Astana's Alberto Contador, Johan Bruyneel, Lance Armstrong
With Stage 1 in the books, who would have thought that Lance’s 10th place finish would be only 4th place on Team Astana. Alberto Contador is on great form, and his climbing abilities in the past tours should make him a formidable foe. Only performance enhanced riders have been able to keep up in the past. 2007′s tour showed that fellow teammate Levi Leipheimer could not keep up in the high mountains when final sorting happened. The Schleck brothers and Sastre set the mark in 2008, but if Lance and the rest of the team rally around Contador, Johan Bruyneel should add another Tour victory to his resume.
For complete stage 1 results, visit Versus.com .
Stage 2 should be a classic sprinter’s dual pitting Thor Hushovd against Mark Cavendish. Cavendish rode a slow time trial coming in 177th more than 3 minutes off the pace, saving valuable energy for tomorrows sprint. Just as Contador represents the future in the GC competition, Cavendish is the future of sprinting, and it’s Cavendish’s to lose.
It is clear already that Contador is the number one man for Astana and should be until he falters.
Cavendish perfectly sweeps to his fifth tour stage victory on Day 2. The fastest man in the world. His teammates like Renshaw really worked well.
The mighty Thor fell to Cavendish today because Mark had great teamwork. It was great to watch how they worked to get their teammate into position to do his thing and the Brit came through.