Dauphine thread

MJtje

Or levi just needs to admit that Gerolsteiner DOESN't have the team to bring the break back! Without the help of DC and Phonak the gap would have been even bigger.......so Levi lacks a team for GC!

whiteboytrash

I agree Lance can use the Dauphine as a tune-up as he has won it before and won 6 Tours... whereas Levi should of kept things in control and not expecting T-Mobile or Disco to make the chase.... schoolboy error !

mitosis

In 2000 T de F he pretended to be hurting for most of a stage before he went hard on the final climb. Great tactic but it probably only works once.

Eldrack

Seems like Discovery were the only team strong enough to control the peloton. Look how long Hincapie and Popo stayed out infront of the peloton. Phonak should have closed that gap to keep the team classification but they couldn't. Good news for Discovery on the Tour.

whiteboytrash

That was 2001......

yace

yep, the alpe d'Huez stage.
in Chinese, we call that "Kong Cheng Ji"

mitosis

Sorry, I was going from memory.

whiteboytrash

I was there the day it happened.... we were in a bar on the l'Aple watching the race…. It was in French so I could not understand the commentary.... we all keep saying he was gone... the French guys in the bar kept cheering every time the camera panned to the pained expressions on his face... we all thought he was gone..... and then BOOOOMMMMM !! He was off... made Ullrich look stupid.... we all ran out of the bar when Armstrong powered past us up the mountain and cheered him on (with beers in hand !)...... O'Grady wore yellow that day and to commentate such a great stage and a marvellous victory by Armstrong I framed the front page of l'Equipe from the following day which has a great photos of Armstrong on the attack and Ullrich in the background in the German jersey with his head down in a world of hurt (psychologically and physically).... when ever people drop by they always ask me about the framed picture... so I tell the story.... ‘well in 2001…..’

musette

Gerolsteiner does have the team to just barely control the peloton, if they brought their TdF team. But they will have the issue of two co-leaders in G Totsching and L Leipheimer, and neither really wanting to work for the other. If one of them lost a lot of time and had to work for the other (a la Cunego/Simoni this year in the Giro), the remaining leader would be better off. But neither is likely to lose that much time to the other, barring an accident.

The Dauphine strategic mistakes made by Gerolsteiner, TM and Phonak were bred out of a sense of dependence on DC's control of the peloton. What LA and Bruyneel did were to make these other teams realize they have to work, if they want to do well in the Tour, lest yet other teams with breakaways would get too much of a lead. This may be Bruyneel beginning to plant the seeds for DC to work less in the Tour (although they will have to work very hard, obviously). By putting GH and Popo on a solo breakway and by LA telling people that he would not mind letting Popo win the TdF if Popo gained time in a breakaway, LA and Bruyneel are also setting up the possibility of Popo being a stronger stategic pawn in LA's road to his GC win in the Tour.

whiteboytrash

Huh ? Why did TM have to chase ? Why is that a strategic mistake and for Disco its a masterstroke ?

musette

It was a strategic mistake for Gerolsteiner because LL had hopes of winning GC. Also, as the team of the then GC leader, they had a stronger obligation to chase. It was a strategic mistake for TM and Phonak, if they were hoping that Vino or Botero/Landis would have a shot at the win.

It was not a strategic mistake for DC because it was a choice on the part of DC.

whiteboytrash

I agree with you on Gerolsteiner but Vino said that ‘overall’ was not an objective so TM didn’t need to chase..... maybe TM had the masterstroke as DC looked at them thinking that would force TM to chase and they just looked back at DC... it depends on what angle you look at it from…. Only Botero and Levi openly said they wanted to win the thing……