SamDaBikinMan

Lance will win the whole thing again. Contador will falter at some point and LA will take the team captain spot in time to get the win.

SamDaBikinMan

Hmmm, thats funny, a year and a half in Italy from 1987-1989 and on all the rides I participated in the wheel sucking was as prevalent as it is here in the good ole USA.

Maybe all those folks were not "real" Europeans.

kimconyc

OK, so he will be "prepared" but it still won't be enough.

I've been watching Astana the last couple of years and they are just rehashing the old JB playbook. I don't think it's good enough to win it this year.

I'm really rooting for Cadel "The Bridesmaid" Evans; he's a character. Plus his team hasn't done squat this year. I like underdogs. Him or Sammy Sanchez...

pathdoc

It will be an exciting tour. I'm pulling for Lance. Love to see him on the podium again.

Howzit

did you just ride there or did you race as a pro? Excuse me sir, but in cycling, no one thinks a wheel-sucker is a champion.

SamDaBikinMan

Oh yes, its definitely a fact that no pro who has ever won a grand tour drafted (sucked wheel) off anyone to do it.
A real champion breaks off the front after the first kilometer and never looks back.


Of course this is a sport full of drug addicts anyway so calling someone a champion begs the question, champion of what? Creative drug use or cycling. Lance just happens to be my favorite druggie.


Oops, actually if you think a champion is someone who never drafts (sucks wheel) then perhaps you are misguided.

Howzit

You are really lost.
Your English might not be as sharp as I thought. From what I posted you derived in your head the following: "Champions never draft for a single kilometer and break off form the first kilometer to the end". Which is nothing I said at all. How you came up with that demonstrates your lack of command for English

Ok, I wish I could "say it slowly" to you, but over the internet I cant. In cycling, great champions are those that break out and win on their own strength (This does not translate to "breaks from kilometer one" as you seem to think it translates to). They go out to prove to everyone that they have the resistance and strength to win the race. Lance essentially gets paced up the climb and does a glory boost towards the summit after he runs out of team-mates. And in the event that someone attacks, he just latches on and wheel-sucks them.
Again, Ulrich, Fausto Coppi, Miguel Indurain, Marco Pantani, Greg LeMond, Jacques Anqueti, Stephen Roche, Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx, all these guys had to go out and really show that they were champions. You cannot argue that, whatever you might think or imagine.

Lastly, you obviously dont know much about cycling if you are calling them drug addicts. The pro peleton take drugs to simply be competitive, and to recover during a full season of racing (unlike Lance who is a pro Tour De France racer). The drugs they take for the large part are not addictive drugs, you clearly have no idea of what you are talking about in addition to your lack of English comprehension. EPO, im sure you have heard of, stimulates red blood cell production by binding with receptors in bone marrow.

I hope your sarcasm meets a little common sense to blend into a reasonable response if you reply. And please, when I say "im so hungry I could eat a horse", it does not literally mean i want to eat a whole horse. You need to study more English.

SamDaBikinMan

Sarcasm is my specialty.

Hmmm, interesting conclusion you have there. So you are telling me that the break aways where Lance' rivals had no answer for did not qualify him as a champion. Considering on quite a few of his breaks during his carrer he rode some of the absolute best climbing specialists off his wheel without even attacking in the normal sense of the word I'd feel safe regarding your analysis a complete failure. But you are certainly entitled to your opinion however wrong it might be.

Now, in fairness I will state that I do not feel Lance is as much a champion as Eddie Merckx and others that were not TDF specialists and won every European classic at one time or other. I did find it strange that the other grand tours and prestigious races failed to make it onto his radar with any signifigance other than to be used as training for the tour.

But, to say that Lance did not show championship form is just completely ridiculous.

Being wrong is not illegal as far as I know so don't sweat it too much.

Howzit

There we go, I think deep inside you know what I am talking about. And sure you can ride people off your wheel after you wheel-sucked on them for half the climb before that, for a glory ride towards the top. Name one climb he ever attacked near the bottom, no team-mates nothing and went on to win the stage? You said it yourself, he "never attacked in the real sense"

And hence you see where I feel like Lance is not a real champion. Getting 8 guys to pace you up climbs and nurse you to victory in one big race a year to me seems like that doesnt make you a traditional champion. Now, if you say he is a Tour De France champion, then I guess we can conclude that is true... i guess. By the way, Marco Pantani won both the Giro and Tour De France in the same year on his own strength. He came from nearly last after the prologue and worked his way up the GC mile by mile. His attacks were unaided, no team-mates around, and no wheel-sucking.

In fairness, I guess it is just my opinion, but I hope you see where Im coming from.


