Yesterday saw the loss of sprinter Oscar Freire of Rabobank. Today saw the following riders abandon:
Robbie McEwen – Predictor Lotto Ivan Parra – Cofidis Stuart O’Grady – CSC Michael Rogers – T Mobile
Tough day for the Aussies today.
Tough day for Charlie Anderson in the pool with a loss of 65 possible points. He did pick Cancellara for the Prologue so he can’t write off his pool chances just yet.
One would think that The Chicken went a long way towards his goal of winning the Tour de France today on the climb to Tignes.
But cast your mind back to the 2006 Tour. On the stage 16 finish to La Toussuire Rasmussen beat the next closest finisher by over a minute and a half and the rest of the Tour contenders by at least two minutes in a display of dominance much like today. On the very next day Rasmussen would lose two minutes to all these same rivals.
So a successful Tour for Rasmussen, while looking very good today, is far from assured. Not to say that Chicken man can not continue to do well, but he’ll need to avoid a blow up similar to last years.
Moreau looked great today. Mayo looked good. Valverde looked just ok. Evans followed wheels. He needs to attack his rivals if he is ever going to win this race. It would have been interesting to see how Contador would have done in the lead group without his mechanical. Kloden and Vinokourov continue to hang in there but they are going to need to use tomorrow’s rest day to get things back on track if they are going to have any hope of doing more than just finishing the race this year.
Big losers today:
Thomas Dekker – lost 19:17
David Millar – lost 39:07
David De La Fuente – lost 39:07
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