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Stage 8
Day 8 Saint Gregoire - Rennes TT 52 km
Analysis
I knew and told you that there would be some surprises in this Tour
with top riders out and domestiques being permitted to ride for the
win. Today, we saw some of that and it is very likely to get worse
before this Tour is over. As I said before, predicting this Tour is
a crap shoot because of that. We are seeing formerly suppressed
talent rise to the top and I like it.
But something else is blowing in the wind. Why did so many riders,
who were expected to do extremely well by everyone, ride so poorly
while others did very well? Leipheimer and Hincapie stunned everyone
with terrible performances and we may never know the answer. CSC
lost big time when Julich crashed out of the race with an injured
wrist. The cycling world just turned up-side-down.
This shake up will have everyone guessing for years. The best placed
GC rider for CSC is Sastre in 16th place at 2'27" and the best
placed GC rider for DSC is Savoldelli in 13th place at 2'10" and
Hincapie 20 seconds further back in 17th place.
On the other hand, TMO has four riders in the top six, with three of
them in the first four, one in first place, and only one is known to
be an established GC rider, Kloden. The biggest question is, of the
following riders: Honchar, Rogers, Sinkewitz, Fothen, and Karpets,
who can climb with the best GC riders?
If one of the TMO riders placed in first, third, and fourth can
climb well enough to be a strong GC rider, then, in conjunction with
Kloden in sixth place, they put TMO in the driver's seat. If none of
them can climb well enough to race against Landis, then TMO is going
to be chasing PHO for GC. If Honchar can climb well enough to fight
with the top GC riders, then TMO is definitely in the driver's seat.
If the young rider and leader of the White or Youth Jersey, Fothen,
can climb well enough, then GST has just become a major player for
GC with Leipheimer now playing domestique. Fothen could also turn
out to be the next Tour dominator and man to beat for years to come.
At this time, PHO and TMO have to be the two main players for the
Yellow Jersey with DVL (Evans) and RAB (Menchov) serious
contributors to the battle and GST (Fothen) and CEI (Karpets)
possible major contributors to the battle while CSC and DSC will be
fighting just to put a rider in the top ten along with A2R (Moreau).
When this Tour started, no one would have believed this was
possible.
Stage 11 will be the next major sort for this Tour and we will have
to wait until then to see how things will shake out. It is possible
that some of the top ten to 15 riders will drop significantly in the
first mountain stage (Stage 10) do to poor climbing ability even
though that is what I class as a KOM mountain stage and not a GC
mountain stage.
It is significant to notice that DSC dropped to fifth on Team GC at
4'29" and that TMO, PHO, and GST have all moved ahead of CSC and
DSC. CSC and DSC are in a world of hurt right now and have to come
up with a solution which will require very aggressive racing to make
up time lost time, especially with one more time trial left to race.
CSC and DSC will have to have a sizeable lead going into the last
time trial or probably lose the race in it. It may be that TMO, PHO,
and GST will be the only show in town this year with everyone else
racing for leftovers or a top five finish.
I don't think you could have shaken this Tour up much more if you
had driven a large truck head on through the middle of the peloton.
Stage 11 will be very interesting.
Tomorrow
Tomorrow's stage will continue with the battles for the Points and
KOM jerseys. It will be a relatively short 181 km with one cat 3 and
three cat 4 climbs at the mid and end of the stage and has three
road primes scattered through the stage. The controlling break
should go early and be about 5 to 8 riders but could be more. Watch
for the top four KOM riders to try to make the break. The break
could win the stage but watch for McEwen at the finish because he
was smart enough to ride slow enough so that Boonen caught him in
the time trial today. We call that resting your legs for the next
stage and racing smart. McEwen keeps out smarting Boonen and may do
so again tomorrow. McEwen knows better than Boonen when to
rest and when to race. How many times have I told you that
bicycle racing is energy efficiency and how to manage it? Ask
McEwen, he knows. :-)
