Overshadowed in all the press by the scandalous speech by outgoing Tour de France director Jean-Marie LeBlanc during the unveiling of the 2006 route, incoming tour director Christian Prudhomme remarked as he presented the course in October of 2005:
“It is an awesome final week and it will be like a dream if the result will hang in the balance going into the final time trial,”
Mr. Prudhomme, welcome to your dream come true…
What a great time trial!
Serguei Gonchar wraps up the tour winning both time trials and spending 3 days in yellow with a great ride today. Only Andreas Klöden could come within one minute of Gonchar’s finish at 41″ back. Klöden’s great ride, along with a 20th place ride by Carlos Sastre, allows Klöden to replace Sastre as the third place in the GC and take his place on the podium in Paris.
Of course the big story is the maillot jaune, which Floyd Landis wrapped up with a solid ride to third place for the stage at 1′ 11″ behind Gonchar. Oscar Pereiro was a real star today–not known as a strong time trialist, he rode with the yellow on his shoulders and finished in fourth place behind Landis. While it was probably a personal best time trial for Pereiro it was not enough to keep the maillot jaune as Landis beat him today by 1′ 29″ giving Landis the maillot jaune with a 59″ margin.
Tomorrow Floyd Landis will become the third American to win the Tour de France, joining Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong for a combined 11 victories in the past 20 years!
Just to bookmark a pretty good article with a great title about Stage 17.
In the OLN pre-race show when asked if Floyd could possibly get back into it, Phil Ligget said categorically “No.”
By conventional wisdom he was right. Theoretically none of the GC leaders would allow Landis to get free of their group. They would work together to keep him under control, especially knowing he is a skilled time trialist. Of course now, after an incredible stage over 5 categorized climbs into Morzine, we know they could not control Landis. Phonak set a blistering pace on the approach and early slopes of Col des Saisies and Landis launched his attack off the front which none of the contenders could hold. The contenders probably felt that Landis would not be able to hold such a pace and would either blow up or that they would catch him after the first or second climb as he lowered the pace and they slowly elevated theirs.
In Phil’s defense, it was an unprecedented attack and Floyd set a blistering pace for such a mountainous stage finishing 200.5km in 5h23’36″ — that’s an average speed of just over 37km/hour. Paul Sherwin will be helping eat the crow, as he also expressed that the GC would not allow Landis that kind of a breakaway.
Only Bobke felt Landis could do “the impossible” — Bobke, Landis and Team Phonak.
An absolutely amazing performance!!
Floyd took a huge gamble and delivered an amazing ride to erase much of the losses of yesterday’s disastrous stage. Sastra is driving hard now to move into the maillot jaune, and Oscar Pereiro is descending like mad to keep himself in it. Landis might be back in Yellow at the end of the day, but Sastre and Pereiro are both fighting hard to have it as well. Right now it looks like Sastre has the edge, but no matter how it ends tonight, the separation of these three will be mere seconds.
Sastre is across at 5′ 42″ behind Landis, so he will remain in front of Landis for the GC, but only by about 18 seconds!
Pereiro is sprinting to save his positin in the maillot jaune, it will be close! He saved it by about 10 seconds!
With only seconds between the leaders, Floyd will be the favorite for the time trial but there will be a lot of motivation for the Sastre and Pereiro as well.
Amazing stage. If you missed the live broadcast you really must see the rebroadcasts some time today! Amazing!
Landis finished 5′ 42″ in front of Sastre, and 7′+ in front of Pereiro. For the overall 1st to third are separated by 30″ now. Landis erased an 8minute+ deficit and now is within striking distance to regain the maillot jaune and keep it to Paris!!
This one will go down in tour history as one of the great stages. Easily one of the greatest attacks in the past two decades I have been watching.
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