Tue 24 Jul 2007

Tour de France Thoughts

Some random recollections from the second week of the Tour de France:

• Disappointing that so many prominent Australians went out on the first Alpine stage: Michael Rogers and Stewart O'Grady both crashed seriously and sprinter Robbie McEwan finished too far behind the stage winner and was disqualified.
• Watching the Astana team of Alexander Vinikourov trying to blow the main group apart on the flat stage 12, taking advantage of a reasonably stiff cross wind, was great. All the team tactics and somewhat expected conclusions where the mountain stages are ridden one way and the flat stages mostly as a group with a bunch spring can lead to boring television. So seeing a group of extremely fit cyclists trying to ride each other into the ground on good, flat roads was great.
• The individual time trial in stage 13 wasn't as boring to watch as it could have been. Particularly memorable moment, though, was watching Vinikourov go down the main hill in the middle at an astonishingly slow speed. It was raining lightly and the road was slippery, so he was taking extra care not to fall off (something other riders did not always achieve). Despite this cautious approach, he won the stage by a huge amount. His confidence in his ability to ride fast on the safe portions and thus being able to slow down on the really dangerous bit was impressive.
• Michael Rasmussen is still a very good climber. Good to watch. The television commentators are trying to play up the fact that Australian Cadel Evans is in third place and can ride a better time trial on the second last day. But if he's minutes and minutes behind super-Rasmussen as a result of the latter being able to climb every mountain at a great rate, it's not going to help much.
• I was on a plane from Sydney to the US for stage 15, but it looks like Vinikourov is still trying to catch up the time lost from crashes in the first week. He and his team and looking very good (see the comment about stage 12, above).

Topics: sport/cycling/Tour de France