Le Plot Thickens

Today was the real start of the Tour de France GC competition, and several of the favorites are already out of the running. Literally, in the case of Bobby Julich, who crashed hard on a tight corner at a traffic circle. He was the leader of the CSC team after Ivan Basso was excluded due to Operation Puerto. Jens Voigt, a perennial CSC strongman, finished DFL. Another CSC rider, David Zabriski, was a favorite to win the stage but ended up 13th, almost two minutes behind the winner Serguei Gonchar (however he spells it) of T-Mobile. T-Mobile, which would have been led by Jan Ullrich if he hadn't been excluded due to Operation Puerto as well, dominated the time-trial, with four riders in the top ten of the stage and in the top ten of the GC, most certainly knocking Discovery out of top team spot. Discovery's highest rider is Paolo Salvvodelli at 13th.

The Americans, except for Floyd Landis, screwed the pooch. Overall contenders George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer, and Bobby Julich finished 24th @2:42, 96th @6:06, and DNF, respectively. Zabriski had a decent ride (13th for the stage, @1:57, and is 10th overall in the GC) except he's a time-trial specialist and should be winning these stages since he doesn't stand a chance in the mountains. Landis had a good ride and was only beaten by 1:01 in an unexpectedly inspired performance by the Ukranian. He also had a mechanical problem on the course with his weird handlebars after the officials made him change the angle of them, losing probably 30 seconds or so by changing to his spare TT bike.

It's impossible to watch the winner Serguei Gonchar jumping up and down on the podium and not join in his exuberance at winning the stage and taking the yellow jersey. At 36 years of age winning a long time-trial stage and leading the overall Tour has got to be the pinnacle of his entire career.

Photo copyright Fotoreporter Sirotti
Observations
1) The sprinters are done wearing the yellow jersey, it will be the time-trialers for a few days until they get into the Pyranees, then the real GC contenders will emerge
2) The sprinters can either win stages or wear the yellow jersey, not both, unless your name is Mario Cipollini
3) Leipheimer is out of contention ("Worst time trial of my life"), he'll have to try for a stage win somewhere
4) The leader of the Discovery team is still unclear, but it will be either Salvodelli or Hincapie, and the mountains will decide
5) The leader of the T-Mobile team is still unclear, but it will be either Andreas Klöden or Michael Rogers, and the mountains will decide
6) Tom Boonen can only beat Robbie McEwen in a time-trial
7) Thor Hushovd can't even beat Robbie McEwen in a time-trial
8) There will probably only be one American (if any) on the podium in Paris and his name is likely to be Floyd
9) Ratings are down more than 50% in the US from the Lance era
10) Lance says he'll be in France for the last week of the Tour, maybe that will help the ratings. I doubt it.
11) After Operation Puerto, if Lance had decided to just ride one more, he'd have won eight Tours instead of seven
12) If Jan Ullrich hadn't been booted he'd already have won the Tour, unless Lance had decided to just ride one more, or if Basso could have kept up in the time-trials and beat him in the mountains, which might have been tough as good as T-Mobile looks
13) I thought the Tour would be much more exciting when the outcome was uncertain, but I think this much uncertainty is chaos

Read more in my series on the 2006 Tour de France:

First | Prev | Next | Last