Stage 17

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Stage 17

Posted Bourg D'Oisans-Le Grand Bornand

Analysis

There were two really great and fun battles today that made the racing fun. With so many long and hard climbs, it was only natural that the KOM battle would rage and it did, hard and long. The break went before the first road prime at 9 kilometers and they didn't try to bring it back in for the road prime. A group including Simoni got off for the first climb but, as USP was pulling the break back in on the second HC climb, Virenque and Moreau bridged to the break and heated things up even more. It turned into a really good KOM battle mostly between Simoni, Virenque, and Moreau. They did some really good attacks, counter attacks, and sprints for the primes.

But, before the climbing was over, USP pulled these leaders in and dropped them. It seems that Lance is so secured in his position with no significant threats to his lead that he can feel free to race for stage wins. They seem to be having a little more fun and the racing is definitely more interesting. The finish of the stage became most interesting because the final break or lead pack only had six riders but there were two riders each for USP (Armstrong & Landis), CSC (Sastre & Basso), and T-Mobile (Kloden and & Ullrich). This created a situation where team tactics became a lot of fun and this fun started with a good move from CSC.

Sastre attacked and then Basso bridged to his team mate. This is a pretty common tactic where a team will attack a domestique up the road and then bridge a team leader to him then the two will work together to drop everyone else. USP did the right thing by Landis immediately chasing them down with Lance on his wheel. Then CSC had Sastre attack again forcing Landis to chase him down again while Basso rested in the group. Then Lance took a pull and had Landis attack over the top of the climb to force the others to chase but Ullrich saw it comming and went just behind the Landis move. This caused the USP tactic to back fire forcing Lance to chase Ullrich. Just as the group got back together, Ullrich's team mate, Kloden attacked and had a good lead with 500 meters to go but Lance chased him down with Ullrich and the others failing to take advantage of this effort by staying on Lance's wheel until about 200 meters to sprint around him so Lance won the stage with Kloden finishing second. This was a fantastic little battle using team leverage that was a ton of fun.

It was fun watching the team mates play off of each other. First was the combo attack by CSC and, when that failed, they used team leverage to force the others to chase while Basso rested. Then, after that was nuetralized, Lance tried to use team leverage to force the others to chase Landis while he rested but Ullrich broke the tactic by attacking instead of chasing forcing Lance to chase while Kloden rested. With the attack, Ullrich was able to use the USP tactic against USP. Next, well rested Kloden used team leverage to force Lance to chase Ullrich while he rested and, as soon as Lance caught Ullrich, Kloden attacked forcing Lance to chase while Ullrich rested but Ullrich failed to take advantage of the move permitting Lance to win.

This is what I call a battle of control. Each team was trying to use team leverage to obtain and maintain control but the other teams all properly countered breaking the attempts for control until T-Mobile had the final control but failed to capitalize off of it by not making the right move. The team that wins is the team that makes the last good move and that was Lance with his counter attack to catch and beat Kloden.

That was fun bike racing!!!

Because of today's action, Ullrich moved up to fourth with Azevedo also moving ahead of Mancebo. Sastre and Leipheimer also moved into the top ten on GC. Today's stage also caused the top four on GC to all move up behind Virenque on KOM. Voeckler is still in the lead for the White Jersey but his lead has dropped a lot with Karpets and Casar moving to within striking distance. This could turn into an interesting race with Karpets only 45" behind Voeckler and Casar only 1' 56" behind him.

Tomorrow

The Annemasse-Lons Le Saunier stage is shorter than today's stage at only 166.5 kilometers. It also doesn't have the large number of difficult climbs. The worst climb for the day is a cat 2 climb at 75.5 km. There are only two road primes at 43.5 & 144 km.

Most likely, Lance, Ullrich, and the other top GC riders will want to rest their legs for the flat time trial on the next day so they don't lose too much time. I do expect Basso to lose a fair amount of time because he has tended to in the past but trying to hold second place should provided the extra incentive to not lose as much time. He is only 1'02" ahead of Kloden. I am not sure how well Kloden time trials because I didn't research him since he wasn't favored to be one of the top GC riders until the other four lost so much time and finally dropped out of the race. Ullrich will probably want to win the TT and could gain enough time to pass either Kloden or Basso or both even though he is four minutes down on Basso. In the past Basso has lost 4 minutes or more in the TT so this could be an interesting race for the second and third podium spots.

Because of all this, I expect the action tomorrow to consist mainly of a continued battle for KOM with Rasmussen and Moreau trying to move back into the top five and riders going for the stage win. With only one cat 2 climb relatively early in the stage and most of the remaining stage being only cat 3 & 4 climbs or down hill, it is possible that enough sprinters like O'Grady and Zabel will be in the race for their teams to try to bring the break back in for the final sprint so they can get enough points to move ahead for the Points Title. They may even try to make that break and stay off for the stage win and points.

With only two road stages and the flat time trial left, things will get much more competitive and fun. The way things are going, Armstrong might try to win the last stage in Paris. He has won four stages and could win two more. Ullrich and Basso seem to want to stop him.

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