Archives
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Thursday, July 13, 2006
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Tip:
What's the fastest way to see photos from the Tour? Click
on the "Yahoo photo gallery" link in our "Live Guide". AP and AFP
photographers are equipped to transmit photos from the road.
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Tip:
There will likely be very heavy usage of video and audio streams
for stage 11 today. Try to get in early. If you are unable
to get access, keep trying and/or try a different stream.
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Note: There will be no hiding
today and we'll be able to separate the contenders from the pretenders.
Note: Serbian TV is
showing highlights of yesterday's stage first, should go live to today's
stage around 16:30 CET (10:30am U.S. Eastern Time)
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Wednesday, July 12, 2006
In "The Start Ramp," veteran cycling cyber-journalist
Sarah tracks and reports on the Tour's
Young Rider Competition
(riders under 25 on Jan. 1) and Tour
first-timers.
Thomas Lövkvist
Française des Jeux
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Rider profile: Thomas Lövkvist
Thomas Lövkvist was born on April 4th, 1984 in Visby, Sweden.
He's riding in his second Tour de France and he is the youngest member
of the peloton at age 22. And as the youngest, he read the loyalty oath
before the prologue of the 2006 Tour:
"Speaking on behalf of all my colleagues as the Tour's youngest
rider, I undertake to respect sportsmanship and the ethic of the great
competition we are going to take part in and to display loyalty in all
circumstances." (
www.supercycling.co.za
)
Lövkvist finished 61st out of 115 riders in the 2005 Tour
de France and his most recent win was the Swedish Road Race Championship.
His previous teams include Bianchi and later FDJeux.com (now Française
des Jeux). His first year as a professional was in 2004. In that year
he won the Swedish Individual Time Trial Championship, the Circuit de la
Sarthe as well as stage four of the same race. He also won stage 10 of
the Tour de l'Avenir, eventually finishing second overall. He finished second
at Paris-Camembert and third at the Criterium des Espoirs.
In 2005 he finished second in two stages of the Tour de Pologne.
He eventually finished fourth overall, and won the points competition.
He also finished 12th at Paris-Nice, winning the young rider competition.
He had three other top twenty finishes. And, in November of 2005, he
was named the
Swedish Male Cyclist of the Year
.
Although the 2006 season is just over halfway finished, Lövkvist
has already turned in several good results. In addition to being the
Swedish men's road race champion, he won the young rider competition at
the Tour Mediterranean, finishing sixth overall. He came in second on stage
two of the same race. He also finished second in the Swedish Individual
Time Trial Championships. He was third in the young rider competition at
Paris-Nice and finished 19th overall at that race.
Lövkvist started his professional career strong, and appears
to be keeping that up. He has a bright future ahead of him and is definitely
someone to keep an eye on -- no matter what team he's riding for. Hopefully
we'll see him in the white jersey one of these days!
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Monday, July 10, 2006
Today is the first rest day at the Tour de France,
in Bordeaux.
360 degree view at the Bassin d'Arcachon near Bordeaux
The Bordeaux area is cycling-friendly with two-lane
bike paths from the city to the Atlantic coast
(cyclingfans.com is producing superhigh resolution
panoramas of some of cycling's most mythic locations from the Col
du Galibier to Mont Ventoux to the Avenue des Champs Elysées.)
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Floyd Landis
(photo P. Geyer)
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Tom Danielson
(photo P. Geyer)
American Tom Danielson of Discovery Channel
won the week-long Tour of Austria which ended yesterday. For
more, click
here
.
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Sunday, July 9, 2006
"Houston, we have a
problem"
Bad day overall for Americans
at the Tour
T-Mobile shows strength, Gonchar
in yellow
It was a good day for Discovery yesterday as they
carried out a successful spacewalk outside the space shuttle.
The Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team, however,
seems to have returned to Earth at the Tour de France after seven
years in orbit.
Team CSC (CSC is an American company, the team is
Danish), with the ambitious mission this year of achieving a rare
Giro-Tour double, is grounded.
And Levi Leipheimer, who just last month landed on
the lunar landscape that is Mont Ventoux, at the Dauphiné
Libéré, grabbing the yellow jersey, has dug himself
a hole so deep at the Tour that the "Baby Jessica" rescue crews
perhaps should be mobilized to get him out.
Just like that, Americans went from a position of
strength in their goal of reaching the podium to one where they
may need a telescope just to see it!
Well, except for Floyd Landis that is. And
you knew if someone was going to be different it would have to
be Floyd. Landis was the best yesterday of the favorites
for overall victory, finishing second one minute behind T-Mobile's
Serguei Gonchar who also took the yellow jersey. Gonchar, known
for leaping into the air when up on the podium, seems to be trying to
get into orbit himself.
After Landis, there was stage favorite David Zabriskie
finishing in 13th place (hope he's not superstitious) nearly two
minutes behind Gonchar, then George Hincapie in 24th at 2:42 and
Leipheimer in 96th at 6:05! Leipheimer, known for his consistency
and seemingly sure to at least reach the podium with all the big favorites
out of the race, for various reasons, saw his hopes disappear in one
afternoon.
Discovery Channel had only one rider, Paolo Savoldelli
(19th), in the top 20 yesterday.
Team CSC's problems continued when American Bobby
Julich crashed out of the race, a repeat of his exit from the 1999
Tour, again on the first big time trial.
