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July 20, 2006
Stage 17: the other competitions
No question who today's “Most competitive rider” was: Landis rides with red race numbers tomorrow.
The white jersey for best young rider goes over to Damiano Cunego, but by only 5 seconds! Fothen was about 4:40 better than Cunego in the first time trial, so I expect Fothen to retake the lead.
T-Mobile's passive day may have ridden Klöden out of the Tour, but they've moved clearly into the lead of the team competition, 8:41 ahead of CSC. Turns out CSC foolishly burned its riders out getting Sastre up the road to contest the overall race win.
Landis probably sewed up the King of the Mountains for Rabobank's Michael Rasmussen today. Flying Floyd took max points over most of the day's climbs, including double points on Joux-Plane, and moved up into 2nd in the competition. There are very few points left to contest.
Similarly, McEwen has pretty much sewed up the green jersey, leading by 45 points with 2 flattish road stages to go.
That leaves yellow, and it's hard to see any other way to cut it than that Floyd Landis is again the favorite to win the Tour de France on Sunday. He's certainly a 30-second better time trial rider than Pereiro, 18 seconds better than Sastre, and has a 2-minute cushion on everybody else.
Posted by Frank Steele on July 20, 2006 in Andreas Klöden, Damiano Cunego, Floyd Landis, Michael Rasmussen, Oscar Pereiro, Robbie McEwen, Stage results, Top Stories, Tour de France 2006 | Permalink
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Comments
With Floyd 30 seconds over Pereiro in ITT, that would put them neck-and-neck on Saturday (discounting whatever occurs Friday), right?
Posted by: Fritz at Jul 20, 2006 8:52:38 PM
Richard, I meant that Landis should easily make up the current time gaps. He actually beat Sastre by 1:10 and Pereiro by 1:40 in a slightly shorter Stage 7 time trial.
The 2:00 gap over everybody else should mean that Landis only has to concentrate on the times of Pereiro and Sastre; I don't see anybody else in the top 10 who could pass Landis for GC in a time trial.
There really is a chance we'll still see GC men looking for time bonuses on the road tomorrow and Sunday.
Posted by: TdFblog's Frank at Jul 20, 2006 9:06:51 PM
I'm super-bummed out that OLN didn't give us Phil and Paul for the last part of Floyd's ride on tonight's rebroadcast.
Posted by: noelle at Jul 20, 2006 10:41:56 PM
I think Bob and Al thought they were playing Phil and Paul's stream for awhile tonight. Quite humerous to hear them open mic'ed when they didn't know it was broadcasting!
Especially when Bob dropped the gratuitous GD on Dessel's crash!
Anybody else catch that?!
Posted by: Eric at Jul 20, 2006 10:49:55 PM
Just curious as to what the maximum time differential would be going into the final stage for there to be a down to the wire finish in Paris? When was the last tour where the riders really raced on the last stage?
Posted by: Troy at Jul 21, 2006 12:49:56 AM
noelle, I did hear Bob when Dessel crashed, and I turned my cc on to see it if was picked up (it wasn't), but that was definitely cool!
Posted by: Shawn Mansfield at Jul 23, 2006 9:20:54 PM
