Tour de France: Stage 4

I’m really glad the Tour organizers decided to bring back the team time trial.  I’m especially glad they planned it on such a difficult course.  Bicycle crashes are awesome.  People normally don’t get hurt too badly, but they look crazy.  Today’s stage offered plenty of crashes amongst the hard riding throughout the stage.

The time trial allowed some real separation between the main competitors for the yellow jersey, even pushing some out of the picture (at least for now).  So, my pre-tour pick of Denis Menchov isn’t looking too good.  Let’s not speak of that again.

Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel seem unbeatable in the team time trial, winning the past four times the event has been contested.  I’m not sure if they train better for it, or if they just have a stronger team, but no other team seems able to compete with them in the team time trial.

Now that Lance is in within a second of yellow, we’ll start to get even more speculation about who the leader of Astana is.  It really won’t matter until Friday.

Now the Tour spends two flat days along the Mediterranean coast before climbing up to Andorra on Friday.  That’s when you’ll start to see who has a chance to win the yellow jersey.

Rider of the Day

Team Garmin (OK, it’s a team not a rider, but this was a day for the teams) rode a very impressive race, intentionally dropping some of their sprinters to finish with only 5 riders at the lead (the time for the whole team is the time of the 5th place rider).  They took a big risk in dropping riders early, but it really paid off as their strongest riders were able to keep up the pace throughout the course.  In the end, they were the only team that could compete with Astana.

Reasons I Love the Tour #4 - Time Trial Helmets

You don’t often see serious athletes looking so silly in pursuit of performance.  I understand the aero advantages of the “teardrop” helmets, but they look ridiculous.  I can’t help but laugh when I see riders wearing them.  It’s great for some comic relief.  Road Bike Action has a too-serious roundup of time trial helmets.