On The Tour

Is it just me or is Specialized sponsoring an awful lot of teams this year? Saxo Bank, Quick Step, to name just two. Well I'll be the first to say it, they make great bikes, I know this because I have two and love them both. But hey its not as if - at the high end - Cervelo or Pinarello, Look or Time are particularly all that different. On the other hand, CTT (Cervelo Test Team) with last year's winner, Carlos Sastre has been doing rather poorly considering the talent they can call on. I guess that's why The Tour is exciting.

Still am I the only person who doesn't like the idea of the Astana 'dream team' concept? It just seems so wrong that a team could be loaded with so much power, I don't much like the notion, mind you if Astana does not leave Paris with the Yellow Jersey its going to reflect pretty badly on pretty much everyone in that team from riders to coaches. By rights Astana should be clobbering everyone from day one. (Which I suppose is the reason I dislike the super high powered team concept, it takes away the excitement.)

But having a dream team also deprives the weaker guys on the smaller teams from really getting a chance at involvement. I mean consider some team that has a couple possible GC types and a bunch of guys brought in for support, just to fall back periodically to the team car and bring water bottles back into the pelaton or pull the sprinter until near the finish. Well those guys know they will never get a yellow, green or even polka-dotted jersey, but at least they get to support someone who might. Well with Astana around that sure is not going to happen. I suspect for most of the rest of The Tour Astana will have both Yellow and Green Jerseys and that ruins it for the fans as well as the guys who really are "just happy to be there to support my team".

As I write this stage seven just ended and Fabian Cancellara just lost the yellow jersey. Before the race started today I just knew he'd loose it. For much of that stage up to the final climb it looked like I might be wrong, he might be able to hold on, even after two tyre failures. Then I saw the same thing that happens to me on long climbs. The gas tank emptied out and he just could not hold on to the rest of the lead pack. It is a downright awful feeling, I know - only too well. That yellow Tarmac of his sure was pretty.

It is a horrible thing when you climb a hill and suddenly slam into the wall and you get dropped like a sack of rotten apples. To loose the yellow jersey, I cannot even begin to imagine. Of course at least Fabian had some guys on his team help him reach the end of that stage, but I think about the Tuesday night rides, when I was weaker, and I was the guy getting dropped, way off in the distance a couple blinking red lights and you would think to yourself, I need to catch those lights, but they only seem to get further and further away. Being dropped, no matter if you are a yellow jersey wearing world class pro or just your average Michael (in this case) with a day job and a mortgage, sucks in a big bad ugly way.