I won't jinx him, but...
I will say that things are looking very good for Lance Armstrong in his quest for a seventh consecutive tour victory, and first riding for team Discovery (the light blue just looks weird, but I digress):
The prologue, a short time trial to kick off each tour, usually does very little in the way of separating the top contenders. It's just too short a ride to create big time gaps. For instance, this year's prologue was only 11.8 miles, the purpose of which was to create tiny time gaps so that the yellow jersey can be awarded before Stage 1.
Things don't always go as planned. The yellow jersey was awarded, to a relatively unknown American named David Zabriskie, who posted the fastest average speed in a time trial ever, but he's not a contender for the general classification (GC, the overall standings). Lance, who is the favorite in the GC, finished second, just two seconds behind. Third place, Alexander Vinokourov (a GC contender), finished 53 seconds behind!!! That is a huge time gap between contenders over such a short distance. Jan Ulrich, widely considered the most talented rider in the sport and Lance's main competition, and the only other rider besides Lance to win a Tour (along with 5 runner-up finishes), finished 1:08 back. That's more than the amount by which Lance beat Jan in 2003 in the entire 2,100-mile race in 2003, when the margin was 1:01.
To make things worse, they send riders out one at a time at one-minute intervals, and because Jan was sent out right before Lance, Lance actually passed him on the road. You'll occasionally see this happen on longer time trials, when there is more of an opportunity to create large time gaps, but on such a short course, it has to be a demoralizing blow to Jan to be passed on the road.
So Lance sets out on his last Tour with nearly one minute or more on all of his main competitors on a day when no one expected separation of more than a few seconds. A minute isn't a huge lead for a race that spans three weeks and 2,100 miles, but with the form that Lance showed today, especially relative to his competition, and with the best team in the world supporting him, it's hard to see this Tour finishing any differently than it has the past six years, with Lance in yellow on the Champs Elysee.
The only thing that could top Lance's dominant performance would be a victory by Andy Roddick in tomorrow's Wimbledon final over two-time defending champion Roger Federer. Nothing against Federer, who really is amazing to watch, but I'm an unabashed Roddick fan, and I hope he notches the second Grand Slam championship of his career tomorrow. He almost did it in last year's Wimbledon final, but a rain stoppage killed his momentum as he was rolling Federer, and the Swiss machine came back with renewed focus and dominated the rest of the match. Time to bust out those 150-mph serves, Andy! You'll need 'em to take down the champ and finish the match looking like this:
The prologue, a short time trial to kick off each tour, usually does very little in the way of separating the top contenders. It's just too short a ride to create big time gaps. For instance, this year's prologue was only 11.8 miles, the purpose of which was to create tiny time gaps so that the yellow jersey can be awarded before Stage 1.
Things don't always go as planned. The yellow jersey was awarded, to a relatively unknown American named David Zabriskie, who posted the fastest average speed in a time trial ever, but he's not a contender for the general classification (GC, the overall standings). Lance, who is the favorite in the GC, finished second, just two seconds behind. Third place, Alexander Vinokourov (a GC contender), finished 53 seconds behind!!! That is a huge time gap between contenders over such a short distance. Jan Ulrich, widely considered the most talented rider in the sport and Lance's main competition, and the only other rider besides Lance to win a Tour (along with 5 runner-up finishes), finished 1:08 back. That's more than the amount by which Lance beat Jan in 2003 in the entire 2,100-mile race in 2003, when the margin was 1:01.
To make things worse, they send riders out one at a time at one-minute intervals, and because Jan was sent out right before Lance, Lance actually passed him on the road. You'll occasionally see this happen on longer time trials, when there is more of an opportunity to create large time gaps, but on such a short course, it has to be a demoralizing blow to Jan to be passed on the road.
So Lance sets out on his last Tour with nearly one minute or more on all of his main competitors on a day when no one expected separation of more than a few seconds. A minute isn't a huge lead for a race that spans three weeks and 2,100 miles, but with the form that Lance showed today, especially relative to his competition, and with the best team in the world supporting him, it's hard to see this Tour finishing any differently than it has the past six years, with Lance in yellow on the Champs Elysee.
The only thing that could top Lance's dominant performance would be a victory by Andy Roddick in tomorrow's Wimbledon final over two-time defending champion Roger Federer. Nothing against Federer, who really is amazing to watch, but I'm an unabashed Roddick fan, and I hope he notches the second Grand Slam championship of his career tomorrow. He almost did it in last year's Wimbledon final, but a rain stoppage killed his momentum as he was rolling Federer, and the Swiss machine came back with renewed focus and dominated the rest of the match. Time to bust out those 150-mph serves, Andy! You'll need 'em to take down the champ and finish the match looking like this:
posted by Chang Kim at Saturday, July 02, 2005
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