2007 Tour De France: Alberto Conquistador

In 2004, second Alberto Contador was racing in a Spanish stage race when he crashed. When he was brought to the hospital, doctors found out that he not only had multiple fractures but a life-threatening brain aneurysm. So they opened a hole in his head to remove the defect and placed a titanium plate to cover the hole. Fortunately for Alberto, he recovered and Spain today has a rider that they can look up to since Miguel Indurain 1995.

Last night, I was watching the tour live (http://pages.tvunetworks.com/channels/#. Click sports and then click versus) and it was the most exciting stage since that 1996 Tour stage when Bjarne Riis run roughshod over Indurain, Laurent Dufaux, Richard Virenque and the rest on the way to Pamplona.

While Contador and Lance Armstrong have similar riding styles (fast pedaling revolutions or cadence), LA had a more powerful and consistent attack. His team would ramp it up on the last climb, his teammates peeling off one by one like rocket boosters. If you are strong, you can probably hang at first but in the seven years that LA owned the TdF, only Ivan Basso and Alejandro Valverde could go with him. Once LA attacks, its bye-bye time.

Contador, even though he rides for the same team the LA had, is not the rider that LA was so he didn’t have a dedicated team. In fact, DISCOVERY CHANNEL was made for Levi Leipheimmer. And unlike LA, he doesn’t have that one big attack, but what he can do is a thousand little attacks that will make his rival’s legs burn and that’s what he did last night.

Yellow jersey Michael Rasmussen was the only rider to go with Contador and was angry when Contador wouldn’t work with him. Tactically, Contador didn’t have to and Ras had to distance himself from Cadel Evans, a good TT artist who had just a 60sec deficit coming into the stage.

ASTANA’s hope went downhill when favorite Alexander Vinokourov was dropped, crashed and lost almost 30 minutes. Not even a miracle from Lourdes can help him now. While teammates Andres Kloden and Andrei Kascheskin were in the lead group, they could not answer the repetitive assaults and lost time.

A surprising Mauricio Soler got third but lost the KOM jersey back to Rasmussen. A smart ride by Leipheimmer netted him 4th. Valverde lost 3.45 and is now almost 10 minutes in arrears while French hope Cristophe Moreau lost more than 30 minutes. The enigmatic Iban Mayo lost 9.31min, making a podium finish dim.

If the race will not be decided in the next 2 mountain stages, then the final TT this Saturday will. At this point, everybody is tired and only Ras and Contador has the energy to whip up a storm. We’ll see how they do Monday and Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the other teams are giving Ras a hard time for the doping mess he is in. However, I think they’re just jealous. I don’t know if they’d raise hell if Ras was 60min down.

Meanwhile, Contador was angry with Ras when he attacked him on the line. It seems that the 2 had an agreement that Contador would help Ras pad his lead and Ras would give Contador the stage win.