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Congratulation to the winner
Congratulations to Cadel Evan, the legitimate winner of the TDF.
The new official Tour map…
Boonen goes ballistic
Well, well, well, it looks like the biggest name yet has broken free of Omerta and let loose with comments on doping. They are the strongest I've yet heard. To say the least. World Champion and current Points (green jersey) leader Tom Boonen had this to say in response to learning of Vino's positive:
"Alexandre Vinokourov is an asshole, I hope he serves a life-long suspension. I don't get it, everybody knew he was one of the 'men in black'! I saw him train in an anonymous team kit a few times myself, and so did Steegmans. So test those guys every day, dammit! I can only hope that Vino's handiwork won't make the people think we're all the same. The worst part is that he doesn't only endanger the sportive side of things, but also a lot of jobs. You try to find a new sponsor in a situation like this."
Then Boonen turned his comments to Rasmussen and the GC leaders ...
"It would probably be better for everybody if Rasmussen doesn't win the Tour. If he's smart he loses a few minutes on the last mountain stage. I don't know if Alberto Contador is clean or not, but I absolutely don't trust Rasmussen. But I still think it is possible to win the Tour without doping. Take Cadel Evans: a hell of a rider, and clean. The cheaters are relatively easy to find: the ones who play hide and seek. Guys that don't do anything for months and then start flying all of a sudden. That's impossible."
Perhaps next time he's interviewed, Boonen will let us know how what he really thinks. 
Actually, it's extremely interesting to hear Boonen single out Cadel Evans as clean. He's neither a countryman, nor a teammate, nor a former teammate. Is Cadel the "real" Maillot Jaune? The "real" winner of the TDF?
Photo of the day
First, do no harm.
Second, don't be stupid.
Biopure would have had labeled packages of the product sitting around if only for use in clinical trials and to conduct stability tests mandated by the FDA for labeling reasons (i.e., determining the expiration date they could use on their product.)
Given that the FDA and others had concerns about the manufacturing quality controls, I'd hate to be one of the first to test this blood substitute. You can argue that using it in very healthy young people under close supervision carries less risk than the trauma care or surgery for which it was originally intended.
People with access to it would include people at Biopure, people running clinical trials, and distributors, including low level employees all along the chain if bags that were meant to be discarded weren't. (And presumably others.) I would rule out routine "dumpster diving" in this case as I assume it would be viewed as a biohazard, thus destined for the incinerator. (Then again, I have no idea what they do with cow blood at slaughterhouses.)
This line from the VeloNews story caught my eye:
'Richards said Rasmussen became very upset when Richards explained he had disposed of it, asking him if he had "any idea how much that shit cost?"'
Pure idle comments on my part. I have no intention to cast aspersions on anyone.
"getting whacked ..."
Bunch sprints are definitely for the young and fearless.
Do you "have to worry about getting whacked by a bike when trying to pass someone at the finish?" Definitely. But there's a bit more to it than worrying just about an "inadvertent" whack.
First, sprinting is a "full contact" game. In fact, racing the way the pros you're watching in the Tour do, there's a suprising amount of contact just riding down the road. If it looks on TV like these guys are packed impossibly close together on the road like sardines, it because, well, they are! It's just part of the game riding in packs among guys who race or spend a ton of time on their bikes -- you "feel" movement around you and it's just a given that when the road squeezes down, or when a group spread across the road wants to squeeze down to dive through a turn, you're going to elbow to hip, shoulder to shoulder contact. If a guy is overlapped with you (i.e. picture someone a half bike-length in front of you) and starts to push down on you, whether to fight for the draft of a guy in front of you, or give himself more room for an upcoming corner, it's common just to reach out and forward, put a hand on his hip and push him back out. If a guy's intent on squeezing you to the point you think he might hook you (his bars hooking yours -- a bad scene), you shift weight, lean over and put your shoulder into him. At a minimum you shoot an elbow and and fend him off. And heck, this is what you expect on an amateur training ride, much less in the Tour among big boys at the end of a stage.
At any rate, back to the sprinting ...
