Tour De France: Prologue

Lance Armstrong has brought a lot of changes to cycling and one of these is the importance of the prologue in the Tour. Lance likes to use the prologue as his statement of dominance to come. He always wants to best all of his main rivals and if he can win the prologue outright. Before Lance, at least in my experience in following before Lance, none of the main rivals gave much attention to the prologue. They focused on not losing time, but didn't seem to give it much importance.

Well for Lance fans this was a good day because he made his statement getting 4th on the day and besting all of his main rivals. He also got strong rides out of his team mates, so that looks good as well. But most importantly for Lance he got his first stroke of good luck. Their was rain forecast for later in the day so some of the favorites chose to go early and got caught in a strong rain, while Lance went near the end and actually had drying roads. This weather situation created some pretty significant time gaps for such a short time trial.

For us Tyler Farrar fans we are happy because he had a solid ride. Tomorrow will be the first big sprint stage so we'll see if he or Cavendish can get the first sprint win of the race.

Standing of the Favorites

4	Lance Armstrong (USA) Team Radioshack	0:00:22
6	Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Astana	0:00:27
23	Cadel Evans (Aus) BMC Racing Team	0:00:39
70	Carlos Sastre (Spa) Cervelo Test Team	0:00:54
72	Ivan Basso (Ita) Liquigas-Doimo	0:00:55
74	Denis Menchov (Rus) Rabobank	0:00:56
77	Bradley Wiggins (GBr) Sky Professional Cycling Team	0:00:56
79	Fränk Schleck (Lux) Team Saxo Bank	0:00:57
92	Christian Vande Velde (USA) Garmin - Transitions	0:01:00
122	Andy Schleck (Lux) Team Saxo Bank	0:01:09