Archives
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Monday, July 3, 2006
Hot tip:
What's the fastest way to see great photos from the Tour
de France? Click on our Yahoo photo gallery link and you'll
find some great shots from the current stage in progress! These AP/AFP
photographers are equipped with full mobile capability for transferring
their photos from the road...
Hincapie in yellow
Discovery Channel snubs L'Equipe
George Hincapie
2005 Dauphiné Libéré
In yesterday's stage 1 of the Tour de France, American George
Hincapie, of the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team, used the final
intermediate sprint to earn a two-second bonus, enough to grab the yellow
jersey of overall race leader. It was sweet revenge for Hincapie
who was just an intermediate sprint away from taking the yellow jersey
in the 1998 Tour. Hincapie, one of the most complete riders in the
peloton, has also worn yellow in the Dauphiné Libéré,
in 2005 (photo).
French sports daily L'Equipe now finds itself in the awkward position
of not getting daily rider updates (injuries, etc.) from the team of
the race leader. But Discovery Channel isn't expected to defend
the lead for very long this early in the race.
Sunday, July 2, 2006
July 2, 2006
Editorial
A French Revolution!
From gory to Gloria to glory?
The 2006 Tour de France got underway yesterday afternoon and
last night all of France celebrated, cheered, drank and honked their
car horns. Thousands poured onto the Avenue des Champs-Elysées,
thrilled that Frenchman Thomas Voeckler had won cycling's biggest
race!
No, let's not get ahead of ourselves. The French of
course were celebrating France's victory over Brazil in the World Cup
quarter-finals. The celebrations continue today, in glorious
weather, and "I Will Survive," the Gloria Gaynor song that came to symbolize
France's first-ever World Cup victory (also over Brazil) in 1998, the
year of, ahem, the Festina doping scandal, can be heard through the windows
of automobiles everywhere. French boys with blue Zidane jerseys
were out early this morning working on their moves. Everyone is
asking, "How can Zidane retire after the skill he demonstrated last night?"
And that was just the quarter-finals!
There's a line in that song that reads, "Go on now, go walk
out the door, just turn around now, 'cause you're not welcome anymore."
That's probably how Ivan, Jan, Francisco and the other riders
prevented from starting the Tour feel today. You're no longer welcome,
off you go.
Off with their heads was more like it. Though the riders'
teams unanimously agreed to pull their stars from the competition
(they really had no choice because all ProTeams signed an ethics charter
requiring them to remove from competition riders who are under investigation
for doping), based on evidence presented to them of athlete involvement
in the "Operacion Puerto" doping scandal in Spain, the timing and manner
in which this has all been carried out was ugly and questionable.
Predictably, the final pre-Tour week began when French dailies
Le Monde and L'Equipe continued their assault on retired 7-time Tour
champion Lance Armstrong, cutting and pasting selected (and contested)
testimony from a recent court case in the U.S. that resulted in Armstrong
receiving not only the $5 million in bonus money due from SCA Promotions
for winning the 2004 Tour de France, but an additional, astonishing $2.5
million in punitive damages. L'Equipe closed out last weekend by
dragging 3-time Tour champion and Armstrong foe Greg LeMond out of storage
and dusting him off for yet another round of assaults on Armstrong.
LeMond wasn't all that was dusted off in France this past
week. The French guillotine, which had gone unused since 1971,
coincidentally the year Armstrong was born, was also pulled from storage
and put to use as cycling's top stars were lined up at the Tour start
in Strasbourg and "decapitated" while the world watched. The
French government, Tour organizer Amaury Sport Organization (A.S.O.),
and of course the French media, all played a role in the timing of these
public "executions".
Make no mistake, if the suspended riders were involved in
the doping operation in Spain, then they need to be removed from the
sport, at least temporarily, not the least of which for their own
sake. They will, we hope, understand that eventually.
As with any revolution, this is going to be painful.
More heads are going to roll. But the executioners had darned
well better be sure their own houses are clean. There is no telling
where all of this is leading...
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Friday, June 30, 2006
Note: Our Guide to Live Online Coverage
of the 2006 Tour de France will be up before tomorrow's prologue.
Basso, Ullrich, Sevilla, Mancebo, Beloki
out of Tour
More suspensions to come
Well, we said over a month ago, on May 25, that: "Depending
on who all is involved, this (Operacion Puerto) scandal could have
a major impact on the remainder of the 2006 pro cycling season..."
The impact will of course go beyond 2006 as some of
the top riders in the sport, including Giro d'Italia winner Ivan
Basso, Jan Ullrich and Francisco Mancebo, are facing bans, including
up to four years from ProTour races. Ullrich, who had been looking
to add a second Tour win after his victory in 1997, may instead see
his career effectively over.
