I about fell off my bike when he said that. He also dogged Bianchi when he talked about George, VHP and Eki calling him immediately after each had finished the last ITT. He said Jan had 3 teammates who crashed in the same corner Jan crashed in, but none of them called Jan. I'm counting down the days until next year!

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

Specifically concerning bike racing, he has class on the bike -none off it.

And he wonders why the europeans aren't wild about him?

pure smack talk, people. he could hardly keep a straight face as he said it! jan is to some degree a head case, and LA is simply messing with him. ullric makes bad decisions under good conditions ( howzabout calling out his tactics . . . ." a COUPLE mistakes?"), and LA is trying to make him make worse ones.

class has nothing to do with it. it is sport, and smack is a part of sport. it is a tactic - next year is just 'round the corner, and LA is starting already as he usually does. this is why he will win 6.

"yo mama"

:)

he is making a fool of himself anyway on this point.
there are already some interviews in newspapers where he said that he appreciated that jan waited for him, that he did the same 2 years ago, and that it was just mutual respect.

I think class has something to do with it here. That said, there was a poll in France about Lance's popularity and only Hinault was in front of Lance. I'd say that means he is very very popular in France (don't expect germans to prefer him to jan though).

smack talk is fine, when talking about what is going to happen "i'll kick his ass" or whatever, but not when BSing something that already happened and that was class act...only thing that could happen is in the same situation next year, Jan wouldn't wait and maybe the 6th tour would elude him

I don't see it that way, Larry. At first I thought, well that's a bold statement to make. But after listening closely to what he said, I thought differently. First of all, he only commented on "what I saw". He never claimed that was indeed the case, AND he did not say he faulted Jan. In fact, if you extrapolate from his comments on thinking that he'd lost the race with the crash, he more or less expected the others to keep riding. I think he focused more on Tyler's very visible actions, than questioning Jan's motivations in the incident. Bottom line, if he thought Jan was wrong for riding off, as he believes, then I'm pretty sure he would have said exactly that. Lance doesn't dance around issues, but neither does he ever claim he has all the answers.

And rumors of mass european dislike of Lance are just that, and greatly overplayed. It just plays well in the press. Its the same phenomenon as the press playing up Lance's "new found" humanness. Hey, he's had it all along. They just never noticed because the press equates humanness with weakness. He's been so dominant in the other wins that they didn't pay any attention to his REAL humanness. Oh, they wrote of the cancer story, but only extrapolated from that how it made him "stronger".

i will respctfully disagree with you here, francois.

it is, in a sense, both tactically wise, and even COMPLIMENTARY to jan for LA to do this, IMHO.

wise, in the sense that jan has not shown the ability to take negative situations and turn them into positve motivators and positive results. the more the press picks up on this the more it can be predicted to affect jan's psyche negatively. conversely, lA has made a habit of turning negative commentary into positive results - the more this blows up the more it will help LA. wise tactics, by any definition.

secondarily, you do not see LA bothering himself with this sort of thing over anybody else. he fears jan. were i jan's handler i would tell him " look jan, he feels the need to attempt to psyche you out, he is scared - train !!!" the issue then, is a compliment to jan in the sense that LA wishes to expend energy on him even now.

i will maintain that tactical manuvers, and posturing have nothing to do with class. smack is a fine art, and perhaps there is a cultural issue in its appreciation. :)

I don' hold with all this hardassed stuff. It simply isn't cricket chaps.

funny though to see how the germans tend to get
psyched out easily...heard some stories about two big triathlete german guns that are easily psyched too...

Huh?

But the difference is he was commenting on what people had told him right after that day. He said last night that after he watched the tape he thought Jan was not waiting.

That is FUNNY coming from a Frenchman!



Just kidding!

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What if the Hokey Pokey is what it is all about?

Let's get the facts straight here. Jan Ullrich was RIGHT BEHIND Armstrong and barely avoided the crash. He could have stopped or slowed appreciably. He didn't. PERIOD. He didn't have the presence of mind to immediately not take advantage. Only when one of the sport's finest athletes embarrassed the lead group into slowing did they do so. Take a look at Hamilton when he's telling them to slow down. He is PISSED, or at least very aggravated. Come on, Lance is right about this now that he has seen the tape. Earlier he was being polite without knowing all the facts.

I'm not saying Ullrich is a bad guy either. He just didn't have the presence of mind to slow. It was a rookie move, which is yet another reason why he will not win next year despite having more talent than any other rider.

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

I don't buy what Armstrong said. Just looking at the guys (Ullrich's) body language as he continued up the mountain, I could tell that it was not that of a rider trying to gain as much time as possible.

1) He was continuously looking back. If you are attacking, you never do this.

2) The group got consistantly larger. Lance had attacked and whathisname and Ullrich were the only ones who could stay on his wheel. 1 min after the crash the group was more than 10 riders strong. If Ullrich were riding hard, the group would have been shattered.

3) His face and body were relaxed. We've all observed what Ullrich looks like under duress. He didn't have that look.

