Today's Mountain Selection

[Rick H]

About 40 riders finished with Armstrong today after the first big climb in the mountains, including
most of the favorites. Not among them were early favorites Simoni and Botero, both 6 minutes back!

So if the Col de la Ramaz was any indicator, then there are about 45 riders on top form right now.
The breakdown by team of the riders that finished with or before Armstrong's group is:

Euskaltel - 5 (Roberto Laiseka, David Etxebarria, Samuel Sanchez, Haimar Zubeldia, Iban Mayo)
QuickStep - 4 (David Canada, Kurt Van De Wouwer, Michael Rogers, Richard Virenque) iBanesto - 4
(Evgeni Petrov, Juan Miguel Mercado, Francisco Mancebo, Denis Menchov) ONCE - 4 (Jorg Jaksche, José
Azevedo, Joseba Beloki, Marcos Serrano) US Postal - 4 (Roberto Heras, José Luis Rubiera, Manuel
Beltran, Lance Armstrong CSC - 3 (Tyler Hamilton, Peter Lüttenberger, Carlos Sastre) Bianchi - 3
(David Plaza, Félix Garcia Casas, Jan Ullrich) Cofidis - 3 (David Moncoutie, Guido Trentin, David
Millar) Kelme - 2 (Ivan Parra, Javier Pascual Llorente) Fassa B - 2 (Volodymir Gustov, Ivan Basso)
Alessio - 2 (Pietro Caucchioli, Laurent Dufaux) Brioches - 2 (Didier Rous, Sylvain Chavanel) Ag2r -
2 (Inigo Chaurreau, Mikel Astarloza) Telekom - 2 (Alexandre Vinokourov, Rolf Aldag) Rabobank - 1
(Grischa Niermann, sorry Levi but not much help anyway) Gerolst - 1 (Georg Totschnig) Credit A - 1
(Christophe Moreau) Vini C - 1 (Stefano Garzelli) FDJeux - 0 (some FDJeux's finished 1:40 behind
Armstrong's group) Jean Dela - 0 (ditto) Lotto - 0 Saeco - 0 (poor Simoni)

So it looks like...
* Laiseka or Mayo could use their team climbing strength to launch an attack.
* Lance, Beloki, Mancebo, and Virenque(!) have as much help as anyone
* Tyler's still in it
* Ullrich can't be too unhappy with his position or his team
* Mancoutie/Millar might provide a surprise
* Basso, Dufaux, Vinokourov, Moreau and Garzelli are more or less isolated

Overall, Lance still looks to be in a good position, with Beloki and Ullrich close behind and
there's always a dark horse... The race of truth is tomorrow!

Rick H

[Doug Taylor]

"rick h" <amln082@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:d199b54f.0307121408.62b03c82@posting.google.com...
> About 40 riders finished with Armstrong today after the first big climb in the mountains,
> including most of the favorites. Not among them were early favorites Simoni and Botero, both 6
> minutes back!

***
>> So it looks like...
> * Laiseka or Mayo could use their team climbing strength to launch an attack.
> * Lance, Beloki, Mancebo, and Virenque(!) have as much help as anyone
> * Tyler's still in it
> * Ullrich can't be too unhappy with his position or his team
> * Mancoutie/Millar might provide a surprise
> * Basso, Dufaux, Vinokourov, Moreau and Garzelli are more or less isolated
>
> Overall, Lance still looks to be in a good position, with Beloki and Ullrich close behind and
> there's always a dark horse... The race of truth is tomorrow!

Indeed.

QuickStep has no alternative but to try to protect the jersey and will have to work.

Heras, Rubiera, and Beltran sure looked confident today in the last 30 or so km controlling the
chase group. With Hincapie and the rest of the Postie crew also working hard in the peloton early, I
think Lance is in very good shape team wise.

It will be intersting to see if all the talk about inter-team alliances against him will
materialize.

Now if I can only resist tuning in the results tomorrow before I can watch the stage :-)

[John Forrest To]

I love cyclingnews.com

JT

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[Amit]

amln082@yahoo.com (rick h) wrote in message

Thanks for that. I did a breakdown by nationality :

Spain - 19 France - 4 Italy - 4 Germany - 3 Austria - 2 US - 2 Rus - 2

-Amit

[Amit]

amln082@yahoo.com (rick h) wrote in message
news:<d199b54f.0307121408.62b03c82@posting.google.com>...
> About 40 riders finished with Armstrong today after the first big climb in the mountains,
> including most of the favorites. Not among them were early favorites Simoni and Botero, both 6
> minutes back!
>
> So if the Col de la Ramaz was any indicator, then there are about 45 riders on top form right now.
> The breakdown by team of the riders that finished with or before Armstrong's group is:
>
> Euskaltel - 5 (Roberto Laiseka, David Etxebarria, Samuel Sanchez,
> Haimar Zubeldia, Iban Mayo)

Eusktel is a potentially powerful team. Mayo dropped LA earlier this summer and Zubeldia beat him in
the prologue, but in the cyclingews interview Mayo says the team never practiced a TTT. This is as
bad as Millar riding without a front changer. If they were better prepared for the TTT they might've
been more of a threat in the GC.

Until others learn to prepare as well as LA and Postal they will continue to get beaten.

-Amit