The Official Tour De France discussion thread.

KGnagey

Just wondering if Jan can make time on Basso in the last two days in the Alps, enough to overcome him in the final TT which is quite long. Jan has a reputation of finishing very strong. What is Basso's results in other long TT (55 Km)? I would like to see Jan podium in second place. As a professional cyclist Jan is a fighter and won't go down easily. The battle for second will be the battle to watch in these final few days.

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mutu

well, it's quite obvious as far as i'm concerned... the guy is trying to make a point about how hard the whole deal is, maybe as close as going through hell ?!... hmmm...

mojomarc

From what I understand, Basso is not much of an ITT rider, and we all know Ulrich can be exceptionally good in those, so I fully expect Ulrich to gain some serious time on such a long ITT. I don't know about Kloden. Unfortunately for JU and Kloden, they are still too close to Lance for USPS to let them go out on their own too far without reeling them in, and CSC would definitely help USPS at that point to protect Basso's podium position, and I'm not sure that JU would get the support by team management to attack on his own at the expense of Klodens' podium spot.

It's just a hunch, but I think that the stage today will feature breaks by guys like Virenque who are out of contention, but the major players will be fairly closely watched, which will leave the ITT to determine which of the three contenders will share the podium with Lance. Assuming, of course, that there isn't some sort of huge disaster....

gavinb

Does anyone know what gearing was being used up the Alpe yesterday? The comentators kept refering to crank lengths, bike weights etc, is it published anywhere?

izzodesh

lance and landis really closed the gap today...
sasestre almostr got away....but that was amazing when lance got to the summit..

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keydates

What's with Cyclingnews.com and cows?

mareblu

I actually like Bob Roll! He makes fun of the french by saying it his way.

I don't think OLN should get rid of him. In fact, one thing OLN did well was to get rid of that blondie Kirsten or Krystin (don't remember her name now) they had in the past hosting with Bob. Now, she was pretty annoying....I guess, OLN got a lot of p.o viewers complaining about her lack of cycling knowledge.

Rudy

Regardless, we beat the Frnech again

mareblu

hahahaha! yeap! We did it one more time!!!!!

Robear

Question:
What does it mean, ie, what is the rule when they say a rider is "dropped" from the peloton?

meehs

Wow! You resurrected an old thread with this question!

When a rider is referred to as being "dropped", it simply means that he is no longer able to maintain the pace of the peloton (or whatever group he may be riding with) and thus falls off the back, no longer able to keep up.

Robear

And if he rides faster and catches up, he can be back in? This is not an end to the man's ride, is it?

meehs

No, it's definitely not the end for a dropped rider. They can pull it together and catch back up to the group if they have it in them. It seemed as though Voekler was dropped a dozen times last year only to regroup and make it back to the peloton!

Robear

Thanks, Meahs.