TDF Stage 4: "Big Win, Small Gain"
Category: Sports (Pro/College/HS)...
Posted Wednesday, July 07, 2004 at 10:34 PM [GMT-6]

I stole the post title from Chris Carmichael's analysis of today's Tour de France stage, the Team Time Trial. The USPS train team put on an awesome display of precision and power to blow away the rest of the teams and win today's stage by over a minute, a huge gap at this level of competition (only 39 seconds separated the next four teams).

However, because of the new rules this year, Lance & Co. was able to pick up only seconds over their main rivals. As Bryan over at Arguing With Signposts put it in a comment on the previous TDF report, this race should be renamed the "Tour Defeat Lance" as it seems that the route and the rules changes were chosen with the express purpose of working against his strengths. Up to this point, however, he's managed to cope very well and, in fact, now wears the yellow jersey as the overall race leader. His teammates also hold down the 2nd-5th places, with six of the Posties in the top 10 overall at this early point in the race.

That's not expected to last...Lance has bigger fish to fry than hanging onto the yellow jersey through meaningless intermediate stages, and if one of the lesser rivals wants it badly enough, he'll gladly concede it to keep from wearing out his team to defend it. His eye is still on Jan Ullrich and Tyler Hamilton.

Tomorrow's stage should be another fast one, relatively flat and 200 kilometers in length. Don't look for any shakeup in the placement of the main contenders.