A Ride Through the Pyrenees To Answer Lingering Questions

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The New York Sun

Headed into the second week of the Tour de France, the once fearsome CSC team looked like a captain-less ship whose sails were flickering in a limp breeze. Even the team’s manager, Bjarne Riis, skipped out on Sunday’s stage to watch the World Cup final in Berlin. He wasn’t present for Monday’s rest day press conference in Bordeaux, either, when the struggling team laid out its plan for the Pyrenees.The riders will start climbing today.

“Our strategy hasn’t changed,” CSC’s second-incommand, Kim Andersen, said. “We are here to work, and we’ll work with the people we have.”

It was a straightforward strategy: Someone will attack on each stage, and the others will stay back to defend the leader, who is now Carlos Sastre from Spain.

“I think everybody is really motivated,” Andersen said.

None of the teams appear to lack motivation — on the contrary, with the peloton stripped of its major contenders after a pre-race doping-scandal, even the underdog squads believe they have a chance. What the teams have lacked until this week, however, has been at least a skeleton plan for who will take over their suddenly vacated helms.

In the case of CSC, they are riding without Ivan Basso, broadly considered the favorite before he was banned on the eve of the race. Andersen’s announcement that Sastre would fill Basso’s shoes was not a huge surprise. The Spaniard has finished in the top 10 in three of the last four Tours, and is currently only 2:27 behind the leader, Ukraine’s Serhiy Honchar. The only other possibility would have been American teammate David Zabriskie, who is less than 2 minutes behind Honchar, but few suspect that Zabriskie’s grit will endure in the mountains.

The more difficult decision belonged to T-Mobile, the German squad previously skippered by perennial favorite and 1997 Tour champion Jan Ullrich, who was also ousted in the drug scandal. T-Mobile occupies four of the top five spots in the overall classification, including Honchar.

Andreas Kloden, now in fifth-place overall, is a very good climber and serious contender.He finished just one step behind Lance Armstrong on the podium in 2004. Third-place and fourthplace overall now belong to Michael Rogers and Patrik Sinkewitz, each of whom has had a strong showing. Although Sinkewitz is a great climber — after all, he was placed on the team to help escort Ullrich through the mountains — neither he nor Rogers are on anyone’s short list to finish in the top five.

Then again, the two are only 26 and 25 years old, respectively, both have world-class race victories to their credit, and a few surprises are all but guaranteed this year.

Still, the leadership of T-Mobile appears to belong to Honchar.

“The rider with the yellow jersey is the captain,” announced T-Mobile manager Olaf Ludwig at his team’s press conference. “Everyone knows that Honchar can ride well up a mountain. We will try to be at the top of the classification as long as possible, to have all tactical possibilities open to us.”

Those possibilities, Ludwig conceded, would be limited. In the wake of the drug scandal, the team has only seven riders (as opposed the usual nine) he noted, and would not be able “to play the same card the Discovery Channel did all those years.”

That is, they do not have the same depth of talent that Lance Armstrong had at his disposal to chase down attacks in the mountains while keeping some good climbers at his side.

The Discovery Channel still has all nine riders, but still no clear choice for a leader. While New York native and cocaptain George Hincapie briefly held the yellow jersey at the beginning of the Tour, he elected not to defend it last week and then suffered a mediocre time trial result on Saturday. He now lags 2:30 behind in the standings.

The other co-captain, Yaroslav Popovych, is at 3:27, which could be considered nearly out of contention. Team manager Johan Bruyneel has yet to announce which of the two will make the bid for the yellow jersey, and that is probably just as well because a third Discovery rider and potential contender, Paolo Savoldelli, has the team’s best time, at 2:10, in 11th place overall.

None of those placements are very inspiring. Some veteran commentators have already written off the American squad’s chances of winning what would be their eighth consecutive title.

America’s greatest hope now hangs on Floyd Landis, the undisputed captain of the Phonak team, and his ailing hip. Despite the burning pain that he kept a secret until this week (Landis broke his right hip in a training fall in 2003 and will have the now “ruined”hip replaced after the Tour), the former teammate of Armstrong has emerged as the all-around favorite.

Yesterday’s mostly flat, 169.5 km ride from Bordeaux to the Basque town of Dax did little to change the standings or the predictions. Spain’s Oscar Freire weaved his way to a firstplace photo finish, and yet again the top riders finished in the pack with the same time.

Today’s trek into the mountains, however, should clear up a few lingering questions for the Discovery Channel and other teams in search of an identity, a leader. The 190.5km stage covers two exhausting climbs, the beyond-category Soudet pass, and the category-one Col de Marie Blanque, which descends to the finish line.

jmoretti@nysun.com


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