The Little Race of Truth

The Stage 4 Individual Time Trial was less than 30 km, but it still produced impressive time gaps. Just ask Alejandro Valverde or Yaroslav Popovych.

The hero of the day was Stephan Schumacher of Gerolsteiner, so for two consecutive days, teams we ripped in the preview come up with a nice result. Schumacher was so good today, he beat the world champion time trialist by 33 seconds. For his trouble, he also gets to wear the yellow jersey with a 12 second lead over Kim Kirchen & David Millar.

Other winners:

Kim Kirchen was second on the stage and is now second in the overall standings. I think I will start taking him seriously. Yeah, we’re not through the first week yet, and anyone can crack in the mountains, but so far Kim Kirchen has been awesome. He still wears the green jersey and he’s got the lead on all the yellow jersey contenders.

Cadel Evans finished 4^th, only 9 seconds behind Kirchen. He’s in great position too.

Denis Menchov finished 6^th, so he reclaimed much of the time he lost due to the crash in stage 3. He’s now a minute behind Kirchen, but ahead of Valverde.

Cunego, Valverde, Sastre, Pereiro, and Frank Schleck sustained moderate damage, less than 2 minutes to Kirchen. That’s substantial time, but not devastating.

Big losers: Zubledia and Popovych lost more than 3 minutes. So, there will be no controversy at Lotto—Popovych works for Evans. Maybe Zubledia should take the hint and realize he should go for a stage win in the mountains.

The other big losers were the TV audience whenever Vs. went to the in-car camera. It was painful. They make such a big deal about the cyclists getting great information from the team managers. Well, based on what we saw, that information consists of “Go! You look good. You can make up the gap. Go!” I thought the guys in the car were having a who-can-be-more-vapid contest.

But how about Columbia. They had 3 men finish in the top 11 in the time trial. They’re now second to Chipotle in the team standings. Kirchen wears green again, and Thomas Lovkvist wears white.