I still place Lance on the podium, he uses his "template" he runs over and over again which works, much to the delight of fans like you.

40 Cent

Well a good portion of it was his own anyway.

Dubbayoo

Top ten but not sure I see top five unless something happens to AC that gives LA free reign.

127.0.0.1

Lance is a champion because in his prime he could hammer anyone on a TT or on the climbs. teammates included. don't even dare say he is not deserving. the team protects him, and all teams protect their own captain. then it is captain vs captain and team vs team and tactics at the end. the strongest rider wins, not the wheelsuckers.

sheesh.

at any given moment in almost any stage (except at the end sprint) Lance could target you and reel you in or make you pay. no one could escape him if he wanted to sacrifice the overall and just 'show off who is boss'. the boss always wins.
'who' is boss is not always evident at the start.

Keith99

Why do you hate Lance so? Including Mig (and misspelled at that) in a list of attacking champions is a dead giveaway. I think Mig had all of 1 non time trial stage win in all his TDF wins. He simply dominated the time trials and tried to hold on, usually including a lot of 'wheel sucking' in the mountians. And your list is rather strange for anyone who had spent any time in Europe. Or is it that you just hate the French as well as Lance?

Keith99

I do not find his choices relative ot other races that strange. To me he is very much in the mold of Anquetil. Both targeted the TDF because that was where the payoff was. Both were very tactical in the TDF. One could even go so far as to say they were almost boring. No risk unless very very calculated. Which does lead to Lance's one big 'failure' in the TDF, he has no signature level one day performance. Pantani did. Hinault did. If it were not for stage 17 on 1969 Merckx would have had the problem of so many that no one or 2 stood out.

DenisMenchov

I think if Lance is able to win the tour at his age, and considering he's been out of the tour for quite some time, he will probably be considered to be the best pro tour cyclist in the world.

kristian1977

I don't pay much attention to racing but no one thought he would win the 5th or 6th or 7th for that matter..... I wouldn't count him out, not yet. Give the man some respect!

kroozer 

I wouldn't count Lance out of a top-10 finish, or the podium, or even an overall win in the TdF. He raced a good Giro, he's just getting into top condition, he's got the experience, and (most of all) he's still got the competitive drive to do it. Of course, I wouldn't be shocked if he falls a bit short, either, but it will definitely make for an interesting Tour.

Donegal

Don't count out Bruyneel. With Lance, AC, Leipheimer, Jani, Horner, Kloden........ Who do you follow? Who do you mark? I think the team will have so many guns to fire that they should be able to at the very least win several stages. Remember, winning the tour is a study in "not losing it". You must have decent form on the bad days to stay in. One bad day can cost you the whole race. It's more technical now, teams work differently now. I just like to watch the moves and try to predict the outcome.

BikeWNC

I disagree about signature performances. Come on, how many TT did LA win? Le Alp was epic with all those fans. The musette stage when he fell got up to win, with a broken bike. The look stage with Ulrich. There were several more I'm sure.

iab

Now Sam, I know you like to write some stupid **** time to time, but this one is almost sig line worthy. I have got any amount you are willing to wager for Tom's charity that there is no way your prediction will happen. cb will still be making the big bucks, socialized medicine won't happen before the Tour, lay out some cash.

lotek 

yet this can be a double edged sword, think T-Mobile with Ulrich, Vinokourov, et al where the team
seemed to be tearing itself apart with too many captains and no clear protected rider.

USAZorro

Point taken, but it worked for CSC last year.

lotek 

I think it worked for CSC for a few reasons.
Like Bruyneel, Riis runs the team with an iron hand, I don't think any infighting
would be tolerated (although just what a manager would do if there was is an interesting question).
I think that CSC while long on talent with 3 potential tour leaders was unique in that all 3 of
them are not huge ego type riders. I can hardly see the Schleck brothers in the same league when
it comes to 'having' to be top dog as say Lance, Vino, Jan or some of the more dominant personalities
in the peloton.

Marty

USAZorro

I suspect Lance is going to ride more like he's a GC contender than he did in the Giro. What Astana has is a literal embarrassment of riches. They have what? six guys to potentially draw from who have finished in the top 15 in the Tour at some point. Lance, Contador, Kloden, Levi (all have finished on the podium), Zubeldia has finished as high as 5th and Popovych 12th.

They might actually be able to support two guys slugging it out for top GC honors, but I don't see Lance as being able to either dominate Contador in time trials, or to hold his wheel in the big mountains. Once he loses a minute or two to Contador, he'll fall back into a support role.

Dubbayoo

He could win it ten times and it wouldn't matter. One more win won't change anything about how people feel about him.