Great action! So, no surprise that the chicken is off the front, but some of the favorites are in trouble. are these the 6(or 7 if you include Rassmussen) who can win the Tour? Valverde, Moreau, Mayo, Kashechkin, Schleck, Contador, and Evans?
Over a minute on Vino, Kloden, Levi, and Sastre. I think it’s too early to count these guys out. Vino, and Kloden, are still nursing injuries and can out time-trial the others. I think Sastre and Levi came to the Tour a litttle under-prepared and will be strongest in the Pyrenees.
Great race. Looks like all those big guys are pulling themselves right back in on the wheel of Kloden. I expected Rasmussen to lead, but I didn’t think he’d be so far off the front, and still pulling away.
Those guys should have worked together instead of attacking each other for 5 miles. They could have had over two minutes on the Astana boys. Moreau is definitely the strongest guy in the group.
You have to wonder at what point teams will stop making Kloden haul broken team leaders around the Tour and let him lead on his onw. He did the same stuff for Ullrich that he’s doing now for Vino.
I’m just going to post my prediction from yesterday here, that pretty mcuh sums up the race…
“Tomorrow will the the chicken’s day. His team will pace him up the first cat 1 climb, he will take off( probably alone), and do his thing for the rest of the day. They then get to sit back and let other teams set pace, while there is complete and utter devistation in the field. The top GC guys won’t chase him too hard, because he can’t tt faster than a 5th grader…He will get the polka dots, possibly the yellow, and hang on for a top 5 GC… It is the year of the chicken!!!”
They shouldn’t have called Kloden back. He was catching the group until they made him go back for Vino. I guess it is a Kazakh team…
You gotta feel for Contador. He looked so strong before that wheel change. Impressive the way he rode through the Sastre/Levi/Menchov group to almost rejoin Moreau, et al.
Nice. You were right on, but we’ll have to see if he finishes top 5. He says he’s going for gc more than polka dots this year.
I think those guys are going to pay for attacking each other and letting Kloden and Vino stay close. Did you see O’Grady go down? I missed it. Did it look bad?
After Levi lost his chain, he got the standard pseudo-mechanical help from his car to get him caught back up. Rogers took a tumble into a guard rail, and went downhill from there. As he got into his car, it looked like they were checking out his collarbone. O’Grady got carted off on a backboard with a neck collar, but I didn’t see that crash. Probably just standar precautions.
This kind of stuff is what makes me throw in the towel when it comes to honor among these guys. This was not the usual pacing behind a car for a few seconds. They actually grabbed his seat, held on, and then sped the car up to get him back to the group, while holding him… Blatant cheating, not the usual as I’ve seen. There was one other rider doing the same thing later on too, I don’t remember which one… And it was not a crash, which gets a little more leincency, but a bad shift by Levi that threw his chain off, and then he cranked it around his deruailler…
Well, I don’t know what ind of “bad shift” Levi could have done to cause his chain to wrap around his rear derailleur, but we see this same thing every year from lots of guys. They get a new bike, or recover from a mechanical, and their car helps them along, making some sort of “minor adjustments” to get them back up to speed. This is nothing new. I don’t know what the big deal is.
don’t use the lost the chain excuse for levi…he had a new bike in 20 secs. his history has always been one of choking in the tour, it is no surprise he has put himself out of contention…and don’t tell me he’s going to beat all the 15 riders in front of him by 3-4 minutes in the ITT…this isn’t LA. LA owning a piece of Discovery Team must be taking a back role or maybe Contodor is the real team leader and Lance has had him flying stealth. Certain Brunnell does not appear in control of the team tactics, like he did when LA running the show.
First of all chains just don’t wrap themselves around a derailleur. A shift usually has to be involved there somewheres… And even the bad eyes of Sherwin and Ligget could see there was no adjustment going on, but blatant cheating. They couldn’t much believe it themselves, and more than once said the refs better not see that… And those two have seen it all, and were shocked to the point of having to make an issue about it. I wonder when the refs see the tape if there is a process for retroactive penalties. I know in the sprint they use the camera sometimes, but I’ve never heard out on the actual course if that has ever been done. Levi better hope not, because the video is very clear what happened…
I’m not saying it isn’t cheating. I’m just saying that calling it a “bad shift” implies he broke his bike through lack of skill, which seems ridiculous. Also, I’m just saying that you see this every year, and in other races as well. I don’t think anyone was “shocked.” I know I’ve heard Phil and Paul make similar comments every year about someone or usually more than one someone.
I’m just saying that calling it a “bad shift” implies he broke his bike through lack of skill, which seems ridiculous. [[[
I guess you don’t get out and ride much. The chain didn’t break, and they don’t skip on thier own during pedaling… We have all done it, made that shift across too many gears, without keeping a decent cadence up, and wa la, the chain goes off. After awhile if you are in tune with your gears, it doesn’t happen much, if any at all… In the heat of the moment you can lose control and make the silly rookie mistake, probably what happened to Levi… Why you say this is ridiculous, I just don’t understand… What do you think is the #1 reason for this scenario??? Something not so ridiculous…
Yes, yes, you know all about cycling, and I am talking out my ass because I ride tricycles.
I don’t know what happened, and neither do you. Chains come off for all kinds of reasons, some of them mechanical, some procedural, some of them pure chance or bad luck. The guys weren’t going particularly hard when Levi’s chain went off, so why you think he was trying to shift over a bunch of gears is a mystery. Regardless, that’s not the point, and I’m not really looking to argue over something neither one of us really knows for sure. My real point was that the assistance is simply not a “shocking” thing to have happen in a pro cycling race, or even the TDF. It happens every year, many times, and Phil and Paul comment on it whenever they see it. It seems to be pretty standard.
