The Tour Begins

Prologue Recap

This weekend's British launch of the Tour de France has to have made Tour organizers happy. London embraced the Tour with incredible crowds. Racing the prologue through central London past many of the famous sites resulted in huge crowds. The television coverage showed wall to wall people along the entire route. Because it was a slightly longer route than past prologue courses have used, it is clear that the British certainly have not turned their backs on the sport especially since Great Britain really is not a great cycling hotbed. Although there have been some great British cyclists the country's laws and sporting culture have not fostered a long term relationship with the sport.

Team CSC's Fabien Cancellara showed why he is the world champion in the time trial. His dominating performance was the ride of the day. To win by more than thirteen seconds is really impressive. My toddler and I sat down to watch the coverage off the DVR and he stood and screamed at the television "Go, Go, Go" which is exactly what the Swiss rider did.

As I had predicted last week, however, the prologue's length resulted in the unfortunate outcome that none of the sprint favorites will likely be able to wear the yellow jersey this first week. The time gaps are just too large as a result of the fact that the prologue took most of the riders nine and a half minutes to complete. A shorter prologue results in smaller time gaps leaving sprinters within shouting distance of the lead as the time bonuses available on flat stages can catapult a sprinter into yellow. However, all of the favorite sprinters, Milram's Erik Zabel, Credit Agricole's Thor Hushovd, Predictor-Lotto's Robbie McEwen, Quik.Step's Boonen and Rabobank's Oscar Freire, lost more than forty seconds to Team CSC' Cancellara. Even with twenty second time bonuses available to stage winners on flat stages, for a sprinter to wear yellow this week they will have to likely win three or more stages to close the gap to the leaders. That is unlikely to happen.

Team CSC will likely be somewhat motivated to keep and defend Cancellara's jersey this week. While Carlos Sastre is the team's leader, the doping news regarding team manager Bjarne Riis has clearly had an impact on the team and has caused Riis to stay away from the Tour. The team seems to have its sponsor's support, having only lost one secondary sponsor but naming a new important sponsor just before the Tour. CSC is a well disciplined team and knows what it needs to do to make sponsors happy and that is lead. I would expect Cancellara to be in yellow until the race hits the mountains.

Stage 1 Recap

Sunday's crowds for Stage 1 finishing in Canterbury were just as large and as impressive as Saturday in London. However, the amazing event of Sunday was Predictor-Lotto's Robbie McEwen who came from nowhere to win. McEwen had been involved in a crash about 20km from the end. His team dropped back and raced him back to the group with about three miles to go. McEwen did an incredible job getting through the peleton, getting to the front, and timing his sprint for the win. He won by a big margin.

Now, I am not a big McEwen fan but you have to give him a tip of the hat for today's performance. He did not panic, his team worked him back to the front and he positioned himself perfectly.

The tactics of Quick.Step, Lampre and Milram have to be questioned though. All three teams were at the front setting up the train over the last 10km for their sprinters: Boonen, Benatti and Zabel. However, their speed was not high enough. The basic physics of cyling dictate that if the peleton is moving along fast enough at the end, anyone dropped in the closing kilometers just cannot get back on. Although the three teams were cooperating to some degree at the closing setting up the trains for their leaders, the peleton was not strung out in the long single file line that you used to see for Mario Cippolini in his days at Saeco. The peleton was strung out but clearly was not moving along fast enough to keep McEwen from getting back on and getting to the front and then getting around the lead out men for those teams. Really smart riding by McEwen and his team. Really dumb riding by the others.

Tour Ephemera

Somethings you may have missed:

Discovery Channel is wearing green accented team kit to highlight its environmental program.

ESPN.com's Jim Caple gives you an irreverant explaination of why the Tour is still cool and relevant. Like Caple, I am debating whether it is time to buy a Slingbox so I can watch the last week of the Tour while I am in New York from my laptop.

Pezcyclingnews.com has an interview with Anthony Pope, the man behind ProCycling Magazine's Plastic Peleton People cartoons depicting cycling events with Playmobil people.

Lance Armstrong has released a strong and detailed rebuke of David Walsh's latest doping book.