Le Boss C'Est Contador

Le Tour de Lance

First of all, it's amazing that Lance Armstrong is even in the race to begin with. The last time he raced in the Tour it was 2005, and he retired at the end. After the Pyrenees, he looks like one of the top two legitimate contenders for the yellow jersey. If the other top contender wasn't on his own team, he would look even more likely to win. I think the only one who could really take Lance out of race is Johan Bruyneel. To me Lance looks just like he did in his previous Tour wins, biding his time and riding intelligently, avoiding any mistakes before he picks his opportunities to make time against his rivals. He certainly didn't lose any time in the Pyrenees, when Contador attacked (against his own team!) Armstrong and Leipheimer were forced to turn off the gas so as not to help the other GC contenders. And after the initial sprint, Contador didn't make any more time against the pack, and I think Lance had a good bit of energy he held back. He's still got a long ways to go, but he is certainly a legitimate contender. When the race started, I thought he would just be tarnishing his reputation, one more champion who couldn't go out on a high note. I couldn't understand him insisting that he could be the leader of the team, since I didn't think he would stand a chance against Contador in the mountains. But he certainly has held his own so far.

The public opinion seems to be in his favor. The journalists, especially the French journalists, continue to claim he is unpopular, but if you listen to the crowds the seem to be much more for him than against him. Journalists have to earn a living, though, and saying Lance is a good cyclist is not news. If you offered a journalist, not just a Frenchie journalist or a sensationalist, but any journalist, a fair-minded journalist who doesn't have anything personal against Lance Armstrong, the choice between documents that absolutely proved Lance Armstrong had taken performance-enhancing substances and documents that absolutely proved he hadn't, I think almost all of them would chose the proof that he was dirty. And it's actually a much bigger story if he hasn't, since that would make him even more superhuman. Athletes that cheat to get ahead are a dime a dozen; an athlete that utterly dominates his sport even when the others are cheating is epic. And there are many journalists who do have a personal against Lance, maybe because they root for the underdog or don't like his arrogance or his ruthless style or single-minded focus on winning the Tour, or hate Americans, or cyclists, or whatever.

I heard on the Versus converage that Lance has been tested forty times since he announced he was returning to the Tour last August. That's before the race even started. That's forty out-of-competition tests, not counting the daily testing during the Tour and other races. Lance without question is the most-tested athlete in history, and has never once tested positive. There are riders in the race who have been proven to have taken performance-enhancing drugs, and they are all more popular with the press. I can understand why a fan (especially a French fan) or a journalist might be against Lance, I cannot understand why the Tour and the are against Lance. There seems to be a personal grudge against him, backed up by the testing abuses and nasty comments and leaks of (later documented) false information to the press.

All of this, on top of his teammate's seeming betrayal, is just more motivation for Lance to win another Tour. And if he can overcome the world vs. Lance at 37 years old, he will be in my mind the most dominant athlete ever.

EPILOGUE
I heard a sports analyst on ESPN ask Bobby Julich why Lance finished in 41st place today. Bobby said "um, because it was a bunch sprint finish? And, Lance isn't a sprinter, you ass-face?" Well, that's not exactly what he said, I am paraphrasing, but the question was asked.

Le Tour 2009

It's been an exciting Tour so far, and diabolically difficult even before we hit the mountains. The time trial in Monaco was an amazing course, and the team time trial course produced the carnage that the riders were predicting.

Some initial thoughts:
- Finally the Tour is in high definition. Even if you don't like cycling, it's worth watching the three or four hours just for the countryside of France.

- If Lance Armstrong hadn't retired in 2005, he would have won the Tour in 2006 for sure, with most of the favorites out for doping. He may have beaten Alberto Contador in 2007, and he would have beaten Carlos Sastre in 2008 for sure. That would have been his 10th yellow jersey, and he would probably be retired for good.

- Lance looks like he's in at least as good a shape as he was in winning the Tour in previous occasions. He's a viable contender until we see who's got the goods in the mountains. My guess is that he won't be able to stay with Contador, but Contador has already made a dumb mistake or two. There's a reason the Tour is three weeks long.

- All of the questions about who the Astana team leader have got to be wearing on Lance and the other Astana team members. I can only imagine how it antagonizes Contador, but he doesn't speak English so we don't see him on the television coverage.

- Fabian Cancellara's descent in the stage 1 time trial was amazing, too bad we didn't get to see any of it on television. He was fourth going up the mountain and finished , he gained 26 seconds in about 10 kilometers on the best riders in the world.

- Previous winner Carlos Sastre was denied the right to wear yellow for the first stage. I bet this wouldn't have happened if the previous winner was a little more popular than Sastre.

- Mark Cavendish will win a huge number of stages, he looks absolutely unbeatable. If he can make it over the mountains with a team I think the record of eight stage wins is not unattainable. Leaving the Tour last year to lose in the Olympics was (in retrospect) a dumb decision.

I can't wait to see what happens in the mountains!

See my posts on previous Tours here.

