Doesn’t it tick you off that Evans finishes 2nd in the tour wiothout ever having thrown in even 1 attack in the mountain stages. If you wanted to see Cadel all you had to do was look behind one of the front runners and there he was. Not once did he lay it out there to try and win a mountain stage. I’ll bet if the tour had stopped midway in the leg at McDonalds he would have been 2nd in line to order as well. Come on Cadel, lay it out there just once so you can give us some excitement. I know it is easy to sit here and say all this but all of the other contenders threw in an attack at some point in time, but not Cadel. At least he tried on the time trials. We all know, however, that we want our tour winner to give us exciting mountain stages and Contador did do that.
WRONG,he attacked i think in the first or 2nd stage of the ALPS, now GO TO BED!
tfun~
He tried to follow the attack from Contador in that second stage in the alps.
This said, Cadel is just racing with his best abilities. He probably does not have the same “jump” as Contador, and he prefers sustained efforts to hard attacks followed by slowing down.
Yes but at that time no one even knew who Contador was so he was essentialy attacking the contenders…
tfun~
LOL
I bet Cadel knew exactly who Contador was, and what he was capable of !
Because the average american tour viewer doesn’t know who Contador is, doesn’t mean he is/was under the radar within the peloton !
good point,
.
cycling isn’t about who works the most, it’s about who works that smartest.
I would say Cadel did pretty well considering he had very little help from anyone on his team.
You are right. It is hard to imagine Cadel even was on a team as there nefver seemed to be anyone around to help him. He need sto look for a better team next year.
I would say Cadel did pretty well considering he had very little help from anyone on his team.
How could you say that? Horner was with him during the whole tour. The only time Horner wasnt there was when the contender group went from 10 to 4. And the 4 were Levi, Contador, Cadel, and Rasmussen.
Well, he had chris horner…who was flat out all the time and didn’t seem to be able to help until he popped…
Everyone is talking about Levi winning the tour without Ras, but no one even mentioned the fact that Cadel got second in the Tour with no team to speak off. And that’s quite a feat!
Sheesh, the guy finished second by what, 21 seconds.
Some people just need to complain.
What’s up with stating the obvious?? Are you new here?
No, its about who has good power and great power to weight ratios.
2 words.
Jan Ullrich
-HWM
ps: He attacked on the Galbier.
I’m happy to see Contador win because he did race actively. He made the race, rather then watched and reacted. Alot of that depends on your goals and your ability. Contador came to the Tour looking for the White Jersey (top young rider) and a stage win. He had nothing to lose by attacking. When he realised this could ride him up high in the GC, why change your tune. It would have been interesting to see how he would have ridden had he been given the yellow earlier. I have a feeling he would have waited longer for his attacks, and ridden a bit more defensively (it is Bruyneel in the car we’re talking about…). Cadel and Levi rode well, but neither made the race, Levi didn’t start attacking until he became a domestique for Contador on that last mountain stage where he went to soften up Rasmussen and then kept attacking once he got Evans into a spot of bother.
And yes, while the casual cycling fan has no knowledge of Contador, he was certainly not off the radar. He was hailed as a huge prospect before his crash, and coma, and then was set to ride the Tour last year, before Astana’s (Team Wurth at that point or Astana/Wurth) exclusion because he was briefly named on the Operacion Puerto docket (his name was removed shortly there after, as he was only mentioned in phone convos talking about him in the results). He came back this year and had a spectacular early season including a big win at Paris-Nice (to go with his stage wins in Tour De Suisse and Romandie, and a 2nd overall at Romandie last year). He was seen as a favorite (along with Thomas Dekker) for the white jersey, and for a mountain stage win, and a dark horse for the Yellow.
In road racing there’s nothing wrong with wheelsucking, because other then for a few triathletes who chirp about it, what matters is the result. Lance won his Tours (for the most part) sitting and waiting while his team rode everyone off his wheel and then he just rode away from them, he seldom really attacked his opponents, he just waited til they were so beat and just kept riding as they faded away. The last tour winner to attack his opposition fiercely to get Yellow (let’s not touch last year’s tour yet since they haven’t resolved anything) was the late Marco Pantani, incidently the last climber to win a Tour (and the last tour with a doping scandal).
On a mountain biking forum I visit, early in the tour I posted on the good performances of the MTBers, yesterday I posted this:
"Forget all that other stuff I said… Rasmussen out because of suspicious activity. I can’t root for Cadel anymore as he’s been such a whiner, I mean after one stage he whined that he could not go with Rasmussen and Contador because it was “two against one” (I like that Bobke later pointed out that they AREN’T on the same team!) Then after another stage he whined about not having a stronger team. Bottom line, mountain bikers suck. 
"
He probably did what he had to do as far as following in the mountains, and trying to lay the smackdown in the TTs.
A bit like Basso on the year he finished second in the Tour I would add…
Contador may have been unknown to the average fan, but he has been around and has achieved some notable results. For a few years now he was thought of as one of the future stars of spanish cycling. Velonews did a bit on him and Luis Sanchez in the MIT wind tunnel working on their tt positions back in the fall of 2005.
http://www.velonews.com/...articles/9083.0.html
Also, does anyone remember the video footage of a Liberty Seguros rider in Paris-Nice (2005 I think it was) using the then new Look Keo pedals? They show him cranking it out and then his left foot comes flying out of the pedal and he almost loses it. That was Alberto Contador. It was posted on the Time Sport USA blog back in March 05, but that blog looks like it is history.
Check it out here:
I could be wrong, but wasn’t Chris Horner with Cadel until the last 2k or so of every climb? Sorry, but Cadel is probably making a good bit more coin than Chris–he’s the big GC contender and he knew what guys he was going to ride with. He knew LONG before the climbs even started that he’d be left alone near the tops of the climbs but he didn’t speak up until AFTER he got dropped. He and Horner (along with everyone else) sat on the Rabobank train most of the time on the climbs anyway before the fun started. When he was exposed he hung tough (like he should), but it did look like Horner went all out as long as he could to help Cadel. I was rooting for Cadel until he threw Horner (and the rest of his team) under the bus. I’m waiting for him to blame the mechanics for those 23 seconds. Horner finished 15th–that’s DAMN impressive.