Is Lance really trying to win this year or not?

'tis all mind games.

LA will be riding to try to win. It's in his nature and also he has said he wants to go out with a win in the TdF -- to go out on top.

A rough translation of the following French phrase:

"A l'heure actuelle, quelle analyse portez-vous sur les performances de vos rivaux pour le Tour de France?

"Le casting est plus ou moins le même que les autres années. Dans la liste des prétendants à un bon résultat, on peut ajouter Popovych. Il est vraiment très fort et sera très utile à l'équipe. S'il courait dans une autre équipe que la mienne, je m'en méfierais terriblement.""

Is the following:.

Q: Presently, what is your analysis of the performance of your Tour de France rivals?

A: The usual people from prior years. In the list of people with potentially good results, one can add Popovych [Read between the lines: But not the top of the podium for Popo this year! Just a good result]. He is reall very strong and will be very useful to the team [Read between the lines: useful to LA as leader]. If he were part of a team other than mine, I would be terribly worrried. [Translation: I'm not worried because he is on my team and is my domestique!]"

😄

He is be so modest this year to try and lure his rivals into a false sense of confidence. He said before the Dauphine that he hasn't worked much on time-trialling. Remeber the grimace hoax. He is playing the same game. Discovery just want T-Mobile to take the bait.

Yep he is playing mind games again.......also ONE of the many reasons why is so good. Faking alpé d'huez in 2001 that was classic.

To get back to the thread offfffffffcourse he is going to win his 7th. Look at the marketing campaign behind him. The drive for 7 and so on........no way he is going to lose. Love those boring tours😎

El Loto said:

He is be so modest this year to try and lure his rivals into a false sense of confidence. He said before the Dauphine that he hasn't worked much on time-trialling. Remeber the grimace hoax. He is playing the same game. Discovery just want T-Mobile to take the bait.

MJtje said:

Yep he is playing mind games again.......also ONE of the many reasons why is so good. Faking alpé d'huez in 2001 that was classic.

To get back to the thread offfffffffcourse he is going to win his 7th. Look at the marketing campaign behind him. The drive for 7 and so on........no way he is going to lose. Love those boring tours😎

After today's prologue, it is clear he is in form to win again.

Popo was way down so he either didnt have it or was soft pedalling, if thats possible in a & km ITT prologue. I of course riding it all out would finish sometime next week. Just had the worst four hour ride of my life. Oh well.

The more special with only 2 TT's under his belt. And this was a short explosive proloque which doesn't quarantee a good place for an 'old' guy like armstrong. Next appointment ITT and then ventoux to see his climbing skills!

hombredesubaru said:

After today's prologue, it is clear he is in form to win again.

Popo was way down so he either didnt have it or was soft pedalling, if thats possible in a & km ITT prologue. I of course riding it all out would finish sometime next week. Just had the worst four hour ride of my life. Oh well.

For the people who can watch france 2: Saturday 11 june le dauphine libere😄

16h15 - 17h55Trois cols de première catégorie et un col hors catégorie sont au programme de cette avant-dernière étape du Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré. Le parcours fait la part belle aux grimpeurs.
I'll be watching.......

LA has been bluffing about how he might be willing to let some of his domestiques win under certain circumstances. Of course that will not happen at DC, when LA is going for Number Seven. He is trying to do this for several reasons: (1) his usual mind games with JU and other competitors, and (2) equally significantly, setting up Popo and Paolo as threats and legitimate contenders in the eyes of LA's rivals so that DC can implement team strategies that are based on other teams' need to control Popo/Paolo (including in the mountains).

"He even raises the possibility that he may opt for assisting his team-mates Paolo Savoldelli - winner of the Tour of Italy eight days ago - or the talented Ukrainian Yaroslav Popovych. This is taking pre-Tour bluffing to a new level."

http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cycling/story/0,10482,1500100,00.html

MJtje said:

The more special with only 2 TT's under his belt. And this was a short explosive proloque which doesn't quarantee a good place for an 'old' guy like armstrong. Next appointment ITT and then ventoux to see his climbing skills!

Even more exciting for us Lance die-hards: he pulled out of his pedals on the clomb he was pulling so far. Graham Watson following or on a bike to take pics estimated 3-8 seconds lost. In other words he wanted to and was in position to win. He is back.

