Touroscopy - Stage 17 - One epic stage
Wednesday, 23 July 2008 14:06
The Tour de France course designers like to leave their stamp on the race each year with a signature stage. Well Stage 17 was it for 2008 and yesterday saw one epic battle for overall supremacy of the Tour de France. The media love to speculate on tactics and how the race should be ridden. But all this theorising and advice is quickly thrown out once the race takes to the road. Practice is significantly harder than cafe talk.
Losers
Yaroslav Popovych - Popovich was brought onto the Silence Lotto team to protect and be a climbing lieutenant for Cadel Evans. During the stages in the Pyrenees he was unsighted and then, in a strange tactic, Popyvich went up the road to try and get a victory for himself. On Stage 17, the one that he was hired to be ready for, he wasn't ready leaving his team leader in Cadel Evans isolated. When Sastre went off the front Popyvich was no where to be seen.
Stefan Schumacher - This guy has spent a lot of time at the front of the peloton. The question is why? If he was looking for publicity for his team then mission accomplished. However, he started the day with a man on his team lying in second place over all (Bernhard Kohl). Why would he be riding in support rather than taking off for a pointless ride that ended after the second mountain of the day? Schumacher is a good and smart rider but his tactics over the last few days seem not so smart. The only reason we could see for his break was to take the maximum points in the King of the Mountains classification off any other rider for the day. Either way the tactic went bust as he faded into obscurity after the climb of the Croix de Fer.
Spectators wearing just their underpants - What's going on with this? Sure it must be exciting to see your favorite rider flying up the mountains but to rip your pants off and go crazy might be too much. Maybe the French police could look at this... if not them then the fashion police!
Winners
Team CSC - We keep putting them up in the 'Winners' section but when they get on the road they are clearly the most powerful team on this years' Tour. The work they did on the Croix de Fer to shell the majority of the field was amazing. Not since the big blue train of the mighty U.S Postal team of Lance Armstrong has a team been so dominant. But, for all their pace setting they could not get rid of their rivals. They did however, make the race with both the Schlecks and Sastre.
Peter Velits - The man from Slovakia lead the group over the Crox de Fer on yesterday's stage and stamped his name as someone to watch for the future. his team (Milram) has not had too much to cheer about this Tour with veteran sprinter Erik Zabel being outclassed by new whiz kid Mark Cavendish. While he wasn't the only one to get beat up by Cavendish he was expected to challenge in more stages than he did. But Velit's ride was brilliant and the Milram directors would've been patting each other on the back that they have a good one.
Carlos Sastre - His ride on the famed mountain Alpe d'Huez was breath taking. With the rest of the favorites watching it slip away from them (with the help of the Schleck brothers) Sastre's lone ride made the day. It was brave and fast and looked like a determined effort to win the Tour. He took the jersey and may have enough time to take the Tour. Sastre's beautiful victory at Alpe d'Huez was one to savior. And it is worth noting that the last two times yellow was taken on Alpe d'Huez it stayed on that rider.
State of Play
The race, for all intents and purposes has been settled. The CSC team did a nice job and looked great when they were driving the field but should they not altered their tactics for the other contenders of the Tour. The one two punch of th CSC was amazing in sending Sastre up the road. The Schleck brothers looked very comfortable with Andy Schleck showing all the signs of being the dominant force in a few years. Evans got everything out of his body on the stage. With no team around him he was very much left to try to defend and limit his losses to the flying Sastre. So Evans finds himself with a 1.30 deficit on Sastre. The next couple of stages should see break aways succeeding as CSC will be in recovery mode. Then it will come down to Saturdays time trial. Again Cadel will be riding for his life.
For another look at Cadel's chances click on to the blog.
