Hi All,
It's about time! This weekend finally saw the Tour de France really have an epic finish. After repeated attacks by the big names on Sunday's 15th stage, the top of the GC is now tightened up so that the Top 6 are all within 49 seconds. And we have 3 pre-race favorites (Menchov, Evans, and Sastre) that are in that group and need to open some time in the next two mountain stages (Tuesday and Wednesday) before Saturday's final Tour-deciding time trial. So the next two mornings are definitely get-out-of-bed-early mornings to follow the tour as it winds towards Wednesday's finish at the top of Alpe d'Huez.
Sunday's 15th stage was epic for more than seeing the faves struggle at the end. It featured a massive crash that took out 30 riders (including 6 of 8 riders from Garmin-Chipotle). However, they all got up and finished the stage. It also saw 2006 TDF winner Oscar Pereiro crash when he went over a guardrail and fell 20 feet onto a road below (amazing picture is here). He broke his shoulder and will be sitting out the rest of the Tour. But the real story Sunday was just how dominant Team CSC is this year. At the bottom of the final 12 km climb, CSC put 5 riders on the front and blew apart the still-sizable peloton. However, when they had thinned the group down to just 10 riders, they still had 3 riders (Andy Schleck, Frank Schleck, and Carlos Sastre). This allowed them to keep the pressure up, eventually resulting in Sastre breaking away from Cadel Evans (who only had a 1-second lead on Frank Schleck) and making up almost a minute by the top, thus putting Sastre back into serious consideration to win. It also allowed Frank Schleck to break away in the last 400m and make up the 1 second he needed to wear Yellow going into tomorrow. This once again illustrates how important team tactics are in a race like this. Cadel Evans ended up alone without teammates for most of the last hill, and I expect to see more of the same tomorrow and Wednesday. Cadel Evans is still only 7 seconds back, and is probably the best time trialer of the group of 6 still in consideration.
Ironman news - this weekend saw Ironman Lake Placid occur for the 10th time. And while the two race winners were relative newcomers (Francisco Pontano and Caitlin Shea-Kenney), I was more surprised to hear that the race sold out Monday morning before spots were available online. So just like Ironman Canada, the only way into Lake Placid appears to be showing up a year in advance! The demand for top quality Ironman races continues to grow. Very interesting. I assume more Ironman-licensed races will come to the US soon…
Speaking of triathlons, the non-drafting New York City Triathlon made the news for the wrong reason. Greg Bennett and Liz Blatchford won the respective races, with Canadians Brent McMahon and Paul Tichelaar finishing in 4th and 5th place. McMahon actually was in 2nd place when he collapsed a few feet from the finish line, but ended up finishing 4th before fainting from heat exhaustion/dehydration. Wow. But the much bigger news was that another swimmer died in this race (the 4th since May in a US triathlon) but it may have been because of jellyfish! Yep, apparently the sludge pit that is the Hudson river had large numbers of jellyfish that stung the racers "repeatedly" during the swim portion, and it has been suggested that an allergic reaction or heart attack might have been the cause of the 32-year old's death. So sad…triathlon is having way too many of these types of events lately...
And for those of you who just read this for Nike commercials, here is a great sneak preview of their Beijing advertising campaign. They are using this commercial globally, so that is why you will see so many non-American athletes featured here.
Tomorrow…we'll recap Tuesday's stage, and talk doping heading into the Olympics…
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