this space reserved for when Lance kicks the shit out of everybody in the race, fully humiliating them and proving his utter domination.
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this space reserved for when Lance kicks the shit out of everybody in the race, fully humiliating them and proving his utter domination.
Should be an amazing stage, but at this point it's seems like it has been a pretty easy ride for Lance. Unreal. You know in the back of his head he is thinking I could come back next year and kick ass again. It's too bad that he is retiring, he obviously has alot of racing left.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tap
Or he is thinking "15 years till the kids graduate, lay low, and come back and win this when Sheryl and I sell the house and take a vacation."Quote:
Originally Posted by Artie Fufkin
My prediction, Lance wins the 15th stage, the motivation:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/cyc...back_indurain/
Lance's former teammate from Motorola:
"The 24-year-old Casartelli was killed after the ascent to the Col de Portet d'Aspet, the first of the six climbs in the Pyrenees that the riders had to make on July 18. The cyclists were coming off a rest day, the second of two in the 20-stage grind, and the pace had been brisk. Minutes after beginning his descent Casartelli, traveling at about 55 mph, leaned into a curve and went down, causing a crash that brought down several riders. He fell headlong and fractured his skull. "
I'm not convinced Lance is going to retire.
yup. me neither.Quote:
Originally Posted by TeleAl
....but today, it could be GEORGIE!
GO HINCAPIE!
I love this stage.
Incredible effort by all the front runners.
2K to go and George is looking GOOOOOOD!!!!!
Hell yeah, George!
Hincapie Wins! Way to go George!
Edit: Now let's see if Lance can put some distance between him and Basso.
FKNA YES!!!!!!!!
HINCAPIE WINS!!!!!!!!!!
And it feels great to know you have ridden a race against a TDF stage winner.
and it is.......HINCAPIE!!!!!! FKNA!!!!
I only wish I got OLN. I'm stuck here refreshing the TdF page reading the News Flashes: http://www.letour.com/2005/TDF/LIVE/us/1500/index.html
Psyched for George, that was an awesome win. and I think Lance is definitely done.
That was fuckin' awesome. Worth waking up early(esque) to watch. Go George! Watching the end raised my heart rate.....on the couch no less! Intense.
So does George Hincampie re-jigger his training next year and become the Discovery captain for the TDF?
Edit - This just popped up on the CyclingNews website.
With a win of this magnitude, there's been idle chatter about Hincapie changing his focus to becoming a GC rider himself, but for the moment, George's shying away from talk of that nature. "I don't know... some people are whispering that, but I'm thinking about today, thinking about next week; it's going to be very hard and every team's looking to attack our team, so let's get through this Tour and see what happens," he said.
"I'm trying to deal with one thing right now - I just won the biggest race of my life! - let me think about this and other stuff later. You know, I've been working for Lance for a long time, and for him to say stuff like that is pretty amazing, and if they want to give me a shot, I'll do what I can. But like I said, I'm just so very excited about winning today and going to try and enjoy it as much as I can."
Check out the riders looking at him go down. That had to hurt.
http://velonews.com/images/details/8527.12005.f.jpg
I liked the shot when he was riding into the finish holding his head because he couldn't believe he was about to win the toughest fuckin' stage of the tour. Good show by George and GREAT racing. It was great to see Ullrich hanging in with the face of pain most of the way. Vinokourov and Rasmussen just keep finding ways to fight back into things.
great stage. happy for george, seems like a great guy.
yeah, so far it has seemed too easy for lance. you get the impression that during these mountain stages he is thinking, "Is this the best you guys got?"
I would love to see him come back next year.
What if Lance came back next year to support Hincapie - as a return for all of the support Hincapie has given him??!!??
Quote:
Originally Posted by spanky
I don't know if lance can be that type of rider.
No way, as loyal as hincapie has been, I don't think Lance could go out that way. I think he is done just as he has said all along.Quote:
Originally Posted by spanky
[QUOTE=Artie Fufkin]My prediction, Lance wins the 15th stage, the motivation:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/cyc...back_indurain/
Thanks for posting this link. I read all the articles on the site. The one I liked the most was the fashback article on LeMond and the 89 Tour. A great read. Printed its about 14 pages but well worth it if you like LeMond and the closest finish in race history. Also in the link you can replace 1999 for 2000 to get more stuff on the stages etc etc. Thanks again.
i missed the live broadcast this morning, damn hangover and the repeat wasn't till 6pm tonight. Now that i watched it as though i was seeing it for the first time, i gotta chime in and say
whoot, whoot YEAH GEORGE. Loved seeing him just sitting back there letting everyone do the work, because his team has the yellow, it was his right to do. Then smoking Oscar by 6 seconds in the last 100 meters. Just wow. He totally deserves it.
I thought Popovych was going to be the heir to Lance?
