Would love to see it.

[reply]Would love to see it.[/reply]

me too, the only problem would be those downward pointing aerobars on the P3, kind of ugly;-)

Supposedly Hamilton left because they couldn't afford him. If that's the case, they sure as heck can't afford Ullrich!

Ullrich had the chance to go to CSC but didn't. As for money, Team Bianchi isn't doing to good either, there was a Velo or Cycling news article about that team as well, how they needed to find more sponsors so they could make the payroll, they also mentioned that Ullrich had taken a big pay cut to help out the team, etc.

I'm suprised no other big team would snatch up Ullrich, considering he almost won the tour this year with what is basically a crappy team, if he would have had a team like Telekom or Once behind him this year they would have made things very painful for USPS.

Andrew

Pretty good TTT for a crappy team, don't you think? I guess we've been there, but it's amazing to me how people categorize professioinal riders into awesome and crappy on no information at all, not really fair to those guys that work hard day in day out, winter and summer, don't you think?

And for the reply before, that CSC couldn't afford Tyler, that's pure speculation, Tyler didn't say that, nobody of importance did, unless I don't know about it. Gerard?

Um, I think plenty of people of importance have said that...

Tyler Hamilton will be riding for a different team next season, with Phonak Hearing Systems as his next employer. Hamilton, who will not compete in any more races in 2003 due to injuries, is at the end of his two year contract with CSC and team leader Bjarne Riis says he cannot afford to keep him.

"Unfortunately it has not been possible to match the offers Tyler has had from other teams, and surely it's a shame that we have to let him go," said Bjarne Riis on the team's website. "We have had a fantastic time together, and I'm proud to have been a part in the process of making him into the rider he is today. The success Tyler has achieve on our team has made him one of the best names in professional cycling today. At the moment we are working hard to create CSC's future team, and we will be very strong. There are more new and exiting names coming up. In short time we will present the basis for the future team".

 ALA Cycling news... Sept 1:

"Unfortunately it has not been possible to match the offers Tyler has had from other teams, and surely it's a shame that we have to let him go," said Bjarne Riis on the team's website.

Ok, I take that back then.

The TTT was pretty good, how many of their riders did they drop? 1 or 2? And they lost 43 seconds to USPS, considering that Ullrich was TT'ing better than LA that does say something don't you think? How many riders did ONCE or USPS drop? How many of his team riders did we see with Ullrich as he climbed the mountains, I rarely saw his team around him in the peleton as well. How many Bianchi riders fed information to JU during the last ITT? Obviously not that many considering 3 other Bianchi riders fell at the same corner as Ullrich.

That all equals a pretty weak team considering they were going for the GC.

Andrew

Hmmm... The Bianchi team finshed third overall, and about a minute ahead of CSC. I don't see anything weak about that. And it doesn't really matter if you drop 2-3 guys as it's the 5th guys across the line whose time counts. So long as one of the dropped riders was not Ullrich, they were doing fine.

I distinctly remember Casero and Plaza being around Ullrich on the hills. Not that it mattered, as Ullrich wisely sat on Armstrong's wheel for most of the 3 weeks.

And Bianchi lost almost a minute to USPS in the TTT, had very littel help in the hills, didn't bother to tell Ullrich about conditions on the last ITT, didn't have an answer to the Beltran express at the start of Alpe D'Huez, etc. I didn't say Bianchi was a crappy team (somebody else said that), but they aren't (or weren't for this year) a top class team like Once, Telekom, USPS. Fix any one of the above and you would have changed the dynamics of this years tour by quite a bit.

As to losing riders in a TTT, for every rider you lose you have to do that much more work, so yes it only matters from a timing standpoint with the 5th rider. But spreading the load across 9 guys is a lot better than 7 guys. And look at it from a energy use standpoint, Ullrich was point man for most of the TTT, he's using more energy to pull the train. USPS had 4 strong TT riders (Lance, George, Eki, Pavel) all doing long pulls while the other mountain goats took shorter pulls.

Andrew

USPS is a big budget team and you can't expect the cobbled-together Bianchi team to compete against that machine. Were it not for that last minute disintegration of the Coast team, Beltran would have been reporting to Ullrich rather than Armstrong. Regarding the other teams you mentioned, Bianchi lost only 13 seconds to ONCE. They beat Telecom by about 45 seconds. And Bianchi beat both teams in the final classification. Was Bianchi the strongest team in the race - probably not. But they were were very impressive and at least on par with Telecom and ONCE.

