Stage 14

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Stage 14

Day 15 Agde - Ax 3 Domaines 220 km

Analysis

The real racing just began and, as expected, Discovery broke on the HC climb when Vino attacked leaving Lance alone with his competitors. Amazingly, the top riders in the group worked Lance over with really good relay attacking until Lance was forced to set pace to stop the attacking. Good moves by everyone.

As I warned you, Riis had Basso resting and saving his legs while the others fought earlier in the Tour. Today the Italian lion roared and gave Lance the best fight of the day attacking Lance a number of times during the last two climbs. Ultimately, Lance finished just two seconds ahead of Basso after dropping Ullrich who also fought hard. These three riders will be the bike race for first, second, and third. Now, if Basso has recovered so well from riding sick in the Giro, will his time trial also be considerably improved over the first time trial? If so, Basso is the big threat to Lance for the rest of the Tour and not Ullrich though Ullrich still has to be watched.

After Vino's first attack, Basso and Ullrich did almost all of the attacking until Lance made the final attack on the last climb. The three of them shattered everyone else and did a very good battle for the day. It was a lot of great racing action and we should expect to see more tomorrow. The attacks were very well done forcing Lance to do the chasing; it is just that Basso and Ullrich didn't have what it took to beat Lance in today's stage. You can bet they will try again tomorrow.

There were a number of really fun surprises today including improved climbing by Leipheimer, Landis, and Mancebo. If these guys improve their time trialing, they can be a force in next year's Tour. Great fun.

I expected Moreau and Rasmussen to lose ground today because they have been racing hard for KOM. Moreau dropped to 10th on GC but Rasmussen managed to hang onto second even though he lost 51 seconds to Armstrong in the stage. I do expect him to drop out of the top five in the time trial unless he rides much better than he did in the first time trial. Rasmussen may even drop out of second tomorrow.

One troubling thing was when Vino attacked just before the last climb and both Ullrich and Kloden chased him down instead of making Lance do it. This has to be absolute proof that there is trouble in the T-Mobile camp and it worked against them today. Even if there was trouble, the tactically intelligent thing would have been for T-Mobile to use Vino's attack to force Lance to chase one more time.

Congratulations to Totschnig for a really tough stage win. Great racing from everyone and the battle we have been waiting years for.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow's stage will be brutal after today's hard racing. The stage is a long 205.5 km with six categorized climbs of cat 2 or better. It is the most significant mountain stage in this Tour. The stage starts with the cat 2 climb about 75 km into the stage, is followed by the FOUR cat 1 climbs, and finishes at the top of the HC climb.

Expect Discovery to break again and to see a similar battle as you saw today. They will need to break and drop Discovery well before the last climb in order to have enough time to break Lance's legs with their relay attacking if they want to beat him. The longer they can force him to ride hard, the more tired his legs will be on the last climb.

The big thing here is that tomorrow's stage will not be the last or even next to last mountain stage after six stages in the mountains. There will still be three more stages with climbs of cat 2 or better to break Discovery and try to break Lance. That should be the concern. Fortunately for Discovery, there will be a rest day following tomorrow's stage and that will help.

T-Mobile MUST get their house in order before tomorrow.

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