Tour De France DRAMA
Well with one day left until the 2006 Tour De France launches the world of cycling is filled with drama. Top of the list and numbers 1 through 8 out of the top 10 is the fact that you have Jan Ullrich, Oscar Sevilla, and their team manager Rudy P out of the Tour due to their association with a Spanish doping investigation. Ivan Basso, also considered a very good contender for the win and my personal choice as the winner, is also rumored to be involved in the investigation, though CSC - his team - has not taken the step of ejecting him from the team, and tour, like T-Mobile did almost instantly with Ullrich, Sevilla, and their coach. This fact will almost guarentee that Ivan Basso wins the Tour, that assumes he does not pull out, or is not arrested, in the middle of the race due to the Spanish case.
Stuff like this gives Floyd Landis, Levi Lepiheimer, and a few others great chances of winning, or very likely getting podium finishes. I still say that if Basso makes it to Paris he will win. If he does not, it is a open race and I would give Landis a nice shot. I am unsure of Levi due to the fact he has not raced a lot in the last few weeks.
Another interesting story is the fact that Discovery hung Azevedo with the #1 marker, not George H or Paulo, or … For those that do not know each team is given numbers starting with a digit and then 1 through 9 for their riders. The rider with the 1 digit in the series is considered the team leader. So one team gets 11 - 19, the next team 21-29, … through 171 through 179. The team of the winner from the previous year is given digits 1 - 9. SO, with Discovery being the team with last years winner they got 1 - 9 and gave the 1 digit to Azevedo making him the defacto team leader, even though Lance and Team Discovery says they will have 4 possible leaders on the road and let the race determine who is the team leader. Have #1 on your back automatically makes your a marked man on the road.
Bottomline, alll I have to say is -
HOLD ON THIS ONE IS GOING TO BE WILD!!!!
—– Update —– 9:10 AM
Ivan Basso, Santiago Botero, Joseba Beloki, Roberto Heras, and over a dozen other cyclist are now OUT of the tour due to their connection to the probe. This is due to a mutual decsion from team directors to keep anyone under investigation out of the tour.
This thing just got SO WIDE OPEN it is not even funny. At this point I am picking Landis to win and Hincapie to get a stage win or two. McEwin should just be given the green jersey because short of a aging Zabel (with a average Team Milram behind him) he has not competition in the race.
[...] As the cycling world deals with all the fall out of Operation Porto, and ALOT of big names not starting the Tour De France tommorrow (Our previous post about that TDF drama here.) there is another big cycling story out there today as well. As the majoirty of the cycling world is focusing on the tour and drugs it happens that Lance Armstong won a preliminary battle in London regarding his slander case against English newspaper that claimed had used drugs. Story here [...]
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