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Stage 9
Day 9 Gerardmer - Mulhouse 170 km
Analysis
First, I want to apologize for misinformation about tomorrow being
the second most important mountain day in this Tour. I have
been using the stage schedule printed out from the Tour site and
only realized today that they didn't include the rest days in the
schedule. Tomorrow is a rest day. The changes at the
Tour site were probably for artsie reasons because they left out
function.
Today was an interesting day. The attacks came early at the
bottom of the first climb with Rasmussen going up the road and being
joined by Cioni. The reason Rasmussen could go two days in a
row is because he cut yesterday's break short by returning to the
peloton after the fourth climb and when the long flats started.
He saved his legs for today, won all the KOM primes, and won the
stage with a great solo. Great move yesterday, great ride
today.
Behind him, Voigt and Moreau got in a break of other riders and
opened a pretty good gap on the peloton. They dropped the
other riders and stayed off to
take second and third over 3 minutes ahead of the peloton with Voigt
taking the Yellow Jersey by 1'50" over Moreau, 2'18" over Armstrong,
and 2'43" over Rasmussen for the first four places on GC. Note that Voigt probably permitted
Moreau to beat him in the stage as part of an agreement between them
so Moreau would work with Voigt to take the Yellow Jersey plus they
are both friends and former team mates.
this is a common practice in bike racing. I help you, you help
me. It works.
The break by Voigt forced Discovery to chase all day but will
relieve Discovery of the chasing responsibilities for the first flat
part of Tuesday's stage. Forcing Discovery to chase today was
a good move but they will have a day of rest before the second most
significant mountain stage on Tuesday. Discovery should do a
lot better than they did yesterday and did do better today but their
legs will remember today's workout and yesterday's failure by at
least a little. Remember that any rider, even Lance, can only
do so many pedal strokes on the front of a peloton within a give
period of time before those legs fail from fatigue. This means
that the domestiques on Discovery only have so many pedal strokes
they can do on the front of the peloton during the time of the Tour.
Where and why you do those pedal strokes is crucial to winning the
Tour. Bike racing is energy efficiency.
The significance of today's GC move by CSC will be decided on
Tuesday. I think it is possible that Lance is underestimating
Voigt as a threat and being a little over confident or he could be
too focused on Vino to realize the threat of Voigt and Julich.
Voigt is ahead of Lance by 2'18", if Voigt can not lose any time to
Lance in the mountains, he has a good to fair chance of beating
lance for the Yellow Jersey because he only lost 1'04" to Lance in
the first time trial and should only lose about 2 to 2.5 minutes to
Lance in the last time trial where, if he is still wearing the
Yellow Jersey, he will have extra motivation to ride harder and may
lose less time.
The big steal today was that O'Grady has learned that, if he can
climb and sprint, he can gain ground for the Points Title in the
mountain stages. Today he got 4th in the stage moving closer
to Boonen and Hushovd. With almost all of the remaining stages
having at least decent climbing, it is very likely that O'Grady
could win the Points Title by being a sprinter who can climb well.
The KOM Title had its changes with Rasmussen increasing his lead,
Moreau, Voigt, and Cioni moving into the top four in that order, and
Kloden holding onto fifth. It should be clear that Rasmussen
and Moreau are racing for KOM and Voigt and Kloden either are or
could be racing for KOM soon pending what happens Tuesday.
Though Rasmussen has taken a sizeable lead in KOM points, there are
still 1.5 weeks of climbing left so this title is still up for
grabs.
Tomorrow
Tomorrow will be a rest day and I will provide my normal coach's
analysis for the Tour to this point. I will look at the past
events that should influence the Tour and potential winners after
having seen the riders for a week.