Le Tour 2008 Week One (or should I say Weak One)

As I predicted last year in this post, "there will be many more drug scandals before I regain confidence in the fairness of the race." Former US Postal and Discovery team member Manuel Beltran was arrested by French police Friday after testing positive for the banned red-blood cell booster erythropoietin (EPO). He was re-tested on Saturday July 5th after pre-race blood tests showed abnormalities, but the results of the followup testing weren't available until last Friday. (Photo from lequipe.fr)

Under a new French anti-doping law, Beltran faces a prison sentence of up to five years and a fine of $121,600 (€76,000). He has been expelled from the Tour, and will be fired from his team pending the results of the testing of the "B" sample. He will likely get a two-year ban from professional cycling, which will be in effect a lifetime ban since Beltran was planning to retire this year after a 14 year career as a top climbing team rider.

This is yet another of Lance Armstrong's teammates who have proved to have been doping. That doesn't make him guilty, but the fact that Lance was able not just to beat but to dominate the best cyclists in the world, when many of them have subsequently been proven to have been doping, makes it more difficult to defend him (and Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton).

Top 10 Tour Disappointments
10) Time-trial specialist and US team Team Garmin-Chipotle member Dave Zibriski's absence due to a back injury.
9) David Millar promised to be a GC contender in the Tour for Team Garmin-Chipotle. After the first mountain stage, he isn't even close. On a day he needed to gain time, he finished 55th in stage 8, losing more than four and a half minutes, and is now 25th overall.
8) French polka-dot jersey winners who can't climb. What an attention-whore Thomas Voeckler is. Not one of the polka-dot jersey wearers so far could hold a real climber's bike shorts.
7) After a fantastic time trial in stage 5, Stefan Schumacher fell near the finish in stage 6 when he ran into the back wheel of Kim Kirchen. He lost the overall to Kiki by 16 seconds, and probably would have had three more days in the yellow jersey.
6) Fabian Cancellara's time trial, the presumtive favorite as a time trial specialist and world champion for the last two years. Everyone was ready to give him the stage win and the yellow jersey. He finished fifth.
5) Robbie McEwen. Or lack thereof.
4) Some of the greatest sprinters in the world are absent from the Tour once again. Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi was banned for one year after testing high for the asthma medication salbutamol. Petacchi holds a therapeutic-use exemption for the otherwise banned substance, he is presumed innocent with levels of up to 1,000 ng/ml, but tested at a level of 1,320 ng/ml. Tom Boonen, last year's green jersey winner, was barred because he tested positive for cocaine outside of competition.
3) Juan Mauricio Soler, last year's polka-dot jersey winner, abandoning because of a fall on the first day of racing.
2) No Alberto Contador (last year's winner) and American Levi Leipheimer (least year's third place finisher) because of the arbitrary ban of Team Astana.
1) We're still talking about drugs in the Tour de France.

Top 10 of the Tour
10) Having a commentator that seems to know something about cycling. Craig Hummer replaced Al Trautwig and he seems to be growing on me, he's dominating the commentator picks. TDFblog described Al Trautwig as combining "bombast and ignorance in staggering proportions!" Hummer doesn't quite have the chemistry with Bob Roll that Trautwig had, but he's doing a great job. Much better than Kirsten Gum. Although not in a sweater.
9) The commentary of Jonathan Vaughters. He's a thousand times better an interview than Johan Bruyneel, and Bruyneel is better than the rest of the team managers. When he used the f-word on live TV, Robbie Ventura's expression was priceless.
8) After a 200 km breakaway, William Frischkorn of Garmin-Chipotle almost pulled it out at the end, settling for second place on the day.
7) Thor Hushovd winning a stage and the leading sprinter in the standings for the green jersey.
6) Bernard Hinault pushing the protester off the podium. The only thing worse than socialist Frenchies are activist socialist Frenchies.

5) Mark Cavendish's domination in the sprints, with two stage wins so far, and possibly more to come if he can make it over the mountains.
4)The cameras and Tour coverage gets better every year. I remember watching Greg LeMond winning the Tour over Laurent Fignon of France in 1989 by 8 seconds. It was on a one-hour tape delayed special, and that was the only coverage of the race that week.
3) Christian Vandevelde in third place overall in the GC standings. Wow. I would have bet money that he'd be toast by now. Go Christian! Another American Tour de France winner would just kill the Frenchies.
2) American teams Columbia's and Garmin-Chipotle's performances. These are teams to be reckoned with.
1) Kim Kirchen of Team Columbia in both the green and yellow jerseys. So far...

