Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Titans To Clash On The Tourmalet


The battle for the 2010 Tour de France reaches its pinnacle tonight in the form of Stage 17, 174km epic journey from Pau, the gateway to the Pyrenees, 165m above sea level, all the way to the mythical summit of the Col du Tormalet, which tops out at over 2100m. On the way the peleton will also have to deal with the cat-1 climbs of the Col de Marie-Blanque and the Col du Soulor, and the stage makes the final rendezvous before the penultimate day time trial in Bordeaux.

The equation is simple - Andy Schleck must get enough time on Alberto Contador to make up for his inferiority in the race against the clock. The final time trial is 52km so I estimate that Schleck will need at least a one minute advantage over Contador heading into Saturday's stage. Unfortunately for the fans of the White Knight from Luxembourg I don't think he can do it. Now that Contador has the yellow jersey he can afford to follow Schleck around as a duckling follows its mother. Schleck will have to attack Contador in front and will not have the element of surprise, and while he has put the Spaniard into difficulty a couple of times during this years race I don't think he has the ability to put over a minute into him, even on a beast of a climb such as the Tourmalet. To do it, he will have to attack early - no waiting for the closing kilometres to have a crack. In fact he will probably have to reproduce the effort of Carlos Sastre on L'Alpe d'Huez in 2008, when he blew the field away with an attack on the foot of the climb and rode away to the Yellow Jersey. While I would love to see him do it, I just don't think he is capable of a similar feet given the quality of the chasers he has behind him in the likes of Contador, Denis Menchov and Samuel Sanchez.


Sanchez and Menchov will also continue their battle for the final podium place and I would expect Sanchez to look to put some time into the 'Silent Assassin' who is arguably a better time trialler. There head-to-head battle for third may prove to be just as exciting as that between Schleck and Contador for the race lead. I expect the Olympic champion Sanchez to go ballistic at some stage on this climb and put Menchov into real difficulty.

The King of The Mountains crown will also be decided tonight as the Tourmalet represents the last classified climb of the whole tour. It is a race in two with Christophe Moreau needing 23 points to catch the current Polka Dot Jersey of Anthony Charteau. Realistically to gain an advantage either rider will need to get into the day's break as they do not have the climbing ability to finish with the GC guys on a finish like the Tourmalet. Given that, their is some chance that neither man will get into the break and the status quo will be maintained, leaving Charteau to ride with the polka-dot jersey to Paris. That would be my tip.

All in all it should be an amazing night of racing and hopefully it is not as much of an anti-climax as the finish to Mount Vonteux was in 2009. Let the best man win! (As long as it is Andy Schleck).

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