These suspensions of course change everything at the
top of the list of favorites for the Tour, which begins tomorrow.
Discovery Channel suddenly looks well positioned, as do Levi
Leipheimer, Floyd Landis and Alejandro Valverde. The race should
be even more wide open now. This Tour could be won by someone who
gets a big lead in a breakaway on the flats in the first week. So
expect to see just about everyone who's not a favorite or teammate of a
favorite for the overall looking to get into breakaways the first week.
Anything can happen, including more suspensions, entire teams
being kicked out, police raids, rider protests, streakers, Elvis sightings,
anything. It's 1998 all over again....but all is rosy, of course,
at the World Cup where aging stars have infinite energy in their legs...
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Note: We'll of course have our Guide
to Live Online Coverage of the 2006 Tour de France up before Saturday's
prologue. We are in the process of completing final preparations
for the Tour.
In our photo galleries section
2006 Tour of Switzerland photos by
Christine Grein
We are excited to announce that we have a new contributing
photographer at cyclingfans.com: Christine Grein. You'll
find some of her latest photos in our Photo galleries section.
And if you have never seen Christine's "Capture-the-Peloton"
website, then run, do not walk, run to see it. Christine
has a rare talent for capturing the riders in the peloton, all of
them, at any time of day, before, during, after the race. If
she sees a rider relaxing with an espresso before race start, Christine
gets the shots you won't often see elsewhere. With many of her
shots, you cannot help but grin. And her database of individual
rider images is just phenomenal!
Note: We told you about OLN's "The
Player" weeks before OLN even announced it. Last week, they
posted their official announcement of this "broadband channel dedicated
to providing viewers 24/7 access to the network’s wide array of sports
events and series." We'll be updating our Archive media
clips soon, including links to OLN content.
Click for more
.
The Landis Way
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Tour de France teams
have started announcing their lineups. So
we'll start looking at some of them and speculate a bit on what
they might do on the roads of France in July. Today:
Phonak
On a cool Saturday morning in late
March, 2004, Floyd Landis and Lance Armstrong, teammates at the time with
the USPS Pro Cycling Team, were negotiating their way by bike through the
crowd to sign in before stage 1 of the Critérium International in
the north of France. The path, between two long rows of team buses
and cars, was filled with riders, team staff, members of the media, and spectators
looking for autographs. The going was slow, not something
either Landis or Armstrong are known for.
At a gap between two team vehicles,
Landis suddenly hung a left into a grassy field before yelling back
to Armstrong, "Short cut!" Armstrong paused before saying "I
don't think so, Floyd." But Landis was gone, determined to find
another way to the sign-in area. Armstrong, the man who the previous
July had had to go "cross-country" in a dramatic stage of the Tour
de France that saw contender Joseba Beloki crash out of the race (the
field where Armstrong demonstrated quick thinking and impressive bike
handling is today marked with a sign), continued along the paved path
to sign in.
Floyd Landis and Lance Armstrong
on their way to the start line of stage 1,
2004 Criterium International
Floyd Landis likes to do things his own way and indeed
later that season, after the Tour, announced he was leaving to
join the team of Phonak Hearing Systems.
Landis rode as a team leader in the Tour for the
first time in 2005, finishing a solid 9th overall, 12:44 behind
Armstrong. In 2006, not surprisingly he has chosen his own
path once again by coming out strong early in the season, winning
the Tour of California, Paris-Nice and Tour de Georgia stage races.
Then, just when we all expected him to show strongly at the
Dauphiné Libéré earlier this month, as Lance
Armstrong has always done (including overall wins in 2002 and 2003),
Landis shut things down on the stage to Mont Ventoux where he was
seen laughing within the final few kilometers of the climb (photo below),
losing 9:30 on that stage before finishing the race in 60th place overall
nearly an hour behind race winner Levi Leipheimer!
Floyd Landis and Chris Horner on Mont Ventoux
2006 Dauphiné Libéré
Welcome to The Landis Way, complete with his original
time trial position. Speaking of time trialing, despite his
poor overall showing at the Dauphiné, Landis finished second
to Dave Zabriskie in the 43km time trial of that race, an indication
of very strong form.
Landis is the undisputed leader of the Phonak team
for the Tour and the riders expected to support his bid to win
are: Victor Hugo Pena, Alexandre Moos, Koos Moerenhout, Axel
Merckx, M. Angel Martin Perdiguero, Nicolas Jalabert, Robert Hunter
and Bert Grabsch.
