I watched a couple of DVDs from early 90's Indurain era some weeks ago and the TTs were huge! 80 kms TTT and Mountain TT with 2 big climbs. Now they're reducing the TTs too much, we need 60 km total flat TTs to perhaps have another winner that's not Contador (i know he's improving is TT but not in long flat ones).
Contador is next superstar for ASO..they aint after beating him. Long TT is boring..this one destroyes all pure climbers chanches..so far good..cant wait final profiles
"We all know that wasn't the real footage of the Worlds anyway. That was just the staged footage to perpetuate the coverup that it was actually Vinokourov that won the race."
I think that there might be a suprise winner for a downhill TT. Sanchez is probably the best descender of the GC riders but there might be a rider out there who has the skills to descend as fast if not faster than Samu, but is not the climbing type, therefore not showing off his skills riding in with the bus on the MT stages, if that makes sense.
issoisso wrote:
The 4th mountain finish is apparently the other one being bandied around: the July 18th stage is not into Luchon as that site says, but instead onto the Plateau de Beille
So, that would give 4 mountain tops and one ITT inside the last 6 stages (excluding the Paris stage)? Would be more interesting than this year's "w00t! teh Ventoux!!1!" route.
Next year will be the Pyrenees Centenary in the TdF, so I guess that ASO will want to include in each of those stages at least one of the cols which first appeared in the 1910 edition (Col de Port, Col des Ares, Portet d'Aspet, Peyresourde, Aspin, Tourmalet, Aubisque). It would be quite in order for the queen stage to feature a Peyresourde-Aspin-Tourmalet-Soulor/Aubisque enchâinement.
I just don't see how the Col de la Pierre Saint-Martin stage would fit in, as it has been years since there were four mountains stages in a row. Perhaps a little stroll around the Basque country?
Levi4life wrote:
I think that there might be a suprise winner for a downhill TT. Sanchez is probably the best descender of the GC riders but there might be a rider out there who has the skills to descend as fast if not faster than Samu, but is not the climbing type, therefore not showing off his skills riding in with the bus on the MT stages, if that makes sense.
I don't know if you've seen this, probably have, but what the hell..
Here we go:
Impressive.
If offense is the best defence, does it mean that defence is the worst defence?
If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord will delete my browser history.
Well it's justified, as I predicted, on each ranking possible, the Netherlands is well inside the top 10 after the Vuelta.
Once again proving the UCI wrong of their 1 january to 15 august limit.
I understand how it's unfair, but don't you think that it'd be hard to only a week turn-around to alert the countries how many riders they will have? That could lead to some countries scrambling to find riders and other countries all of a sudden having to make a tougher selection.
..and they should
