Ho Hum

It has taken 2 weeks of racing for the action to hot up - or more specifically for Astana to pull its collective finger out, do what everyone expected, take the Tour by the scruff of the neck, and claim it as its own.
No more shadow boxing and letting AG2R La Mondiale have the yellow. Everyone knew they were Astana’s puppet – we were just waiting for when the puppet would be discarded.
Maybe we should just go straight to Annecy and have just Armstrong, Contador and Cancellara (only for pure spectator enjoyment) go round and then to Montelimar to climb Mont Ventoux. We’ve been waiting 2 weeks for those days to come around. As exciting as it is there is little spark in the Thor v Mark green jersey race, and does anyone know who wears the dots? No neither do i.
The TTT although the best spectacle in world cycling (and so say all of me) has really made this years Tour a bit of a farce and I doubt we will see it back in the next millennium. You know your interest is waning from the Tour when the Tour of Qinghai Lake is looking interesting…..

Astana. Bull. Horns.

So the TTT is over, and as the smoke clears the devastation is plain to see. I have a strange feeling of de ja vu - memories of the same turquoise armada eating up the Spanish countryside, albeit led by faces we'd all rather forget.

BUT
What? (I hear you say - There are no buts) - but here it is. The tour suffers the same disease as the world cup final. I've said it before, but at the tour there is too much to loose. Riders risk their whole season to hit the top 10 in France in the summertime. Attack and hit the red zone? No thanks. This tends to make for defensive racing, especially from the leaders. Witness Menchov at the Giro - all he had to do was follow. Astana? How can they play the next 2+ weeks?

In my book the TTT was the best thing that could possibly happen to Evans, Sastre, the Schlecks and Denis. Now, they have nothing to loose. There is a bat's chance in hell that they will put 2 minutes into Contador in the hills, and if he falters there is always Levi, Lance, Kloden... No, these guys have to attack and attack hard.

My hope? That they quickly realise their predicament and start making friends. A marriage of convenience between Menchov and Evans? Astana letting Sastre run up the slopes for a bit? The best (and worst) days at the tour are born out of desperation, and after stage 4 there is plenty of that to go around.

It will only get better from here.

Saxo (laughing all the way to the) Bank

The lead up to the Tour is usually just as interesting as the race itself.

The one year it looks, as if Cadel might have had a team that could be within a 50km radius of him over the 3 weeks was dealt a blow with the news of Dekker testing positive for blood booster EPO. Apparently, though not all is lost they have 11 on the roster for the 9-man team and now it is whittled down to 10 – based on the previous Belgian decisions MIT won’t be surprised if the 10th is a man named Tyler.

In camp Saxo, Bjarne seems to have been preparing the team by watching re-runs of Seinfeld or The Comedy Company. Replying to the news that stage 10 & 13 will be “radio- free”, Voigt has suggested helmet free days or two days without cables in the brakes. Maybe not champagne comedy but a good try by Jens, his boss though has a slightly different sense of humour – thinking if the potential for unrest and conflict within the Astana squad does occur then he believes “it’ll be fun to watch”. We all do miss T-Mobile don’t we….