Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Yesterday was a perfect example of what make the Tour the most compelling sporting event in the world. Beyond the doping and the interorganizational politics and strife you have the riders and the race and they took center stage yesterday. Four riders, including American Will Frisckorn, took off at the gun and the main bunch never saw them again. It almost never works; the long flyer, but yester day it did. I spent the last hour of the race urging the four riders to push through the pain and they did. It was wonderful.

We also saw the capricious nature of the Tour as a rider crashed on the run-in to Nantes and split the field. Behind the split was GC contender Denis Menchov who ended up losing 40 seconds to Evans and Valverde on the stage. That could be the race for him. He wasn't paying attention and ended up, along with Ricardo Ricco, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and his team couldn't pull him back into the fold. So now it looks like it's a four man race between the two already mentioned and Sastre and Cunego.

Today is the first individual time trial with the yellow jersey on the line (assuming yesterday's yellow jersey winner doesn't become superhuman). I see this being between Valverde, Evans, Cancellara and David Miller. If Valverde's form holds, he should win this today but MIller's been targeting this all year and Cancellara is the master of this discipline. They'll all be in the top ten but I'm going with Cacellara on this one. I don't think he'll take the jersey back (he'd have to beat the present yellow jersey winner by over two minutes) but he'll get the win. For the GC guys (Cancellara can't climb) it'll be Valverde, Evans, Menchov, Cunego and Sastre in that order. Two other riders to look for will be George Hincapie and Christian Vandevelde who may end up in the top three today with an inspired ride.

It should be fun but not as fun as yesterday was.

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