Malmesbury Bikes

During the Lea 10k fun run, while he paced me round the course, Charlie (age 5) managed to cycle straight into a ditch. It wasn’t a desperately bad crash, but he AND his bike disappeared from view amongst the undergrowth. Fortunately, apart from the shock and a few nettle stings he was unhurt – but, as crashes go, it put my usual attempts to shame.

To ensure that ‘doing a pete’ is forever immortalized, I’ve added it to the Wikitionary – see ‘pete’.

The next  five stages are flat - it’s Stage 15 on the 19th July before they start to see mountains again and head to Verbier, and not for the skiing.

I know I said yesterday that it was all a bit boring, so today’s the rest day when all the scandals appear and various riders suddenly develop mystery illnesses before sloping off home. Hmmmm. . .  well in any normal year there’d be a scandal, but not this year, it’s still pretty boring.

Come on guys, you’re phaffing around wondering whether or not you can out-tactic the world Champion of Tour De France tactics. . .  Lance Armstrong and his management team are the experts at working out how to win Le Tour and you can bet your house that they’ve been planning these for the past two years at least. SO forget about trying to win on tactics and just ride off the front of the pack - if every Stage had a few riders who were prepared to push for a VERY convincing stage win (i.e. by a good 5-10 minutes), then that might just be enough to blow the Astana tactics into confusion. One tactic I can guarantee is that Astana and Lance Armstrong won’t let anyone beat them on the last two days. . .  so if you’re going to win the Tour, you’ll need to be well in the lead by the time everyone hits the Ventoux.

We’ve been Tweeting on and off for a while. . .  now the Twitter feed should get automatic updates from this main site.

Find us at http://twitter.com/MalmesburyBikes

Another classic mountain and no break away – what on earth is going on in the peloton at the moment?

There seems to be some belief that the teams are waiting until the last week, potentially the penultimate day on the Ventoux, before stamping their mark with some audacious climbing. But surely there’s some advantage, even if only psychological, of putting in some good breaks on these wasted mountain classics? I know that there are huge dangers allowing a breakaway, then having to catch-up in a mad-dash downhill, but there don’t even appear to be any challengers or pretenders for the TDF Crown out there.

In the closing stages of today’s stage, Andy Schleck punctured and there was a panic as his team had to pull him back into the peloton going flat-out for the finish. They managed to get him into the peloton, but I wonder why the Schleck brothers hadn’t put in a break on the Tourmalet and given themselves a good lead going down the other side.

And what about Euskatel? I can’t believe that they’re capitulating to Astana’s ‘control’ of this year’s Tour. Euskatel have been on home ground this week, so wouldn’t it have been fantastic to have taken off up hill together, leaving the rest of the peloton behind and cresting Le Tourmalet as a single mass of classic orange shirts? This seems the one year when Euskatel could have really stood out from the crowd in the Pyrenees.

The one highlight of Stage 9 was Pierrick Fedrigo (BBOX Bouygues Telecom), who came through and beat Franco Pellizotti (Ita|Liquigas), after the Italian had sat on his wheel during the last few kilometers of the race and made a late sprint for the line. . . fortunately Pierrick still had some power left in those legs (or maybe he was just furious at Franco’s attempt to get towed to a stage victory – I know I’d have been livid), and slapped the Italian rider back into place. Well done Pierrick!

I’m afraid that the last two stages have been hugely disappointing – I’m not sure what’s going wrong, whether it’s the TDF organisers who have created a less dynamic route or whether the Astana team are controlling proceedings. . . or whether it’s just a complete lack of confidence amongst the other teams to assert themselves at this stage.

Yesterday (Stage 7) Alberto Contador rode into a two second lead and the optimists amongst would have hoped for some dynamic attempts from Alberto and other contenders to use this mountain stage to further stamp their mark on the peloton.

But it wasn’t to be – it was boring, boring, boring! I told you so!

The only plus point to come out of Stage 8 today was a third place for Mikel Chaurreau of the Euskaltel-Euskadi team

Rinaldo Nocentini held on to the yellow jersey, but surely a breakaway could have given a climbing “pretender” a few days in the yellow jersey. The peloton will tell you they’re all playing a tactical game, but I can’t help feeling that it’s really a political game.