Man, I would not want to to test my climbing on Ventoux. It's funny. When he was gearing up for the Tour, was it 99 or 2000? he had a crappy ride on Ventoux in Dauphine and got psyched out. Well we all know what happened later...with Pantani and all. I think Vaughters and Tyler beat him up Dauphine.

[font=Verdana][font=Verdana]Settle it down... Hincapie won it ! So it was hardly a world-class TT/Prologue field.... if you do the maths on the avg speed etc it’s not that fast albeit being a headwind in the last couple of k's........... for those who saw on TV would note Kloden and Vino both noticeably not pushing it.... think Wed and Thurs will be interesting…….. time will tell……[/font]

[/font]

Lol like time told that armstrong was done last year after a disastrous dauphine.........whiteboy you ARE trashing around.

BTW where are youre threads of tour of luxemborg and other races. Ullrich raced 2 races the last days. Have you heard about....maybe......did you make a thread about it: NO! So make other threads.......or just acknowledge that it it TOUR time.......so that speaks for itself that armstrong will be discussed a lot. Like it or not.......trashy boy😉

whiteboytrash said:

[font=Verdana][font=Verdana]Settle it down... Hincapie won it ! So it was hardly a world-class TT/Prologue field.... if you do the maths on the avg speed etc it’s not that fast albeit being a headwind in the last couple of k's........... for those who saw on TV would note Kloden and Vino both noticeably not pushing it.... think Wed and Thurs will be interesting…….. time will tell……[/font]

[/font]

whiteboytrash said:

[font=Verdana][font=Verdana]Settle it down... Hincapie won it ! So it was hardly a world-class TT/Prologue field.... if you do the maths on the avg speed etc it’s not that fast albeit being a headwind in the last couple of k's........... for those who saw on TV would note Kloden and Vino both noticeably not pushing it.... think Wed and Thurs will be interesting…….. time will tell……[/font]

[/font]

ummm...the average speed was not that fast because the first two kms were straight uphill, I mean a real small chainring climb. I saw videos of it and it was hard climbing dude.

If Hincapie beat Levi and Floyd, it,by definition, was a world class field. Deal with it. American cyclists are at the top just now. Gee, when did a French guy last win Dauphine? Lets see, 2001 when Lance was doing Tour de Suisse, and Moreau. Before that 1994, Dufaux, as in doper Dufauz etc etc.

[font=Times New Roman]Maybe Hincapie can win overall and then go on to take the Tour ?🙂

[/font]

[font=Times New Roman]...I wouldn’t mind seeing some stats on the amount of non-Europeans winning these days.... I think in last year's Tour there were more American's and Australian's than French and Italian's..... Its truly is an International sport now..... I'm surprised you don’t see more international sponsors instead of Italian concrete makers and Flemish flooring companies....[/font]

[font=Verdana] [/font]

[font=Times New Roman]…anyway back to the topic…. 🙄

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whiteboytrash said:

[font=Times New Roman]Maybe Hincapie can win overall and then go on to take the Tour ?🙂

[/font]

[font=Times New Roman]...I wouldn’t mind seeing some stats on the amount of non-Europeans winning these days.... I think in last year's Tour there were more American's and Australian's than French and Italian's..... Its truly is an International sport now..... I'm surprised you don’t see more international sponsors instead of Italian concrete makers and Flemish flooring companies....[/font]

[font=Verdana] [/font]

[font=Times New Roman]…anyway back to the topic…. 🙄

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It's fun posting here. Last night when I called out to my son, who races and is quite advanced as a cyclist, that Georgie Hincapie had won, my wife asked the same question as Whiteyboytrash--"Oh, will he try to win the whole thing now?"
You're in good company whiteboytrash.
Anyhoo, nice joke.
Graham Watson says Postal chased down the attck today not only to keep George in yellow one more day, his wife being french and all, but to show people they will go for the overall. If Lance's TT is like Georgia, he will have a hard time beating Floyd and Levi.

I doubt that Hincapie can do well enough on Ventoux to win the overall. DC is trying to win with LA or Popo, I believe. Whichever of those two does best on the ITT and Ventoux will get the team support.

LA has said Popo is the hopeful for DC on GC, and I believe that Popo is preferred because then LA can measure his effort more and not waste himself at the Dauphine. Popo going for it is also consistent with Ace not having done a particularly good Prologue, and the team wanting Popo to build confidence as the team's GC contender for next year's Tour and "the future". Even Savoldelli refers to Popo as the "future" of DC at the Tour, or in general.

