The tour hits the mountains today. I think the real indicator of his current level of fitness will be today or tomorrow at Brasstown. A few of the riders that placed ahead of Lance yesterday said they expect Lance to turn it on at Brasstown, the beyond category climb.
I can tell you, I live about 20 minutes north of where the riders are starting today. There are thunderstorms threatening the area and there is a thick yellow layer of pollen on the roads. The mixture can make for real dangerous riding conditions. It wouldn’t surprise me if team Discovery took that into consideration when determining their pacing today.
Lance isn’t bluffing. Not anymore than he was beaten last year in the Ventoux. Funny there are lots of talks about periodization on this forum but they never apply to Lance.
We don’t know what he was doing beforeTdG. He started getting ready later for the Tour. He probably trained really hard to make it time and got to TdG a bit tired. The others may have come well prepared and even Lance can lose 1’45’’ on a TT. It’s not like he is losing to a 70yo woman on a tricycle, these guys are excellent TTers.
All riders use races to improve their fitness and this is exactly what he is doing. He is likely a bit behind schedule and is just using this race to improve his fitness.
If he was able to win, he would, he wouldn’t let others do it.
On cyclingnews.com they said Floyds was 4 second slower, whats a few seconds amongst friends, he was riding like he stole it!
Floyd, Bobby, Levi and Lance all hammering away at each in a few days and maybe in July, god what a wonderful time to be a cycling fan. Throw in Jan, Vino and maybe Roberto and Cunega, MAMA, lets get some corn poppin we got a race to watch!
Too bad I’ll have to watch it in a couple of weeks isntead of live tomorrow…
man, i knew I should of ditched work and gone to the race today. Looks like team Discovery is attacking based on the live updates on the web. Of course, its still early and this is the longest stage with 5 climbs. Should be a real interesting day.