Landis is now the individual favorite in a race that
really has no favorites and T-Mobile is in a position of strength
in what likely is not a very controllable race.
Can Landis win this thing? Sure, though one
bad day and he'll be singing the blues. But rumor has it
that longtime Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc, who has as many job
titles as Gonchar has spellings of his name and who will retire later
this year to spend more time with his family and with his music, was
practicing a blues version last night, on his saxophone, of a well-known
guitar riff from ZZ Top... Poor Jean-Marie. His reign began
with Greg Lemond's win in 1989, saw seven consecutive years of Armstrong
domination, and just might end with a win by yet another American.
French sports daily L'Equipe, meanwhile, is so preoccupied
with the FIFA World Cup (France plays Italy in tonight's final)
that page 18 of its Saturday edition, which was meant to be dedicated
to details of the stage 7 individual time trial, was instead an accidental
reprint of Friday's entire page 18. An entire broadsheet page
in error. Many in France had to do a doubletake, perhaps wondering
if this was the Tour's version of "Groundhog Day" (the movie). Of
course, that's what Armstrong's reign must have felt like to many here,
especially at L'Equipe.
Speaking of Armstrong, it appears he will now be
in France for the final week of the Tour afterall. Who can
blame him? With A.S.O.'s Patrice Clerc announcing the Grand
Tours will never join the ProTour (the equivalent of taking their ball
and running home from the playground) and UCI president Pat McQuaid
reminding him that WADA head Dick Pound said the Tour (or was it cycling
generally?) is "in the toilet," who would want to miss the arrival of
the race in Paris? Go get 'em, Lance, beat 'em up.
In "The Start Ramp," veteran cycling cyber-journalist
Sarah tracks and reports on the Tour's
Young Rider Competition
(riders under 25 on Jan. 1) and
Tour first-timers.
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Fothen Rides Strong Time Trial
Yesterday was a fantastic day for Germany. Not only
did Germany win the third place match against Portugal at the FIFA
World Cup, but a T-Mobile rider won Stage 7 of the Tour and, in
the young jersey competition, a German is back leading it. Marcus
Fothen rode one of the strongest time trials of his career. In a day
when the so-called big names failed to perform to their potential,
Fothen finished seventh, only a minute and forty one seconds back from
the stage winner Serguei Gonchar.
Fothen now leads the young jersey competition by
a minute and eleven seconds. Sweden's Thomas Lövkvist
is in second, followed by Andriy Grivko (Milram). Grivko is Ukranian,
like the stage winner. Grivko was born in 1983 and this is his second
Tour. He previously rode in 2005.
Joost Posthuma finished 10th on the stage, with Lövkvist
finishing 20th.
Not only is Fothen leading the young rider competition,
but he's currently in fifth place overall. Lövkvist is nineteenth,
only three minutes and one second off of the lead. Today's time shook
up both the general classification and the young rider competition.
Yesterday's leader, Benoît Vaugrenard, finished about four minutes
back and is now fourth in the young rider's competition. He rode hard
but Fothen just blew everyone away.
Fothen told
Letour.fr
that "I have pain in my whole body but it's been
a really good day for the team because we had Sebastian Lang in
third place, I'm seventh and so we have to be pleased." He went on
to explain that his priorities are to help Totschnig and Leipheimer
in the coming stages and then, if that goes well, he'll focus on the
young rider jersey.
Vaugrenard told
Cyclingnews
that he rode well in the first part of the course,
but like so many he just didn't have the power to keep it up through
the second half. He said "I knew it was not possible to keep the white
jersey after this stage but the most important thing for me was to
ride within [myself] today."
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In "View from the Finish Line," Bernie S.
comments on whatever catches his attention in the world of cycling.
Bernie also hunts down video streams for cyclingfans.com.
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Sunday, July 9, 2006
---- This first week of the Tour has been full of
crashes, notably Valverde's, but surely Julian Dean of Credit Agricole
holds the record for bad luck. Not only does he fall off his bike
after leading out Hushovd but he then gets fined for impeding somebody
else and Hushovd gets relegated to last. Next day, all bandaged up
he falls again. If his fellow New Zealanders riding for French
clubs were watching they must be asking themselves if they really
want to be pros!
---- Most extraordinary interview with Bjarne Riis
on TV: he appeared totally disinterested in the questions being
asked and the answers he gave were virtually throwaway remarks. It
was as if sans Basso he knows CSC are bit players.
---- Going into bookshops what is noticeable is the
dearth of books published this year to coincide with the Tour.
Maybe this is a consequence of the absence of Lance this time. Like
Agassi in tennis or Jordan in basketball, Lance brought a clientèle
to the sport from outside and I feel we are going to miss this more
than we realise. The NY Times reported that TV viewing figures in the
US are down by 50% over last year already. (ed. - Well, the Walsh/Ballester
book is out, again, in France just in time for the Tour. New
cover but none of the supposed new revelations that Walsh has long promised.
And with the number of English-language publishers who won't
touch it rising beyond 20, it looks like Walsh's grandchildren will
have to learn French if they are ever to read it. There is also
a new book, just published, by a French author that is a tribute to Armstrong;
we'll be talking about that soon.)
---- Comment of the week surely goes to Dave Zabriskie
of CSC who was asked if the mayhem of crashes scared him. He
replied he thought the most scary thing he had seen was Vladimir
Karpets' haircut.
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