tour, but I expect in one of them for a small break to get away and end up 3-4 minutes ahead of the field. There are just not enough teams this year that will work hard to get a big field sprint.
July 03, 2008
My pick for Tour '08 - Valverde
The old Usenet acronym TIOOYK “There is only one you know” for the Tour de France is certainly applicable once we hit July. Sure the Giro and Vuelta are often better races, but for good or bad it all comes down to the Tour.
You can look on all the different web sites and everyone says the same thing. Evans is the favorite, and Valverde, Menchov, Cunego, Sastre are right behind. The order of the other 4 is the only thing that varies. As much as I would like to think someone will deliver a surprise win like Sanchez, one of the Shlecks, Ricco, or Jimmy Casper (okay that is a stretch), but history shows very few surprises in the Tour. If you look at the winners only Pereiro stands out as a surprise with hindsight. In the past 30 years only Fignon and Lance in their first wins, and maybe LeMond in ‘88 were a surprise at the time. All other winners were listed as favorites at the start of that years Tour. While certainly one of the more open Tours in the past 15+ years the list of potential winners is still less then 10. Assuming there is not a breakaway like 2 years ago opening the door for Pereiro.
So I am going with one of my favorite riders Valaverde to win it all and hope that for a change the big story will not be some top rider being kicked out.
February 10, 2008
The season is back
The new season is here so I figured I would start writing again. The past year had been difficult to follow and get excited about with all the drug stories. Not to mention other things in my life that took me away from paying attention to the good parts of bike racing.
The season really began this week. Sure there was the excellent Tour Down Under and even the GP d'Ouverture La Marseillaise race in France, but for me the season begins with the Etoile de Bessèges stage race in France. Today won by Iouri Trofimov joining such superstar winners of the past like Frddy Bichot and Jan Wijands. Sure the winners list is a little less then the Tour (Adri Van der Peol and Robbie McEwen are probably the best names on the list), but it is pro racing and it is easy to think the guys that are doing well now are the on the verge of breaking out. In the 80’s had to wait to see the color pictures of the new jerseys and reading about the race in the issue of Winning that came out in April. Now here in America we can see color pictures the day of, or watch live feeds for many races. I also walked to school uphill both ways in feet of snow.
The year did start out with some fun political controversy between the organizers of the Grand Tours and the UCI. The ProTour that was of dubious value anyway is now even less significant. We had the Giro not inviting 4 ProTour teams and the Tour hinting they might not invite some as well. It looks like Astana might become this years target like Unibet was last year, and just a team to punish as a means to get at the UCI. While the Astana team of last year certainly was suspect for a lot of things the team this year is totally different. Still it is an easy way for the organizers to show their independence. We are going back to the old way of team selection where sponsorship dollars, politics, and regional favoritism play as big of a roll as who is on the team. There certainly are some advantages to the old way rather then a team that has enough money to pay the UCI. I have always said that I hated seeing Euskaltel–Euskadi doing races like Flanders and Roubaix while watching some of the French teams send their lowest level riders to races like the Giro and Vuelta. Give me the smaller teams in the Giro or Vuelta as they become the main race for the sponsor and the riders do everything they can to prove their value
Even the Tour de France has given the nod to “lesser teams” that have a good story over the years. The Columbians raced there as a national amateur team in ’83, the 7-11 team in ’86 was not one of the top teams at that time, and they invited the ANC-Halfords from England to do the ’87 Tour on the anniversary of Tom Simpsons death.
August 16, 2007
What has happened since the '08 Tour
A lot happened in this years Tour de France and the aftermath is still being felt.
Rasmussen being sacked by his team while leading the worlds biggest bike race. Unheard of, and all I can think is that team management had some pretty hard evidence that they thought had a good chance to going public. Theo de Rooy the team manger that fired Rasmussen left the team after the Tour. American fans who followed bike racing know de Rooy from the focus CBS gave him in some of their coverage of both Paris-Roubaix and the Tour as a typical domestique. Rasmussen has not been suspended by the UCI and is doing criteriums in Europe.
Discovery no more. It was announced months ago that the Discovery channel would not be sponsoring a cycling team after this year. It was thought that with their success they would find a new primary sponsor, but soon after a rider for the team won it’s 8th Tour it was announced that Tail Wind Sports would not have a team in ’08. This seems a lot like in the 80-90’s when 7-11 became Motorola and then ended just as the USPS team was ramping up. Now it is Slipstream team run by Vaughters that has the big plans for next year that is on the rise. Maybe American cycling can only support 1 major European based team at a time.
In more upbeat news Tour de France star Mauricio Soler won the 2nd stage of the Vuelta a Burgos and is leading the race against some top competition. I can only hope that unlike most riders from Columbia in the past 10 years he has more then one great year.
July 10, 2007
3 very different sprints in the Tour
Always a treat seeing the yellow jersey win a stage as happened today (results). Usually the sprint finishes in the Tour are straight forward and predictable affairs, but this year we have had 3 very different sprint finishes.
Stage 1 – This looked normal with the Quick-Step leading the way in, but not sure if the rise was a little steeper then thought but the front of the field seemed to slow down and any organization went away. This sort of chaos is perfect for Robbie McEwen who seems to like a less organized finish and he bolted away for a easy finish to go with a hard win.
Stage 2 – A crash and a good rise to the finish allowed teammates Boonen and Steegmans to finish clear of everyone. Not sure if he left the sprint to late, or Boonen allowed Steegmans the win.
Stage 3 – with less then a km to go a break was being caught and Cancellara attacks when there is usually that lull as a break is caught. Zabel manages another 2nd place to go along with all of his other ones.
Now all we need is a traditional sprint with Boonen, Zabel, McEwen, and the other usual suspects.
July 07, 2007
The Tour starts
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.
February 07, 2007
Unibet and advertising
Yesterday the European pro season was kicked off yesterday with Jeremy Hunt winning the GP d'Ouverture La Marseillaise (results) in France. The better part of the story is that France has a law that prohibits the advertising of foreign gambling and betting houses. So the team to race wore a great jersey with a “?” on it rather then Unibet (picture). This is one reason why ASO is saying they can’t race at Paris-Nice. Now considering the Belgium Lotto team sponsored by a government lottery never has had problems it seems a little inconsistent.
This reminds me of the Coors Light team in the late 80’s and early 90’s. They might have been the strongest domestic pro team at the time. During the 1991 Tour of Texas (one of the biggest US races) when they had a stage that went through Smith County that was dry the team had to cover their jerseys, bikes, and team cars so that Coors beer would not be advertised in the county. Like Unibet yesterday it gives great one day publicity for the team, but that is not something they want to much more then once.
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