Taking Stock After Stage 11
At the midpoint of the Tour and on the day before the race of truth we should examine the big races within the Tour.

Best Team Time

In the last two stages this has been turned upside down. Euskaltel had the lead, followed by USPS, after stage 9. Successful breakaways–especially the 21 minute breakaway in stage 10--in the last two stages have changed things.
1 Banesto in 145h 03' 28"
2 CSC at 00' 15"
3 Euskaltel at 11' 24"
4 USPS at 15' 35"
5 Cofidis at 21' 04"

It’s nice to see Cofidis finally do something good, but they ain’t goin’ nowhere. USPS and Euskaltel will both do great in the Pyrenees, but CSC and Banesto both have some very good climbers. They’ll lose time, but not 6-7 minutes a day. It’s going to be very tough for anyone to catch CSC or Banesto. And once we get out of the mountains, CSC and Banesto will be able to send riders into breakaways again. This should be a great race, and the lead should change a time or two.

Green Jersey

In the last two stages Zabel has been beaten by both McEwen and Cooke in the bunch finish. He still doesn’t bother to get any points in the intermediate sprints. In other words, Zabel is cooked. Unless he magically wins two stages, he isn’t going to finish better than 4th. O’Grady will pass him by taking points any way he can get them, and McEwen and Cooke are going to go head to head every day to make this a great two man race.

White Jersey

Denis Menchov (Banesto) has a 6 minute lead over Sylvain Chavanel (Brioches). He’s got two teammates in 3rd & 4th, so they’ll help him maintain his lead in the mountains. A 6 minute lead is a lot, the young riders frequently fizzle out in the last week. I’m not counting on a Brioches rider winning anything, though.

King of the Mountains
Virenque has a big lead after really just one huge day of work. But as I said before, there are still 11 category 1 or higher climbs remaining. So a rider far out–like Christophe Moreau, Ivan Parra, or Jorg Jaksche could decide to go for the big points. All three of these have already scored a bunch of points, and all three are on teams with no yellow jersey contender, so they may be willing to put their stock in the dots.

Yellow
Hey, we’ve got a good race here. Armstrong has been saying for days that he’s got to come up big on Friday’s time trial, and I expect he will. I said before that after the Alps we’d have a long list of contenders, but it would be down to about 5 after the first time trial. Here are all the men within 4 minutes now.

1 ARMSTRONG Lance USA USP in 49h 16' 37"
2 VINOKOUROV Alexandre KAZ TEL at 00' 21"
3 MAYO Iban ESP EUS at 01' 02"
4 MANCEBO Francisco ESP BAN at 01' 37"
5 HAMILTON Tyler USA CSC at 01' 52"
6 ULLRICH Jan GER TBI at 02' 10"
7 BASSO Ivan ITA FAS at 02' 25"
8 HERAS Roberto ESP USP at 02' 28"
9 ZUBELDIA Haimar ESP EUS at 03' 25"
10 MENCHOV Denis RUS BAN at 03' 45"

Forget about Heras–he’s riding for Lance. As good as Menchov & Zubledia are, I seriously doubt they’ll be within 3 minutes when this stage is done–5 is more likely. Looking back to last year, only Tyler Hamilton managed to finish within 2 minutes of Armstrong on either time trial. I think Mancebo and Basso will lose crucial time tomorrow, leaving us with these men in the top 5: Armstrong, Vino, Mayo, Hamilton, and Ullrich, but I don’t think any will be within 90 seconds of Lance. Bob Roll of OLN is predicting that Ullrich will win the stage, so I’m convinced he’ll lose time to Armstrong.
And if someone gets a puncture, all bets are off.