Tour De France 2005

k9handler · 07-03-2005, 03:01 AM

I am aware that some of you are avid cyclist and fans of the Tour De France, so why not post your thoughts on this years event.
Yesterday the initial stage was quite a shock as the main contenders for the most part are already just about 1 minute back of Lance and Dave Zabriskie...damn the luck of the wind is what some will say.

I am lucky as this year the tour rolls through my training grounds so to speak when it travels through the southwestern portion of Germany on stages 7 and 8.

I am planning on taking a ride down for stage 7 and possibly take the 911 down to Pforzheim for stage 8.

Last year I missed the tour events as I was in Iraq, so this year I plan on making the most of it.

Joeaksa · 07-03-2005, 04:38 AM

Good start for Lance. Hope he keeps it up all the way to the end!

JoeA

einreb · 07-03-2005, 06:13 AM

Smitty, whats the tv coverage of the tour like over there? OLN does a good job here in the states now, but its lance dominated. 4 out of the top 6 yesterday were americans and all you hear about is lance losing by a couple seconds.

ol' 'one nut' couldn't have done any better than that 2nd place finish... absolutely perfect way to start the race witha great lead over the favorites and no jersey to defend. The way he spun by the 'flying sausage' was impressive.

-bernie

k9handler · 07-03-2005, 06:25 AM

well the coverage is about the best you can get with Eurosport and some of the German channels, but I end up watching the OLN coverage as it's in English. I have two satalite receivers but I don't enjoy pointing the dish to change over so my Armed Forces Network (AFN) decoder is what we use the most.
I agree that Lance get's the spotlight, but he deserves it....unlike the hot little indy chick who didn't win the big race!

CamB · CamB's Garage

We get Phil Ligget (sp?) and its still all Lance, all the time.

The reality is that it is everyone (especially T-Mobile and CSC) against Discovery (ie, Lance), and the commentary reflects that. I want someone else (Vinokourov would be nice) to win, purely because I think Lance's had his fair share.

If I was a betting man though, it'd be on Armstrong. Unless he has an unscheduled problem (injury, basically), or potentially is uncharacteristically poor in the mountains, it already doesn't look like anyone has the goods.

gatotom · 07-05-2005, 02:44 PM

k9........enjoy, you are a lucky dog for being in the same area as the tour.

myself, been following the tour since the 70's and yes, Lance has a very good chance of winning. He is kinda like Miguel Induran, who won it 5 times and retired. Migual had massive lungs and he had a very hi vo max rate. Lance has a super hi heart rate that he can sustain work load. In the prologue, or the first stage his heart rate was over 190 and he flat lined it at that rate for the 20 minutes he rode that time trial, most impressive, his resting rate is 36. Lance has a threshold rate of 206

Todays stage was pretty exciting, the team time trial. OLN is great coverage, all day long. Yrs ago you were lucky to get a hour here or there with other sports stuff.

turbo6bar · 07-05-2005, 02:53 PM

If I had legs this big, I'd be crying because my lungs are too small to power them.

k9handler · 07-06-2005, 08:05 AM

gatotom....I have also been a major cycling fan since the 80's. Indurain was a great athlete and is still one of my favorite, funny thing is most people really don't understand what makes these guys tick or the teamwork involved. Banesto and the Motorola/US Postal/Discovery teams have the coaching a makeup to win the tour year after year. CSC will be the next super squad from the looks of it.

911pcars · 07-06-2005, 11:14 AM

Daily video clips are at:

http://www.velonews.com/tour2005/

The lead-in promo led me to think that was it (what the ??), but wait a few seconds and the cycling comes on.

Sherwood

k9handler · 07-06-2005, 11:18 AM

I wish I lived in France as they have access to the tour via a live stream on the official site!

tcar · 07-06-2005, 12:04 PM

It's cool? to watch a bicycle race... done that.

Drive a couple hours, get there early to get a good spot. Wait couple hours.

45 seconds and its all over... all done... no more. TV is much better unless you just want to say "I was there".

k9handler · 07-06-2005, 12:42 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by tcar
It's cool? to watch a bicycle race... done that.

Drive a couple hours, get there early to get a good spot. Wait couple hours.

