TdF Blog Day 17 – Limoux to Montpelier
Today’s blog is a bit late – 18 hours of travel from San Francisco to France with a few minor interruptions (lost reservations; lost luggage) will put things a bit behind schedule.
Cavendish and HTC totally destroyed the field again yesterday – that’ll show me for betting against a guy who’d already won 18 stages of the Tour… he’s killing it and his team is like a TGV getting him to the front. I hope Sky can keep Renshaw from signing with Greenedge if they want to get the same results out of Cav that HTC does.
What else is there to say about an HTC sprint win – they did a great job with Europcar to control the peloton and set up the win. Look at the final km here and tell me this isn’t textbook peloton control. Even though Farrar complained quite a bit after – his team did a great job to get him in position – he doesn’t have the speed to come over Cav. No one does. They only way to beat him now is to isolate him and force him to either start his sprint early because he has no lead-out men left, or get the jump on him when he has no support left.
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There is no stopping Cav when he's got the lead out dialed!
Voeckler Mania!
Instead of a bunch of notes from today it’s all Voeckler today in France!
Today’s Equipe said on page 2 “Voeckler en jaune a Paris?” - and followed with a sub-headline – Solid Leader at the exit of the Pyrenees – the Frenchman showed he has the strength to defend his jersey”
If you compare the look on his face to the face of Contador at the finish yesterday you can see who’s riding into the Alps with the most confidence. Voeckler will be up against three VERY hard days with the hardest two back to back on Thursday and Friday. But he’s got all of France and all of cycling talking about him. Even Lance Armstrong got into the prediction game and said he thinks Voeckler could win the Tour if he kept up to the top of Plateau de Beille with the leaders.
Tomorrow’s rest day blog will focus on the last week and the contenders – who’s ready for the Alps and who’s about get a Michelin-starred dinner of pain…
To get ready for the rest day – check out this video of Voeckler in 2004. Lance Armstrong was right when he was quoted saying about why Voeckler could win, “Lastly, the dude knows how to suffer.”
Ya think he learned A LOT from that day?
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