Le Tour 2008 (or should I say La Tour 2008)

Well, we're four days into the 2008 Tour de France, and it's been exciting despite the absence of two of the three podium finishers, Alberto Contador and Levi Leipheimer, both of the barred Team Astana, and the green jersey winner, Tom Boonen, who was barred because he tested positive for cocaine outside of competition. The winners of thirteen of the yellow jerseys from 2007 were banned. The most interesting chapters of this Tour promised to be Mauricio Soler dominating the mountain stages (oops, he fell and broke his wrist) and Fabian Cancellara (who won seven yellow jerseys in 2007) again dominating the time trial events (oops, he came in fifth in today's individual time trial). No Michael Rasmussen, Alexandre Vinokourov, or Alessandro Pettachi. No Floyd Landis. No David Zabriskie. No Fred Rodriguez or Chris Horner. No Johan Bruyneel. No Al Trautwig, even! (although that might be a good thing, Craig Hummer seems to be growing on me)

I'll still watch every minute they broadcast (three hours a day on most days, today was four because of the ITT). There will always be compelling stories, most every day, with underdogs like Romain Feillu, wearing both the white and yellow jerseys yesterday after a 200 km breakaway (William Frischkorn of the US team Garmin Chipotle almost pulled it out at the end) and Stefan Schumacher, winning today's stage over the best time trialers in the world.

Tomorrow should be another great stage for the sprinters, and I think that's one of the most exciting things to watch in sports, which means that there'll be a breakaway that stays out. Or a big crash in the final turn. Ho hum, come on Pyrenees.

Le Tour 2007

I haven't blogged yet about the 2007 Tour de France, not because I haven't been watching, or because it's been uneventful (hah!). I was waiting to see what the fallout of all the scandals would be. In the end, the Tour will survive this, and go on, but I feel there will be many more drug scandals before I regain confidence in the fairness of the race.

The testing is starting to catch up to the cheaters, but I believe that it's still possible to cheat and not get caught in cycling. I'm not totally disillusioned with professional cycling as I became with heavyweight boxing, where the cheating dominated the results. And I'm not one of those conspiracy theorists that thinks that the fix is in with all professional sports. Operation Puerto caught out a lot of the top names in cycling, virtually all of whom claimed to be innocent, including Jan Ulricht (retired), Ivan Basso (later admitted doping,) Marco Pantani (died of a cocaine overdose in 2004) and Tyler Hamilton (served a two-year suspension for another doping infraction at the 2004 Vuelta a España). The protestations of innocence of Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis, and even Lance Armstrong are now colored in my opinion by the controversies of this year's and previous Tours.

The cycling authorities have a long way to go to get on top of the doping issue. It's hard to say what more they can do, though. Cycling already has the most rigorous testing requirements and penalties. First offense is a two-year ban from cycling, and second offense is a lifetime ban. Think about all the other sports in which doping is involved. The NFL started testing for steroids in 1987, MLB in 2003. Neither test for HGH or other substances that cycling tests for. Some sports, like professional golf, don't test at all. On a personal note, I have participated in a federally-mandated drug testing program for the last 15 years. They test for substances like alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, opiates, and phencyclidine (PCP). The government tests safety-sensitive positions like mine for the safety of the general public. I don't feel it to be a significant infringement of my rights or privacy, it's part of the job and the world we live in.

I expected this to be one of the most exciting Tours in recent history, and the finish did not disappoint, with the top three GC contenders within 31 seconds of each other. There were some disappointments, however, and the green jersey and polka-dot jersey competitions were not as close, and the white jersey was kind of a joke, with Contador leading the entire race.

Top 10 Tour Disappointments
10) Dave Zibriski's prologue time-trial time lasted less than a minute as the best time. Vladimir Karpets was the next rider and beat his time by more than six seconds. Dave Z's time ended up being the eleventh best time (Karpets' was sixth best) but as a specialist, I'd like to see Zibriski do better.
9) David Millar promised to win a stage in the Tour. He wasn't even close. His thirteenth place in the prologue was followed up with a 64th finish in stage 1 on home soil. He finished 20th in the stage 13 time-trial. His final chance on the stage 19 time-trial was spoiled in the first hundred meters by two broken wheels, finishing a dismal 87th.
8) Spanish climbers who can't climb. Why is Mayo in the Tour de France, anyway?
7) Frenchies pointing the doping finger at everyone but themselves. Don't they remember Richard Virenque? This guy swears Contador is definitely cheating because the speed of the climb of the Gourette-Col d'Aubisque was faster than Lance Armstrong ever went up it. This article strips the winner of his title for doping even before the race is held.
6) The tradition of a final-day procession into Paris. This was the Tour that begged for a final day race, with the top three only 31 seconds apart. If the final time trial had been Sunday instead of Saturday, it wouldn't have left the race feeling incomplete.
5) Robbie McEwen crash and later elimination left the green jersey competition a one-man race.
4) No Petacchi in the Tour once again. Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi was banned for one year after testing high for the asthma medication salbutamol in May. Petacchi holds a therapeutic-use exemption for the otherwise banned substance. With this exemption, he is presumed innocent with levels of up to 1,000 ng/ml, but tested at a level of 1,320 ng/ml. The testing criteria have become nonsensical; remember Jonathan Vaughters being stung by a bee on his face and unable to be treated for swelling that was so bad he couldn't even see? There has to be a way an athlete can take legitimate medicine without being banned.
3) Team Discovery finishing eight seconds short of a 1-2 finish
2) Vino's phenomenal stage 13 win on the long time trial, losing 30 minutes in the next mountain stage, and then winning stage 15 to seemingly coming back from the dead after his injuries in a crash to become a contender in the race once again, and then failing a drug test for blood doping, resulting in the whole Astana team being withdrawn from the race. This after team officials promised to sponsor the team for another ten years after his incredible showing. Maybe this was his revenge for the team being banned and leaving him out of the 2006 Tour.
1) Team Rabobank and the UCI failing to inform Tour officials of the problems with Michael Rasmussen (he had missed two previous out-of-competition doping tests), and then removing him from the race on the basis of Italian journalist Davide Cassani's statement that he witnessed Rasmussen training in Italy when he was supposedly in Mexico with his wife. This was despite Rasmussen testing negative for doping before the Tour and seventeen times during the Tour. If the Tour and Rabobank are trying to avoid negative publicity, this was the worst conceivable way to achieve that. At the time he was removed, he was winner of two stages, holding the yellow jersey, leading the race with 3 minutes and 10 seconds, and was the favorite to win.


