The Cycliste Moderne, August 19, 2005

Levi Flies

Levi Leipheimer won Thursday’s high mountain finish in the fourth stage of the Tour of Germany. The finish was on the Austrian climb up the Rettenbachferner, which is more than 2670 meters above sea level. That is the highest climb and finish of any race in Europe this year and Levi Leipheimer put the hurt on the peleton.

His Austrian teammate Georg Totschnig came in second, just fifteen seconds behind, but was disappointed by his inability to finish with Leipheimer. Leipheimer rode away from his teammate in the last two kilometers after the Gerolsteiner teammates had isolated T-Mobile’s Jan Ullrich and ridden him off their wheels. Leipheimer rode to put distance on Ullrich and recognized his teammate’s disappointment. However, Gerolsteiner as a team has to be very happy with the top two places on the stage and Leipheimer’s taking the lead in the general classification as well as the mountains classification.

Ullrich lost less than a minute to Leipheimer today and should be in good position for the 30km time trial later in the race to take the lead. However, it was a dominant day for the top three riders as they put distance on everyone else. The Tour of Germany will be won by either Leipheimer or Ullrich. None of the rest of the top ten can match their time trialing abilities.

Raisin Risin’

Young American Saul Raisin has had a relatively quite season for the French team Credit Agricole. Today he showed his potential by finishing two minutes and forty-six seconds back of Levi Leipheimer. That was good enough to move Raisin into the top ten in the Tour of Germany. Of the French teams, Credit Agricole has been one of the few to truly develop individual riders in a system that is helpful to English speakers.

Guidi Positive

In more bad news for Swiss team Phonak, Fabrizio Guidi had a positive doping test at the HEW Cyclassics earlier this month. Guidi’s positive is the latest in a string of doping cases for the Swiss team. With former world champion Oskar Camenzind, Tyler Hamilton and Santiago Perez all failing drug tests in the last year, Phonak’s ProTour status may again be in doubt. When the UCI denied Phonak its ProTour license last year as a result of the three positives during the season, Phonak was only able to compete after the Court of Arbitration for Sport ordered its inclusion subject to a shorter license period and a clear indication that the UCI could strip the team of its license in the event of additional positive tests.