Le Tour De WTF
Okay, so right off the bat, Hincapie disappears in a puff of disappointment–the guy at the Link said he lost too much weight too quickly, and he’s down to like 155lbs, which for a guy who’s just a touch shorter than I am is Jack The Pumpkin King territory–and Landis, after having dropped a bomb (”oh, bee-tee-dub, I’ve got the hips of an 80-year old woman who’s allergic to calcium”), somehow pops to the top! I’m happy to see a Yank in the front, but I’m kind of confused–a “destroyed” hip joint and a yellow jersey seem like they’d clash. Then in Stage 16, Landis conks out in the Alps and drops a full eight minutes behind the leader, kind of killing his shot at the Tour.
That’s more like it, I thought, that’s the familiar disappointment that I’d managed to not feel for the past seven years.
Until I crack open the Bloglines this morning to find this:
American Floyd Landis (Phonak) chased down and destroyed an 11-man breakaway, then soloed away to win the 17th stage of the Tour de France Thursday in Morzine after 200.5km of racing on the final day in the Alps.
He goes from bonking out in the Alps to some kind of Robocop-in-bicycle-mode breakaway in less than a day. And this isn’t just a last gasp on his way out–he put almost six whole minutes of shame in everyone else’s game, and now he’s 30 seconds away from the yellow jersey again.
God, I’m almost happy Lance retired–this is an amazing Tour.
July 20th, 2006 at 7:28pm
Yes, Yes!!!
I started reading Cycling New’s Live Report this morning, surprised to see that Floyd was riding well and then he just left them, for like the last 100 K or so!!
Just awesome! He’s probably set a world record for bottles of water poured over his head! The TV folks are saying that it is the best stage they can remember, bar none. That is pretty high talk, cause there have been some real gems.
July 21st, 2006 at 11:40am
And Bobke’s color commentary was a good as the stage. He was going nuts.
July 21st, 2006 at 11:44am
Yeah, I need to see the TV coverage of that stage.