45 seconds and its all over... all done... no more. TV is much better unless you just want to say "I was there".

well for some it's more than that...not worth explaining since you "have the t-shirt" so to speak.

einreb · 01:01 PM

Who's the man now, Tom?!?!?!?! Robbie!

those sprinters have balls (no pun intended... ok, maybe a bit of a pun

)

Quote:

Originally posted by tcar
Drive a couple hours, get there early to get a good spot. Wait couple hours. 45 seconds and its all over... all done... no more.

No, more like you show up the day before, camp out... party hard, wake up, go for a ride, party hard, pass out, miss the race.

-bernie

lusso · 07-06-2005, 01:44 PM

Honestly,
Lance and the whole crew make me want to go out and ride. Absolutely incredible.
Dave

artplumber · 07-06-2005, 09:55 PM

Armstrong is clearly the favorite as others have said. I think that the competition is a lot closer to him than they have been in the past. T-Mobile is reformulated to win the tour now - probably will be Kloeden or Vinokourov as top dog rather than Ullrich. Don't forget that Basso stayed with Armstrong last year in the mountains and Basso's weakest area of time trialing is better than it was last year. Last year there were no "looks" and ride away from the field. Age catches up to everyone.
The best news from this year's tour is that there are a bunch of Americans potentially in contention including some really young blood. Hopefully, the good ol' USA won't forget the race once Armstrong is gone.

BTW Lance had even bigger legs before cancer - he was really a sprinter.

Eric Mckenna · 07-07-2005, 04:37 AM

Lance is a great rider.. but I don't like him..
- I like the old school bad asses! like KING KELLY! Sean that is Sean Kelly! he was an all-rounder.. not a Tour Boy! like Lance.. but hey that is just my .02 and I don't like Lances attitude he is a bit rude if you ever meet him in person...I met him in Vermont at the NORBA Nats a few years back....

-Eric

scottmandue · 07-07-2005, 07:04 AM

I hope Lance wins... he is going to retire and "let someone else have a chance" anyway

I'm pissed about the TV coverage, I have 120 satellite channels and no OLN.

And no I'm not going to pay through the nose to have it added when I can buy a DVD of the race for $20 after the fact.

einreb · 07-07-2005, 07:37 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by artplumber
Don't forget that Basso stayed with Armstrong last year in the mountains and Basso's weakest area of time trialing is better than it was last year. Last year there were no "looks" and ride away from the field.

I'll preface this by saying that I'm not a fan of Lance. I've always rooted for Jan "the flying sausage" Ullrich, Julich, Tyler or any one of the many underdog losers.

I'd consider Lance's 2:22 thrashing of Basso up the 2004 Alpe D'Huez time trial as a pretty dominating.

Uni-ball also gave the one mountain stage to Basso last year. He was breathing through his nose and didn't even look to pass as Basso approached the line. Lance then followed it up with a win over Basso as he sat up at the end of the climb, zipped up his jersey and accelerated away from Ivan with no hands on the bars. Completely unreal performance.

BGCarrera32 · 07-07-2005, 08:22 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Eric Mckenna
Lance is a great rider.. but I don't like him..
- I like the old school bad asses! like KING KELLY! Sean that is Sean Kelly! he was an all-rounder.. not a Tour Boy! like Lance.. but hey that is just my .02 and I don't like Lances attitude he is a bit rude if you ever meet him in person...I met him in Vermont at the NORBA Nats a few years back....

-Eric

Sean was fun to watch because of his cramped, horrid position on his bike and the use of toe straps well into the early 90's. And he'd kick butt doing it...

artplumber · 07-07-2005, 12:25 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by einreb

Uni-ball also gave the one mountain stage to Basso last year. He was breathing through his nose and didn't even look to pass as Basso approached the line. Lance then followed it up with a win over Basso as he sat up at the end of the climb, zipped up his jersey and accelerated away from Ivan with no hands on the bars.

I wasn't there, but on the coverage, it sure didn't look like Armstrong was "giving" the stage to Basso. Maybe he didn't look to pass because it wasn't there? That doesn't mean that later on mental toughness can be kicked up a notch for Armstrong. And after all, that's what most sport is about when rivals are closely matched. Otherwise Ullrich would have won many more Tours.