With rain falling at the TT in Albi, strategy is going to play a very important role.  Tyler Hamilton told me after the 2003 Tour de France that the final TT, where he jumped from seventh to fourth overall was all about strategy.  First off, the course was a point-to-point, and with a strong tailwind blowing all the way from the start to the finish it would mean that the overall time each rider spent on course would be less.  This being the case, even though Tyler was faster than some of the riders ahead of him, with the faster overall times there was a possibility that he would not be on course long enough to gain back much time.   Also, with rain coming down, taking a risk could lead to a crash.

Because the first half of the course was flat and fast, and the second half was tricky and technical, Tyler decided to race as hard as he could when there was less risk and back off when the course became more technical.  His decisions paid off, though he just missed a podium place.

Lance Armstrong and his director used different tactics.  To implement their plan, they would designate one rider who started much earlier than the Texas Tornado to ride the course flat out.  This rider would radio back any tricky sections or sections demanding more attention insuring that Lance could give maximum possible effort at all times.

Of course, all the riders preview the course weeks or months in advance and then usually ride the route the morning of the TT just to make sure they know what is coming.  Michael Rasmussen admitted that he did not preview the final TT course in the 2005 Tour.  His multiple crashes and slide from, second to seventh place were the result.  You can be assured he will not make that mistake again.

So what happened in Albi?  Vino proved that he is a warrior.  He is still in the show!  Evans impressed me the most, as I said in an earlier blog, this is a man on a mission!  And, the Chicken showed that he can limit his losses when it counts.  It is going to be a battle royale in the Pyrenees.

Ever Upward,

Bruce

Undoubtedly, the best news for us Americans following the stage in Marseilles was that Team CSC rider Dave Zabriskie was no longer the lantern rouge. No one deliberately competes for the honor of being in last place at the Tour, but this event is so difficult and requires such a superhuman effort just to finish that there is no shame in being at the bottom of the standings. In fact, most riders inherit the lantern rouge on the basis that riders below them in the standings drop out of the race!

Obviously, it is the intention of every rider to bring their A game to the Tour. But for some, it just doesn't work out. Look at heavy pre-race favorite Alexandre Vinokourov. Did everyone else see the bandage on his right knee that was dripping puss and blood? It has been five days since his now infamous crash outside Bourg-en-Bresse, but his wounds are still oozing an incredible amount of fluid. One can only imagine how serious those cuts on his knees are, but clearly, they were a major reason for his failure in the Alps. However, when you carry the weight of the whole Kazakh nation on your shoulders, it is not easy to give up! Thanks Borat!

Getting back to Zabriskie, I haven't had a chance to talk to Dave yet, but I am guessing that his heavy pre-Tour racing schedule is at the root of his problems. Remember that he rode the Giro d'Italia, Italy's three-week national tour, in May and it was an exceptionally tough course. Zabriskie followed that up a few weeks later with the Dauphine Libere and its week-long pilgrimage through the French Alps. Dave was climbing like an angel on the hardest stages. He was on the bubble for making the Team CSC Tour squad; his performance at the Dauphine sealed the deal.

As I said earlier, there is no shame in being lantern rouge at the Tour. Having said that, I hope Dave rights his ship and rides well in the two time trials and the Pyrenees. He's a class rider clearly capable of being at the front when it gets tough. I hope we all get to see that before we reach Paris.

Well, as I write these words Dave Zabriskie has withdrawn from the Tour. I was really hoping that he would somehow recover and show us what I know he is capable of, but as we have seen since the beginning, the Tour is a harsh mistress and gives very few gifts. I'll miss you Z-man!

Ever Upward,

Bruce

PS: There is nothing worse at the Tour than losing time on the flats. It was heartbreaking to see Christophe Moreau and his teammates trying to bring themselves back to the main peloton, but losing time all the way to the line. Team Astana seemed to be providing a lot of horsepower to keep Moreau from regaining the group. Clearly, they had a lot to gain with Kloden just behind Moreau on GC. However, it might also have been a little payback for Vino losing time when he crashed. Moreau may have lost the Tour today!

As the Tour leaves the Alps, let's take a look at who's hot and who's not.

Michael Rasmussen is molten. The Chicken, as he is known, has almost a three-minute lead thanks mostly to some very aggressive riding on the stage to Tignes. It was so refreshing to see one of the favorites attack with three big climbs remaining. Such attacks can pay big, but if you blow up, your Tour can be over just like that. Rasmussen's days in yellow are well-deserved.

In the Armstrong/Ullrich years, the Chicken's time trialing skills would have spelled defeat as both Lance and Jan were incredibly strong against the watch and could literally destroy their competition. However, this year's field does not include an overall contender with a certified TT pedigree, so the Chicken is looking good in Vegas.

