Very brief recaps this week, but for good reason...

Hello All,

I did have a bunch of great updates to recap the prologue and Stages 1-5 of the Tour of California, but instead I jumped on a plane and am down here in So Cal to witness frist hand the final 3 stages of the 2009 Tour. So here's a very quick recap.

Prologue: Lance did get beaten by a Canuck (Svein Tuft finished 9th, Lance 10th, by a tenth of second over the 3.9 km). Bikey fave and fellow Canuck Dominique Rollin was 24th (in a field of 136) but since he is responsible as a lead-in man for Thor Hushovd this year on Cervelo's Team, he isn't expected to make much noise this week. The big boys all came to play though, with the Top 6 including Boonen, Hushovd, Michael Rogers, George Hincapie, Dave Zabriskie, and Levi Leipheimer until the last rider, Fabian Cancellara came out and beat them all by over a second. Cancellara is the king of prologues! The misfit of prologues is Garmin's Thomas Peterson, who missed his start time and ended up in last place, a whole minute and 15 seconds behind the next slowest rider. Oops.

Stage 1: This was supposed to be a stage for the sprinters, but Mother Nature and Rock Racing's Francisco Mancebo decided otherwise. The weather was brutal (everyone wore jackets and leg warmers) and an early break containing Mancebo could not be caught. Well, the break got caught, but Mancebo solo'd to a stage victory and the Golden Jersey as the race leader. Actually, the Astana-led peloton was trying so hard to catch Mancebo that they ended up splintering the pack, and only a group of 18 riders managed to finish 62 seconds back of Mancebo. So much for Svein being ahead of Lance. But many of the big names stayed in contention (Basso, Andy Schleck, Zabriskie, Rogers, Armstrong, and Leipheimer among others) surged to the top of the leader board. And one day after his super-human effort in the prologue, Cancellara dropped out, citing illness. Thanks for coming all the way to Cali for 3.9 km of racing Fabian.

Stage 2: Turning point of the tour so far. Levi Leipheimer urged his top lieutenant Yaroslav Popovych to attack the lead group at the bottom of the biggest hill of the stage, blowing apart the peloton again. Leipheimer went on to catch what was left of an early break away, and although Mr-I-Showed-Up-Late-For-The-Prologue Thomas Peterson was able to stay with Levi and ultimately out-sprint him for the stage win, Levi grabbed hold of the Tour this year, opening up a 24 second lead on Michael Rogers, which is a nice gap going into the time trial Friday. Not surprisingly, the weather was again terrible, with Levi describing the stage it as "Turn your shower on, as cold as it gets, and stand there for 4 hours". Brutal.

Stage 3: The sprinters got their chance and Dominique Rollin set up Thor Hushovd for his first win of the tour. No change in GC.

Stage 4: Fairly flat stage, the weather finally got better, second group sprint, and Mark Cavendish easily outsprinted Tom Boonen.

Stage 5: Boring flat stage, same results...Cavendish appears to be the man to beat in 2009. He had quite a coming-out party at the 2008 Tour de France, when he won 4 stages. He might win more in 2009 if this keeps up. He was out of position on Stage 3 and had no chance, but has looked unbeatable the past two days.

I guess the other story is that most of the big names have crashed their bikes due to the bad weather. Floyd Landis has crashed, Lance hit a motorbike, Levi almost got run over by the whole peloton when he crashed, Christian Vande Velde has crashed...on and on it goes...Velonews did a great job of capturing the Levi crash here...

Oh yeah, and Lance got his time trial bike back. All is well in the universe.

Tomorrow, off to Solvang, and hopefully next week I won't have to post other people's pictures!