Then Armstrong, in what later was described as a planned attack, joined a break that actually stayed away! The (virtual) cheers in the chat room were deafening – people not only wanted, but were literally willing Armstrong to victory. However this is no fairy tale story and the Texan was out sprinted to the line by Frenchman Pierrick Fedrigo (or as I like to say in the Versus chat room, “Random French Dude”).

Posted on the Team RadioShack blog Johan Bruyneel said that Armstrong’s lack of results these past couple of stages were on purpose.

“Now that he’s not in contention for the general classification anymore, you try to save strength.” I wonder what Levi thought of that strategy when it was announced on the team bus? I continue to ponder how that plan would have gone over during the halcyon Armstrong days? Probably not well.

Read the full post at Versus.com.

If you are participating in my Versus Tour de France daily online live chat (and if you’re not shame on you!) print out the list below (or view it on the Browne Eye Mobile app) and on the corresponding stage listen for Paul and Phil’s catch phrase or random comment. When you hear the phrase take a strong pull on your morning beverage of choice. Depending on the stage and my mood, I may be drinking a bloody mary, coffee chased with espresso and/or my fav beer of the week.

One added caveat to this game is that you are not allowed to leave and relieve yourself of any internal biological pressure that may be building due to the inordinate amount of liquid you are ingesting. What I mean is you can’t get up to pee – you need to hold it.

Also, some phrases are worth double gulps**, so be prepared with enough of your beverage to continue throughout the whole stage. If you run out of your drink before the stage is over is considered a rookie move and shows a lack of planning. Don’t be that guy – plan ahead.

For the hard core players, I’m adding the option of drinking a Red Dragon for sightings of the infamous Devil.

As an added bonus I’ve included a couple of Tour de France ring tones. Amaze your cycling friends and annoy your co-workers with the Versus Cycling theme song and a Tour de France car horn. (To use these as your ringtones, download the files to your PC desktop and drag them into your iTunes library.  For further assistance, I suggest Googling for instructions.)

In the short term he’s still racing the Tour and with his chance of winning the overall completely gone, his only opportunity is to go stage hunting. Bill Strickland, author of Tour de Lance, picks stage 13 as the most probable.

Strickland points to the final climb of the day, the Cote de St. Ferreol, as the location where Armstrong could make his move.

“Armstrong knows that climb well: The last time the Tour finished here was in 2005, and Armstrong, along with favorites such as Jan Ullrich, Alexander Vinokourov, Ivan Basso and others, powered an escape that held a 20-second gap over the field to the finish.”

Stage 13 could be lucky for Armstrong, however it might be a gut reaction for the peloton to mount a chase and not allow the Texan out of sight. I’m wondering if Team Sky might just not organize to assure he never gets more than a couple of pedal strokes ahead of the bunch. I haven’t heard about any war of words lately between Garmin-Transitions and RadioShack, but they might take this as one last opportunity to stick it to Armstrong. But hey, maybe Garmin-Transitions director Matty White is a bigger man than me – I’m just a vengeful guy who enjoys sticking it to a rival.

After the peloton rolls into Paris, they complete their ceremonial hot laps on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and Armstrong unclips for the last time, where does he go from there?

Read the full post at Versus.com.

Coming out of a roundabout, the seven-time Tour champion clipped a pedal and went down. The footage shown on television doesn’t do Armstrong’s crash justice. Across the street, and from the sound of it a couple of bottles of wine into their spectating day, a fan caught the moment on video: Armstrong sliding on his back at about 60 kilometers an hour (I’ve included the YouTube video at the bottom of this post). As we all know, Armstrong remounted and finished over 11 minutes behind stage winner Andy Schleck–effectively ending his last chance of winning the Tour de France.

With an 8th Tour win out of reach, will Armstrong now be embraced by the French? Johan Bruyneel said, “the French love the loser more than a winner.” Looking back at cycling history we can see that is a fairly accurate statement. Five-time Tour de France winner Jacques Anquetil was never as popular with his countrymen as Raymound Poulidor, who was known as the eternal second. Here in the States, we put winners on pedestals, which is where Armstrong has resided for the past ten years. The struggle of an also-ran strikes a chord with the French.

Read the full post at Versus.com.

In pre-race sound bites Armstrong has acknowledged the physical superiority of Contador but the telling comment left out was being equally complimentary to the Astana team.

Read the full post at Versus.com.

It’s not like Vande Velde hasn’t had solid results at the Tour: he was fourth in 2008 and eighth in 2009. He’s been a professional cyclist for thirteen years so it’s not like this was a case of rookie-itis. The rain coupled with a dangerous descent – described by Radio Shack’s Chris Horner as dangerous in the dry, and in the wet: suicidal – made it a crash-fest in the making.

