It is my favorite time of year, the only reason we have DirectTV, the only sporting event I care about…yup, the Tour is here. The 2009 Tour de France started on Saturday and it has already been a great race. Usually the first week is “boring” compared to the second two weeks, but this year it has been quite exciting.
The prologue was an individual time trial set in Monaco, which the Swiss rider and best time trial rider in the world, Fabian Cancellara won. This put him into the yellow jersey, which signifies the overall race leader.
There are two other jerseys of significance, the green jersey which the best sprinter wears and the polka dot jersey which is worn by the “king of the mountains”, the best climber. There is actually a fourth jersey, a white one for the best young rider. The green jersey is currently on the shoulders of a British cyclist from the Isle of Man (I had to look that up but it is an island territory of Great Britain sort of like GB’s version of Puerto Rico), Mark Cavendish who won the second and third stages in group sprints. There have not been any significant climbs in the tour yet so the polka dot jersey doesn’t really matter yet.
Yesterday was a very exciting stage as it was the team time trial (TTT). They brought the TTT back this year after a four-year hiatus from the tour (interestingly when Lance retired, they removed the TTT and both he and the TTT are back this year.) Team Astana, which is actually a team from Kazakhstan but has the two most famous American riders, Lance Armstrong and Levi Leipheimer, won the TTT by a margin large enough that it ties Lance for first place but Cancellara still wears yellow by a fraction of a second.
Team Astana was formed around rider Alexander Vinokourov who was caught doping in 2008 and following the major doping scandal, new management and many new team members were brought in. The new (and current) manager is Lances’ long-time coach, Johan Bruyneel who coached the U.S. Postal and Discovery teams, which Lance raced for during his seven-year reign of the Tour. When Lance decided to return to pro cycling, he called Johan and said he would ride for free as he wants to raise cancer awareness with his return to the sport.
While I don’t necessarily want to be a Lance Armstrong fan, I cannot deny that his return from retirement has brought excitement back to cycling and the tour and I find myself much more engaged and interested in all of the riders than I did last year. I think his presence gives you a place to focus and then I am able to branch out from there and follow other teams and riders. Last year there was never any focus since I wasn’t following one rider or team and I lost interest in the race (I was also extrordinarly busy last summer.)
There are two American teams, Garmin – Slipstream and Team Columbia – High Road. Mark Cavendish (remember, best sprinter who wears the green jersey) rides for Team Columbia – High Road so they have been pretty successful this tour with two stage wins already. They did not do as well as they were expecting in the TTT. Another famous American cyclist, George Hincapie rides on that team. Garmin – Slipstream has an up-and-coming American sprinter who I expect to see many wins from in the future, Tyler Farrar, but besides putting in a good TTT they have not been as visible in the tour as Astana and Columbia. All of the teams are multinational and have riders from any number of countries.
I am realizing I could go on and on about the tour but I should probably wrap it up and then call it a night.
A quick recap through stage 5. Lance was 10th after the opening prologue. Due to the cross winds on the roads in the south of France, a split occurred in the peloton on day 3 of which Lance was the only GC contender (the guys who have a chance to win the race, there are really only 10-15 riders out of 180 who have the ability to do this) to make the front pack which gained time on the rest of the field. This moved him to second place, 40 seconds back from Cancellara. In the TTT, Astana finished 40 seconds faster than SaxoBank, the team that Cancellara rides for which brought Lance up to being virtually tied for the yellow jersey. Since Astana did so well in the TTT, there are five members of the team in the top 10 of the race. Lance is not the clear leader of Astana as they have four potential GC contenders. The leader will be decided when the tour heads into the mountains and the strongest rider can be established.
One other thing worth mentioning. On most of the flat stages, a group of riders charge ahead of the field in hopes of beating the peloton (main group of riders) to the finish line. They virtually always get caught by the peloton and waste their effort except that they get some good TV time for their sponsors and perhaps get their name announced for a few hours. Today, a Frenchman, Thomas Voeckler actually beat the main peloton to the finish line by mere seconds, it was very exciting! I love it when the breakaway group, or in this case, one member of the original breakaway stays away and wins the stage.
Okay really I am done talking about cycling for now though. More updates to come. Please post questions if you want to know more. I am addicted and am working on getting Belén hooked as well.
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