What the hell...?
Jul. 8th, 2006 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelleOkay...was that the 2006 Tour or did someone slip in an entirely different race somehow?
All the commentators were saying this week that everything would change at these individual time trials today. Well, um, that's certainly true. We were all waiting for the best of the best to come through and take the trial handily. Levi Leipheimer was expected to stamp his mark on the race and move up to striking distance. Nothing worked out as planned, to say the least.
Barring some kind of miracle, Levi is all but out of the race. To say that he sucked today is a vast understatement. How bad was he? Through the first time check, he'd lost a minute and a half. How bad is that? Paul Sherwin and Phil Liggett were scrambling to find out if he'd crashed somewhere, or if the computer was just flat wrong. That's how bad. But no-- he curtly said at the end he'd just had a bad day.
Yeah. Understatement.
Worse, however, CSC's new potential GC guy (General Classification: in other words, their pick to win the race) also had a spectacularly bad day. Bobby Julich slid out of a turn near the beginning of the course, hit the ground sideways, slammed into the curved curb, and skidded. Hard. He lay on the ground all but twitching in pain, until the Tour doctor, who had thankfully been right behind him, arrived. With help, he was half lifted out of the road to sit on the side before the next rider came through. Eventually, officials managed to help him to his feet. Bobby got that heartfelt but horrible applause from the crowd as he stepped into the ambulance, holding his left wrist, on which he landed. Broken, it's thought. This, crashing in a time trial, is exactly how he left the tour in 1999, the only other year he didn't finish.
Oh, and Floyd Landis? This guy just can't freakin' win. Twenty minutes before the start, race officials suddenly decided that the radical downhill-skiier position in which he's been time-trialing all year employs an illegal position for his handlebars. He was forced to move them, and then, surprise, surprise, the handlebars came loose after he was already on the course. He had to switch bikes, losing vital seconds. He otherwise, however, actually had a good day, and finished excellently in second place not just for the day, but in the overall standings.
The stage and race lead was won by an astonished and jubilant Sirhiy Honchar from T-Mobile. He's a world time-trial champion, and has won a stage of the Giro d'Italia, but it's the first time a Ukranian rider's been in the yellow, and he seems to be understandably ecstatic.
So now we have a completely new race. Nothing's as it was, and we're coming up to the mountains, where everything will change yet again. In other words, stay tuned.
All the commentators were saying this week that everything would change at these individual time trials today. Well, um, that's certainly true. We were all waiting for the best of the best to come through and take the trial handily. Levi Leipheimer was expected to stamp his mark on the race and move up to striking distance. Nothing worked out as planned, to say the least.
Barring some kind of miracle, Levi is all but out of the race. To say that he sucked today is a vast understatement. How bad was he? Through the first time check, he'd lost a minute and a half. How bad is that? Paul Sherwin and Phil Liggett were scrambling to find out if he'd crashed somewhere, or if the computer was just flat wrong. That's how bad. But no-- he curtly said at the end he'd just had a bad day.
Yeah. Understatement.
Worse, however, CSC's new potential GC guy (General Classification: in other words, their pick to win the race) also had a spectacularly bad day. Bobby Julich slid out of a turn near the beginning of the course, hit the ground sideways, slammed into the curved curb, and skidded. Hard. He lay on the ground all but twitching in pain, until the Tour doctor, who had thankfully been right behind him, arrived. With help, he was half lifted out of the road to sit on the side before the next rider came through. Eventually, officials managed to help him to his feet. Bobby got that heartfelt but horrible applause from the crowd as he stepped into the ambulance, holding his left wrist, on which he landed. Broken, it's thought. This, crashing in a time trial, is exactly how he left the tour in 1999, the only other year he didn't finish.
Oh, and Floyd Landis? This guy just can't freakin' win. Twenty minutes before the start, race officials suddenly decided that the radical downhill-skiier position in which he's been time-trialing all year employs an illegal position for his handlebars. He was forced to move them, and then, surprise, surprise, the handlebars came loose after he was already on the course. He had to switch bikes, losing vital seconds. He otherwise, however, actually had a good day, and finished excellently in second place not just for the day, but in the overall standings.
The stage and race lead was won by an astonished and jubilant Sirhiy Honchar from T-Mobile. He's a world time-trial champion, and has won a stage of the Giro d'Italia, but it's the first time a Ukranian rider's been in the yellow, and he seems to be understandably ecstatic.
So now we have a completely new race. Nothing's as it was, and we're coming up to the mountains, where everything will change yet again. In other words, stay tuned.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-08 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-09 03:16 am (UTC)