Post Tour Analysis

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Post Tour Analysis

There are a number of things that need to be learned from this Tour. The first, of course, has to do with there being too many crashes. With 65% of the top contenders in this year's Tour being eliminated by crashes, I hope the UCI and Tour Organization will realize that something has to be done to improve the safety of bike racing. It just has to happen. Imagine if Lance had been eliminated by a crash and not been able to obtain his sixth Tour win. He stated that was one of his biggest concerns.

One of the things the crashes did was prevent a lot of great tactics from being used by those top contenders who were eliminated. Those were opportunities to teach you that you will not be able to learn from because those tactics were not used. Everyone lost from this including Lance. As you probably know by now, I am more concerned with having a great battle than with winning the race, even though I love to win as much as anyone, because all the fun in a race is between the starting line and finish line. When you cross the finish line, the fun is over and all you get to do is stand on a really small stage and wave at the people. By that time, I am already thinking of the next bike race. :-)

Also, my most important reason for competition is challenge and achievement. I believe that, without challenge, there can be no real achievement. The greater the challenge, the greater the achievement. If Lance feels the same way, then winning a race with less challenge will provide him with less feeling of personal achievement even if it was his sixth Tour win. I have to believe this because of his stance on drugs. My personal feeling about drugs is that, the first thing you have to do in order to take drugs is give up on yourself and I can't do that. Then you have to be willing to risk letting everyone else know that you have given up on yourself. Besides, how can there be any achievement when you had to cheat to win. You didn't achieve anything but proving that you don't believe in yourself and you have to live with that the rest of your life. No thank you. No pills, no powders, no potions.

The only other competition Lance had was Ullrich. If Ullrich decides to compete in the Tour next year, he must get a better way to train. His current training program causes him to overtrain so bad that, if he starts the Tour on form, he is so badly overtrained that, he will be pushed into severe overtraining before the Tour is over and he will do terribly. Therefore, his strategy has been to start the Tour so off form that by the time he rides himself into form, he has lost so much time that he can't make it up. His training strategy is his greatest weakness and he needs a training system like mine which will have him on form with minimal accumulative fatigue. You can only do that by emphasizing quality over quantity and using advanced rest cycles to maximize recovery.

If Ullrich does get a better way to train and his two best team mates, Vinokorov and Kloden, return, he should have a very good chance of winning the next Tour because he is still very strong and fast when he is on form. He would still have to be Lance's top competitor and would pose an even greater threat to Lance.

If Mayo and Zubeldia continue to improve for next year and they and their team improve their time trialing, they will pose an even greater threat for the Yellow Jersey next year. We could see some really good racing coming from them.

Hamilton was very promising and, if his back recovers completely, he should be back and as big of a threat as he was this year. His new team proved to be a strong team and will be very helpful in his bid for a Tour win. Hamilton's first and most important project should be to make sure that his back gets fully recovered as quickly as possible.

We didn't get to see much of Heras but his team did show good strength. With coach Saiz running that show, I would expect them to continue developing for next year and pose an even greater threat.

The coach who is possibly showing the greatest promise and even got great reviews from Lance is Riis. Basso has improved a lot and is showing great promise for next year. If Riis develops Basso and his team for just one more year, they should be a serious threat.

Mancebo and Totschnig also improved over last year and you should keep an eye on them. I didn't expect much from Beloki this year because I have had to work with riders who had to miss that much time because of an injury or illness. They normally take more than six months to rebuild and he didn't start rebuilding until December. By next year he could be back to form but this kind of injury can hurt more than the body. A lot of riders never recover mentally from the injury and long term pain caused by the surgery and rehabilitation. I do believe he is mentally strong enough to rebuild but it will take until next year. Making significant changes to the body takes significant time. No exceptions.

Some of the developing riders you should keep an eye on are Karpets and Casar. They are both very promising and did very well this year. Even though he is the French National Champion, Voeckler needs to work on both his climbing and time trialing. In general, the French need to revamp their program for coaching because they just are not developing riders for GC. It has been about 20 years since they have been able to win their own Tour and this always translates into getting left behind in coaching advances. The other countries have been improving GC coaching but France hasn't.

We saw this year that the Points Title has become so very competitive because there are an incredible number of great road sprinters around. I expect this to continue developing for at least a while. Even the KOM Title was more competitive this year with more riders making the KOM breaks. This could also be an interesting trend. I do hope the Tour returns the Combativity Title to its former structure. It made the racing even more exciting by adding one more running battle to the race.

The way Lance is talking, the big question is, will he be back to the Tour next year or will he shift his focus to winning other races. Maybe he will even try to win the Tour AND other major events to leave a better legacy which will be critic proof like Merckx did. I hope so.

This is one interesting thing that you need to learn. These teams have already begun planning for next year's Tour. They have already sat down and done their own post Tour analysis to see what they have to do for next year. They will use this to plan their program including a training and racing calendar to achieve their goals. You don't start preparing and training for a race a few weeks or months before the race. You have to start at least one year before the race if you really want to do well. If you don't, you wont do well.

The preparations they do this Fall and Winter will determine most of their potential for next year. The best time to develop a team or rider is during the Fall and Winter and, if done right, you will make the biggest and best improvements during this time.

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