First Important Day of the Tour

The Tour de France had it's first day of importance for those with aspirations of winning in Paris. The first long individual time trial was today and was a disaster for most of the Americans that had such hopes. Serguei Gonchar, a Ukranian from the T-Mobile team scored big with the stage win and yellow jersey as race leader. Gonchar's not considered a threat for the overall as he's 36 (old by pro cycling standards) and has only ever finished the Tour once (in 61st place at that). The only American to have a decent showing was Floyd Landis of Phonak who finished 1:01 down on the day, but is in the driver's seat for the overall victory. Floyd aparently had to change the position of his aero bars prior to the start because race officials declared that the bars would break UCI rules. Floyd lowered the bars which then snapped on the course and he had to change bikes. It cost him a little time, but not the stage win. His day was downright great compared to that of his compatriots.

The day was a mess for the Discovery Team with Paolo Salvodelli, George Hincapie and Yaroslav Popovych all losing two plus minutes on a day when they figured to factor in the top of the leader board. American Levi Leipheimer of Gerolsteiner had the worst time trial of his life and finished over six minutes back which essentially ends any chances he had of a good finish this year. CSC's American duo of David Zabriskie and Bobby Julich suffered different sorts of days. Zabriskie was expected to contend for the stage win as he's a time trial specialist, but finished 1:56 back instead. Bobby crashed in the first mile and was taken to the hospital with a beat up and bleeding wrist and had to drop out of the race.

There's still a long way to go with the mountain stages to begin in a few days and one more long time trial left, so it isn't over by any stretch of the imagination, but the advantage has definitely shifted to favor riders like Landis, Menchov, Karpets, Evans and the T-Mobile team who has four guys in the top ten and could play some great team tactics to their advantage with Gonchar, Kloden, Rogers and Sinkewitz which would put a lot of pressure on Floyd's Phonak team. Salvodelli and Hincapie could still factor in, but would need some amazing riding in the mountains and neither is a spectacular climber.

This year's Tour is definitely proving to be difficult to predict. Two weeks to go.