Your Ad Here

miércoles, 23 de julio de 2008

LE TOUR DE FRANCE 2008:TEAM CSC-SAXO BANK, CHAPEAU! (This article is available in English and Spanish)

The spectacular Tour de France will finish next Sunday and until this moment we are seeing a superb labour of the impressive Team CSC-Saxo Bank.
This Danish team is showing that it is the best team of the French competition and it is exerting a great control of the race in any race´s circumstance, since it has experimental and powerful bicyclers as the Norwegian Kart-Asle Arvense (he won 2 stages of the Giro d´Italia in the past and this year he has won one stage in the Tour de France), or the Danish Nicki Sörensen or the powerful Australian Stuart O'Grady-he was one of the best “sprinters” of the world and besides he was Olympic Champion in Athens in Men´s Madison-and the Ukrainian Volodymir Gustov. These 4 road bicycle racers are the first option, used by the team´s manager, Bjarne Riis, to control the race and when this quartet has already given everything and Riis want to harden the race, he can use 2 super-class road bicycle racers, firstly the elegant and formidable Swiss Fabian Cancellara-he has an incredible level and he is one of the best for a classic races as Milan-San Remo or Paris-Roubaix and of course he is a clear favourite, alongside the Italian Paolo Bettini or the Spanish Oscar Freire, to win the gold medal in the Olympic Games in Beijing-and later to melt down the rivals, the powerful German Jens Voigt, who seems that he has a motorbike during the races-he is synonymous of power and control of the race and he won 2 stages in the Tour de France and one more in the Giro d´Italia-. Once these sensational 6 road bicycle racers have fulfilled their task, it's time to the team´s leaders to show their level and quality, like they have done today in the climb up to the Alpe-d'Huez, where we saw a Team CSC-Saxo Bank´s exhibition and impressive superiority, because on the one hand we saw the excellent attack of the Danish team´s leader, the Spanish Carlos Sastre, who has only a short response from the Russian Denis Menchov of the Team Rabobank and he could climb alone the famous mountain and he arrived the finish line with an important gap of 2 minutes and 15 seconds over the other favourites to final victory. This gap was enough for Sastre, both to win this mythical stage and to get the Yellow jersey (the leader of the Tour) of the Tour de France. But this Carlos Sastre´s win would not have been possible without the great help of the other members of the team and especially of the Luxembourg brothers-Fränk (he won the stage of Alpe-d' Huez in 2006) and Andy-(sons of Johnny Schleck, who was a good professional road bicycler racer in the 60 and 70)Schleck, who are 2 sensational athletes and today they have been brilliant, because they controlled perfectly all the rivals, defending the situation of Carlos Sastre and they did it with an incredible ease, almost insulting, because they climbed up the Alpe-d´Huez with a formidable way. The truth is that I want to see the next edition of the Tour de France because it can be spectacular the duel between Fränk (28 year´s old) and Andy (23 year´s old) Schleck against the Spanish Alberto Contador (it is a pity that we can not see the Spanish professional road bicycler racer of Team Astana in this edition of the Tour de France, because I think that he would have won it with relative ease). Anyway, we have had a great show today in this stage of the Alpe-d' Huez and now we are anxious to see the result of the Satuday´s individual time-trial, which it will be the moment of the truth, because we will see the definite duel between the 3 candidates for the final victory of the Tour de France: Carlos Sastre, the Australian Calde Evans of the Team Silence-Lotto -Sastre has an advantage of 1 minute and 34 seconds over the Australian-and the Russian Denis Menchov of the Team Rabobank-Sastre has an advantage of 2 minutes and 39 seconds over the Russian-.
Lastly, I can not finish this article without referring to the absurd attacks in Alpe-d'Huez of the Spanish Samuel Sanchez of Team Euskaltel Euskadi and Alejandro Valverde of Team Caisse d'Epargne, since honestly I do not understand these late attacks, since these 2 Spanish bicyclers did not have any option to win the stage and the accelerations had a consequence: to reduce the Carlos Sastre´s advantage, benefiting to the Australian Cadel Evans –Ok, Valverde and Sánchez do not belong to the Team CSC-Saxo Bank, but they are Spanish as Sastre and I suppose that if they can not win anything, they prefer the victory of other Spanish, except that they envy the Carlos Sastre´s situation and they prefer the victory of a foreign bicycler, but for me these actions are absurd-.
Cheers,
J&F

No hay comentarios:

Your Ad Here