71st SkodaTour de Luxembourg 1 - 5 June

[Christian]

Official website: http://www.aotdl.com

Teams:

Vacansoleil DCM (Carrara, Devolder, Feillu, Leukemans, Poels)
FDJ (Hutarovich)
Saur-Sojasun (Casper, Engoulvent)
LEOPARD TREK (F. Schleck, Cancellara, Monfort)
Europcar
Liquigas
Radioshack (Klöden, Rast)
Cofidis (El Farès, Keukeleire)
Geox TMC (Felline)
Sky (Henderson, Cummings)
Landbouwkrediet
Veranda's Willems Accent (Drucker, Sheirlinckx, Van Goolen)
Katusha (Galimzyanov, Hoste)
Team Differdange Magic-Sportfood.de
Topsport Vlaanderen
Skil Shimano (Geschke, Geniez)
Andalucia - Caja Granada

Full start list: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spr...EplSmZOV1o2TGc&single=true&gid=24&output=html

1/6: Prologue Luxembourg (2,659 km)
2/6: Luxembourg - Bascharage (192,8 km)
3/6: Schifflange - Differdange (200,7 km)
4/6: Eschweiler - Roost (185 km)
5/6: Mersch - Luxembourg (152,1 km)

Profiles: http://www.aotdl.com/skoda-tour-de-luxembourg-2011/parcours/les-itinéraires-et-horaires/

2010 podium:

Past winners:

2009: Fränk Schleck
2008: Joost Posthuma
2007: Grégory Rast
2006: Christian Vande Velde
2005: Laszlo Bodrogi
2004: Maxime Monfort
2003: Thomas Voeckler
1998: Lance Armstrong
1997: Frank Vandenbroucke

LEOPARD TREK are bringing a strong team, as are Vacansoleil (maybe the strongest), Radioshack and Sky. There are also a lot of up-and-coming young sprinters so it should be interesting to see them battle it out. Based on his and his team's season so far my guess is Klöden for the overall. He was already second in 2009.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

The stage to Differdange looks the most interesting.

 

[Tuarts]

Your podium picture is wrong, it only shows 2/3 of them.

 

[Christian]

The stage to Differdange looks the most interesting.

Usually stage 3 is meant to be decisive but it wasn't the case last year when Tony Gallopin won the sprint from a quite large group. The year before that I remember F. Schleck and Klöden battled it out for the win. This year they've changed the finish from Diekirch to Roost so I don't know how that'll work out but I could well see a group like last year at the finish.

I think stage 3 is harder in a whole (with the Mt. St. Nicolas in Vianden early on for example), but the finishing parcours in Differdange (with 4 times the Col de l'Europe) is much harder than the finish in Roost.

IMO they should go back to making stage 3 the decisive one, as the Ösling region is much hillier than the rest of the country

 

[online-rider]

I'm looking forward to this one.