Monday, July 6, 2009

Tour Time

I typically prefer the one day races to the Grand Tours. But the French version just has so much pageantry that it's hard to not appreciate. So far, the race has been a blast and so many pieces are in place for this to go down as one of the best Tour's in History. Fabian Cancellara absolutely crushed the TT on Saturday, he's so fun to watch. It must be really demoralizing to everyone else when he's on good form. When he is, he's unbeatable. Speaking of unbeatable- Mark frikkin Cavendish- holy crap. The fastest guy in the race, no question about it. If he makes to Paris, it's difficuly to imagine him not winning the Green Jersey. Thor is hanging tough, but he's going to need to get/make some luck.



Ironic maybe that when the peloton split today, Lance was in position to jump with it, and Contador was not. I doubt it means much it the overall race, but I'm sure it's feeding the fires inside Astana. It just shows that the mental aspects of cycling are just as important as the physical ones.

On the course, seeing the conditions, everyone should have known that a split was possible. Still when Columbia made the move to break it apart only a handful of guys- notably Lance, Thor, Cancellara- were where they needed to be. Those that got left behind were screwed. For most of the GC guys, the gap wasn't fatal, but to the other Green Jersey contenders- especially those who were caught out by yesterday's crash- they have their work cut out for them.

Expect big changes in the standings tomorrow from the Team Time Trial.

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