Sunshine and Light

Would being German help?

For those of you who haven't seen Stage 10 of the Tour de France yet, and are watching it this evening, time to go surf elsewhere!! Spoilers ahead!

I totally don't get T-Mobile in today's stage of the Tour de France. They put their whole team on the front of the peloton for the day...for what? They darn near shook off Honchar/Gonchar (however you want to say it), they let a break get well out of reach, and they lost the yellow. I know that they're riding for Kloden, but it seems to me they wasted a lot of energy today. Now I understand Cyril Dessel (who by the way is a former Jelly Belly...the US connection!) is not the most imposing rider in the Tour, but if you just don't care, maybe you should have sacrificed one or two guys and let the others wander around the pack with the rest of the riders rather than giving Phonak a magic carpet ride to the finish. I also like the part where Honchar/Gonchar was getting flogged at the end there, doing his pulls and delivering water bottles. I'm not buying that T-Mobile was on the front maintaining the glory of the yellow jersey. Not when the yellow jersey was busily doing domestique duties. It smacks of last year when they were chasing down Vinokourov. Maybe it doesn't pay to be non-German on T-Mobile.

Then again, my grasp of cycling strategy is simplistic, so maybe tomorrow, all will be made clear.

I do have to say that I like the part where AG2R was riding immediately behind T-Mobile, thus blocking other teams from coming forward. Had something like that happened in the local Wed night crit world championships, there would have been a meltdown of epic proportions. I'm sure the USAC would have been called in to mediate. So it amuses me to no end to watch it occur in the pros.

By the way, a good source of TdF stuff is the aptly named www.tdfblog.com

posted by MyHusbandRules @ 1:54 PM