Tag: Garmin Slipstream

Attack! Attack! After years of Lance Armstrong inspired sensible bike racing where the best teams would put all of their boys on the from to make life difficult throughout a stage and then have a final climb big gun hit out, early attacks are back. And we, the viewing public, are all the richer for it!

Lotto Lottery Ticket... There are three definite bunch sprints forthcoming in the Tour: the traditional Champs Elysee final stage, and the stages directly before and after the Alps. Today's relatively short stage may also be a bunchie. It's a very lumpy part of the world: virtually no flat, and no straight stretches of road make it an exhausting, but beautiful, area to drive through (let alone ride).

Rest Day Number One on Le Tour de France 2011! As it stands this is the day everyone is hanging out for on the whole race, riders just want a day off the mental and physical stress.

Ouch. What a tough day in the saddle for the boys, particularly Johnny Hoogerland. Everything was under control, with the break only a couple of minutes out in front, Thor getting over the climbs comfortably, and plenty of time to reel the break back in when BOOM! Zabriskie hit the deck, a couple of big hitters also went down from other teams (Kloden, Vino and VDB in particular) and there is a decision made to wait for everyone affected in the crash to catch back up.

Thor is staring down the barrel of a very tough day in the saddle today! He has been fantastic in first gaining the yellow jersey on the back of a great stage one sprint followed by his huge TTT effort, and then holding it with his epic rides up the Mur de Bretagne and Super-Besse. Can He Hold ?

The first climbing day of the Tour has been and gone, and nothing major has changed, it's surprisingly static. We're still unsure of the form of the Schlecks (and particularly Andy); Contador still has a tower of work to do to get back into the race; Evans still looks very good; and Hushovd still has the yellow! So while there have been no significant changes, there has been a significant surprise.

Time For The Hitters. After a couple of days where I've been off the grid, it's a good day to get back on Tour watching duties! We've seen Cav do what Cav does: win Tour stages. Radioshack appear almost cursed, with Brajkovic out, Horner in doubt and Leipheimer losing a minute after slipping on some paint...

Question Marks. Today is a long, lumpy stage with a kicker in the final 2km. It's not hard enough for the GC boys to do more than snipe a few seconds on each other here or there, but maybe too hard for the pure sprinters to be a part of the finale.

Mark Cavendish in Form. Another day, another bunchy and-seemingly inevitably-another win to Cav. He is an amazing bike rider, with an incredible knack for winning, and as regular and almost easy as his wins at the Tour seem, he is beating some very good bike riders and teams who are often racing solely to beat him.

Turned Tables. For the past couple of years, Garmin have been on the back foot in the sprints at the Tour particularly. The HTC train has been dominant, they've won the Teams TTs at most Grand Tours, and Cav has just been winning sprints at will. The Garmin squad has had some shocking injuries, have just been on the wrong side of the TTs, and despite being at times agonisingly close, Ty hasn't been able to get Cav.

Death Of The Curse. There is a theory within cycling circles that the person who is the current world champion (and thus wearer of the Rainbow Jersey) is stricken by a curse, meaning their season in the Bands is a poor one. That appears to have changed.

Gilbert Gilbert. That's Gilbert repeating. Geddit?? haha! Dad Joke if ever I saw one! Today, stage 4, is another one for the punchy power climbers, with Phillipe Gilbert being the red-hot favourite. The finale is a 2km 6.6% kicker which is still probably not hard enough to let skinny blokes like Contador and Schleck do their thing, and will be more up Evans or Gilbert's alley.

A Great Result. After all of my brash talk about Garmin's cherry having been popped, and Tyler thus being assured of the win on Stage 3, it was so exciting to see the result this morning! The race wasn't quite the shootout I'd anticipated, but Garmin executed their final kilometres brilliantly, and if there ever was a deserving winner of a stage, it is Ty Farrar.

Duelling Trains. There's something about certain sporting moments when two competitors meet each other in their pomp and just go head to head. There's a minimum of tactics, and a maximum of fireworks, and we, the interested onlookers can only marvel at how good this is, and wonder who will crack first?

The Dotty Jumper. Or the polka dot (climbers) jersey, or the king of the mountains. This is the jersey that is currently the least predictable of those up for grabs in the Tour, and also currently the least closely followed (this is perhaps untrue in non-Anglophone countries, but comparing the amount of coverage that Cav gets in his green jersey battles, as opposed to Anthony Charteau in his dotty battles, I don't think so).

Talking About The Green. We're into the final couple of days prior to the big show starting, and I reckon it's time to throw my two cents into the prediction ring. I'll start with the green (or points) jersey-a jersey that two of the boys from Garmin have worn in the past two seasons, but which neither actually held. Wiggo and Millar both rode in the green jersey the day after the Prologue, yet neither was leading the points competition, which was lead by Fabian Cancellara, who happened to also be holding the yellow jersey, and so of course wore that on the day.

Two Weeks Out. If the energy was up a week ago, things have gotten even more hyped for all of the teams headed to le Tour now. Cyclists will have ridden themselves into or out of spots as the final places are essentially solidified based on a combination of form, usefulness to team goals and personality.

Three Weeks to Go. We're approaching mid-June, and the cycling world in Europe is building to a frenzy of anticipation: three weeks 'til the Tour! Most teams will have had five or six of their riders locked in as starters since before the season began, with only a badly-timed injury preventing big hitters like Thor Hushovd, Ryder Hesjedal and Christian Vande Velde from Garmin from starting.