TDF Countdown - 2 days
2 Day’s Until The 2005 Tour De France
Only two days left before the 2005 Tour De France begins. Since two seems to be the magic number today I thought I would talk about two people that could really help or hurt Jan Ullrich’s chances of winning the Tour this year. Those two riders are Andreas Klöden (2nd in the 2004 TDF) and Alexander Vinokourov (3rd in the 2003 TDF and who Johan Bruyneel mentioned yesterday as a rival - our post about that here), and the reason I say help or hurt as they both are excellent riders that have placed on the podium in the TDF. The T-Mobile team says they are all there to work for Jan Ullrich but if Jan has a bad day Klöden and Vino are going to start thinking about their time in the sun. We could see a Lavie Claire situation (Hinult v Lemond) where the captain of the team is holding the other riders back and one, if not both, decide to revolt and go it on their own. IF they can work as a team though this trio (Klöden, Ullrich, and Vino) could present a challenge for Team Discovery to defend against for 21 days. T-mobile is so focused on beating Armstrong they left their long time spirinter, and multiple green jersey (points championship) TDF winner, Eric Zabel home where the team is not bothered with trying to work for anyone but Jan Ullrich.
The good news for Team Discovery though is Vino seems to be a bit off this year and Klöden has not been as strong as expected, but he may be peaking at the right time. In the end, T-mobile and it’s three prong attack is formidable placed to try to dissect the Discovery team that is only focused on Armstrong, his gains, his wins, and that is all. There is no doubt who runs the show at Discovery, T-mobile may not have the luxury if Jan is not 100%.
Locally we would like to thank The Bike Zoo and Harper’s Bike Shop for supporting the OLN coverage with advertising.