Tactically when you sprint you are always worried about getting squeezed, blocked, pinched, or having the door shut. All of those things can and often do involve contact. One thing I'll say for the TDF coverage, the aerial views of the sprints really show this stuff better than you'd ever see otherwise.
For example, in his earlier stage win, Tom Boonen squeezed down on Juan Antonio Flecha as he sensed him gaining from behind on the right. He did it early enough that Flecha had no choice but to veer right and slow just a tad. It was just enough to ensure the door was shut on his momentum. Then in Boonen's next stage win, it was Erik Zabel in second place pinching down on Julian Dean (who was leading out Thor Hushovd). Again, it was Dean quartered up behind and to the right of Zabel, and Zabel hipped him out so hard, Thor not only lost his lead-out, but was actually forced to go left to find an open alley. That sprint was perfectly set up for Credit Agricole and had Zabel not knocked Dean out, I'm fairly certain Thor would have been raising his arms rather than Boonen.
I can't recall where to find it, but in one of Cadel Evans' interviews, he was asked about being up near the front for one of the bunch sprints, and he said he was in perfect position so figured he'd have a go at it, but quickly pulled up when one of the big boys stuffed a derailleur into Evans' front wheel. He was pretty cool about it, laughing when he said it. Last time that happened to me I wasn't done with the adrenaline rush of fear for 20 minutes and I was still replaying the incident in my head in my dreams that night. Heh. Just one more way in which I'm reminded of how much "tougher" those guys are than us mere mortals.
Remember a couple years ago when Thor Hushovd got his arm slashed in the final sprint? (How could anyone forget with VS using that as a bloody promo over and over and over?!). There's a perfect example of how someone whipping out of the draft and trying to use the slingshot to come around and pass can get squeezed and pinned. Basically, whomever it was ahead of Hushovd felt him coming and rode him straight into the barriers. That kind of thing is basically a massive game of chicken/daring, because if nobody yields, there's going to be heavy contact and sometimes a brutal crash. In that case, Hushovd was not yielding and not going to pull up just because he was getting squeezed into the barriers. Had the fan not stuck the placard over the side that hit him, there would have been a very physical contact between Hushovd and whomever it was squeezing down on him from his left.
Because the Tour organizers typically try and give the sprinters a long fairly straight run in, you don't see it quite as often, but some of the most desperate contact comes in the very high speed corners just in advance of a final sprint. The closer the corner is to the finish, the more impossible it is to come from more than a couple spots back, and so the more important it is to get in those top 3 or 4 spots going into the corner. So there's literally a race to the corner, and inevitably there's a guy 7 or 8 back who tries to dive underneath and cut the corner, which sets up a guaranteed contact situation.
Picture a right-hand corner. Picture the big train all the way to the left-hand side of the street prior to the corner to give themselves the widest apex through the corner so they can maintain the highest possible speed without digging a pedal in the corner. They are going to angle all the way down to cut right to the curb on the corner on the right-hand side as they roll through. Now picture a guy trying to come out from 6th or 7th. He can't get around on the left, because they train is all the way on the left-hand side of the road. And he knows he's got to get through the turn top 4 or he has no chance. So he tries to cut the corner early. Meaning his angle and the angle of the guys in front of him inevitably will cross. Either it happens right as they reach the corner simultaneously, or immediately afterward when they'd be crossing right through him.
That kind of scene is a large part of why I stopped racing. In flat country, most races are criteriums -- tight, short courses -- and inevitably there is the scary fight for the final two corners and then the sprint.
Bottom line, you could never be a sprinter if you gave a whole lot of thought to the contact or the game of "chicken" that happens inevitably as guys try and slingshot out of the draft and get around, while the guys in front inevitably try and stop them by slamming the door shut.
For fun, here's a memory from a couple years ago -- Robbie McEwen and Sean O'Grady having a go at it in what actually was a pretty tame straight ahead sprint. Gives you a bit of an idea of the sort of contact that happens when a guy is trying to slingshot through to one side and the other naturally pushes down on him.
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