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Old 07-14-2004, 09:57 AM   #1 (permalink)
beauty in the breakdown
 
Location: Chapel Hill, NC
Tour de France Coverage, for Americans

Following up on my How to Watch Cycling for Americans, I am going to write some coverage of the Tour de France so that readers who arent normally exposed to the race can read along and follow Lance on his quest for an unprecedented sixth victory. If you dont know much about cycling, I would recommend reading that post before hand. Im going to break it down as much as I can here, but it will greatly help you to get that background.

If you desire more in depth coverage, check out VeloNews or Cycling News.

The race thus far has been run over flat territory, meaning that the sprinters have been looking for stage wins. The big players, Lance included, have merely been biding their time, trying not to crash. Highlights include the Team Time Trial, where teams race against the clock for the best time. US Postal, Lance Armstrong's team, took no prisoners, beating the field by more than a minute, a margin that is nothing to sneeze at, especially in an event as short as the team time trial (around 40 miles, it took just around 1 hour, 10 minutes to race). Lance's chief rivals, Jan Ullrich, Tyler Hamilton, Iban Mayo, and Roberto Heras, have been biding their time, waiting for the mountains, where the race really starts. Iban Mayo suffered a crash in stage three, and is now more than five minutes behind Lance, something that effectively dashes his hopes of winning the race. The current leader is Thomas Voeckler,a French rider who was in a successful breakaway earlier last week. His is not expected to be a factor in the mountains. The first week was also full of crashes, with over half of the riders being involved in at least one crash, including Lance Armstrong, who was caught in two crashes.

The climbing started today, in stage 10. Today was also Bastille Day, meaning that the French riders in the race will certainly be putting on a show. There are nine rated climbs on the route today. Climbs are rated in difficulty, from a Cat 4, the easiest, to Cat 1, the hardest. Then there are the Hors Category climbs--those that are so heinous, they exceed all other difficulty ratings. Todays race includes one Cat 1 climbs and a smattering of the lower category climbs.

As predicted, there was a flurry of attacks. One breakaway got away, comrpised of Axel Merckx, Eddie Merckx's son, and Richard Virenque, a French climber and contender for the climbers' Polka-Dot Jersey. The two built a lead of 8 minutes before Axel was dropped on a climb and gobbled back up by the peloton. Virenque didnt wait for him, and continued on down the road, winning the race with 5:20 on Armstrong.

The race enters the mountains on Friday. Expect things to get very interesting there, with attacks coming from the main contenders--Armstrong, Ullrich, etc.

Oh, and because there has been some confusion in the other thread, the title, for Americans is toungue-in-cheek. America is one of the few countries that doesnt follow the sport, and Im just trying to help make a few more fans here
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Last edited by sailor; 07-14-2004 at 06:37 PM..
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Old 07-15-2004, 09:59 AM   #2 (permalink)
beauty in the breakdown
 
Location: Chapel Hill, NC
Things were much less interesting today. There werent as many climbs on the course, which helped keep most of the peloton together, enough so to even lead to something of a sprint at the end. Two riders dropped out after yesterday--Sebastian Hinault (no relation to legend Bernard Hinault) who crashed hard on a descent yesterday and lost consciousness for a while as well as injuring his back, and Jan Ullrich's teammate Matthias Kessler who had a nasty crash into a fencepost yesterday that broke a rib. He finished yesterday's stage, but could not continue today.

Again, the stage started with a flurry of attacks off the front as riders tested the peloton, trying to see if they could get away. None succeeded however until Egoi Martinez (a teammate of climber Iban Mayo) and David Moncoutie escape. They are soon joined by Juan Antonio Flecha. Flecha did what is called bridging the gap, a seriously balls-out move where a rider rides off the front of the peloton and tries to catch the breakaway--when you consider that the breakaway must be travelling faster than the peloton, and he must be going faster than them to catch them, the difficulty of such a move is apparent. The three riders work together until 10Km from the finish, when Flecha attacks. Martinez chases him down, and as soon as they have rejoined, Moncoutie counters, launching his own attack. The others cannot chase him down and he gets away as he hammers up a short but steep climb. He continues to push up the pace, escaping all his chasers and winning the stage. Flecha and Martinez come in 2:18 later, and the rest of the peloton comes in 5:58 behind Moncoutie, with a few tired sprinters managing to get to the front to grab the next five slots.

Armstrong sits 9:35 behind overall leader Thomas Voekler. This wont worry Armstrong as he knows that he can easily make up this deficit in the mountains.

An interesting note is that Tyler Hamilton, former teammate and now serious rival of Armstrong, tough SOB, and seriously nice guy, is riding wearing the tags of his dog Tugboat, who was diagnosed with cancer and put down yesterday. Tugboat is somewhat of a legend in the cycling world--an exceptionally social, nice, and lovable dog that followed his owner all over, and was well known to both the riders of the peloton and the journalists covering cycling.

Picture: http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos/20...e11/CH8981.jpg
__________________
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
--Plato

Last edited by sailor; 07-15-2004 at 10:47 AM..
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