I haven’t written about the Tour de France, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested. According to the press (and some of the racers) today’s stage, the first stage that involved any sort of sustained or difficult climbs, would be the day the General Classification contenders (Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich, Tyler Hamilton, etc) made their moves. Sadly, none of the contenders made any sort of move. Richard Virenque managed to hold a 200km break, and easily won the stage. In fact, there were only a few items of note:

1. Supposedly Virenque broke a promise to his breakaway partner, Axel Merckx. He told Merckx that he’d let him the stage if Merckx allowed Virenque to win the King of Mountains points sprints. Virenque proceeded to leave Merckx on the toughest climb, and Merkcx eventually was swallowed by the peleton.

2. Iban Mayo is the unluckiest rider in the Tour. Tabbed as a contender to the GC this year, Mayo crashed on the cobbled stage last week, losing roughly four minutes to Armstrong. Then, today, he flatted twice and threw his chain once. Somehow, he managed to finish in Armstrong’s group and didn’t lose any more time, but the level of effort surely limited his chances.

3. Tyler Hamilton managed to lose a few seconds to Armstrong by dropping off the back of the first chase group on the final climb to the finish. It’s not a big loss, but given Armstrong’s large (for this point in the Tour) lead, it could come back to haunt him.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next few days. Armstrong’s Postal Service team was more than happy to let other teams pull the peleton along, and since neither Ullrich or Hamilton tried to catch the break, Armstrong didn’t have to exert himself much. Of course, Armstrong is sitting in sixth, so he’ll have to at least put the hammer down once to catch all the non-GC contenders crowding the top of the leaderboard.

Posted on 14 July 2004