2007 Tour De France: Waiting for the fireworks

T-Mobile’s vocal anti-doping rider Linus Gerdemann drew first blood on the day the real Tour de France began, aka, the first mountain stage. He was part of a 15-man breakaway entering the final 16Km climb to Col de Colombiere.

But’s who’s Linus?

Linus, at 24yo, is in his 3rd year as a pro. He signed a 2-year contract year with CSC but decided to break it and ride for T-Mobile instead. CSC had no choice buy to let him go. This win is his second career win for a first year Tour rider who is expected to ride as a domestique for the team.

The rest of favorites arrive quietly in one big group, 3.38min in arrears, which meant there really was no team capable of controlling the race like Lance Armstrong’s team did when he took his 7 wins. In those days, Lance would start his bid by winning the first mountain stage, to show everybody that he was heads and shoulders above riders like Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso. It was a cruel mental blow to his rivals. And he did it 7 times in 7 years, losing to Alejandro Vlaverde on the last year.

I think that favorite and riding wounded Alander Vinokourov and teammate Andreas Kloden are happy with how things turned out today. Tomorrow’s another mountain stage and it should be a blockbuster!

Vellum Speaks

Of the 21 teams in this year’s Tour, everybody is riding carbon fiber bikes except for CANNODALE who’s still stubbornly sticking with Aluminun/CF frames. Just what is it with CF? I asked Architect Miguel, Vellum prez, to tell us more about this wonder material…

For this year’s Tour de France, carbon fiber is still the material to watch. May it be on bicycle frames, components and accessories, this material tops it all.

Compared to Steel, Aluminum and Titanium, Carbon Fiber is a design dependent material wherein you can manipulate the tube according to how you want it look like and how you want it to perform without compromising the weight which other materials cannot simply do. With its characteristics to dampen vibration and its ability to be strong yet light, Carbon Fiber is still the top material in the years to come.

Though it is widely used in the market, the price trend keeps on rising as the demand cannot cope up with the supply. With the aviation industry on top of the market, what is left for the other industries are the bits left from what they ordered, so to speak. 

We Filipinos have the ingenuity and the skill to produce such material but not as the same level and quality as the specialists in Taiwan, which is also considered as the hub of bicycle manufacturing. Resource wise, Japan still produces the best carbon fiber sheets there is in the world. They have been studying the process for decades now and the development doesn’t stop there. Who knows what cutting edge processing technique they are preparing now in time for next year’s tour de france... We might be seeing a sub 500 gram frame perhaps? Not impossible at all.

 A 600-gram raceable frame is already in production but would cost you a fortune (a brand new car can be bought at this price). The average off the shelf branded carbon fiber frame would weighs around 1 kilo with some going low as 790 grams. Now, if only the UCI would consider lowering the bicycle weight limit for their races, wouldn’t that push the manufacturers to produce the lightest best performing raceable bicycle? Not impossible at all.....

VELLUM is the only carbon bike company in Southeast Asia who has found a niche in the world market for high-end bike frames.