4) By the time Hamilton had got to the front Ullrich was dropping back. I think Hamilton felt the group as a whole was getting twitchy, and not Ullrich. So fault Ullrich if you like for not taking a leadership role. I guess he felt it was each riders responsibility to rememeber the "code".

5) What was Ullrich supposed to do...coast? They were going up a mountain. It wasn't like 2001 where Ullrich crashed on a descent so Armstrong freewheeled. They had to keep at least some momentum going up the mountain, particularly Ullrich, since it takes so much for him to get up to speed. Doing less would have put him at a severe disadvantage and he knew it.

So in the end, I don't fault Ullrich at all. He eased up as much as he could without putting his chances in jeopardy too much. It was a fine line to walk.

My $0.032(CAN)

The problem with this argument is fourfold:

1. Ullrich put about 300 meters on Armstrong going uphill at what appeared to be a steady pace without any significant slowing other than what he suffered from the crash He lost about 5 seconds himself avoiding the crash. Time enough for a few others to catch him;

2. Ullrich was dead meat before the crash. Armstrong had already attacked and when he attacked again Ullrich was history. He rode in with the two Spaniards.

3. It is actually easier to wait going uphill for one obvious reason-gravity.

4. Why was Tyler slowing the lead group if Ullrich had in fact slowed?

Again, I don't think this is an enormous fault on Ullrich's part, just another sign he is no Eddie Merckx or Indurain.

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

Maybe I was watching a different race. I saw Ullrich avoid the crash and continue, yes. Not attack....continue. He held the group at a moderate pace, repeatedly looking back for the yellow jersey. Stopping or slowing way down at this point in a stage is not an option. They had been working too hard, for too long, to allow the main peloton to catch them. The riders will always continue, but make sure that the pace is such that the leader can rejoin, if possible. Ullrich was most definitely not in attack mode, and in fact was pulling off and dropping back before Tyler moved to the front.

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"that which does not destroy me will only make me stronger" Frederick Nietzsche
andrew peabody
http://BREAKAWAYMULTISPORT.COM

Andrew: He pulled so far ahead of Armstrong he couldn't have slowed much. And, why was Tyler so agitated? Because Ullrich had slowed so much? Excuse me, mais non.

I suppose reasonable men might disagree about this. Perhaps we need more facts to reach a truly accurate assessment. But I don't think so....

Just my .0002 farthings worth.

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

I think LA was already joining the pack at the time Tyler took the front so they couldn't have been riding that hard. On another note....Lance also said that he thought Beloki's crash wasn't that bad and he expected him to continue. So why didn't he reign in the group to see if Beloki was coming back on? There's one that hasn't come up yet.

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________________________________________________________________________
"that which does not destroy me will only make me stronger" Frederick Nietzsche
andrew peabody
http://BREAKAWAYMULTISPORT.COM

Andrew: Excellent question! Perhaps others in that lead pack saw that Beloki wasn't getting up and assumed his race was over and gave that info to Lance? I don't know. Send that question to Velo News or Rob Roll. :)

It is hard for these guys to always make the right split second decision particularly when most of their blood is in their quads and their brains are running purely on instinct. We've all been there, no?

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

The fact that Armstrong chose to attack guys who "waited" for him after he had crashed had me a little puzzled. That wouldn't have been a gentlemanly way to say "Thank you." On the other hand, if he felt that Ullrich and others had attacked him while he was down, then attacking them back makes more sense. Whether or not Ullrich attacked can be debated endlessly. Only they each know for sure.

IMHO, the perception of what happend (warranted or not)is what's gonna make next year's TDF so interesting. I can't wait.

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E-Z

--It ain't a good idea to swim near MY bubbles!

...just saw that as a contradiction. I'm a huge Lance fan, but thought the Ullrich comment was uncalled for. I was rooting for LA the whole way (even if I don't have a USPS uniform;-)), although toward the end I was hoping that Tyler could beat the odds and pull a real comeback into yellow( or at least the podium).

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________________________________________________________________________
"that which does not destroy me will only make me stronger" Frederick Nietzsche
andrew peabody
http://BREAKAWAYMULTISPORT.COM

Agreed. Next year is going to be one heck of a race for all the obvious reasons. I hope JU gets counseling to deal with his anxiety before then. At the start of the final time trial he looked like he had just been released from St. Elizabeth's hospital and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He is the Jimmy Peirsol of cycling, I suspect.

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

I know Aaron Peirsol (who does not seem to have any anxiety problems...)...who is Jimmy P.?

A baseball player for the Cleveland Indians in the '50's and early '60's. He'd tear up the bases-literally-scream obscenities at the umpires, rip off his clothes, etc. He was a truly crazy paranoid shizophrenic. Jan isn't there yet. :) But didn't he look feral at the starting gate? I imagine it would be the look of a prisoner standing in front of the guillotine!

Aaron Peirsol is a solid kid with a good head. No comparison to Jimmy P.!!

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

I see your point, but Beloki didn't have the yellow jersey. The peloton says that, "you never attack the yellow jersey when he is down."