2/3 to Paris
Now 14 stages are down and 7 remain. Of those 7 there are 3 in the Alps, one time trial, two with rolling hills, and one flat finish.
With the win in stage 14, Oscar Freire looks to have the green jersey locked up. He leads THOR! by 47 points. With that sort of lead he just needs to stay upright and beat the time cutoffs in the Alps. Freire has been on fire this week, gaining points on THOR! in each of the last 4 stages.
As I said before, the KoM jersey is wide open. Lang has 60 points and leads his teammate, Kohl, by 1. But there are a ton of points available on the next 4 stages. The Gerolsteiner team now has a purpose--these two guys need to collect as many points as possible. Kohl is within a minute of the yellow jersey, so no one is going to let him attack, but Lang is almost an hour down, so look for him to get into the all-day breakaway to rack up points.
Finally, as we go to the Alps, we can see a shake-up in the yellow jersey race. We still have 9 men within 4 minutes of the lead. There are always some people who climb well in one group of mountains and bonk in the other, so expect changes right away. Evans is passive by nature, but CSC has already shown the ability to crack the peloton and attack the race lead. Valverde and Cunego figure to attack to make up the minutes they lost in the Pyrenees. Kohl, Vande Velde, and Efimkin are had to predict because we've never seen them in this position, and it would be a mistake for the "favorites" not to mark them. And then there is Menchov. I remember two years ago saying that he looked like the winner after the first set of mountains, but he cracked badly in the second group. This time, will he have what it takes to finish?
With the win in stage 14, Oscar Freire looks to have the green jersey locked up. He leads THOR! by 47 points. With that sort of lead he just needs to stay upright and beat the time cutoffs in the Alps. Freire has been on fire this week, gaining points on THOR! in each of the last 4 stages.
As I said before, the KoM jersey is wide open. Lang has 60 points and leads his teammate, Kohl, by 1. But there are a ton of points available on the next 4 stages. The Gerolsteiner team now has a purpose--these two guys need to collect as many points as possible. Kohl is within a minute of the yellow jersey, so no one is going to let him attack, but Lang is almost an hour down, so look for him to get into the all-day breakaway to rack up points.
Finally, as we go to the Alps, we can see a shake-up in the yellow jersey race. We still have 9 men within 4 minutes of the lead. There are always some people who climb well in one group of mountains and bonk in the other, so expect changes right away. Evans is passive by nature, but CSC has already shown the ability to crack the peloton and attack the race lead. Valverde and Cunego figure to attack to make up the minutes they lost in the Pyrenees. Kohl, Vande Velde, and Efimkin are had to predict because we've never seen them in this position, and it would be a mistake for the "favorites" not to mark them. And then there is Menchov. I remember two years ago saying that he looked like the winner after the first set of mountains, but he cracked badly in the second group. This time, will he have what it takes to finish?
posted by uberschuck at 12:24 PM
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