Course Analysis | Riders & Teams | Projections | Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Stage 3 | Stage 4 | Stage 5 | Stage 6 | Stage 7 | Stage 8 | Stage 9 | Stage 10 | Stage 11 | Rest Day & Coaches Analysis | Stage 12 | Stage 13 | Stage 14 | Stage 15 | Stage 16 | Rest Day & Coaches Analysis | Stage 17 | Stage 18 | Stage 19 | Stage 20 | Stage 21 | Post Tour Tactical Analysis And Summary
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Stage 1
July 5th Paris Prologue - 8 km
Today was primarily a parade for the people to see the riders
individually and get a small glimpse of the action to come. It did
provide us with a tiny idea of the shape some riders are in though
it must be understood that some riders didn't try as hard to win and
their placings wont be indicative of their fitness and time trailing
ability. For other riders it either answered questions or created
new questions. Based on the results for this stage in conjunction
with other results, it looks like USP could win the team time trial
giving Lance an advantage as long as they don't try to defend the
title that soon. That would definitely destroy their team and
Lance's of winning his fifth Tour. On the other hand, it added fuel
to my questions about Lance's form. He normally finishes much higher
or wins this stage.
It also showed that Bianchi could be a time trialing force and could
finish high on the team time trial keeping Ullrich in the running
for GC while ONCE could finish low making it difficult for Beloki to
be competitive for the title. Euskaltel looks like they might do as
well or better than I expected in the team time trial so that Mayo
could be in the running.
A really big surprise was Zubeldia on the Euskaltel team who
finished in the top five. Does this mean that Euskaltel could do an
ONCE with two or more riders in the top five to ten? This is getting
fun again.
On the other hand, things didn't look so well for Simoni, Botero,
and Azevedo with their teams not showing strong and with
iBanesto.com and Credit Agricole doing a little better than
expected. Could it be that Simoni, Botero, Beloki, and Azevedo will
do worse than I expected and Ullrich, Mancebo, and Moreau might do
better in the team time trial than expected?
Bummer, they are already messing with my top ten guess. :-) I guess
I will just have to be patient and wait the next 22 days to find out
like the rest of you.
Tomorrow
Tomorrow will be the first of three flat stages before the team time
trial. We will see the beginning of the races for the other jerseys
and titles like Points, KOM, Combativity, and stage wins. It will be
important to see which teams will begin to expend energy on these
titles with many of them realizing before the Tour started that
their best chances will be for a subtitle and not the GC win.
You will need to start following these battles to see how the GC
teams will use their development to help them win the Tour. You may
want to review the results for these titles from last year but
remember that there will be some new faces since there are some new
strong teams in the battle.
