2006 Tour de France: Anything can happen

Floyd Landis and his team PHONAK has been criticized for giving up his yellow jersey easily and failing to honor the tradition that the team should respect the jersey by protecting it at all cost. On stage 12, Landis gave ex-teammate Oscar Pereiro an incredulous 30 minutes and a 90 second lead on the overall.

The reason why PHONAK handed over the jersey easily was because Landis knew that his team is not as strong and he didn't want his boys to defend the jersey with 3 hard days in the Alps still to come. With the jersey in Pereiro's shoulders, it will be his teams' responsibility to control the attacks.

The only problem is that Pereiro is not your average Joe Rider. He placed 19th last year and placed 2nd in the most difficult stage. And there is this notion that the yellow jersey gives the wearer the strength of two men! And that's one of the arguments that says that Landis was wrong in giving up the jersey.

But in the end, I think Pereiro and his team isn't strong enough to take the jersey to Paris. If I were PHONAK, I'd rather keep an eye on Dennis Menchov and RABOBANK and its possible collusion with DISCOVERY CHANNEL. Cadel Evans has a good chance of making it to the podium but with a team halved between helping him and Robbie McEwen for the green jersey, he's a long shot of wearing yellow.

The fight for the yellow jersey is realistically between Landis, Menchov and Evans. But nothing is set in cement here. The Alps will help to weed out the weak and the sick while putting the true king on is throne.

Italians do it differently

Italians set up their bikes differently. Did you know that the left brakes on their bikes are for the rear wheels and the right brakes for the front wheel? Also, they have their own thread design for the bottom bracket.

Bikes in the peloton

Of the 20 teams in the tour, 6 teams are using Italian framesets (Colnago-2 teams, Willier-2, Bianchi and Pinarello) and while the French frame makers have six this year (LOOK, Time-2, B'TWIN and LaPIERRE). The US has three (TREK, Specialized and SCOTT) while one each for Switzerland (BMC), Spain (Orbea) and Canada (Cervelo). Belgium's representative framesets (Ridley) are actually made in Taiwan while Taiwan probably has the most successfully commercial framesets (GIANT) in the world. All of these bikes use full carbon fibers except when a rider requests for a certain material.

An example would be Liquigas rider Magnus Backstedt who is 6"6' and 200lbs (Lance Armstrong was 5"10' and 158lbs). Because of his size, Backstedt produces so much power that the possibility of his bike breaking apart during racing conditions is always an issue. So BIANCHI made a custom made titanium frameset for "Maggie" instead of a carbon fiber steed.