Stage 20

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Stage 20

Montereau-Paris

Analysis

First, I want to congratulate Lance for his sixth Tour win. It was an incredible achievement and a great moment in cycling history. I hope he keeps building on this achievement. I also want to congratulate Virenque for his record seventh win of the KOM Title. It was another outstanding achievement in cycling.

The last stage started with a little defiance from Simeoni. He must have attacked at least four times and was reprimanded the first two times by riders in the peloton. This may be his way of standing up for himself but it was the wrong thing to do because it will only increase the pack hostility towards him. Notice that NO ONE was willing to work with him in any of his break attempts.

The right way back into a peloton when you have earned their disfavor is to be quiet, work faithfully as a domestique for at least one or two years until you have re-earned their respect and then you might be able to start racing aggressively again for yourself. The best thing is to never get on their bad side which is why I teach a lot of the peloton etiquette I teach especially in the section on Bike Discipline. You really need to know how to ride right in a peloton before you make it up to at least Cat 2 for safety and to not become a pack out cast. I don't just teach you how to train and race but also peloton sociology.

Following Simeoni's first attack being brought back in and no one even trying to join him (that would have been bike racing suicide), the pack settled down to the usual last-stage parade until the first road sprint. At that time, the sprinter teams took over the race until the first road prime and then attacks began until the US Postal team took over for the parade into the final circuit and once around that circuit basically showing off the first six time tour winner to the crowd. After that, the breaks started again with ten riders finally getting up the road for a little bit but the sprinter teams brought everything back together and kept the breaks in or close until the final sprint started with Boonen taking the last stage win.

There were no changes on any of the standings.

The last few days, I have been thinking and I am very pleased with what I have been able to do for cycling through this web site. When I first started this web site 5.5 years ago, the most intelligent email I would get from most riders was, "I am an American, Lance is an American, and, therefore, Lance will win the Tour." Today, I get very sophisticated emails discussing racing and training theories that most cycling coaches could not have written five years ago. I realized that the one good thing I got from my bad reads resulting from bad information was the emails telling me why I had to be wrong and the why's were very sophisticated and mature tactical analyses. I would have never gotten those emails five years ago and most of you probably would not have even noticed that I had read the tactics wrong. It is amazing today that I get emails from riders asking questions about tactics being used at races and I have to remind myself that the email is from a cat 4 or 5 rider and not a pro. There are cat 4 and 5 teams out there using more sophisticated racing strategies and tactics today than most cat 1 or 2 teams used five years ago. It is really incredible.

When I started this site, I was the only person in cycling teaching and using the concepts of offense and defense in relation to cycling strategies and tactics. Today, I hear more and more riders beginning to apply these concepts to their racing. It is unbelievable but there are cat 3 teams today which are strategically more sophisticated than a lot of pro teams were five years ago.

I know that most of this increase in knowledge and understanding had to be caused by this site because until the beginning of this year when Tom Prehn's book came out, my ebook was the only book on the market teaching such strategies and tactics. I got to thinking about it and realized that most of what I teach in my ebook still is not available through other cycling books. To get even part of or something similar to what I teach in my ebook, you would have to purchase a book on training, Tom Prehn's book on tactics, Fred Matheny's book on riding discipline, and a book on bike maintenance. That is only to cover some of the basic topics and not exactly what I teach or as much of it. Even with that, there are a number of topics in my book such as sports psychology, coaching, selecting a team, and other topics that still can't be found in cycling books anywhere. No one has put out a book yet teaching emphasizing quality over quantity for training and I have been teaching that for decades.

And I have been able to furnish this information to you at a really low cost because to get the books listed above and only get a fraction of the topics I teach would cost you at least $100. I have been providing all of my information to you for a regular price of only $34.95 because of this new electronic technology making ebooks possible. That is really great.

I want you to know that I am really proud of you guys. You have paid attention, learned, and are applying the things I teach with each and every one of you doing your little part to help improve the quality of the sport. It is really great to know that I have been able to help that many people that much. Thank you and may God bless you all.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the first of many rest days before the next Tour action. :-) Come back on Monday for the Post Tour Analysis.

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