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Official Thread: TdF Rest Day, Limoges - Limoges 0.0 KM

Apparently...

Team Astana have put in a formal protest. They are outraged that there will be no racing today. And what is more they are seeking confirmation of rumours that there will be no road closures, race radio, motor bike outriders or safety cars and most importantly no podium girls! They are a furious at this blatent disregard for rider safety. As a consequence they are refusing to rest and will be staging their own stage with from Limoges to Lake Vasiviere. They have invited other teams to join them in their protest but so far only Caisse d'Epargne have shown interest in providing support for one of the Astana riders. Astana have confirmed that while there is no official leader for this stage that team orders are to ride tempo to the base of the final climb and then have a nice chat about who should go first.

In a statement to the press Lance Armstrong provided an explanation: "Frankly the first few days have not been that hard and I don't think the organisers appreciate that we all really like riding our bikes. I am feeling pretty good right now and I want to make the most of it. This is not about me it is about raising awareness of a terrible affliction that affects all of us"

Rumours still abound about continuing dissention in the Astana ranks and it was believed that Lance favoured a long flat TT while Contador was keen to go for a mountain top finish. It is believed a compromise was reached to race out to Lac Vasiviere and run a TT around the mountain top lake used in previous Tours. When Contador was pressed to comment he was quoted as saying: "Yes - we talked about it in the bus and everything is fine"

Organisers of the race are said to be confused "We have always had rest days in the past and it has never been a problem - obviously we will need to re-think our approach." They confirmed that they would indeed be doping control in operation and that Armstrong would be tested every 10km of the stage.

When asked about why they had adopted such an unorthodox approach to racing in the Pyrenees this year - a spokesman said "We have found that the French riders find it hard to keep up when we put the mountains at the end of stages so this year we put them near the front so that they can get up them when they are fresh. We have been very pleased with the outcome." When asked about the rumour that the stages had come out that way because of a printing error and that in fact the race had been run the wrong way round - the spokes man declined to comment.

Verses have anounced that they will be postponing coverage of the scheduled bull fighting and will be covering the stage live. "This is a real bonus for us" said Bob Roll "We have a number of special features on Cancellara's seat that we were unable to screen in our regular broadcast but now we will have plenty of time to cover this and the Tour organisers have agreed to sponsor a race free half-hour of continuous commercials - we are really quite excited."

So it looks like another positive outcome for the sport of cycling.

Vive le Tour :D
 
Apr 8, 2009
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Thats funny.

apparently Liggett will spend the whole day wandering around saying "Lance" "Big George Hincapie" and "poor Cadel"

sits in the cafe talking to himself :)
 
davidg said:
Thats funny.

apparently Liggett will spend the whole day wandering around saying "Lance" "Big George Hincapie" and "poor Cadel"

sits in the cafe talking to himself :)

Phil says "There really is only one team in it today - Lance's big boys have left the other teams asleep in their beds"

Paul says " Yes there is only one team in it - since arriving in Limoges the others have yet to unpack their suitcases of courage"

Phil says " Yes the other teams are losing big chunks of time - they seem to have no answers today only questions"

Paul says " The big guns have been silenced or dare I say it Cadel's big guns are silence'd "

Phil says " Its up hill all the way today apart from the down hill which is just as hard as the up hill when your going over 100 kmh which is over 50 mph in old money "

Paul says " Especially because these bikes are not designed for going around corners"

etc etc etc

We love it really :D :D
 
May 6, 2009
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180mmCrank said:
Phil says "There really is only one team in it today - Lance's big boys have left the other teams asleep in their beds"

Paul says " Yes there is only one team in it - since arriving in Limoges the others have yet to unpack their suitcases of courage"

Phil says " Yes the other teams are losing big chunks of time - they seem to have no answers today only questions"

Paul says " The big guns have been silenced or dare I say it Cadel's big guns are silence'd "

Phil says " Its up hill all the way today apart from the down hill which is just as hard as the up hill when your going over 100 kmh which is over 50 mph in old money "

Paul says " Especially because these bikes are not designed for going around corners"

etc etc etc

We love it really :D :D

Phil says " There is Egoi Martinez, a former team-mate of Lance Armstrong"

Pauls says " Euskatel are a team of climbers"
 
Jul 12, 2009
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This is a quick and dirty translation from a German blog on http://de.eurosport.yahoo.com/. It's not complete (I left out remarks on some German riders like Voigt and Kloeden, or Feillu).

