johnsemlak said:
I think Lance is pretty good with mountain climbs actually. He may not be a pure climber, but I think he's the best in the current TDF. I generally read that the 'flatter' tour is actually to Lance's disadvantage.
I agree that the flatter course opens up the field a bit.
There are a lot of strong climbers on the Tour - Paco Mancebo, Roberto Heras, Iban Mayo, Floyd Landis, Vino, Basso. What the '05 course does is change the successful strategy used to time when and where USPS (now Discovery) would look for time bonuses. In the past the steep mountain finishes all came with a map notation that says "LANCE ATTACKS HERE!" This year's edition doesn't offer the same kinds of opportunities as the past Tours. Instead of the Greatest American Sports Moment that Most Americans Never Saw, Lance's attack on l'Alpe d'Huez in Stage 10 of the 2001 Tour where he put some two minutes into Jan Ullrich and set himself up to take the jersey in the Pyrenees a few days later, we're more likely to see finishes like last year's stage 17, when Lance, Floyd Landis, Jann Ullrich, and Andreas Kloden were in a four-way sprint at the end of a downhill finish. The time bonuses for finishing first may make the difference in who's on top of the GC in the end - it makes for more exciting racing in some ways, but it's also riskier for the GC leader.
Everyone's going to have to work very hard to cover the breakaways on the mountain stages. I think this is why the real challenge is going to come from Ivan Basso, IF he has his climbing legs after a tough Giro d'Italia. Team CSC is the only team in the race this year that can realistically match Discovery, as they showed in the TTT yesterday. Jens Voight and Erik Dekker are both so suicidally strong that they can make totally kamikaze attacks in the mountains that splinter the peloton and force Discovery out of its plan, and Bobby Julich is finding a whole 'nother set of legs in the latter half of his career that make him a dangerous
domestique on the order of George Hincapie or Paolo Savodelli on Discovery.
I think Lance can win, but I don't think it's going to happen without a real dogfight, and I expect to see CSC contest every move by Discovery. This could be a very exciting Tour to watch.