Top 10 of the 2007 Tour
10) Fabio Cancellara's fantastic prologue time trial in the streets of London, dominating the entire field with the third fastest time-trial in Tour de France history, behind Greg LeMond's 1989 winner into Paris and David Zabriskie's stage 1 win in the 2005 Tour.
9) Fabio Cancellara's fantastic stage 3 win, powering off of the front of the pack when the breakaway was caught with less than a kilometer to ride and holding out for the win. I can't remember the yellow jersey ever being allowed to ride off of the peleton and win a stage like this. Brilliant. He tried it again in stage 11. If he hadn't fallen in the stage 13 time-trial, he could have had three or four stage wins.
8) Levi Leipheimer producing the fourth fastest time-trial in the Tour de France history, almost winning the yellow jersey on the last day a la Floyd Landis or Greg LaMonde. This memory will finally blot out the disappointing efforts in time-trials of years past.
7) Overshadowed by another 24-year old, Alberto Contador, Mauricio Soler is the best new climber and battled Rasmussen as the best of the best in the Alps. This guy is agressive and exciting.
6) Bonan finally won a green jersey, too bad the best sprinters in the world weren't around at the end to battle it out.
5) Nearing the end of stage 1, about 20 km out from the finish, when the peleton starts to heat up and sprinters start to jockey for position, Robbie McEwen was flying over his handlebars onto the asphalt. His team waited for him and amazingly was able to pace him back into the peleton before the stage finish. Most amazingly, he was able to ride around the world's best sprinters and win the stage.
4) The Tour start in London was incredible, with more than a million fans out to watch the prologue, and an estimated 2 million more to the road course between London and Canterbury Sunday. Now how about a stage or two in the US of A?
3) Sandy Casar winning in stage 18 after a terrible fall colliding with a dog. He managed to stay with the breakaway and out-fox everyone at the end, riding away from the other three riders on sheer guts.
2) Alberto Contador's fifth place time-trial in stage 19 to retain his yellow jersey and win the Tour de France. Who thought this guy could stay within two minutes of Cadel Evans? This shows that Contador has the right stuff even as a first-time Tour rider to perform when it counts.
1) Alberto Contador's success in this year's Tour in both time-trialing and in the mountains. This kid is for real (if he's not a doper). Very few riders can take time from their rivals in both the mountains and in the time-trials (a guy named Lance Armstrong was the last in recent memory) and he's only 24 years old. Contador's time-trialing will only improve as he gets older. If this kid can have the mental focus to improve, and concentrates on winning the Tour, he's got a real chance to win a lot of yellow jerseys. It may be too early to write his name next to Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault, and Indurain yet, but he has the potential to be there with the greatest Tour riders of all times. At 24 years old, he's got about fourteen or fifteen chances to win six more and achieve Lance's record of seven Tour wins.

Le Mort de Landis

As I predicted previously, Landis' B sample tested positive for a high T/E ratio, and he has since been fired by team Phonak. He will most likely be stripped of his Tour de France title. For all the reasons I listed previously, I still don't believe that he is guilty, but he may be in a position from which he cannot extricate himself, guilty or not guilty. There are many questions about the tests, the testing procedures, the testing laboratory, and how the results of the tests became public, but these are probably insufficient to clear Landis of all suspicion. The fact that previous and subsequent tests did not show a positive result are difficult to resolve with the one positive test, but the issue of doping is too serious for the Tour to ignore. Stripping the title will stain the race even more than the 1998 Festina scandal, even more than the Operation Puerto scandal. Read more about cheating in the Tour de France here.

Ironically, this satire site pokes fun at the race administrators and jokes that Landis was stripped because his hipular injury gave him a psychological advantage.

Here and here are articles reporting that Lance Armstrong was to have been stripped of his sixth and seventh Tour de France titles, respectively, so perhaps there is some hope for Landis.

