Wednesday, August 1, 2007

le tour in a nutshell

Highlights:

Fabian Cancellara. The Swiss powerhouse smashed everyone in the prologue in downtown London and held the yellow jersey for 7 days. The time trial world champ put a minute on his nearest rival: on the tight 7km course 8 and a bit seconds per km is massive! He then demonstrated his awesome form in stage 3, foiling the sprinters teams by breaking away on the cobbles 750 m from the line in Compiègne and holding on for a magnificant stage win. Bravo Fabian!

Cadell. Highest finish in the classification (2nd) by an Australian ever. Need i say more?

Lowlights:

The day Canberra's own Mick Rogers crashed on the decent and dislocated his shoulder and Paris Roubaix winner Stuart O'grady crashed and suffered injuries too painful to mention.

Vino. What were you thinking? the crazy Kazak shocked everyone when he failed a blood transfusion test (yep that's right someone else's blood). The winner of Vuelta Espania 2006 crashed then managed to ride through the Alps with over 60 stitches in his knees, torched everyone in the 1st time trial, won another stage then tested positive for someone else's blood!

Most pissed rider:

surely it must be Andreas Kloden - the super consistent German missed out on a probable top 5 finish (approx 60K euros) when his Astana team was forced to leave the tour when team leader Vino had took on the blood doping controls and lost. He had even managed to continue with a fractured coxix, thanks to a crash.

Perrenial dissapointment:


Christoph Moreau. The Frenchman was carrying the hopes of his country after blitzing the Dauphine Libere but got caught with his pants down when Astana put the hammer down on the way to Montpellier. If that wasn't bad enough his pedestrian time trial performance ended any hope of a French victory.

Best coverage:

For details galore about le tour and nearly every bike race on every continent http://www.cyclingnews.com/

For just the pros minus the detail but lots more humor http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/ plus an interesting foto section......

Some facts:

3,650 km in 21 days

Food consumption- these guys smack down 4-8K calories per day!

2 comments:

Jose said...

yes, good review but... one moment...
nothing about the winner... Contador (SPANIARD)... How is that possible!

david said...

true. Contador was brilliant...particularly considering he was young enough to win young rider classification (white jersey). At 24 he's the youngest rider to win since Jan Ullrich in '97...lets hope he makes more of his talent than the enigmatic german.