Posted on 07/18/2006 10:11:39 PM PDT by nutmeg
Its fun reading whats written on the French version of letour.fr, since the English version isn't a translation of what is written by the French writer. It seems that letour.fr has a both French writer and an English writer. (as well as a German writer and Spanish writer, I suppose)
I only have a basic grasp of the language, but being of French Canadian descent, its fun.
Dessel has impressed me, I thought he would shell bigtime on L'alpe D'Huez, but yet here he is still plugging away.
Levi has 3 minutes on the Groupe Maillot Jaune. Which moves him up all of 1 position on the GC. Another 2 minutes and he'll be in 3rd tho'...
Rasmussen is on the Col Du Mallord. Only a Cat 2 climb,mainly because it is so short, but it is still a tough climb 150KM into a killer stage.
And "Col du Mollard" can be translate in "Moutain pass of the spit"
Everyone thought Dessel would be off the leaderboard by now, but he's still going strong.
I can't see Landis, Sastre, Dessel, etc letting him get away though.
As a Frenchman, if Dessel makes it onto the final podium on the Champs-Élysées, that would make him...like...Vanilla Ice famous.
You too eh? I'm about half canuck, but stopped taking French in 6th grade when I learned that nouns were divided between masculine and feminine and had different modifiers. That was just too odd for me. Then I learned that English is one of the few languages that doesn't do that...
Levi is still flying, he is about to catch Valjevic. Cesar is gamely hanging on to Levi, but he looks whipped, he will drop on the next climb for sure.
Didn't Levi suggest, in a low-key way, that his problems on the first TT were due to some transient physical problem?
As in, "if you spit off of it just right, you might nail someone on top of the dome down in St-Jean-de-Maurienne."
While they are all concentrating on Landis however, Levi might just run away and hide on them.
If Landis gets out of this stage still in good shape, it may go down as one of the best solo efforts in a long time. He has no less than 4 teams trying to hammer him down at the moment.
LOL!!! Better than Col du Cracher! OUCH! Bienvenu, Republicain!
It sounds like the peloton has gained some ground on Leipheimer.
Merckx looked ready to drop,now he is back on Landis wheel and they are moving toward the front of the Peleton.
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