This is a guest post by Mr.Q, a professional quizmaster and an ardent Tour de France follower
The Lance influence !!
As the tour starts of on the third of the Alpine stages, the race for the top contender is now becoming a show of team strength. With several teams totally out of contention, its Astana & Garmin Slipstream teams which are putting the riders right up front and keeping the rhythm & the speed going. To see the Astana team minus Leipheimer chugging away right in the front reminds one of the Discovery team & US Postal team days, when Armstrong, in order to make sure that he doesn’t get caught in any untoward incidents used to ensure that his team rode right at the front, even if they had to lead the peleton.
Zubeldia and Contador
Now with Astana adopting the same strategy it’s the fans who are reaping the rewards too!! As Armstrong & Contador with Kloden & Popovych are always in the front and very much visible for that one photo of a life time. We were talking to some of the fans here and almost everyone here wants to get a glimpse of only one person – Armstrong!!
Right from the start at Monaco, I have maintained that this race is all about just one man & his fight to show the world that he is the best. And that is not a comment about the Yellow Jersey, but about Lance Armstrong. Every media person wants a quote & a photo of him & so do the fans. Armstrong keeping in his mind that he also has his LIVESTRONG foundation to promote is doing his best to be with everyone while keeping his attention on the race. His tweets have kept over 15 million fans updated daily. While standing on the roads, 90% of the conversations we have had with fellow fans has been about Armstrong. (Contador, Cavendish & Hurshod are the other riders with big fan clubs)
Sylvian Chavnel at the start
The 17th Stage of the Tour de France started off from the ski resort town of Bourg-St-Maurice to Le Grand-Bornand a distance of 169 kms. The route will be one the most trying one so far as there are four Cat-1 climbs before ending in the town most famous for some champion winter Olympic athletes from France. The town of Le Grand-Bornand has seen the tour four times before this and has very happy memories for Lance Armstrong as he has won a race stage here.
Today’s race was all about youth & the spirit of the tour. Many a rider tried to race away from the peleton but no one could stand to the power of Team Astana & Saxo Bank, who just swallowed those who wanted to break away.
In the end it was a battle between the two Schleck brothers Andy & Frank with Contador, as the two brothers teamed up to break down the Yellow Jersey holder. The Saxo bank riders are natives of Switzerland and their superior Alpine riding skills were on display today. But after each of their attacks, Contador had the energy to be still there with them afterwards. It was a see saw battle where finally tour etiquette also was on display, as with 2 kms to go, Contador patted Frank Schleck & asked him to go for the Stage win. This was done as he is the Yellow Jersey holder right now and a stage victory would not mean much for him, but for someone who has worked the whole stage and never won a stage so far it was a fitting reward. Andy Schleck in turn allowed Contador to come in second, the time credited to all three being the same.
The race also saw Armstrong sticking to Wiggins as planned in the team and not allowing him to combat Contador. As Contador was moving away with the Schleck brothers Armstrong didn’t follow them & sacrificed his podium position sticking to his team’s requirement of not allowing Wiggins to ride away. A move which is going to cost him very heavily as he now has to pull out almost 3 minutes on the Yellow Jersey. Finally, after Wiggins dropped off the race pace was when Armstrong started out and with V. Nibali of the Liquigas team and rode an astonishingly fast descent to cut down the deficit.
For the record in Stage 17 – the winner was Frank Schleck of the Saxo Bank team. The individual standings of the top changes though the Yellow Jersey remains with Alberto Contador. The two Schleck brothers Andy & Frank come into 2nd & 3rd position & Lance Armstrong slips to fourth spot. The Green Jersey remains with Thor Hurshod of Norway & Andy Schleck retains the White Jersey.
Report from the hospital about Jens Voigts is that he is out of danger after falling face down on the road at over 70kms per hour speed during the descent to Bourg St. Maurice yesterday.
Fabian Cancellara
The 18th stage of the tour is an in the beautiful city of Annecy. The race is an individual time trial and will test the skills of the riders to ride without any team member supporting him. It’s a 40kms stretch around the lake and though Contador & Armstrong are in very strong form, it will Bradley Wiggins, the Olympic Gold medalist who will be the one to watch as he can gain the maximum from this stage. The Schleck brothers will have to race out of their skin to remain in the top three. Though me thinks, Fabian Cancellara will be out to prove that he can still win the odd stages!!
Au revoir!!…
Email : mrq@planningfactory.in
I love the writing relevancy of your site and it does a nice-looking decent job of presenting the info.
“I think you may have imagined about adding some video clips for your weblog posts to preserve your readers more entertained? I necessarily mean I just learn by way of the whole internet site right here and it had been high-quality but considering that I am more of a visual learner, I observed that to turn out to be a lot more useful. Properly you should let me know how it turns out! I love what you individuals are carrying out and up too. Such good work and opinions! Preserve up the great work guys. I’ve additional this site to my blogroll. This can be a awesome blog site thank you for sharing this useful facts.. I will pay a visit to your internet site frequently for some newest post.”
“Aw, this was a truly top quality submit. In principle I’d like to jot down such as this as well – taking time and actual work to generate a good article.!. but what can I say.!!!. I procrastinate alot and by no means seem to get some thing performed. “
I like this website presented and it has given me some sort of inspiration to have success for some reason, so thanks.
I just needed to take a minute and let you know that I’ve been savouring reading your posts over the last few months. I have a blog of my own, and would enjoy to switch links with you. If you’re interested just leave me a comment on my page or send me an e-mail with your details.
Good luck getting people behind this one. Though you make some VERY fascinating points, youre going to have to do more than bring up a few things that may be different than what weve already heard. What are trying to say here? What do you want us to think? It seems like you cant really get behind a unique thought. Anyway, thats just my opinion.
“Wow, many thanks a bunch m8″
hello there and thank you for your information – I have definitely picked up anything new from right here. I did however expertise some technical issues using this web site, since I experienced to reload the website many times previous to I could get it to load correctly. I had been wondering if your web host is OK? Not that I am complaining, but slow loading instances times will sometimes affect your placement in google and could damage your quality score if advertising and marketing with Adwords. Well I am adding this RSS to my e-mail and could look out for a lot more of your respective exciting content. Make sure you update this again very soon..
thanks for the feedback…am looking into this
Great post. I was checking continuously this blog and I’m impressed! Extremely useful info specially the last part
I care for such info much. I was seeking this certain info for a very long time. Thank you and good luck.
Wow! This can be one particular of the most helpful blogs We have ever arrive across on this subject. Actually Excellent. I am also a specialist in this topic so I can understand your effort.
Excellent write-up mate, keep the excellent work, just shared this with ma friendz