Dauphine thread

Dead Star

lol sure have.

davidbod

We'll see what Jan's form is like soon. A good tactic would be to have Vino attack and make Discovery waste effort chasing him down and keep Jan back behind the chase.

About form at this time of year, remember that this close to the tour a rider may be at or near a peak in training load which will have a negative effect on performance. I think this is what was going on with Lance last year, and clearly Mayo peaked early. All in all Lance had a good couple of days considering it's Ventoux after a very hard ITT, but by the same measure so did many other riders including Vino, Levi, Floyd... We'll see how their legs hold for the rest of the week.

Can't wait to see Jan later. Its been very strange this year no getting a peak at any of the real contenders form until now. By the way where is Mayo?

limerickman

1996 Dauphine Libere, Indurain blasted to victory.
Four weeks later, Mr 60% crept in with his chemical cadence and stole a win.
So form and predictions, even at this stage can be pretty meaningless.

The Mobile team, need to work as a team in the TDF.
I hate these discussions about the TDF, because there is far more cycling in the season but I suppose we're now in that TDF timeframe.

Tactically, I just wish Mobile would adopt the Indurain approach.
The LA supporters make a great play about LA being the better climber than JU.
LA is a more explosive climber no doubt.
This requires JU to adopt a more Indurain-like approach.
Indurain managed to reign in the most explosive climber ever - Marco Pantani
(Pantani's climbing put LA's in the ha'penny place).
What was Indurain's strategy ? Don't panic, let the explosive climber go and
just limit the loss.
That is the strategy that JU needs to employ.
Indurain and Ullrich are diesel locomotives - they climb at a set speed on climbs.

yace

but Ullrich dont have Indurain's dominace in TT/TTT.

limerickman

Fair point.

But his form in the TT (he won the Olympic ITT in 2000) is as good, if not better than LA.
He also won the ITT at Atlanta in 1996 (after finishing second in his debut TDF)
three weeks earlier.

Tactically, I think JU needs to think about his approach to the TDF (and he needs a team that are closely knit and working well together).

yace

I am afraid that the 96 Olympic gold medal went to Indurain.

Dead Star

should've been Boardman!

MJtje

let's talk a bit about rabo.......Menchov is doing great....I think he could be the darkhorse. Breukink says he's slowly getting into form. I won't put much thought into his TT 2 days ago (although it is his weak point), but he apparently had a headache. I think Menchov can achieve his goal, 5th in the tour.

Reading michael boogerd his site.......he doesn't feel good at all. He hasn't raced since the classics and he lacks race kilometres.

First time I think Breukink made a longlist of people going to the tdf and not naming our 2 best dutch guys as certain: dekker, boogerd. Only rasmussen, menchov and freire are certain. But it's a dutch sponsor so no doubt dekker, boogerd, kroon WILL ride. I hope they have trained specifically for the tour......or else they will get again a lot of bad press!

yace

I have the feeling that Mayo will surprise us in July

whiteboytrash

Lets hope so but he has been very very very very very quite this year..... he still gets mobbed by chics when he goes shopping but apart from that have'nt seen alot of him...... saw him ride with Basso in the Tour of the Basque Country and both of them hung off the back the entire race......... then Basso went BOOM ! in the Giro..... maybe Mayo will do the same in the Tour or at least light up some mountain stages....... ?

Bjørn P.Dal

I think limerickman also knows that it was ekkimov who won in 2000.

whiteboytrash

* UPDATE for 10/06/05 * Bottom's up !

15 km AXEL MERCXK 6 KM FROM THE SUMMIT of the Cote des 4 Seigneurs... From the top, it's a sinewy downhill drop to the finish in Grenoble...

15:31 Axel Merckx busting up the slopes of the Cote des Quatre Seigneurs, the final difficulty of today's 219-km stage to the French Alps capital of Grenoble... The Belgian 3 min off the front of chase duo Inigo Landaluze and Eddy Mazzoleni. The pack is now officially an afterthought on this stage, trailing by 14 min 10 sec... If the time splits remain unchanged, Landaluze will take the overall lead at the day's end and Merckx will rise up to second in the G.C...

30 km Axel Merckx ratcheting back some of his lead, now 3 min 10 sec off the front of chase duo Inigo Landaluze and Eddy Mazzoleni...

whiteboytrash

Levi now out of yellow and the orange boys up tops ! Looks like Levi and co spent their biscuits up Ventoux...... can they make up 2.51" in one day ?

Dead Star

Gilbert 13th woohoo