2007 Tour De France: Can they handle the truth?

By the time you read this, we all will have a clearer picture of who’d win the Tour de France. Going into the penultimate stage, surprised overall leader Alberto Contador leads of DISCOVERY CHANNEL of Spain leads PREDICOTR-LOTTO’s Cadel Evans by 1.53min. But inattentiveness and maybe, fatigue, caused Contador to lose contact with Evans in the run-in to lose a precious 3 seconds to the Aussie. While the staff from PREDICTOR are saying that the loss shows that Evans is fresher than Evans but no, I don’t think so. I think it was miscommunication or inattentiveness.

Three seconds may not seem much but this final TT plays into Evans strengths compared to last week’s ITT. The parcours is flatter which favor the more powerful Evans. However, having to overcome a 1.50 second advantage over the yellow jersey is not easy as it seems. We all know that the jersey gives a psychological advantage to those who wear it.

Michael Rasmussen, the erstwhile leader, lost an average of 7sec per kilometer in all the TT’s he did prior to last week to the winners. But in the ITT last week, he lost less than half of it per kilometer to Alexander Vinokourov. Of course, Ras was wearing the maillot jaune last week while in the previous years, he didn’t.   

Less than a minute behind Evans is the American Levi Leipheimmer. Levi is an above average time trialist but he has never shone in the Tour. I think that this is his best chance to shine and grab second place from Evans.

TT’s don’t lie, that’s why it called as the race of truth.

DISCOVERY CHANNEL had announced earlier that it will be leaving the sport after this year. Up to now, team management has yet to find someone to fork over 15M$ to make the team go next year. While Contador’s fine showing will surely be a big plus in the negotiations, the doping factor is like the proverbial elephant in the room. It would be a shame for the team to lose a talent as promising as Contador’s.

LOCAL NEWS, Tour ni FIGER:

The Tour ni Figer started yesterday with the DOCTOR J (and GWAPINGS dominating category C and B, respectively, held at the Mandaue Reclamation Area. Today’s stage 2 will be a road race, Danao-Lugo-Danao to be followed by a 10K ITT next Sunday.

This race is sponsored by the Figer family from New Jersey- Al, Donna and their three beautiful kids. We hope that just like the Tour ni Frank, the Tour ni Figer will become an annual fixture of our local cycling. I’ll write a longer column about the TnFi in my next columns.