Alejandro Valverde is probably the biggest threat. In April, Ivan Basso told me that he was impressed with Valverde's improvement in his TT times, making him a bonafide contender. Don't count Levi out just yet. Save for Rasmussen, he is only one minute behind his rivals and if he can uncork some fast rides against the watch he could win. I am also pulling for

Cadel Evans. He attacking in the mountains says he is here to win. The Aussie is capable of riding a fast TT--witness his win in the 2006 Tour of Romandie.

One interesting aspect of this Tour is that there is so much parity that if one rider, like the Chicken, is able to put everything together and have the ride of his life, that might just be good enough to win in Paris. Personally, I just love seeing contenders like Rasmussen, Moreau and Evans attacking and doing so when failure could exact a huge price.

I would love to hear what everyone else is thinking!

Ever Upward,

Bruce

ps - it is great to see Rasmussen doing so well. Last year after the Tour

he crashed heavily and broke his hip so badly that his career was in doubt.

When I caught up with him at the Tour of California in February, he had really

just started training for real and was nursing a horrible head cold. Clearly,

he was not enjoying his time on the bike. My guess is that has all changed!

OK. So the mountains have finally revealed the true contenders for the Tour. Kudos to Michael Rasmussen for a cracking ride, but props as well to Christophe Moreau for attacking the favorites over and over on the final climb to Tignes. But, for me the biggest news is that the Cormet de Roselend has claimed more victims.

It's a bit of a personal thing between me and the Cormet. The descent of its east side is a 4,000-foot, twisty, technical affair with many treacherous hairpins. Years ago, I almost came to grief on one of its "lancets", as the French call them when the road narrowed abruptly and veered sharply to the left. I could lie and tell you that my awesome downhill prowess saved my butt, but in reality it was plain old luck. While he was still a rider, current Discovery Channel Team Director Johan Bruyneel crashed heavily in exactly the same spot going over the side and down the embankment. Today, that turn claimed two more victims.

Aussie and Team T-Mobile rider Michael Rogers came to grief on the Cormet. What makes the crash even more ironic is that he was in the lead breakaway at the time. As the designated team leader for T-Mobile, this was the first major move of the Tour and his move should have been rewarded for its aggressiveness. Instead, the Tour is over for the three-time World Time Trial Champion. What a turn of fortunes for Team T-Mobile. One day you have a stage win, the team prize and the yellow jersey. The next day, your team leader is heading home.

Fellow Aussie, Stuart O'Grady came a cropper on the Cormet as well. It's been a rough Tour for the gritty Team CSC rider. His win this spring in Paris-Roubaix was the highlight of his career. Now he, like Michael Rogers, must deal with the lowest of lows in cycling: leaving the Tour de France.

Never Downward,

Bruce

P.S.: Crashing sucks!

All of Belgium can heave a collective sigh of relief. Tom Boonen has finally won a stage! After watching his chief rivalsand even a teammatebeat him to the line, it was looking like Groundhog Day for Belgium's most popular rider. In 2006, Boonen was wearing the rainbow jersey of World Champion and while he rode well in the spring classics, winning the Tour of Flanders for a second time, he just couldn't not find his high gear in France. It was a huge disappointment made even

more so by the rainbow jersey on his shoulders.

I first met Tom in 2002 when he was a virtually unknown 21-year-old, first-year pro racing for Lance Armstrong's U.S. Postal Squad. I was in the San Francisco airport heading over to the spring classics and looked up to see a rider adorned in USPS team sweats waiting in line next to me for a flight to Belgium. Boonen was the only guy on the squad I didn't know so it was pretty easy to get the name right. We spent 14 hours together making our way to his home country--unfortunately, there are no direct flights from San Francisco to Belgium.

Just at the start of his professional cycling career, Tom had so much energy and excitement like a kid at his first Christmas. He was a refreshing change from the battle-hardened veterans and I could see that there was definitely a fire down below. I was so convinced that Tom would do well in that year's classics that I phoned my editors at Cycle Sport magazine in London and pleaded with them to let me do an article on Tom. They, and everybody else, had never heard of him so they politely refused.

After three phone calls in three days, they finally relented and I was given the assignment to do a 1-page intro piece. Tom and I hooked up the day before Paris-Roubaix. That same excitement was still there so much so that Tom told me he had awoken that day and started putting on his racing kit only to be told by his roommate that the race was tomorrow.

Of course, the rest is history. Tom went on to finish third in the race and a superstar was born. My piece never made the magazine. Once my editors realized what they had, they assigned a Belgian journalist to do a full feature reasoning that a fellow countryman could get the best out of this up and coming rider. So it goes!

