Stage 17

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Stage 17

Day 19 Pau - Revel 239 km

Analysis

As expected, there were a lot of early attacks with large numbers of riders trying to get away. The winning break finally went up the road with 17 riders, which is huge. The first four riders on GC had team mates in the break but the best placed rider was over 38 minutes down so no one was concerned about chasing until the break was over 22 minutes ahead of the peloton. This meant that Discovery had to tow for most of the stage anyway until Credit Agricole finally started towing to protect their best placed rider, Moreau, who was about 11 minutes behind Lance and 10th on GC. A little later, T-Mobile did some towing to make sure Vino stayed in the top 10 on GC. The towing by all of these teams was at a minimal pace so they could rest as much as possible for the next few days.

Towards the end of the stage, riders in the huge break began attacking to eliminate other riders and increase their chances of winning the stage. They broke it down to only 8 of the 17 break riders and then dropped it to 2 being chased by 2 which returned to four and tactical attacking. The end result was a counter attack by Savoldelli to win the stage in the sprint. Did you see how he rested on the rider's wheel he caught for 50 meters just a little before sprinting around that rider? It permitted his legs to rest just a bit and gave him an advantage. Great sprinter move.

Did you see Vino attack just before the last climb and following the crash? He probably saw Evans and Landis out of position and attacked to open a small gap and gain a little time on them. He was only behind them both on GC by seconds and he gained enough time to move ahead of both of them. Great move.

This is a heads up sport and you have to pay attention to the smallest details. Vino has increased his position twice that way in this Tour. He has good pack smarts.

Why didn't the sprinter teams bring this break back in? First, Hushovd benefits and will win if O'Grady and McEwen don't get any more points in a sprint or prime so why would his team chase and give them the opportunity to gain those points? Only O'Grady and McEwen really would have benefited from the sprint and Boonen is out of the race so the other sprinter teams didn't want to chase. The gap got too big and with only two teams wanting a sprint, the peloton was able to stay away.

With the breaks winning, Davis is now threatening both McEwen and O'Grady for the Points Title so watch for them to try to pick up more points soon in either road primes or stage sprints.

Lance, Basso, and Ullrich got to rest today but expect the battle to continue between them tomorrow.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow's stage is only 189 km but is mostly hills and climbing and it finishes at the top of a short but very steep cat 2 climb. The climb is only 3.1 km long but it is rated at 10.1 % which is very steep and easy to gain time on. 122 km into the stage a is a longer but less steep cat 2 climb and the stage starts with a 35 km undulating climb.

I expect to see some heavy attacking at the start of the first kilometer because of the climbing and wouldn't be surprised to see T-Mobile and/or CSC try something here to weaken or break the Discovery legs by the first cat 2 climb so they can get at Lance again with hopes of breaking him enough to gain even a little time on the last cat 2 climb. If nothing else, they want to tire his legs out enough he will lose time in the time trial.

You have to understand that their strategy is to take a little out of Lance's legs every stage until either Lance breaks or is tired enough that he loses time in the time trial. At the professional level of racing, you have to work on their legs a little at a time to eventually break them. Basso and Ullrich have already achieved a fair amount of this in stages 15 and 16 to the point that Lance was hurting. In stage 15, they stripped away Discovery and began relay attacking Lance. Their relay attacking was hurting Lance's legs enough that Lance resorted to working on the front forcing the pace hard enough to deter more attacks. Forcing the pace took less out of Lance's legs than answering the relay attacking but it was still doing what Ullrich and Basso wanted in that they had stripped away Lance's team and were working on tiring out Lance's legs just like I told you they should do.

You have to understand what answering relay attacks does to your legs. When you have to jump again and again to cover relay attacking, it is like interval training and any of you who have done interval training know that it quickly kills your legs.

In stage 16, they stripped away Discovery and started attacking Lance again. It was hurting Lance enough that he called to Bruyneel for help and Bruyneel sent Hincapie up to help Lance even though Hincapie had just been dropped by the attacking. Being the pro he is, Hincapie sucked it up and ground his way back to the pack with Lance. As soon as he arrived, Ullrich refused to permit Hincapie to do Lance's work for him and attacked driving Hincapie back out of the pack forcing Lance to set pace at the front fast enough to keep Ullrich and Basso from attacking. Even though they didn't break Lance's legs on that climb and put time on him, Basso and Ullrich happily sat on Lance's wheel knowing Lance was losing pedal strokes getting increasingly tire.

Again, they were doing exactly what I teach. They had stripped away Discovery so they could get at Lance's legs and begin to tire them out so that eventually they will, hopefully, be able to put time on Lance and win the Tour. Expect them to continue that strategy tomorrow and, maybe, even the next day. The strategy is very simple and is based entirely on knowing that every rider can only do so much work before their legs break. They break the team and strip it away from the team leader so they can get at the team leader's legs to tire them out and break the legs so they can put time on that team leader. They have been methodically working on this since stage 14 and I have been trying to show you how they are doing it.

Tomorrow's stage should be won by a break. The only rider Rasmussen has to worry about for KOM is Pereiro so his team will cover that action so Rasmussen can try to hold onto his podium spot for GC. With only cat 2 climbs, Hushovd, O'Grady, and maybe even McEwen might try to make tomorrow's break to get more points for the Points Title. Popovych will continue to mark Kashechkin for the White Jersey but will first concentrate on defending the Yellow Jersey.

Tomorrow should be a really fun and exciting stage. Don't miss it.

Also, yesterday I posted the basic rules for stage racing with the understanding that specific rules change frequently. Today, at the bottom of that I posted how to watch the Tour. I also answered a few more questions on my In The News page. This is in response to requests from readers. Enjoy.

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