Click link to read the full post at Versus.com.

The complications aren’t just on the roads of the Tour. Things can get wacky right up to the start on Saturday. A rumor was floating around like a stagnant fart that RadioShack wasn’t going to be allowed to start the Tour. And just like a fart it was unpleasant and no one ‘fessed up to who started it. Bicycling Magazine’s Bill Strickland Twittered the rumor and quoted two unnamed sources, but even he doubted the validity of the claims. While highly unlikely that the Shack would be bounced out of Rotterdam it did give me a moment of pause. That could have been a disaster of, dare I use the word, epic proportions. As I write this it looks like Lance and company have no fears and will be ripping through the downtown streets on their new Treks.

Click link to read the full post at Versus.com.

His first obvious weakness is the Astana squad. While they are not completely inadequate and have shown some strength earlier in the season, can the boys in blue and gold really be expected to provide support during that last brutal week in the mountains? Doubtful.

Click link to read full post at Versus.com.

Who will be working for who in California Courtesy-Al Crawford

The racing season is right around the corner and all the pro teams are counting the days till their specific race rendezvous. Taking a quick glance at the various team sites you can see where riders will be. In the case of Kenda p/b Geargrinders it’s the Tour de Taiwan in March. The Tour of Taiwan is a UCI ranked event, so snagging some early season points will make them an attractive selection for any of our domestic grand tours such as Tour of California (I actually heard that only one slot is still open for a team), Tour of Missouri (keeping my fingers crossed on that one) and of course the Tour of Utah (inside source told me they are going big in 2010). Beyond the American Continental teams is the Big Show – the teams who are assured a spot in our domestic races as well as the three European Grand Tours. Let’s not forget the Spring Classics.

For those stalking Garmin-Transitions (I’m talking about a certain group of #cyclingdivas) the team was polite enough to not only post their race schedule but also format it into an attractive calendar suitable for framing. I have mine pinned up next to my mounted talking bass. Both are great conversation starters. “Hey, what’s that? Is that a talking bass mounted next to the Garmin-Transitions racing schedule?” Yes…yes it is.

With a large squad Garmin-Transitions is splitting the squad into a Giro and Amgen Tour of California team. From a personal standpoint I’d like to see both Christian Vande Velde and David Zabriskie line up at the Amgen Tour of California. However, the Giro has been the traditional tune-up for potential Tour de France champions. Wiggins of Sky has already stated that he’s eying the Giro’s prologue and the time trial. If Zabriskie is going to have the break out year that Vaughters predicts then Italy may be where he’s headed in May. Vande Velde has contested the Giro these past two years and went on to strong finishes at the Tour, so I wouldn’t expect a change in his racing program.

One schedule that got me thinking was Team RadioShack’s race program posted on Johan Bruyneels’s Facebook page (never in a thousand years did I ever think I’d be writing that sentence). The month of May is missing the Giro and instead has the Tour of California followed by the Tour of Belgium. This is an interesting conundrum that Joe Lindsey pointed out in the Boulder Report. Armstrong had used the Giro for the high-intensity training to fine-tune the fitness. However the Tour of California has been Leipheimer’s race. There could be awkward moments around the dinner table in California if Armstrong wants to flex his racing muscle during the race and not be the super-domestic he was in 2009. And what about Kloden? It looks like scraps for him. With no Giro, the Tour of California is Leipheimer’s, the Tour is Armstrong’s – no matter what he said at the press conference, so what’s left? Maybe throw him a bone at Paris-Nice?

Wiggo - the next big thing?

I have mixed feeling about the new British Sky team. They are the New York Yankees of the cycling world buying up any and all available (in the case of Wiggins – not so available) talent. The British side of me is rooting for them and I’m glad that in these uncertain times a huge corporation has stepped up and backed a team. The a-hole side of me will enjoy harassing my father who has become a big fan of them and I will be able to endlessly mock him when Sky doesn’t win. I am gambling with my inheritance because if I piss him off too badly he might remove me from the will. However the reality is that the Browne fortune is probably no more than several boxes of empty Lucky Lager bottles and my grandfather’s old prosthetic arm, so it’s not a big loss.

While not a Pro Continental team, BMC with Cadel Evans, George Hincapie and Alessandro Ballan are deserved of a wild card entry into all the races. Their season is starting off early with the Tour Down Under and then it’s a European campaign with Hincapie, Ballan and fresh meat John Murphy. I don’t think anyone would argue with me by saying that Murph is a guy who deserves this shot. I expect to see Hincapie, Ballan and Murphy to be at the Tour of California. Evans has already decided to race the Giro as prep for the Tour. He’s going to have to be a cagey rider to do well in the 2010 Tour.

With no TTT can anyone really beat him in the Tour?