Lance
Entered the class this year and had some problems fitting in. His achievements were surprisingly good, but he needs to work on his social behaviour. His claim for the position of class representative has evoked unrest. Bullies Alberto in front of all other students.

Alberto
Continued his extraordinary achievements from the past few years. Still has some potential to get better. Should not get too far away from the class on trips to the coast, not leave the class in the mountains without consulting with his teacher, and fight less with Lance.

Denis
Had to consult the doctor several times and was often inattentive. Can do much more, but needs to work on his concentration in the second half of the year. May be dreaming about the class trip to Rome this spring too much.

Cadel
His GPA suffered from the bad result from his group in the team work exercise. Work attitude and behaviour are exemplary.

Carlos
Class leader from 2008 is still on a high level, especially considering that his favourite subjects “mountain top finish” and “winning hard stages in the alps” have not been examined too often so far due to new school rules.

Rinaldo
Italian exchange student appears to be a teacher favourite and surprisingly has best GPA at midterm. Must thank math teacher Bruyneel, though: Because Lance and Alberto had to hand in their exercises before Rinaldo, R. could collect some more points.

Andy
Is called the professor, and many of his peers think he can skip a class. Does his homework with diligence, never disrupts the class and shows excellent behaviour. Wants to and should get better in the second part, when the Alps are on the curriculum.

Mark
Has an extremely astute processing speed and a quick tongue as well. Some think he is a wise-***, but he’s very popular in his peer group. Usually hands in his work first, but skips blackboard duty from time to time.

Fabian
Confirmed advance accolades from his Swiss boarding school in convincing fashion. Left the class in Monaco, but got back to the youth hostel on time. Earned special praise in foreign languages and will be sent to United Nations strategy game.

Tom
Trouble kid. Was sent to the school psychologist in 2008 already, and this time narrowly avoided getting kicked from school. His scholastic achievement deteriorated drastically, he fell down on the school yard a few times and eventually will be freed from physical education.
 
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180mmCrank said:
Do you think he's been wearing it in bed at night too? I have to confess I think if it were me I'd be tempted :eek:

I remember a few years ago when a similar question was posed by a reporter to Zabriskie after he had gotten yellow in the prologue. The exchange went basically as follows:

Reporter: In the past, wearers of the yellow jersey have done all sorts of things with it like take it to dinner, and blahblah. Fignon even said he slept with it on the pillow next to him. Will you do anything like that?

Zabriskie: I sleep in the buff.
 
BroDeal said:
I missed the coverage today. Who won?

Funny you should ask...

It seems that the lack of race radios caused some confusion today.

All started out as expected and the somewhat reduced peleton rolled out of Limoges with Astana at the head. Evans attacked immeadiately (well after Voekler but nobody counts that as a proper attack anymore) and with only 150km to go was chased down by Cancellara and after a few cross words and a short sulk they all returned to the peleton no harm done. For a while racing resumed as normal with Astana riding tempo on the front.

After a few more kilometers a number of riders stopped, they were soon joined by several more until all of the peleton was stationary. There followed a period of confusion where some riders sat down on the road, many were obviously upset and several were in tears. Apparently the riders were at a loss as to what to do - without radios and the guidence of their team directors they were at a complete loss. It was at this point that Lance circled his arm in the air gave a loud whistle and pointed in the direction of Vasiviere. Asked afterwards he said "It was something I saw in a movie once" it seemed to do the trick and the peleton was soon rolling along as usual.

