Wow… this Tour de France has been the best one so far. From Simon Gerrans winning Stage 15 to Carlos Sastre’s solo effort up the L’Alpe-d’Huez to snatch the Maillot jaune (Yellow Jersey) from his team mate Fränk Schleck but also get a significant time gap from Australia’s Cadel Evans.
The opinions expressed below are my own and may not be correct. I tried.
The most exciting stage of the Tour was the time trial. I was watching it live with friends who work at CSC and we were all torn between cheering for Cadel or for Carlos. To put it plainly, we would’ve been happy either way. While it was sad to see Cadel come 2nd two years in a row, I’m sure next with and a supportive team Cadel can get a 1st place.
I can’t understand why Silence-Lotto got rid of Chris Horner, the only rider who seemed to help Cadel in the mountains, replace him with Yaroslav Popovych who had a bad tour this year. In all the stages Cadel needed help Popovych was way behind and then Popovych breaks away one day with a few other riders and clearly got burnt out and couldn’t help Cadel the day after. I’m pretty sure Popovych was hired to help Cadel in the mountains, a job which he failed to do. Oh well.
With no team mates helping Cadel and no one else willing to help him chase Team CSC Saxo Bank, Cadel was doing so much work. This and his crash made his time trial not as succesful as it could’ve been. While Carlos was looking smooth and rolling in a nice gear Cadel seemed to be all over his machine grinding at the high gears. Maybe this tactic wasn’t so great. Anyway, onto positive stuff.
Congratulations to Carlos Sastre, Kurt-Asle Arvesen, Fabian Cancellara, Volodymir Gustov, Stuart O’Grady, Andy Schleck, Fränk Schleck, Nicki Sorensen, Jens Voigt, Kim Andersen, Lars Michaelsen, Bjarne Riis, Torsten Schmidt, Dan Frost Scott Sunderland and other members of Team CSC Saxo Bank. Maillot jaune, Maillot blanc and Best team - all wonderful achievements. Another shout-out goes to all the Australians in Le Tour 2008. You’ve done our nation proud.
On a final note, I was glad to see that there were hardly any dopers in this years tour. Ricco you are a fool.
Viva le Tour!