With the new year just hours in front of us the speculation has begun. Will the Giro once again be just an event the Italians battle for and everyone else uses for Tour training? Can the Tour of California become THE race to attend as we hope for drier days? Will the new super budget Sky Team be more than just an over-expensive team filled with racers and their bloated egos? Will their failure to win any significant races cause my dad to have a rage-fueled stroke? Who knows, but I’m double checking the will. I think Lucky Lager beer bottles are collectables and might be worth some coin.

Hincapie and Lewis have their race radios plugged in for Tour of Missouri

I wrote this piece just before the Tour de France for the Astana website in response to the organizer’s ban on race radios in two stages. Now that the topic has resurfaced as the UCI is proposing phasing out two-way race radios. While there hasn’t been a time line established when exactly the radios will be put on the shelf, it has set off a firestorm of controversy. So here’s my two cents for what it’s worth…

Race radios are a relatively new piece of equipment in a sport that is over a hundred years old. The radio was first introduced by the Motorola team because, well, the title sponsor produced them. But beyond the obvious sponsorship tie-in the radios allowed the director in the team car to point out road hazards and relay information without having to lean on the horn and blast their way up to the rider. And before you could say “10-4, over and out” the entire professional peloton had a radio tucked into their middle jersey pocket with a cord leading up to the ear. And today at your local race it’s not too unusual to see a few riders with a radio piece firmly planted into an ear.

This year’s Tour de France race radios have been excluded from stages 10 and 13. This is not the first time the UCI has taken a rather harsh stance with technology. Time trial bikes must be able to fit within a measuring jig to determine their race legality. In an age when almost the complete bike can be made from aeronautical strength carbon fiber, the UCI rules do not allow riders to race a bike under 15 pounds for safety concerns. I’ve heard reliable rumors that back in the day when bikes were weighed, ice was place in the seat tubes as ballast and then over the course of the stage it melted and ran out the bottom bracket. Others cleverly used the weight restriction to show that their bike was so light that they had to add very visible weights to the top tube to bring it into compliance. Cross-country mountain bikes are now approaching that weight restriction because composite materials are stronger. However this year it is race radios that are being limited on what is now a trial basis.

Why the brief exclusion of race radios on just these two days? For several years the idea of eliminating or at least limiting the use of radios has bounced around the halls of the UCI like a loose ping pong ball. This year the idea caught traction with the ASO, the owners of the Tour de France, and they decided to implement the no radio rule in a very limited manner. This idea was not so well received by modern day directors or riders. Directors stated the obvious that the radios were in fact partially for safety. They could alert riders of upcoming road concerns without continually driving up and down the bunch. Information could also be relayed in the same manner without causing a traffic jam worthy of a southern California freeway. But those against the radios seem to harken back to the “good old days” of poring over a stage map on the hood of the team car, sticking a moist finger in the air to determine wind direction and planning a race strategy. Some of the old guard are even quoted as saying that the radios were attached to race directing gigolos. Wow! But lets take a look from their side of the fence. Having a radio piece continually stuck in a rider’s ear takes away from the spontaneity to make decisions. The rider becomes too dependent on what the director is saying from the team car. While getting directions from the director via the radio is instantaneous, the rider is the first one to see the action go down and will have learned by this point in their professional career what moves look dangerous and what doesn’t. However I have sat in enough team cars to know that the car is not always the first to know what is going on. And yes, in some of the bigger races the directors can watch the race live on the in-car televisions, but that is often aimed at a marquee rider or the break up the road, not necessary their rider. The good rider becomes a good rider because he has learned how to read a race. The ones who can’t often self-select themselves out of the bike racing gene pool. It’s that simple – Darwin in action. Others wring their hands and cry out that the sanctuary of the pre-race team meeting will be forever ruined and perhaps directors will now send out 140 character Tweets to riders. “The race starts at noon be at bus by 11 to pick up bikes & clean kits. Also work together. Lead out Mark. Check ur Facebook pg 4 updates.” As any sun burned race journalist will tell you team meetings still occur before every race, and sometimes right up to sign-in making it a challenge to get that all important pre-stage quote of how the legs are doing. Another factor to consider is that the roads in most cases are not improving and are in fact deteriorating. Also with more traffic on the roads than ever before, there are now more cars parked on the sides squeezing the lanes even smaller. These types of road hazards need to be communicated during the race for the safety of the peloton. Stage 4, the team time trial, was no better example of how important a radio can be. With the numerous turns a rider needs all the assistance he can to be able to navigate through the course safely. And even then there were still numerous crashes.

The experiment of excluding radios for two stages is, on the surface, interesting. However the rider’s safety must be thought of and if fewer accidents can be prevented by the use of these than so be it.

BMC's Cruz plugged in

The team car outfitted with race radio

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