Ever Upwards,

Bruce

It is at about this time in the Tour that the Team Time Trial(TTT) makes its appearance. But not this year.  Is anyone else disappointed that there is no TTT in this edition of the Tour? I love that event. The TTT is a combination of speed and grace--and not necessarily in that order. You have to be smooth first, then the speed will follow. Watching Lance Armstrong and his Blue Train rocketing across the French countryside at 35-plus mph was poetry in motion.

Another reason I love the TTT is that it forces teams in contention for the overall to bring a balanced squad. To be sure, it is nice to have 120-pound mountain goats to protect your leader when the road tilts upward, but if you don't bring a few bigger guys, you can lose the jersey when you least expect it; just ask Floyd Landis and his Team Phonak when the 2006 Tour left the Pyrenees and headed across the flats to the Alps.  Yes, Floyd and his team decided not to chase that now famous breakaway, but without the help of the sprinter's teams it meant a golden day for Oscar Periero.

Given the thoroughbreads on Team CSC, if they had held the TTT this year, undoubtedly the result would have been Fabian Cancellara padding his lead, but what a sight to behold! It is not clear why the Tour organizers omitted the TTT from this year's schedule. Let's hope that this does not become a regular ocurrence.

Ever upward,

Bruce

When 2007 Paris-Roubaix winnner, Stuart O'Grady, crashed into a barrier during the Tour prologue on Saturday, he quickly got back on the bike and continued like nothing happened.  Here's hoping that he is 100 percent, but that is only something "Stuey" knows for sure.

Crashing is a part of bike racing, but in a three week race it takes on a greater importance.  In a race like the Tour, a rider needs to feel good on the bike every day.  Sure, there are times when you can hide out in the pack, but at the current speeds of the peloton, those times are few and far between.  And when the Tour enters the mountains, there is no place to hide.

This makes rest and recovery vitally important and if you aren't able to sleep at night you just cannot recover.  Road rash means sticky sheets.  Bumps and bruises means a potentially compromised sleeping position.  General aches and pains can easily cause insomnia.

Then there is the fact that while the body attempts to heal itself it is robbing energy, the same energy a rider needs to pedal his bike.  Former Discovery Channel and current T-Mobile rider Michael Barry crashed so heavily in the 2002 Tour of Spain that he had road rash over half of his body.  Though he wanted to continue he had to aboandon the race.  Michael slept 14 hours a day for the next three weeks as his body made the necessary repairs!

So, whether you are a rider like O'Grady who is counted on to support his team leaders and possibly win from a small breakaway on a flatter stage or one of the favorites, crashing at the Tour can never be viewed as a minor inconvenience.  A friend of mine rode eight Tours and only one of those Tours was crash-free.  Safe travels for the peloton!

Ever Upward,

Bruce

Several days ago, the Tour de France organizers announced that for the first time in the history of the Tour, the race number 1 will not be issued. The number 1 is usually reserved for last year's winner, but if that rider is not competing the number goes to the winner's team (Discovery Channel had it in 2006 as Lance won in 2005). Second-place finisher, Oscar Periero's Casse d'Epargne team will get numbers 11-19, but no team will ride numbers 1-9.

Of course, this is due to the fact that the actual winner of the 2006 Tour is still not determined since Floyd Landis returned a positive result for testosterone. Yes, doping continues to grab the headlines in pro cycling and with each new positive result or rider admission, it seems more and more like pro cycling is WWF on bicycles.

I have been covering professional cycling for 20 years, including my first Tour de France way back in 1988 and I am not going to abandon the sport I both love to participate in and love to report about. Eddy Mercxk once said, "on the bike, there is always suffering." But, cycling is more complex than that. I think back to all the great duels over the years, Coppi and Bartali whose struggles united a post-war Italy; Anquetil and Poulidor, who proved to us all that you didn't have to be a winner (Poulidor was known as the "Eternal Second") to be adored by the fans; Merckx and Ocana demonstrating that even the seemingly invincible could be beaten; Lemond and Fignon showing the true character of the first American to win the Tour and Armstrong and Ullrich proving that even rivals can be friends.

Me, I am looking past the doping for this year's Tour. Can Vinokourov keep his enthusiasm in his shorts and ride a tactically superior race or will he take off like a banshee on the first mountain stage, blow like a top and ruin his chances? Will Levi finally ride a consistently good Tour and climb onto the podium continuing the American dominance? Will Valverde finally live up to all the expectations? Frankly, I don't know what's going to happen and that's what makes it so interesting to watch it all unfold.

Cool!

Ever upward,

Bruce