Hi All,
I'm writing this post early Friday morning, so I haven't seen the results from Friday's Tour stage, but I do have some thoughts about the Tour before I get into the rest of the goings-on in the world of running and biking!
The Tour thru the first 13 stages is still all about two main stories: the unbeatable Mark Cavendish and the Lance vs Alberto Astana team controversy.
Mark Cavendish won two more sprint stages this week, and has eliminated any doubt that he is the best sprinter in the world. He has now won 4 stages in the first 12 of this year's Tour (to go with his 4 from last year) without being beat in a sprint. True, he does have Columbia's unreal leadout train - with George Hincapie, Tony Martin, and Mark Renshaw leading out Cavendish until the last 400m or so. This is a huge advantage to be sure, but the other sprinters (especially Oscar Friere, Tyler Farrar, and Thor Hushovd) still have had chances to beat Cavendish but Cavendish's unreal late acceleration has so far held off all challengers. There are two more flatish stages (Saturday and then next weekend in Paris) that Cavendish could win. That might be enough to keep him in the Green Jersey, which would be very impressive since Cavendish has never even finished a Grand Tour race before.
Actually, this week the second story kinda disappeared since the 3 stages contained no real hills and thus no real chances for the main riders to attack each other. Alberto did hold a press conference on Monday and say that if Lance attacked on his own that Alberto would hold back and mark the rest of the contenders rather than chase down his own teammate. The friction between the two teammates has mellowed a bit this week, and with today's news that Levi Leipheimer has withdrawn with a broken wrist, Team Astana will have to work a bit tighter together to keep their two main guys out of trouble as the other contenders try to steal a bit of time as the Tour hits the Alps starting on Sunday.
A few nuggets about 2010 as we still sort out 2009. It appears that regardless of the outcome of Lance vs Alberto, there will be a rematch. There was a story yesterday that Alberto Contador will be joining a new Spanish team in 2010. This team is being developed by Contador's buddy Fernando Alonso, the F1 Racing Champion. Much more exciting, it appears that Lance will be back in 2010 as well, as there is lots of noise about him creating his own team, tentatively called Livestrong-Nike, in 2010. The financial difficulties of Team Astana, as well as the return of Alexander Vinokourov later this fall, will probably mean that most of the current Team Astana will move on in 2010. Interestingly, Johan Bruyneel will probably join Lance on the new squad. Guess we know where his loyalties lie...
I will actually try to start doing some daily recaps with all of next week's big stages. Hopefully the fireworks will start soon, since this year's Tour has been rather lackluster, despite Lance's return and the Astana soap opera.
The rest of Bikey comes later on!
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