Pretty soon things returned to normal with Voekler making repeated attacks until a small group with an Euskatel rider, some unknown French bloke, and Van somebody or other managed to get away. All was fine until the break moved out of sight at which point the peleton bagan to slow...it slowed and it slowed ... it was so slow that the riders were doing track stands ... when asked afterwards one unnamed rider admitted "We couldn't remember who was in the break and no one wanted to chase down their team mates!" It was like this for several minutes and at one point it looked like racing might be over for the day. Contador went to take a nature break in the bushes. At which point a cross wind blew up and the rest of Astana sprinted off up the road in a tight eschallon formation.

After several minutes of hard chasing the peleton came back together and began it's pursuit of the break-away. Although after a couple of hours people began to doubt if a break had even managed to get up the road - that was until they were seen in the distance heading towards them. Apparently they hadn't seen or heard from anyone in a while and had decided to re-trace their steps.

Finally they reached the slopes of the road up to the mountain lake - Lac du Vasiviere. The approach is notoriously steep some parts exceeding 20% in places.

There was yet more confusion as David Millar was seen trying to find his bike in the bushes - he had apparently thrown it over the hedge on a particularly steep part of the climb. When asked about it afterwards he admitted that he had been upset at the state of the road but he realised that without race radio to contact his team car he was faced with a long long walk back to the bus!"

Predictably as the climb progressed Schleck and Contador yoyo'd on and off the front until the Spaniard finally got away. Lance played his part as a good team man and followed in the wheels with the rest of the Astana riders. Indeed he was heard to be enthusiastically shouting encourgement to his team leader - at least we believe it was encouragement - something about following team orders and I'll see you at the finish? He even tried to throw Alberto an extra water bottle unfortunately the spanish rider didn't see it and hit him on the side of the head! But it only served to spur him on.


Contador was first to Vasiviere and began the final circumnavigation of the lake believing he was several minutes ahead of the chasing pack. However he arrived at the finish to find that he had missed the critical move by the other members of Astana. No one is sure exactly what happened had he gone the wrong way around the lake?

The main thing was that Astana had triumphed and Lance was in Yellow - a terrific achievement - and on track for his historic 8th TdF victory.

There was one final point of controversy - apparently the Astana boys had change bikes at the top of the climb on the edge of the lake. There was some debate about whether the riding position fell within regulations. After some shrugging of shoulders and puffing of cheeks the race jury agreed that all was indeed in order.



hydro_bike_orig.jpg



At the post race press conference Johan confirmed that it was difficult to follow the progress of the race but that things had gone to plan. He had told Lance and Alberto to follow the moves and not to expend too much energy. At which point he somewhat cryptically quoted the great Fausto Coppi..

"Age and treachery will overcome youth and skill"

When asked what he meant by this he declined to comment.

The organisers were pleased with the outcome of the non rest 'rest day' stage and the experiment with not allowing radios was declared a success. "It was much more exciting than a usual stage - no one new what was going on - even we were confused at times. But the main thing was that the race was the winner!"

Vive le Tour!
 
May 6, 2009
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Brilliant 180mm.

Anyway this is the Euro's earned so far:

1 BBOX Bouygues Telecom 31,650 euros
2 Columbia-HTC 28,460
3 Astana 23,200
4 Liquigas 22,000
5 Caisse d'Epargne 20,360
6 Garmin-Slipstream 17,750
7 Cervélo 17,550
8 Saxo Bank 17,430
9 Cofidis 17,170
10 AG2R La Mondiale 16,790
11 Agritubel 15,710
12 Française des Jeux 14,060
13 Rabobank 12,600
14 Team Katusha 12,290
15 Team Milram 9,740
16 Skil-Shimano 8,480
17 Euskaltel-Euskadi 8,440
18 Quick Step 6,220
19 Lampre-NGC 4,240
20 Silence-Lotto 3,110
 

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