Let’s see how the downhill finish from Le Tourmalet tomorrow can wreck any hope of a final exciting day in the Pyrenees.

Alberto Contador broke free of the main group just below the top of Arcalis and managed to end up with two seconds over Lance Armstrong. It was brave move and I feel that Alberto will have lost most of, if not all of, the support from the senior members of the Astana team by racing ahead of the Texan. Lance’s face after the race said it all, “things hadn’t gone to plan” was what he actually said, but he was clearly well ruffled (understatement? – Ed) by the way the day had panned out.

As to the weekend – you’ve got two days of mountains in the Pyrenees with downhill finishes, which doesn’t sound like a recipe for success. That seems like a perfect way of creating a dangerous finish as the main group goes hell for leather downhill to catch any breakaway, as well as removing much of the advantage that climbers can make from a good breakaway as they stand a good chance of losing much of that on the downhill finish, either by good group work by the following peloton or by coming a cropper as they race to retain the advantage.

Here we go - it’s up and into the mountains for a mountain top finish at Arcalis in Andorra. It’s the highest finish for any Tour route and they haven’t been here since 1997. Not only is it high, but the climb up is just over ten kilometres at 7.1 percent.

The weather should be kind to them, after yesterday’s rain (which caused all sorts of mayhem on the slippery drag in Barcelona) it predicted to be mostly cloudy with a high of about 70 degrees.

The key to today will be how the Astana team reacts - or rather, will Lance Armstrong try to stamp his mark over the potential rivals in the team. If he does, I wonder whether the likes of Alberto Contador will suddenly come down with a serious illness and retire. Although I have a suspicion that the other Astana team members have been happy to stay in his shadow for the first few days and look like the underdogs, basically waiting their chance to impress as the roads start to go up and over the mountain.

It’s going to be an interesting day on Stage 7 of Le Tour.

As expected, today wasn’t the greatest in terms of excitement. There was a five man breakaway that got itself into a few interesting mind-games very close to the finish line - as they accelerated and toyed with each other as the main peleton bore down on them. As it was a German-sounding Frenchman took with a few kilometres to spare and raced over the line ahead of the others.

Tomorrow takes the race into Spain and the low eastern Pyrennees, finishing in Barcelona. The racing should be good, to match the spectacle that the Spaniards are bound to lay on. Let’s hope that Euskatel put on a better showing for a Spanish audience.

Let’s be honest. . .  time trials during Le Tour can be a bit boring. Better than some of the flat stages, which try to liven things up with a sprint here or there, but boring nevertheless.

Well they proved otherwise today during Stage 4 of the Tour De France.  We had crashes from Radobank (Denis Menchov), Lampre, Bbox, Lotto and Cofidis. We had towering performances from the likes of Cavendish again, who drove his team well. But at the end of the day it was the yellow jersey that proved most exciting. . .  with the seconds rounded normally, Lance Armstrong was dead level withFabian Cancellara. So the times from back in Monaco on Saturday were added up taking the hundredths of seconds into account. . .  and Lance missed the yellow jersey by 0.22 seconds. . .  shame, eh?

And to cap it all we had a very impressive performance from our adopted Basque team, Euskadi Euskatel.

The Tour De France may have snuck up on some of us, especially me, but Mark Cavendish is on top form. He rode off in a breakaway this afternoon that included Lance Armstrong and the yellow jersey holder, Fabian Cancellera - crossing the line 41 seconds ahead of the main peleton. See the BBC Sport for exact details.

Having watched the highlights, Mark Cavendish’s Columbia team put in an extraordinary effort to keep him protected until the end. I have to say that I was disappointed that Lance A didn’t seem to be helping out that much at the front of the breakaway, but it could be that the TV cameras weren’t looking when he was grinding the bunch forward.

So hats off to Monsieur Cavendish - he’s having an astonishing year, which just adds more weight to his achievements today. Hears to several more stage wins over the next few weeks.