He is. The next few years look promising and if things play out there will be some great battles with Popo, Valverde, and Cunego.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crinkle
I just hope Disco does not sign Vino as is rumored for next year. The boy has never been a team player and I think would hurt the Disco team as look what it has done to T-Mob this year.
agreed, it was reported on OLN that Vino said he would only consider going to Discovery, that it was the only team he wanted to ride for. T-mobile is just too stacked this year. None of the 3 are going to agree to ride for the other, which is a shame. I think they could have contended with Lance by teaming up on him, doing different combination attacks, forcing Lance and Disco to crack on chasing them down too often.Quote:
Originally Posted by atomicboy
Vino has good cause to leave T-Mobile though. He gets a breakaway in Stage 14 and his own teammates lead the chase group back onto Vino's wheel. What the hell was that about?!?
So very psyched for Hincapie. Tough stage for him and a great win. I kept thinking Lance would catch up and George would be in great position to help Lance on, but I'm glad things played out the way they did.
I was a little perplexed about that after Stage 14, but after reading some articles and comments, it appears that was their "strategy", Vino attacked and for some reason they thought others would follow, but why would they as Vino was not a GC threat anymore. When no one attacked Ulrich and Kloden amped up the tempo and pased Vino, they did succeed in breaking up Disco.Quote:
Originally Posted by snow_slider
In stage 15 Vino getting water bottles for Jan and chatting with him, and at one point it looked Jan said something to him and he shot up the road. They looked like teammates yesterday. His talents might be better served on another team.
T-Mobile's director just does not know how to win in modern cycling. He has an old-school mentality, and relies too much on talent alone. He is a shitty coach and tactician. Notice Ullrichs best TDF since he won in 1997 was the year he rode for Bianchi, not T-Mobile/Telekom.Quote:
Originally Posted by snow_slider
Agree....when are T-Mobile going to sack Walter Godefroot? They have the largest payroll in the sport but YTD have produced squat. T-Mobile needs to look in the mirror after this season and make some tough decisions. They need to start with the management.Quote:
Originally Posted by Plakespear
speaking of which WTF?
T Mobile conceded the Yelow jersey battle is over, but are still determined to fight for a podium spot. Their website tonight reporting
Afterwards, T-Mobile team manager Walter Godefroot, who is happy about the team´s number one position in the team points competition, commented, "we must accept that in this Tour there are riders that are stronger than us. But, I´m not the type to be disappointed. We tried everything today and yesterday. And that was exactly our goal."
Read between the lines....We have great riders but our tactics suck and I have no idea what I am doing.
I had high hopes for this Tour to be close and that is not the case except for spots 3-5.
I forgot to post these quotes from Chris Horner after Saturday's stage....at least he tells it like it is.
Now a few words on T-Mobile's strategy yesterday. Was that a strategy? I mean, what are they doing? Okay, I could see the tactic of driving it into the climb; evidently, it worked and Armstrong was without team-mates, so you could see that tactic work. But when Vinokourov's attacking, why are you pulling your own team-mate back?
And it's not just T-Mobile; look at the rest of the guys... 101 Tactics: you never, never, never pull the race leader around; the fact of the matter is that they pulled the best climber in the world on the mountains and let him destroy them at the finish.
AtomicBoy beat me to it by a scant few seconds.
All that matters is that Big George got a TdF stage win. That's so fucking cool.
all i can say is "wow". been in chicago last few days, so Tivo'ed all the crucial mtn stages, thur - sunday, and watched them all last night. man, i went to extreme lengths over the w/e to craete the TdF media black-out. anyway, i was going bonkers in my living room last night. awesome couple days of racing.
so stoked for big george - after missing the win at Paris-Roubaix by a chin, to win the hardest stage of the 2005 TdF is just amazing...so cool.
race is over (was Fri/Sat really, when LA easily covered all the attacks from T-Mob boys and Baso) and LA set to go out w/7. Lets hope Disco make big george their guy next yr, otherwise, he will sign w/someone else nxt yr as their GC guy....
Basso in 2006. Called it.
I think Lance's 7th is secure, hopefully will see some action this week in the fight for 2nd and 3rd. Here is a good Jan interview from Velonews:Quote:
Originally Posted by freshies
http://velonews.com/tour2005/news/articles/8543.0.html
From the article:
"My aim now has to be the podium. I can't expect to do any better, but even then it won't be easy overtaking Michael Rasmussen. He's been the revelation of the Tour so far."
Rasmussen, who is wearing the race's polka dot jersey for the race's best climber, has more or less secured the jersey ahead of Tuesday's 16th stage, which is the last of three days in the Pyrenees.
Ullrich may decide it will be his last chance to attack - but whom he attacks, and when he does it will be interesting to see.
If he does, Armstrong could decide to let the German go - although he won't get far if Armstrong, and especially Basso or Rasmussen, smell danger. "
Hopefully we will get some fireworks from Jan over the next couple days.
If he can keep away from injury and get a stronger team to support him, then yes.Quote:
Originally Posted by bagtagley