Stage 11
July 17 Bazas - Pau 147 km
Wow, what a race. Today's stage was really good. I expected it to be
fast but not over 52 kph (32 mph) for the first two hours. There was
a tremendous amount of attacking with Jacky Durand trying to get off
at least four times. They knew the break would probably stay because
the top teams didn't want to chase hard the day before the first
mountains and the sprint teams didn't want to chase the break in
with a hilly finish.
Did you notice that both USPS and ONCE tried to get riders in the
breaks? That was for control and to force the other team to chase.
The team battles have started.
Finally, 11 riders got up the road, of whom the best placed, O'Grady
was over five minutes down, so ONCE and the rest of the pack let
them go to control the peloton and bring the speed down. ONCE
controlled the stage by slowly permitting the break to ease out past
four minutes. At the end, ONCE did concert a little more effort to
prevent O'Grady from gaining over five minutes and gaining the lead.
If you had your cheat sheets next to you, you should have seen that
McEwen tied Zabel for the Points Title on the first road prime. In
spite of this, did you notice that none of the sprint teams wanted
to work to bring this break back in because of the hilly finish?
McEwen took the lead in the Points Title today and poor Zabel is
surrounded by three Australians. For the fun of it, I have decided
to name these three sprinters the Aussie Plague because they are all
over poor Zabel like a bad disease. :-)
I hope you noticed that, except for the road primes and KOM sprints,
the break worked together very well until the last KOM climb when
Halgand attacked taking three others with him. They worked together
to put over 20" on the rest of the break and then Halgand attacked
in the closing hills for the win. It was a good win with a good gap.
The break moved Halgand up to second for KOM, Dierckxsens to third
on Combativity, and O'Grady to third on Points Title. The only
changes in GC was O'Grady moving to eighth on Individual GC, Vogondy
to fourth for the White Jersey, and the big mix up was on the Team
GC with Lampre moving to third, Kelme to fifth, and Cofidis to
sixth. This should be a lesson for when you want to move up on Team
GC in a race, it is most easily done by having one rider in a
winning break well ahead of the peloton. That extra time from the
one rider can make your team jump several spots on Team GC.
A big event in today's race was ONCE losing a rider and dropping
their team strength to eight riders with a big team battle beginning
tomorrow. They will probably need that pair of legs at some point.
What difference will it make?
Tomorrow
You should now go back over my course analysis. You will note that I
rated the mountain stages by significance as stage 11 is fourth,
stage 12 is second, stage 13 is flat (climbers' rest), stage 14 as
first, the second day of rest, stage 15 as fifth, stage 16 as third,
and stage 17 as sixth for climbing.
I would expect to see ONCE begin using team tactics to soften up
USPS in stage 11 and the first part of stage 12 in hopes of either
gaining time themselves or causing Armstrong to lose a little time
on the final climb for stage 12 since it is the second most
significant climbing stage in the Tour this year.
Then we will get a flat stage in which ONCE may or may not decide to
try and apply pressure to USPS followed by the most significant
mountain stage, stage 14. I expect ONCE to attempt to finish wearing
down USPS and try to get to Armstrong's legs in the first of stage
14 in order to break Armstrong on the climb to Mont Ventoux.
Even if Armstrong survives or even gains ground on Mont Ventoux, his
problems will not be over. After a day of rest, they start the last
three days in the mountains with stage 15 as the fifth most
significant mountain stage which I expect to see ONCE to continue
their efforts to wear down USPS and Armstrong for stage 16 which is
the third most significant mountain stage. As I explained in the
course analysis, with a battle as we should see, stage 16 could be
the stage which makes or breaks this race.
Even if Armstrong survives the six mountain stages, he will not be
in the clear. With the results we had from the first time trial, if
Armstrong doesn't have a decisive lead going into the second time
trial, he could lose the race in that time trail.
AND, if the race is still close after all that, we could see a very
interesting team battle all the way to the line in Paris. This could
be the hardest fought Tour in decades. This will be fun.
For tomorrow's stage, watch the team tactics used by ONCE, USPS, CSC,
Kelme, Lampre, and even Fassa. PLUS, watch how the tactics used by
other teams to win KOM points and the stage effect the efforts of
the GC teams. Watch to see any riders lose a lot of ground putting
them out of this battle quickly. This could get nasty. Sound fun?
:-)
The battle in the mountains begins tomorrow!!!