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More on Landis' Bodily Fluids

Up until yesterday, I was pretty certain that Landis was not guilty. I still felt he had a coin's toss chance to prove it, and I felt that because of the following reasons:
1) Testosterone is not a performance-enhancing drug in the short term. It helps to build muscle, which is why the body produces it in the first place. This is not a drug you would take in the middle of the Tour de France for any reason.
2) Landis' previous six drug tests during the Tour did not indicate anything unusual about his testosterone levels
3) Landis' testosterone level was very low, not elevated, it was his T/E ratio, or the ratio of testosterone to another naturally occurring hormone
4) Industry consensus (not the cycling industry, the medical testing industry) is that this test is susceptible to a wide variety of problems
5) Every test of this type that has been challenged has been overturned
6) There are many alternate explanations for Landis' high ratio, including a naturally high testosterone to epitestosterone level, bacterial contamination, hormones he takes for his adrenal glandular problem, cortisone injections he takes for his hipular problem, alcohol consumption the night before the test (variously reported as one shot of Jack Daniel's or two beers and four shots of Jack), natural depletion of hormones due to the efforts of the race, or contamination of the specimen during testing
7) You'd have to be stupid to get caught, since there are many ways to take testosterone without elevating your T/E ratio

What happened yesterday? The New York Times in this article indicated that an IRMS (isotope ratio mass spectrometry) test showed that some of the testosterone in Landis' sample was synthetic. While that doesn't change any of the reasons above, it's unlikely (at least to me) that two different tests gave false positives. There are many problems with the IRMS test as well, but... every single athlete caught at doping claims he (or she) is the isolated case of a false positive. The AP in this article said that the leak came from the International Cycling Union. [Note: I previously reported incorrectly that the leak came from the French national antidoping laboratory in Châtenay-Malabry.]

Landis' B sample will be tested and the results will be announced on Saturday, but I find it unlikely that the results will be significantly different. If Landis wants to avoid a two-year suspension and being stripped of his Tour de France title, he's got some 'splainin' to do.

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Say it ain't so, Floyd

The day after my Tour de France posts last Tuesday, word leaked out that Landis had tested positive for doping. This is probably the worst scenario possible for the Tour and American cyclists, and for Landis specifically. Even if the test is a false positive, the damage is already done, and no one will completely believe that his superhuman effort in stage 17 was not aided by artificial means. This is a huge blight on the sport and on the Tour. Roberto Heras, former Discovery team rider and winner of last year's Vuelta d'Españe was subsequently disqualified because of doping, the top four favorites of the Tour were excluded from this year's Tour, and still the winner is suspected of doping. Doping is clearly a problem in this sport, and will continue to be until more effective tests are developed. It's difficult to say that the sport should be tougher; first offense is a two year ban (like the ones being served by Tyler Hamilton and the one recently completed by David Millar) and second offense is a life-time ban (like the one issued to Canadian cyclist Genevieve Jeanson). Cycling performs year-round random testing, and in the Tour, the winner of each stage, the leader of the race, and several random others are tested every day. The severity of the punishment is aggravated by the uncertainty in many of these testing methods.

Landis is said to have tested positive for testosterone doping after winning stage 17, specifically, that his T/E ratio exceeded the criteria of 4:1. Testosterone doping is difficult to detect, since the body naturally produces testosterone, and the levels vary day to day and from individual to individual. This test attempts to circumvent those problems by comparing the level of testosterone to another hormone in the body. If an athlete is taking testosterone, there will be elevated levels compared to other hormones in his blood, although there are many simple methods to overcome this effect, such as using a patch to deliver the testosterone in continuous doses, and by removing the patch as little as an hour before testing will eliminate the discrepancy. Another test attempts to detect testosterone that was not produced by the athlete, and although it's not clear, experts believe that Landis has the right to request this test on the B sample. This test, called IRMS (isotope ratio mass spectrometry), performs carbon isotope analyses to differentiate natural and synthetic steroids. Of course, by storing your own body's testosterone, this test could be faked out as well.

This article in Velo News summarizes the issues so far.
This article from the New Yorker discusses performance-enhancing testing and athletes (see section 3 for specifics about T/E testing)
This blog is written by a graduate school reasearcher and gives a great deal of technical information about the types of testing.

Observations
1) The lab that performed the test and leaked the information to the media is the same French lab that leaked the false reports that Lance Armstrong's 1999 samples had tested positive for doping.
2) Landis was tested six times previously during the race, and none of these tests indicated testosterone doping. Many experts are saying it would be impossible to create that drastic a change in levels by taking testosterone.
3) There have been many, many criticisms of this test previous to this incident, and every cyclist who has challenged a positive result in this test has prevailed
4) Many experts have indicated that other factors could produce these effects, including Landis' (legal) cortisone shots, alcohol use, and Landis' thyroid problems. Other factors can cause swings in the ratio, such as dehydration, fatigue, diet, and depletion of reserves over the 21 day race.
5) Even if the additional testing indicates that Landis is not guilty of doping, the Federation could still impose the same penalty for testing positive based on the original test
6) If Landis is disqualified, Oscar Pereiro will be crowned as Tour winner. Andreas Klöden (T-Mobile) be second and Carlos Sastre (CSC) would move up from fourth to a podium spot
7) If Landis is disqualified, it would be the first doping-related disqualification in Tour history, which says something about either the efficacy The top four finishers of the 1904 Tour were disqualified for cheating, but because they didn't ride the entire course.

