Time For The Hitters. After a couple of days where I’ve been off the grid, it’s a good day to get back on Tour watching duties!
We’ve seen Cav do what Cav does: win Tour stages. Radioshack appear almost cursed, with Brajkovic out, Horner in doubt and Leipheimer losing a minute after slipping on some paint; Sky have had a win through Eddie the Boss, but have lost Wiggo; Garmin continue to hold the yellow jersey, and it appears VDV is their sole gc option as Ryder lost some time behind a crash. Who said the first week is boring?
Super-Besse is the first mountain stage, although it’s not a killer like the Alpine stages late in the race. It was the scene of fireworks a couple of years ago, with Riccardo Riccò winning the stage and Stefan Schumacher losing the yellow jersey in a late crash… No one waited that day… And no one moaned either… Heh.
Anyhoo, with a 1.5km final climb at 7.6% it’s plenty hard enough for there to be some minor time gaps to be put into blokes. Contador is surely going to be looking to hit the field as hard as he can, Evans will be covering and hopefully countering, and we will finally get to see what form Andy Schleck has.
And atop all of this, Phillipe Gilbert will be hoping to lay some unanswered points on the green jersey to gain some space on Cav & Thor.
So looking into the crystal ball, my tip is;
- Contador
- Evans
- Gilbert
Now we get to see how the big hitters are faring. Very excited!
