Originally Posted by wabbit
I'll be so glad when he retires... get lost already.
Although I prefer to see a more exciting race... for the sake of sport, I'd rather ***** about how his competition isn't doing well enough than ***** about Armstrong. I'd rather not see it like WWE, or today's F1
Originally Posted by jbonus
I'm still not convinced the French deliberately formulate the Tours in hopes of Lance losing. If it's true, the French are out of their minds. Why would they have two time trials in the first four stages? Lance has only lost two (now three) time trials! What a way to go into the mountains with a couple of minutes advantage where he'll be sure to pad his lead all the more. I don't know. Then again, they're the French, hating us publicly, but loving Jerry Lewis, Coke and Levis out of their homes. Where they can smoke! And probably Marlboros. No, Chesterfields.
Seeing how he struggled late in the mountains in 2000, but dominated basically every ITT in 1999 and 2000, they made five mountaintop finishes for 2001, and only one long flat TT. In 2003, seeing how he showed signs of time trialing weaker than he was climbing, they made the mountains easier and went back to two long ITTs. Then knowing his team would do so well in the TTT, they changed the rules in 2004 so he wouldn't make as nearly as much time - and moved the mountains to days later, when he always showed his best in the earliest mountain stages.
That TTT rule in particular is an obvious change to disadvantage him.