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Le Tour 2006 redux

Most of my friends know that I'm a big Tour fan, but none of them are big fans. I think one of the reasons I'm a fan because we lived in Waterloo, Belgium when I was a kid, and it was extremely popular, especially during the reign of Eddy Merckx. I got several calls during the Tour, and I had to beg them not to tell me what happened before I could go home and watch my TiVo'ed version of the live race start to finish.

It's been a big dent in my social life, but I've watched every minute of the live coverage so far, probably close to eighty hours in three weeks. I just knew that as much as I enjoyed watching Armstrong dominate the race, that this would be one of the most interesting Tours in the last few years. Operation Puerto disappointed me, because I was looking forward to Ulrich and Basso duking it out, and maybe Vino having some impact on the overall, but the end result was awesome. One of the great Tours, and definitely no asterisk.

Observations
1) The accomplishments of Lance Armstrong are in sharp relief to this Tour, where in the last stage at least three riders had a good chance to win the race. Armstrong wasn't ever in this much danger that I can recall, even though there was some suspense, you always knew he was going to win by the last week.
2) It's clear that cycling is a team sport, and what the team does impacts the race in a huge way. Several team mistakes dictated the finishing order of the race, including Phonak allowing Oscar Pereiro to gain back 30 minutes, and CSC letting Landis gain back the 9 minutes he needed to win the race
3) It's 21 stages for a reason, if it was a shorter race, it wouldn't be won by the best overall cyclise

Surprises
1) The poor showing of the Americans, despite Landis' win. Maybe all the hype was in the American press, but I know that Leipheimer (13th) and Hincapie (32nd) were top-5 favorites before the race (after Operation Puerto). I expected more out of Bobby Julich (crashed) and Zabriski (74th and no time trial win).
2) The poor showing of Team Discovery. Hincapie didn't come through, and Popovych (25th) was supposed to be at least an outside contender.
3) Freire abandoning before the last stage, even though he was out of the runnign for the green jersey, he was almost in Paris. He must have been pretty sick.
4) A much more entertaining Tour without a dominant rider
5) No team time-trial, one of the more beautiful events in sports. The race organizers must feel that it's an unfair advantage to the better teams.
6) Another compelling story of an American rider overcoming long odds and a medical problem to win the Tour, ala Greg LeMonde and his hunting accident, Lance Armstrong and his bout with cancer.

Unsurprises
1) A very tight race right up until the end. No one could totally dominate the race, no one out of this group is the next Lance, at least, not for a few years. Landis won't have the longevity, and it's doubtful he could have made the comeback against climbers like Basso, Ulrich and Mancebo.
2) No Frenchie on the podium again this year
3) Next year looks to be just as wide open

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Floyd Landis

Here are two awesome interviews of Floyd Landis, winner of this year's Tour de France. Both of these were done before the race and before he announced that he would be having hip replacement surgery following the Tour. The first is an Outside magazine article by Daniel Coyle, interviewing Landis and Dave Zabriskie, another American Tour de France cyclist. The second is a Bicyling Magazine article documenting an interview of Floyd by Dave Zabriskie. This is one of the funniest things I've read in a while, because they are both so quirky and obviously very good friends. My favorite part is where Floyd's wife has to interrupt to tell him to be nice
Dave insults his boss's intellect and Floyd asks him if he's sure
at the end they ask if they can take out the offensive stuff
It's too funny to describe.

Outside Magazine article
Bicycling Magazine article

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Le Champion avec Panache

Photograph Bruno Bade, Ingrid Hoffmann, Jean-Christophe Moreau
Wow. Incroyable! Amazing. Epic. After Wednesday's post, I thought I was going to have to eat my words. Floyd Landis lost over 11 minutes on Thursday in stage 16, in just the final 15 km. I thought his goose was cooked, his whole Tour done. One of the observations I was going to make Wednesday was that it looked like Landis was going to win the yellow jersey without winning a single stage, something that has happened before, but is unusual. Then in stage 17 he went out and in what I believe is the single best day riding in the Tour de France I have ever seen, and I've been watching since 1988, he beat every rider in the race for the stage 17 win. An historic stage, one that will be mentioned in the same sentence with the great ones.

Photograph BBC Sport
This was much more difficult than just a one-man breakaway, like Michael Rasmussen's in stage 16. It was more difficult not because the route was more tougher, stage 16 was the queen stage of the tour, the most difficult in this year's Tour and one of the most difficult in recent memory. It was more difficult because when he gained back most of the time he had lost, when the teams realized that he wasn't going to fade out in the end like he did the previous day, or like the lesser contenders did, there were four or five teams that wanted to chase him down, that needed to chase him down, and they couldn't. When he had gained back all the time and more, the pelaton still couldn't gain on him, the leaders couldn't gain on him, no one in the race could gain on him. And what is most amazing, the word had apparently leaked out that morning that he was going to attack early, and several riders told him not to go, that it would be committing race suicide, and he told them "you better drink some Coke, cause I'm going." Even when they knew he was going, they couldn't match him on that stage. That was his stamp on the race, the indisputable statement that he was the best rider in the bunch, and that no one was going to beat him. "A performance that will go down as one of the greatest in the history of the Tour de France" says Eurosport.

