robow

Trying to think back, and I'm not sure that a TDF winner ever had a weaker team. Other than some help from Axel there wasn't much there. Now I've only been following the TDF for 20 years, what do you think?

hollow

Maybe in 1999. Don't know for sure, haven't looked at it closely, but he had a weak team. And you can't call Lemond's team weak in 1986, but he sure didn't get a lot of help from them.

oboeguy

Lemond's ADR team in 1989 was a very weak wildcard team, IIRC. Delgado and Fignon were on power teams Reynolds and Systeme U (or Super U or whatever they were called that year), respectively.

Laggard

LeMonds Z teams were nothing to write home about either.

Allen H

I think of this year's Phonak team as the "anti-blue train". Other than Axel, there was no team help as soon as the peloton began to splinter, unlike almost all Lance's teams.

Smoothie104

in 1989 All of Lemonds Team Abandoned, except one rider, Johann Museeuw

harlond

The 1999 USPS team had Hamilton who finished 13th overall and 5th and 3rd in the two time trials, Kevin Livingston who finished 36th overall, and Hincapie, Andreu, and Vandevelde. They also finished 8th overall among teams. I know they weren't well-respected at the time, but with those kind of results, doesn't seem they were weak.

alanbikehouston

They asked riders why Landis was allowed to ride away from the peloton on Thursday. The general consensus was that his team was riding so fast that the peloton was disorganized and unable to keep up. When his team had finished scrambling the peloton, Landis was off and was never seen again.

So, his team may have only been strong for ten minutes or so during this Tour, but those are the ten minutes that gave Landis the opportunity to escape and race himself back into contention.

erader

i saw lemond and phil ligget speak at stanford university about 8 years ago.

lemond said:

"in 1986 i won in spite of my team. in 1989 i won without a team and in 1990 i won because of my team."

ed rader

robow

OK, Lemond in 89 sounds tough to beat. As far as Phonak's 10 minutes in that one stage, I would hope that over a three week race like this that they could be able to put at least 10 minutes together if they are presumed to be professionals and make their living on their bike. I know sevral cat. riders that could give you 10 minutes of torrid pace once.

merlinextraligh

ADR in 89 had to be weaker. This thread brings up an interesting issue, however. How would this Tour have turned out with a TTT, particularly under the old rules that didn't limit time losses?

hollow

Like I said, I didn't look up the statistics, but if you watched the race, he was pretty much alone in the mountains. Hincapie wasn't nearly as good in the mountains as he became later. If memory serves, Hamilton was the one who was with him frequently, but not all the time. Their overall placings didn't matter as much as how much help they were.

Allen H

THAT is a terrific question. Wouldn't it be possible that Kloden would be in yellow, instead of Floyd, given T-Mobile's team strength, if there'd been a TTT?

dmotoguy

yes. t-mobile would have dominated a ttt this year.

Walter

CSC would've done pretty well in a TTT as well. They, barely but did, beat T-Mobile at the Giro and if there were a TTT you'd have to think they'd have brought Cancellara as well.

Definitely helped Phonak that the event was dropped.

On a positive side there was the stage 17 tempo to launch Floyd and A. Merckx was critical.

Smoothie104

T Mobile had 6 guys, 6! in the top 16 in the ITT this year.

The highest placed CSC rider was Dave Z at 13th...

I think T Mobile would have smoked CSC, and everyone else.

6 Guys on T Moblie went faster than the fastest Disco rider as well, Salvodelli at 19th

DrPete 

Yeah, T Mobile would've crushed the souls of the weak had there been a TTT this year.

I just had a really funny image of The Jan doing one of those T Mobile commercials where they have some annoying person talking till their phone runs out of minutes... That would be funny.

DrPete

Hitchy

Agree....unless of course they ended up 'attacking' each other, which they've been apt to do in the past

DrPete 

I think that was probably accentuated this year by the firing of The Jan. Much in the same way that Disco floundered in the absence of leadership, T Mobile kinda got screwed too. The difference is that T Mobile got their s*&t together and still put on a great tour with a lot of great performances and Kloden on the podium.

DrPete

harlond

Well, Hamilton finished in the top 20 on three mountain stages and finished 13th overall despite losing 6 minutes on the Challans-St. Nazaire stage. That was the stage where Zulle got caught behind a crash and four teams, including USPS with Hincapie, Livingstong, Andreu, and Vandevelde, hammered away to put the time into Zulle. Armstrong finished 7:36 ahead of Zulle, and 6:01 on this one stage. I''m not suggesting that this was a tremendously strong team, but the idea that it was a tremendously weak team, well, I'm not seeing it.

classic1

Lemond had the best teams in the world in 89. He rode off the backs of PDM, Reynolds and Caja Rural for whole Tour. ADR were useless. You probably won't find a Tour winner with a weaker team. I think it was only Lammerts who could finish the race with Lemond.

Z in 1990 was quite a strong team. Pensec, Millar, Duclos Lasalle, Boyer, Kvasoll, J Simon, Cornillet to name a few.

Carrera in 1987 were near useless in the mountains for Roche. Schepers was the only rider who could give him any real help.

roccobike

I thought it was just me, but I couldn't find Phonak team anywhere near Landis, except for Axel. Day 16 never should have happened, and his team should shoulder some of the blame. Just my $.02.

erader

clearly before that fateful day landis was nervous about not having much team support. he said as much plus the team "tactic" of giving away the yellow jersey would suggest that was the case.

on the 17th day, tho, landis realized that he'd have to do it himself and the rest is history .

ed rader

Chongo

Um, does it count as weak when half your team rides against you like Lemond's La Vie team when half rode for Hinault and the other half for Lemond? Just wondering.