Tour De France 2010
This years Tour De France begins tomorrow in Holland. Where are national football team have failed could our cyclists succeed ? They seem to think so, Mark Cavendish has said he will definitely get the Green jersey, if everything goes to plan and similarly Bradley Wiggins who finished in 4th place last year says everything is in place this year to ensure his overall victory, if everything goes to plan.
Most probably things won't go quite to plan, the first week includes some coastal sections where the notoriously strong winds could easily cause chaos and as if that wasn't enough there are also stages with miles and miles of cobblestones just to make life really difficult, and dangerous, for everyone. Assuming Bradley emerges unscathed from all of that his biggest test waits in the final week of huge pyreanean mountains where his main rivals, Contador, Armstrong and Schleck will really make him suffer ( at least Contador & Schleck will, who knows how well Armstrong will cope now ). The clear favourite is last years winner Alberto Contador who everyone seems to agree is some sort of genetic freak and more or less unbeatable by anyone else around at the moment, to make things interesting he has been threatening revenge on Armstrong and promising to "destroy and humiliate the old man when they reach the mountains". I am fairly sure Armstrong will not be too happy with people trying it on with him like that so there could be some exciting and random moves going off to liven things up a bit.
A lot of this years British riders are riding for the new British cycling team Team Sky which is ran by the same person who has engineered Britains recent successes in track cycling, he has promised a British win in the Tour De France within ( I think ) 10 years. Or maybe this year if Mr Wiggins plan comes to fruition. Although it's a British team the other top 2 British riders Cavendish & Millar are still riding for their old teams.
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Controversy
The final days racing of the TdF has just ended, the Spaniard Alberto Contador has just narrowly beaten the brave Luxembourger Andy Schleck giving him a 39 second overall lead and 1st place.
As the interwebs are frantically pointing out 39seconds is the exact amount of time Contador gained by his underhand capitalisation on Schlecks chain failure a few days ago so he has won only by, what a lot of people see as, cheating.
Developments
It seems Bradleys, and the rest of Team Skys preparation wasn't quite so good as they had hoped it was. Bradleys been unable to match the leaders on any of the climbs and is now languishing 17 minutes behind with very little chance of even getting into the top 10. He seems to be a little confused by his lack of form saying yesterday that his performance last year must have been a pure fluke. This was when he was interviewed straight after the end of the race yesterday so exhaustion and sheer pissed offness may have unduly influenced him, previously at the end of stages he's said he's probably going to concentrate on other races in the future so he does seem a bit demoralised. Today though he was a bit more positive and said that although things have gone horribly wrong this year he will be back next year with a new plan. The weird tactics of his team and lack of any real support on the climbs haven't helped him much either and when it's come to the crunch he's always been more or less on his own.
The main talking point of this years tour will probably revolve around the events of todays stage. Yesterday the defending champion Contador was 30 seconds behind his main rival Andy Schleck, Contador is expected to do better than Schleck in the final time trial so most people believed that Schleck would still need to get more time from Contador in the mountain stages today and for the next 3 days. Schleck is looking like he can beat Contador going up mountains but until today he hasn't really made an attack so no one is all that sure.
Today, towards the top of the final climb Schleck finally did make his move catching Contador by surprise and accelerating off leaving Contador at least hundreds of metres behind him down the road. It didn't look like Contador could respond, it was his team mate Vinky ( previously disgraced Kazhackstanian drug fiend and all round "hard man" ) that put in the response. At this point anything could have happened, it looked like what may happen was that Schleck would cruise away to the summit leaving Contador trailing in his wake. However, this is Le Tour, and accidents often happen. Schlecks chain came off stopping him in his tracks and Contador seeing his rival incapacitated and struggling to get the chain back on again on the side of the road capitalised and shot off ahead to the summit and ultimately to the finish gaining 1st place by 4 or 5 seconds.
In most forms of racing this would be fair enough by cycle racing has a lot of weird unwritten rules that riders obey because to do otherwise would be a stain on their honour. Rampant drug taking is not really covered by these unwritten rules. One of the unwritten rules is that if your rival suffers a mechanical breakdown or falls off then rather than laughing to yourself and making the most of his misfortune you're supposed to stop and wait for them to recover before continuing your duel. Lance Armstrong, for all that he is a figure of hate, was constantly stopping and waiting for his rivals when things like this happened to them and in turn they often extended him the same courtesy even when they were behind and looking for any way at all of catching up a bit. Contador obviously did not do this despite seeing quite clearly what had happened, it looked to me like rather than having any intention at all of slowing up or waiting he was doing everything he could to go as fast as possible.
The commentators are split, some say it's fair enough others say it's an indelible stain on Contadors honour. Either way with Schleck now behind and clearly very pissed off with it all we can expect him to really take on the fight over the next few days. It's possible the peleton may not be happy with the unsportsman like behaviour of the Yellow jersey and help Schleck out but personally I think that's a bit unlikely. There are several big climbs ahead with at least one mountain top finish where if Schleck really is the better climber he could really go to town and assassinate the dastardly Spaniard Contador.
Innerestin'
It sounds like Bradley is maybe planning on attacking during the first week, on the cobbles or in the winds and then just going to hang on as best he can in the mountains. Could be exciting if he goes out straight away and grabs the jersey.