Getting back to the original question in this thread re: LA's intent to win the Tour, he continues to bluff by referring to possibilities re: Paolo and Popo.

""Seventh is more of a personal goal and ambition," said Armstrong. "That's not a record and it's not going to be written in any book. But it will mean a lot personally. "It will mean I've retired at the top of my game and that I might have won another one. It's a motivating factor to win another one, maybe convincingly and to retire." But the Texan is ready to spend his last Tour working for a Discovery Channel team mate if one turned out to be in a better position than he was [my translation: which they will never be, except as part of a strategy to cause LA to win the GC]. "I'm willing to share, yeah. You never know. If something happens in the first week and a group gets a 15-minute lead and (Yaroslav) Popovych is in there." [my translation: then, strategically Popo is still riding for me but we will pretend that I'm willing to let him win the tour] We've never been in that position before and I'm riding to win another Tour," he said."

http://sports.yahoo.com/sc/news;_ylc=X3oDMTBpcWU3ZWcyBF9TAzk1OTEyNTc0BHNlYwN0aA--?slug=reu-armstrongtourdc&prov=reuters&type=lgns

However, it is evident LA is still going to be the GC contender at the Tour, however. He has iron discipline over his domestiques and nobody who doesn't kill themselves for him and who doesn't accept LA is the only GC contender will survive as a member of team DC. Also, LA has recruited so that eveybody is 100% loyal to him; neither Paolo nor Popo would ever even think about their own GC aspirations this year. That is how effective LA and Bruyneel are in recruiting the right domestiques.

He will TT much better now.......it is june not april! And it will be a big test tomorrow.

Haha hincapie winning dauphine libere.....LOL! He's a good classics guy and can TT very well but he can't go with the best on a mountain. So or it is lance or popo who will shine.

hombredesubaru said:

It's fun posting here. Last night when I called out to my son, who races and is quite advanced as a cyclist, that Georgie Hincapie had won, my wife asked the same question as Whiteyboytrash--"Oh, will he try to win the whole thing now?"
You're in good company whiteboytrash.
Anyhoo, nice joke.
Graham Watson says Postal chased down the attck today not only to keep George in yellow one more day, his wife being french and all, but to show people they will go for the overall. If Lance's TT is like Georgia, he will have a hard time beating Floyd and Levi.

musette said:

Getting back to the original question in this thread re: LA's intent to win the Tour, he continues to bluff by referring to possibilities re: Paolo and Popo.

""Seventh is more of a personal goal and ambition," said Armstrong. "That's not a record and it's not going to be written in any book. But it will mean a lot personally. "It will mean I've retired at the top of my game and that I might have won another one. It's a motivating factor to win another one, maybe convincingly and to retire." But the Texan is ready to spend his last Tour working for a Discovery Channel team mate if one turned out to be in a better position than he was [my translation: which they will never be, except as part of a strategy to cause LA to win the GC]. "I'm willing to share, yeah. You never know. If something happens in the first week and a group gets a 15-minute lead and (Yaroslav) Popovych is in there." [my translation: then, strategically Popo is still riding for me but we will pretend that I'm willing to let him win the tour] We've never been in that position before and I'm riding to win another Tour," he said."

http://sports.yahoo.com/sc/news;_ylc=X3oDMTBpcWU3ZWcyBF9TAzk1OTEyNTc0BHNlYwN0aA--?slug=reu-armstrongtourdc&prov=reuters&type=lgns

However, it is evident LA is still going to be the GC contender at the Tour, however. He has iron discipline over his domestiques and nobody who doesn't kill themselves for him and who doesn't accept LA is the only GC contender will survive as a member of team DC. Also, LA has recruited so that eveybody is 100% loyal to him; neither Paolo nor Popo would ever even think about their own GC aspirations this year. That is how effective LA and Bruyneel are in recruiting the right domestiques.

Interesting quotes from the MAN, which I hadnt read. Neat strategy. But what team in their right mind would let Popvych get in ANY break. I mean, letting Kivilev get in the 20 minute break in 2001 to Pontarlier or wherever is one thing, Lance knew he was in the form of his life and would drop everyone but hte motorcycles on any climb.

It would force other teams to chase and try to control the race, but still...

Dead Star said:

'tis all mind games.

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