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Victor Hugo Pena
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Axel Merckx
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Floyd Landis is aiming to win
the 2006 Tour de France. While winning is a long way from
his 9th place overall last year, Landis should be considered a contender
for overall victory and certainly the podium. The race is
considered wide open this year with Armstrong's retirement and
there is no telling what can happen with race favorites Ivan Basso
(trying to achieve the rare Giro-Tour double after winning the Giro)
and Jan Ullrich (dealing with the pressure now that Armstrong is gone,
as well as wanting to clear his name in the wake of newspaper reports
in Spain suggesting he may be involved in the doping scandal there).
Indeed, anything could happen in this Tour.
Will they play ZZ Top through the speakers lining
the Champs Elysées this year, on the last day of the Tour?
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Saturday, June 24, 2006
Getting your money's Würth?
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Tour de France teams
have started announcing their lineups. So
we'll start looking at some of them and speculate a bit on what
they might do on the roads of France in July. Today:
Astana-Wurth
The Astana-Wurth team (formerly Liberty
Seguros-Wurth) has received approval to pursue ProTour activity
"for now." The
decision
, from the UCI ProTour Council President, pertains
only to the team's financial situation. The UCI ProTour
License Commission says it does not yet have enough information to
rule on the question of ethics in the wake of team owner Manolo Saiz's
alleged involvement in the "Operation Puerto" doping scandal in Spain.
Astana-Wurth team car at the Dauphiné
Libéré
Astana-Wurth thus remains something of a hot
potato and the question remains: If this thing explodes,
who will be holding it when that happens? The Tour de France
start in Strasbourg is just one week away and the French government
has tried to pressure Spanish authorities to release information
about the case so that the Tour can be spared a possible repeat of
the 1998 Festina Affair.
Tour organizer A.S.O. was quick to uninvite
the Communidad Valencia team, which it had selected as one of
two wild cards, despite the fact that to date none of its riders
have been implicated in the scandal. Having made that "strong"
stand, they just as quickly dumped Astana-Wurth into the lap of the
UCI. Now, unless the UCI can wave a magic wand and transform
Astana-Wurth into a football (soccer) team, cycling's governing body
finds itself yet again fully responsible for everyone's favorite punching
bag, cycling, even as FIFA's World Cup proceeds reportedly without
conducting a single blood test. (Ironic how the sport with all
the money to do drug testing somehow avoids it while a much poorer sport
like cycling continually gets beat up for supposedly not doing enough.)
Given the never-ending political battles between
the UCI and A.S.O., if the UCI comes to the conclusion that
Active Bay, the company that holds the ProTour license for Astana-Wurth,
must have its license revoked, can we expect the UCI to go out
of its way to spare A.S.O. and the Tour a July nightmare? Not
on your life. The raison d'etre of the UCI ProTour is largely
to grow the sport and strengthen the races not under control of A.S.O.
Though a July black eye would be bad for everyone, perhaps some
wouldn't mind seeing A.S.O. squirm a bit. And it would not be the
send-off that longtime Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc wants; he will
retire after the race.
Somewhat lost in all of this, as usual, are
the athletes themselves, starting with Kazakh Alexandre Vinokourov.
Now we don't know if "Vino" has ever had an extra cup or
two of coffee before a bike race but we do know this: when
Vino had the chance to bolt in the wake of this scandal and sign
with a team guaranteed a spot in the Tour, he instead decided to try
and keep the team together (and spare dozens of jobs), most of whose
members he barely knows, by bringing in Kazakh sponsor Astana. Though
Vino's best chance to win the Tour is to have a team like Astana-Wurth
fully behind him, he is still taking a personal risk.
With the above out of the way, what might we
expect Astana-Wurth to do at the Tour, assuming they're on the
start line and do not get booted mid-race?
First of all, the riders expected to support
Vino's bid to win the Tour are: Andrey Kashechkin (Kazakhstan),
Jorg Jaksche (Germany), Luis Leon Sanchez (Spain), Isidro Nozal
(Spain), Allan Davis (Australia), Alberto Contador (Spain), Joseba
Beloki (Spain), and Assan Bazayev (Kazakhstan).
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Andrey Kashechkin
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Jorg Jaksche
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Alberto Contador
Vinokourov, who will be 33 this year and has
given himself two years to win the Tour, is undisputed team
leader. He finished third overall in the 2003 Tour, the most
thrilling Tour of the Armstrong era, so he no doubt thinks he has
a legitimate shot at the top step of the podium. He missed the
2004 Tour due to injury, then finished 5th overall in the 2005 Tour,
with two stage wins, including the final stage to the Champs Elysées.