Photograph Bruno Bade, Ingrid Hoffmann, Jean-Christophe Moreau
The time trial was a formality, none of the other GC contenders expected to take back time on a long time trial from Floyd Landis. Not in the form he showed on Thursday. Not when the jersey was on the line. Not when he finally got angry. And for the eighth year in a row, an American will ride into Paris in the yellow jersey. How does that taste, Frenchies?

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Separating le wheat from le chaff

Yesterday on the monster stage to l'Alpe D'Huez Floyd Landis showed that it's his race to lose. He gained time on all but one of the other GC contenders, and looked strong enough to have won the stage if he wanted to. He beat the remaining GC contenders by about 40 seconds, and should beat them in the similar length stage 19 time-trial. There are two more mountain stages to defend, with today's stage being possibly harder than yesterday's, and a fairly mild stage tomorrow. If he comes out of the mountains in yellow, he won't give it up.

Biggest Surprises
1) Oscar Pereiro coming in within 10 seconds of keeping the yellow jersey
2) CSC blowing up Voigt and Zabriskie launching Frank Schleck to a monster stage win. This was a brilliant tactical move, and Bjarne Riis might be the smartest manager at the Tour, no disrespect to Bruyneel
3) David de la Fuente keeping (and extending) the lead in the mountains, when no one gave him a chance once they hit the big alpine stages
4) Rabobank likely giving up on the polka-dot jersey to support Denis Menchov. Mickael Rasmussen is 35 points down, and he would have to win one of the remaining mountain stages with de la Fuente finishing out of the money, that seems unlikely the way the Spanish rookie is hanging on.
5) Landis can win despite having a somewhat weak (albeit complete) team
6) Landis can win without winning a single stage, although if he comes out of the Alps in yellow, he'll probably win the Stage 19 time-trial

Biggest Unsurprises
1) Tom Boonan abandoning in the first Alpine stage. He hasn't beat McEwan in anything that mattered so far, there's no reason to suspect he could beat him on the other side of the Alps
2) Thomas Voeckler
3) It was most obvious today that cycling is a team sport. Axel Merckx falling back to pace Landis, CSC using everything it had to win the stage, and Jens Voigt (only a couple of days after a huge break in stage 13) had enough strength after launching Schleck, and then crashing, to fall back and help Sastre crack Cadel Evans, Michael Rasmussen catching and pacing Denis Menchov up the last few kilometers, et cetera.
4) The French press are mad at Armstrong, this time because he called the losing French World Cup team a bunch of a-holes, when everyone knows that it is the French press that are all a-holes

Observations
1) Levi Leipheimer can jump as high as sixth, but that's probably it unless someone crashes. He deserves a top ten finish, but not a podium, because of the terrible time trial and first Pyrenean stage. Remember, he was 62nd overall at one time.
2) Likely top five are Landis, Denis Menchov, Carlos Sastre, Andreas Klöden and Cadel Evans, with Landis winning oveer Menchov, but the final podium position is in dispute
3) With Booden out, McEwan has won the green jersey, he's only got to mark Oscar Freire, and even then he's got a 45 point cushion with three sprinting stages left
4) Jan Ullrich and Oscar Sevilla may be kicked off the T-Mobile team, missing the team's July 13 deadline for explaining their role in the Operation Puerto scandal
5) George Hincapie arrived for the Tour at 155 pounds, against his usual 175 (he's 6'3") and reportedly is having trouble eating enough to keep up with the massive energy expenditures that the Tour exacts. I could possible have a new gig as Discovery's new eating coach.
6) Vive les American, no all-American podium like Bob Roll predicted, but probably an American in yellow. SUCK ON THAT, FRENCHY AMERICAN HATERS!

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Le Crunch Time

Today is the second and final rest day in the Tour de France. There haven't been the huge changes I thought there would be since my last post 9 days ago. Floyd Landis is still in the best position to win, and he still needs to stay with the other GC contenders in the Alps to have a chance to win. He's probably got the best chance, since he will be expected to take a minute or two out of everyone on the Stage 19 time-trial, like he did in Stage 7. Right now he's got about a minute on Denis Menchov, who is probably the biggest surprise still in the Tour. Cadel Evans, Carlos Sastre, and Andréas Klöden look like the only remaining GC who have a shot at the win, barring some unlikely Popovych and Leipheimer will probably top 10 finish. Marcus Fothen looks like he could get a top 10 finish too, which doesn't bode well for Levi Leipheimer's continued leadership of Gerolsteiner.



