A Few Races Have Happened

There have been a few pre Tour tune ups that have happened over the last few weeks.

Dauphine Libere

AG2R’s Christophe Moreau had one of the biggest victory of his career with his win during last week’s Dauphine Libere. It was his second victory in the important Tour de France warm up, which he also won in 2001. He showed tactical acumen that he has rarely shown in the past. With a win in the stage finishing on Mont Ventoux, Moreau seized the lead and held on for the win. While Astana had a good performance as a team winning four of the eight stages, Alexandre Vinokourov did not show the form you would have to believe he wanted to show for this important Tour warm up. Vinokourov lost significant time in the mountains

While it is important to do well at the Dauphine, past winners have maybe peaked too early and have had Tour let downs. Although Lance Armstrong had won the Dauphine in 2002 and 2003, it has long been believed that his Dauphine victory in 2003 took so much out of him, that it resulted in his smallest margin of victory of just over a minuite over Jan Ullrich in clearly his most difficult Tour victory.

Astana has to be considered one of the favorite teams for the Tour, however, Vinokourov has never had the pressure of racing as a favorite at the Tour. He has performed well in the Tour when he had the ability to be opportunistic. It will be shown whether he has mental strength to win the Tour as a team leader.

Tour de Suisse

The Tour de Suisse ended with a major victory for French-Spanish team Caisse d’Epargne with Vladimir Karpets showing good form in the mountains and in the time trials. Karpets also won the Tour de Catalunya a few weeks before and is a former Tour de France white jersey winner (2004). However, much like the Dauphine, winning the Tour de Suisse is not really a good indicator of potential for winning the Tour de France because winning the “Fourth Grand Tour” two weeks before Le Tour just requires too much effort to keep one’s top form for nearly six weeks and have a team which can successfully defend for the better part of thirty plus race days.

Eindhoven ProTour Team Time Trial

Sunday was also the ProTour Team Time Trial in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Originally created as a way to provide the ProTour with a team time trial to help teams prepare for the Tour de France, Tour organizers ASO torpedoed the significance of the event by elminating the team time trial from the Tour. While organizers of both the Giro and the Vuelta a Espana have both added team time trials to their events, without a eam time trial in the Tour the event is largely irrelevant and has been plagued by a lack of sponsor support and general interest. Most importantly, the race always goes past the Holiday Inn where I always stay when I am in Eindhoven. Note, I have not informed you that Team CSC won the race because, well, it just does not really matter. Most teams send the B Team and no one is going to remember who won this year.

New Stuff I Have Purchased

I bought another bike two weeks ago at my friend’s garage sale. I felt like I was taking advantage of him, but hey, if someone offers me their KHS track frame as well as HED disc wheel for one ridiciulously low price, I will go ahead and take a set of tubulars wheels and Continental tires too. My seven year old daughter expressed her concern as to whether I was spending too much money on bike stuff and not enough on food for our family. Of course she thinks, correctly so, that she probably ought to get the next new bike at our house. So I doubt she will complain when I buy her a new bike for her birthday.