No Tour for Astana

micron

Pat McTwat is just Heiny's lapdog - and we all know what a doping apologist Verbruggen was, pushing doped riders back into races when they weren't wanted - Useless C**t Imbeciles.

As for the Astana missed test - the rest of the team were tested - only the team leaders had already left and the team organisers said they'd never make the round trip in time - so it was deemed to be the testers fault for turning up at the wrong time. Funny how 6 of the team were still there, wasn't it?

whiteboytrash

Very funny now in hindsight !

Anticyclone

This may have been covered before but one of the stages that surprised me the most last year was the stage up to Plateau-de-Beille. The Alps had been followed by a few of the relatively easy transition stages in southern France. There had been the ITT the day before but the stage to Plateau de Beille only had one big mountain before the final climb. I therefore expected quite a lot of riders to be up there and for time gaps to not be that big. In actuality i was surprised that some people managed to pull away by so much. The winner, Alberto Contador, beat the best time of Lance Armstrong by almost 90 seconds. However, there were four other riders who beat LA's best mark.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/200...esults/tour0714

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plateau-de-Beille

Of course, comparing times on a final climb in different tours is difficult - the speed of the first week will have an effect on the riders, as will other mountain stages and the earlier climbs. However, the 2002 tour seems to be fairly comparable at least - the stage in 2004 looks harder and had a hard day the day before. In that tour LA was over a minute clear of his nearest finishers (Heras/Beloki)...

http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/200...results/stage13
http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/200...results/stage12


Suggesting that someone could realistically beat LA's mark by that much therefore seems a bit debatable. Intriguingly 3 of the top 9 were astana riders, 2 are now astana riders and one is rasmussen

poulidor

Anticyclone,

here a translation of a french website on the same subject
http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=fr|en&u=http://www.passionveloblog.com/article-7038424.html

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Let Astana and McQuaid whine !