Observations
1) The sprinters are done until stage 18, then they only have three more stages to duke it out. Most likely, Robbie McEwen will be wearing green in Paris. Oscar Freire looked like he had a shot but the team is supporting Denis Menchov, not him.
2) A team can either have a sprinter or a GC contender, not both, unless they are both named Eddie Merckx
3) Leipheimer is out of contention for the win, but could still finish respectable if he doesn't have another crappy time trial
4) There is no leader of the Discovery team, but Popovych gets it by default
5) The leader of the T-Mobile team is still unclear, but it will be either Andreas Klöden or Michael Rogers, and the Pyrenees Alps will decide
6) Tom Boonen cannot beat Robbie McEwen this year, and I wouldn't be surprised if he gets shut out of stage wins for the 2006 Tour
7) There will probably only be one American (if any) on the podium in Paris and his name is likely to be Floyd. It's his race to lose, albeit only by sixty-one seconds.
8) Americans have won 10 of the last 20 Tours, and it would be awesome to put another American in yellow and rub the Frenchies noses in it
9) If Tyler Hamilton is implicated in Operation Puerto, which many people are now saying, he'll get a lifetime ban from cycling. He and his wife did an interview on the OLN coverage, but they didn't say anything about that.
10) Discovery is going to have to make some big changes to be a player again.

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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

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Le Tour 2006

Copyright Société du Tour de France.
I love the Tour de France, I think it comes from growing up in Belgium. The Belgians are crazy about cycling, I knew who Eddie Merckx was when I was five years old. I was especially looking forward to this tour, because no matter how big a Lance Armstrong fan you are, it gets little boring watching the same guy win seven times in a row. Kind of like being a Cubs fan except in reverse. I thought this year was going to be exciting, until the day before the start. Then Operation Puerto and the number one, two, and three favorites were pulled out of the race, and another favorite could not compete because his team couldn't field the minimum number of riders. It would be like suspending the two starting quarterbacks the day before the Superbowl for gambling on football. Huge huge story, and potentially crippling to the Tour de France, because the story has yet to be completely heard. And it may result in Tyler Hamilton (and possibly others) getting a lifetime ban from professional cycling. The good news is that no American (other than Hamilton) or Team Discovery riders (including Lance) were implicated, and it opens the door for the American GC (overall) hopefuls like George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer, Floyd Landis. Alejandro Valverde crashing out of the Tour on day 4 eliminates one more of the top contenders.

Who I'm Rooting For:
1) The Americans
2) Team Discovery
3) Norwegians (Thor is the only one, and it looks like he's out of the race for the green jersey because of yesterday's relegation for irregular sprinting)
4) Belgians (Tom Boonan is a favorite because he rode with US Postal in 2002, although he doesn't look as unbeatable in the 2006 Tour as earlier this year and in the 2005 tour)

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Tour 2005

I've been doing almost nothing but watch the Tour de France every evening. There are three hours of coverage on OLN every day, and five hours on some of the longer stages, so I've been picking up something for dinner and watching until I can't keep my eyes open any longer. I'm still two days behind because of my trip to Houma this week.

I've been a Tour fan for a lot longer than Lance Armstrong has been around, I first saw the tour in 1969 when we moved to Belgium. It was the Tour de France debut of Eddy Merckx, when he won the yellow jersey, the green jersey and the polka-dot jersey all in the same year, at age 24 (he would have won the white as well, but it didn't exist until 1999). Eddy Merckx was god in Belgium the years we lived there, and still is to this day. I still believe that he was a more dominant cyclist than Armstrong because he rode more than just the tour. Eddy Merckx won over 525 races in his cycling career out of 1500 races, he's one of only three riders to ever ride all five classic races in his career, and his 34 Tour de France stage victories dwarfs Armstrong's 16 (and counting), even though it looks like Lance will win seven compared to Eddy's five Tours.

My TiVo is great for this kind of thing, especially since I installed the additional hard drive space. My affection for the Tour de France reminds me of when I was in college in 1987 and I would set my VCR (Sony Super-Beta HiFi) to record the America's Cup in Freemantle. The race was fantastic, Dennis Conner came back against huge odds to beat the New Zealanders with their winged keel, but more than the race, the scenery was so grand, so sweeping, so epic, that it was as much a part of the experience as the sporting event. Rick and Claire later lived in Perth, which is very near Freemantle, and when I went to visit I remembered that beautiful mottled blue-green water and white beaches. The Tour completely circumnavigates France, and there are some amazing sights.

Lance is pretty much going to win for sure, which is great. I'm not sure I trust him to retire after this one, he would be the first ever to go out on a win. It's been an exciting one so far, and there are some real stars in the making if he does retire.

Late.

Tour De France Companion 2005 by Bob Roll & Dan Koeppel

Tour De France Companion 2005 by Bob Roll & Dan Koeppel

This time of year is all Tour de France. For 23 days, I watch an average of three hours or more every day. The coolest thing about satellite TV and TiVo is that I can really watch things that I never could follow before. I remember seeing Greg Lemond win in 1989, at that time, there was only an hour on each Sunday afternoon. That was the single most exciting sporting event I can remember seeing, and a tragedy that you had to watch highlights of a week's worth of racing in one hour on CBS Sports Spectacular. Now you can watch several hours every day on OLN. With my TiVo, I can watch it any time I want.

Late.