Tour de France

55 km of TT’ing (two stages)
1 Mountain TT (30 km)
8 Flat stages
5 hilly stages, one finishing uphill
1 hilly stage with cobbles
4 Mountain stages, three finishing uphill


Both Contador and Nibali will come here as favourites, but with a hard Giro d’Italia in the legs how will they make it in the third week?
To challenge in the mountain both Schlecks are here – for the first time on different teams! A rider like Robert Gesink has to be reckoned with as well alongside the Colombian duo Henao and Urán while the home audience will be hoping for Pierre Rolland to do something spectacular.


All the best sprinters are on the start line. Kittel have been invisible lately while both Greipel and Cavendish won their national championships last week. For Vodafone the sprints will be very open though as they have not only brought Cavendish but also Sagan and Boasson Hagen. It will certainly be interesting to see how they will handle that…


Thor Hushovd will be going for green the same way he did last year: With offensive riding picking up points in all terrains. On the flats he will be supported by Kasper Jebjerg, Jens Erik Madsen, Erik McDermott and Michael Færk Christensen.
Thomas Löfkvist and Jesper Hansen will share captaincy in regards of the GC. Since there is a surprisingly week field of young riders and a lot of very strong climbers older than 25 the white jersey could very well turn out to be our main objective, but let’s see how the racing turns out. They will be supported by Daniel Kreutzfeldt, Thomas Riis and Brian Matzen. The last three might get their own chance to chase the break on one of the hilly stages.

If Wiggins are to win this Tour de France he needs to do it on the TT’s. He starts nicely: 9’38’’ could turn out to be best time for quite a while here!

Machado is in extraordinary form at the moment and wearing his new champions-jersey he cuts 5 seconds of Wiggos time.

Levi Leipheimer might be old and unemployed at the end of the season but he is still fast enough to set new best time in 9’29’’.

Still not faster than reigning World champion Cancellara though.
9’23’’ is probably todays winning time.

Löfkvist is our guy for today and for the GC and he does ok with a provisional 19th today.

It’s not often we see riders getting caught on a TT this short, but Tony Martin does just that. Phenomonal time 15 seconds faster than Spartacus!

Tour de France

Stage 2: Bordeaux – Sourprosse


Thor knows that every point is important so since Omega Pharma has kept things closed Hushovd follow the attacks the last 10 km before the intermediate and ends up winning the sprint easily picking up some good points.

Cancellara tries to cheat the sprinters but Vodafone seems to have him under control.

The sprint for the win is extremely close while Thor gets caught behind the remains of the Vodafone train and can’t get in position for the sprint.

Cavendish is by far strongest in the line though.

Stage 3: Montaut - Orthez


Nothing much happen for us in the first part of the race so Thor has time to have a chat with Boasson Hagen about the status of things. I know it’s not a polite thing to do, but I kept Thors radio open and was able to follow much of the conversation and let’s just say that Edvald didn’t seem entirely happy with how things are run in Britain…

In spite of having the world champion take part in the chase the peloton just can’t seem to get hold of the one-man breakaway. Who is it that are able to keep the peloton a bay over 100 km solo you ask? Cancellara of course! When he has 20 km to go he still holds a gap of 3’30’’

Spartacus is just terrifying when left alone…

Thor does well to finish 4th in the pelotons sprint picking up valuable points.

Tour de France

Stage 4: Dax – San Sebastian


Thor gets in the break along with Thomas Riis. The intermediate sprint goes uncontested to the Norwegian champion and with 62 km left the break holds a gap of 6’40’’.

20 km left. The group in front has 2’30’’ to Gilbert, Kolobnev and Gerrans who have attacked from the peloton. That trio of champions has two minutes to the main group at this point.

Thor enter the final 3 km at the back of a four man group as Riis and Monnerais have been shelled of the back. Perfect position for Thor to put in his sprint with 1,5 km to go.

He might not be able to win a bunch sprint anymore but in a group like this he is very hard to beat!
Riis somehow found the resources to outsprint Monnerais for 5th.

That brings Thor in the GC lead and the points jersey (to great joy for our sponsors), Thomas in the white jersey and the team in front of the team competition. All in all a pretty good day...

Stage 5: Aubenas – Le-Puy-en-Velay

Having Thor in the yellow means that the other teams expect us to take charge early on. We don’t want a full day of hard work so instead we send Daniel Kreutzfeldt in the break.

He does well to help build a good gap on the first hill and as thanks the others leave him behind on the second climb. Denis Vanendert, Pineau and Levarlet are just stronger today.
With 60 km to go the front group has 5’30’’ to the peloton, where Thor picks up a few extra sprint points.
Levarlet and Pineau just manage to hold it over the last climb, but all the big GC guys are coming fast from behind. Both Löfkvist and Hansen are complexly unable to follow when Contador, Schleck, Nibali et.al. set the pace.

Pineau is trongest in the sprint while Thor did well to unite the group with him and Löfkvist with the front group behind. Sadly that left him without the punch for a strong sprint.

21 riders had to abandon today. Among them McDermott, Van Garderen, Appolonio and Guardini.