But in-fighting at his T-Mobile team and not having the team
behind him for the overall classification (a certain Jan Ullrich
was team leader afterall) led Vino to transfer to the team formerly
known as Liberty Seguros-Wurth.
Finishing 5th in the Tour, especially without
a team behind you, is nothing to sneeze at. If he is equally
strong this year, and with Armstrong retired, Vinokourov is right
to believe that he's got a shot at victory, especially with a team
fully behind him. The plan this season was for Vino to focus 100%
on the Tour and for him to race less with emotion and to be more patient.
Attack less, ride more defensively. It's not the Vino
we've known and it's hard to imagine him, approaching 33, beating
Basso and Ullrich, but he's got to try.
Will the UCI and A.S.O. let him?
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Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Can they hold the Mayo?
*please don't write in, we've already nominated
this for most corny and overused title
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Tour de France teams
have started announcing their lineups. So
we'll start looking at some of them and speculate a bit on what
they might do on the roads of France in July. Today:
Euskaltel-Euskadi
With other teams seeing transfers on
a regular basis, Euskaltel, the "all-Basque team," pretty much
looks the same year after year, a rarity in professional sports
today.
Euskaltel will of course be led by climbing
sensation Iban Mayo (seen on Mont Ventoux in above photo).
Mayo will be backed by Iker Camano, Unaï Etxebarria,
Aitor Hernandez, Iñaki Isasi, Iñigo Landaluze, David
López, Gorka Verdugo, and Haimar Zubeldia.
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Iker Camano
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Inigo Landaluze
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The days where Euskaltel were anything approaching
a threat for overall victory in the Tour de France (Zubeldia
and Mayo finished 5th and 6th, respectively, in the 2003 Tour
where Mayo also won the stage to Alpe d'Huez) seem long gone. Though
Mayo, who pushed Lance Armstrong to the limits in the 2003 Dauphiné
Libéré, went on to win the 2004 Dauphiné, shattering
American Jonathan Vaughter's record up Le Mont Ventoux in the process,
he disappeared for two years. (He didn't finish the Tour in
2004 after barely even surviving the cobblestones of the first week,
before finishing 60th in 2005.)
Disappeared, that is, until his win to
La Toussuire at this year's Dauphiné
in a stage that is nearly identical to
stage 16
of this year's Tour.
Iban Mayo is smiling again, the day after
winning
stage 6 of the 2006 Dauphiné Libéré.
Iban Mayo is back. The swashbuckling
Basque climber, his injuries behind him, has matured, and
he is smiling again. And with everyone talking about Ivan
Basso and Jan Ullrich, Mayo, never comfortable with the limelight,
is now perhaps at his most dangerous.
Realistically-speaking, what can we expect
from Mayo in this year's Tour? Can he pull a surprise and
reach the podium or will he have to settle for seeking a stage
win or two and a possible top-10 overall? What can we expect
from anyone in the first Tour post-Lance? We just don't know
but the days of pure climbers with limited time trialing who are a
threat in the Tour seem gone. If the CSC team of Ivan Basso,
for example, is able to lock down the race à la USPS/Discovery
Channel, then Mayo may not get much chance to show what he can do unless
he finds himself well out of contention for the overall and is allowed
to get away for a stage win. But if the race proves to be somewhat
uncontrollable, then Mayo may find an opening to do some damage. He
will lose significant time, chunks of minutes, to riders like Basso and
Ullrich in the two big time trials so if he is going to have a shot at
the podium, he will have to be on form for the early stages in the Pyrenees
and then on back-to-back stages to Alpe d'Huez (
stage 15
) and La Toussuire (
stage 16
), both climbs where he has already proved
himself. If Mayo is in good shape after stage 16, and has
good recovery,
stage 17
to Morzine via the beyond category Col de
Joux-Plane will also be to his liking ahead of the
final time trial
, a whopping 57km test against the clock that
will reveal the final podium of the 2006 Tour de France. Will
it include Mayo? Unlikely, but if he's even in the running,
it will be an exciting Tour...
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Note: If you're interested in getting
an inside look at the amateur ranks, the France 
regional reports (in French) are often fascinating
as the cameras get inside the team meetings to discuss strategy
or analyze successes or failures. Example: The VC (Velo
Club) Pomme Marseille team report, just added to the Archive
media clips.
Note: A cycling fan in Denver wrote
in to point out our incorrect "EST" designation for broadcast
times, given that most of the U.S. is now on Daylight Savings Time.
It was suggested that we refer to the given U.S. times as
"Eastern Time" from now on, and that's just what we'll do. Thanks
Will! Sorry for any confusion.
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