How do you know Ullrich's teammates didn't say anything to him about the course? Bacause of that Armstrong interview? If we were watching on television and knew conditions were bad, don't you think the actual riders knew it? Ullrich understandably threw caution to the wind and rode as hard as he could. Jesus himself could have called Ullrich and Ullrich still would have ridden as hard as he could the whole way.

It's common strategy in TTT's to burn up some guys early and let the rest of the guys pull the rest of the way. Look at the team pursuit and a more extreme example - the team sprint.

Was Bianchi impressive because of Ullrich or because of how the team was structured? ONCE fell apart the minute Beloki dropped out of the race, before that they were looking very Postal like.

Ullrich and the final TT, 3 Bianchi riders fell at the same corner. Why was Ullrich hauling the mail like that knowing the problems there? Or are you saying he's a stupid rider? Sure he has to hang it all on the line, but it doesn't take a Nobel prize winning mathmatician to know that slowing down and staying upright will be faster than crashing, the guy is not stupid.

Anyways, the whole point of all of this was simply wondering why no "big" teams have gone after Ullrich, especially after this last tour. He's always been a thorn in Armstrongs side, even more so than Beloki, and this year he was climbing and TT'ing better than ever.

Andrew

Ullrich has a bazillion second place tour finishes and only one win. I think he was riding to try to grab first rather than to defend second. I'd call it passion arther than stupidity.

I think the reasons more teams haven't gone after Ullrich are:

(1) His big salary

(2) His entourage, see #1

you severely underestimate the professionality of those teams. Even the last one of them spends a couple millions a year.
Ullrich knew the danger of that corner! But there is a fine line between going fast and falling, unfortunatly it's pretty hard to know where that line is. Or do you always know how far from falling you are? If so, I want to take a lesson...

Ummm, yes I do know when I'm falling and when I'm not, it's called bike handling and knowing my limits. This is something that a rider like Ullrich, who probably rides 15-20 thousand miles a year should know a whole lot better than I do. There are VERY few excuses to have the 2nd to last rider go down because of poor road conditions, everybody should have known by the time Ullrich went through which corners were problems and which weren't. That's a HUGE screw up by the team director.

John, you're probably right about Ullrich and his salary requirements, plus with his past you just never know when he may go back off the deep end, plus he is getting a little bit on the older side (all of what, 28, 29yrs old).

Andrew

"But there is a fine line between going fast and falling, unfortunatly it's pretty hard to know where that line is."

You never know where that line is until AFTER you cross it.

Trust me, he does (don't think for a moment that your bike handling skills and judgement are superior to those of these premier TdF racers).

Rider after rider went down in not just that one coner, but several other spots in the last 10km. That includes not only Millar, but also Uwe Peschel (who had the fastest split at the time) and virtually anyone else who was going "a bloc" (i.e. balls to the wall) and trying to pull out an actual result.

Ullrich had no choice at all but to skate that fine line -- he had pulled back only 6 seconds on Lance, and was playing for everything. And even after knowing he could ease way back on the throttle, Lance said his rear wheel was skating under him several times in the final 10km.

Even if you get your line into a corner right, one strong gust against your disk at the wrong instant can change everything.

No guts, no glory -- these things happen. For Ullrich, riding it in a "know my limits" way = a certain loss.

I will agree on one point with you. I do not think that Ullrich's team was good enough for a win. To isolated in the mountains. however, he nearly did it and it shows the talent of the guy.

However, when you say he should improve his handling skills, and you know when you are going to fall, blah blah....that's quite funny...

I raced elite in France. We sometimes had races with pros, or some are now pros in the peleton, and these guys have handling skills much better than anyone on this forum...in cycling people crash. if you never crash, it means you do not ride hard enough! you are holding back a bit...everyone crashes. Ullrich knew he needed a top TT, took risks and crashed.
That the team dir. made mistakes is clear, but questioning Ullrich's skill is somehow funny...

Armtrong went down this year. Jalabert went down many times including in the mountains 2 years ago in a corner downhill, Hinault went down, Merckx went down...if you've never crash, good for you, but then you have never been close to the limit...