GV27

I just don't get where this stuff about Levi not being the team's leader comes from. Perhaps from the strategy that Disco used to use with Lance? Where everyone just pulled for Lance and nothing else? In fact the strategy they're using this year is exactly what other teams tried to do to break Lance: leave their leader to mark him while launching multiple attacks to make his team chase and expend energy. Assuming that is Disco's strategy, it's working PERFECTLY and they're looking extremely strong. And the farther Contador gets ahead of Levi the better at this point. Levi's expended a minimal amount of energy so far and if Contador gets some time on him then it just confuses other teams.

At some point they'll have to decide: do we want to keep marking Levi or chase Contador. If they just mark Levi, perhaps Contador ends up winning the tour. If they chase him then the burn energy and Levi just follows and wins the tour. It's a lot like Saeco did with Cunego and Simoni. Sent the young buck attacking up the road constantly. Simoni was certainly the designated leader but everyone else just threw away the Giro that year by focusing on that fact. In that case everyone else just marked Simoni and Cunego won the thing. If they'd chased him, Simoni surely would've.

I think the Tour so far may be an indication that the doping controls are finally starting to work. Nobody can just dominate day after day. People have to pick their spots and conserve energy for the final week.