Stage One Results – Individual Time Trial – Ullrich Gets Schooled
What an incredible start to the tour, stage one results are in and Lance Armstrong is in prime position to take the yellow jersey in the coming stages. Today started early for me, I woke up around 6am as I was so dam excited for the start of the tour (and wanted to get a blog post or two in) that I did not sleep well. The tour coverage started really early today at 7:30am on OLN and me and the wife were not really too sure what we would be watching at breakfast, would it be the race or a pre show?
Turns out we were in for over 3 hours of pre race coverage that was awesome, but since I have been covering the cycling season “fairly” close most of the news was hardly that. None the less I did enjoy the morning “build up” tv, friend …. the 2005 Tour de France is here!!
Finally at 10:30am the race was underway with the riders leaving the start house at one minute intervals, David Zabriskie had the early lead with a scorching time of 20.51 (54.67 km/h). While it was exciting that an American was in the lead for the stage victory many of the big guns were still to come, names like Basso, Ullrich, Vinokourov and Landis. Soon after however the big names did take to the start house and my nervous started to tingle. George Hincapie was just getting settled in and other big names were also get started like Ivan Basso. Soon it was time for the two top ranked riders…. Armstrong and Ullrich. Yan started one minute before lance and he “looked” good from the start but at his first time split he was down a considerable way from the leader David Zabriskie, seconds later Lance to was off. However Lances start did look a bit more tricky as he pulled his foot from the peddle and probably lost a couple of seconds. However Lance looked smooth and quickly it was forgotten. Dam, the man looked like he was possessed and rode a very focused ITT. His goal was to send out a message, that message being that he was here for number 7!
Once Lance got to the first time check it was party time :champagne: the man was only 3 seconds slower than leader Zabriskie!
Then about 5 minutes later me and Amanda (my wife) started to notice just how close Lance was getting to Yan Ullrich! My gosh, could the elder catch Yan? Sure enough Lance caught Yan and nearly won the race a mere two seconds slower than David Z!
Lance could not be in a better position, team CSC has the yellow jersey with David and they will defend for a while, and what is more is that the Team Time Trial is just a few days away with both Lance and George looking darn fast I think this will be the day Lance wears yellow. Hats off to David Zabriskie, he rode the time trial of his life and will always be able to say “I wore the yellow jersey” well done my friend … well done!
- Above 2005 Tour de France photo from Slabber (flikr user) I am sure you will have many people enjoying your tour photo’s.
- Stage one results from cyclingnews.com.
- A look at todays race course from the official site, letour.fr
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