Tour de France: Jambon Preview
By Locutus
Date: 6/29/2005
Tour de France: Jambon Preview
Ah, yes, it's that time of year again. Time when the legs are shaven and the rides are long and the sun sucks the strength right out of your body. It's summertime, and that means that the world's greatest cyclists are gathering in the land of the Gauls to punish each other for more than three long weeks. Throughout the race I'll be working the tickers and sizing up the hams with my daily Jambon Report. Anything can happen in the race: sickness, accidents, crazy fans, all have had an impact on this race in the past. Why, it is sheer folly to attempt to predict who will prevail with so much uncertainty pervading the future. So here's my annual folly-fest, where I size up the GC contenders and place my bets on who will be at the front on the Champs. Feel free to laugh when I'm proven wrong.
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION: THE TOP TEN
"Grandpa" Lance Armstrong (Discovery Channel). The way some people are talking about Lance, you'd think that he needs a walker just to get from the bed to his bike. Age and that little crash last week won't slow old Gramps down a bit. The geriatric wonder, who is approaching a doddering 34 years of age, will reach down into his back pocket and bust out that big can of Texas Whupass one more time to show the young whipper-snappers what is what. He will miss the injured Ekimov in the team time trial and (more importantly) near the finish of the flat stages: Eki and big George Hincapie have been able to put the hammer down and rival the sprinters' leadout trains for the past few years, and that has kept Lance out of a lot of trouble. And who can forget what Eki and George did to those little climbers on the cobbles last year? But the Discovery Channel team is still insanely strong, and Lance is a rider with no weaknesses (time trialing, climbing, descending, power-riding on the flats, flying over cobblestones… he is a master of it all). He may be getting a bit long in the tooth, but he's still Lance. And that means that he's still better than anyone else at riding a bike.
Jan "U-Boat" Ullrich (T-Mobile). Anyone who saw the complete butt-kicking that Ullrich gave the field in the 1997 Tour de France knows what this man is capable of. And he's a better rider now: his time trialing is stronger, his descending is vastly improved, and he's still got a big motor in the mountains. The big question is, how much time will he lose to Lance on the first uphill finish? Every time Jan has faced Lance in the Tour, Lance has gained huge chunks of time on the first uphill finish. Jan takes a while to get that mountain motor going, and Lance has always used that opening to bury the big German. So if Jan wants to win, he's going to have to be ready to climb from the get go. And from the looks of that anchor he was dragging around the mountains at the Tour de Suisse, I doubt he'll be ready. If he is, strap it on people: it will be a war that we'll be talking about forever.
Levi "Button Fly" Leipheimer (Gerolsteiner). Levi has been a solid GC rider over the past few years of the Tour (not counting when he crashed out in 2003) turning in top ten finishes, and this year he has really stepped it up a notch. As he showed in the Dauphiné Libéré a few weeks ago, his time trialing is stronger and his climbing has more pop than in the past. He's always been a rider to get stronger as the race gets longer, and with quality men like Georg Totschnig, Fabian Wegmann, and Beat Zberg working with him in the mountains, I'm betting that he's really going to pull one out of the hat.
Santiago "The Battler" Botero (Phonak). After two miserable years with the pinkos of T-Mobile, Botero has once again found his form in green: his victory in the Tour de Romandie and his 2nd in the Dauphiné shows that he is once again ready to threaten the top of the Tour de France. Botero has won mountain and time trial stages of the Tour in the past, and he finished in 4th on GC in 2002 with the Kelme squad. With Botero's all-around ability, he could easily climb higher if (big if) he's able to put together a solid three weeks of racing. The year he came in 4th, Botero lost around 15' on the climb of Mont Ventoux alone. If he can avoid a similar debacle this year, the sky is the limit for the talented Colombian. But I'm thinking he'll have one bad day, just enough to keep him off the podium.
Alexandre "The Great" Vinokourov (T-Mobile). He finished on the Tour podium in 2003, but he missed the race last year due to a crash in the Tour de Suisse. This year he looks to be on form again, as he rode a strong Dauphiné coming in 5th on GC and winning the stage that finished on Mont Ventoux. Sure, he'll be riding for Ullrich, but you can bet T-Mobile will send Vino out on his patented mountain attacks to put the pressure on the Disco boys. All the men I've put above him will take time from him in the time trials, but if he can make good on an attack or two in the mountains, he could once again threaten for a place on the podium.
"Pretty Boy" Floyd Landis (Phonak). Floyd has had at least one very bad day every year he's come to the Tour. Of course, it wasn't that noticeable before because he was riding for Lance. This year, as a protected rider, he will be less likely to suffer a really bad day. He is a strong climber and a stronger time trialist, but like his mate Botero, his biggest challenge will be consistency. If Floyd can put together three weeks like his monster rides in the Alps last year, he'll be a threat for a top placing. With the incredibly stiff competition in this year's race, I think he'll do a great job and make us Yanks proud by coming in the top six.
Ivan "Bello" Basso (CSC). Basso is an amazing talent who is coming into his prime. He was third in last year's Tour, but he didn't ride the Giro. This year, with all that Giro suffering already in