Tour de France- STAGE 15 - Embrun to Prato Nevoso

letour.com ^ | 07.20.08 | 183 km into the Alps & over to Italy!

[leilani]

♦ RACE PREVIEW ♦

Ciao Italia! Tour organizers were forced to get out their atlases & scramble to come up with a detour when the original route they had
planned for today out of Digne-les-Bains over the Col de Larche was deemed too risky for the riders after a recent avalanche created the
hazard of ongoing rockslides. So this morning's starting line has been moved north to the charming town of Embrun, considered by many to
be an architectural gem, perched on the shores of lovely Lac de Serre-Ponçon. The good news for the riders is that the revised route for
their jaunt over to Italy today is now not only safer, at 114 miles, it's shorter. The bad news is that it's now also decidedly more difficult.

About a half-hour out of Embrun, the peloton will climb out of Guillestre, enter a narrow canyon & and gradually ascend to the village of
Chateau-Queyras where they'll begin to tackle the Col d'Agnel, which today becomes the third-highest climb ever featured on the tour, displacing
the Col de Galibier in the ranking. Col d'Agnel (known as Colle d'Agnello on the other side) peaks at 9,000 feet & its summit is reached via a
20.5 km climb with an average incline of 6.6%, but the peloton can expect to encounter pitches as steep as 12.3% in the brutal final 5km.

The 30km descent from Agnello is followed by a blessedly flat 75km course across the Piemontese plains & the cyclists will wrap up their
exhausting day with a final 16km grind up to the Italian ski resort of Prato Nevoso averaging 8% in the last 8km toward what should be an
exciting summit finish & perhaps an avalanche of sorts after all in the form of their own mass collapse on the front steps of their hotel! ;-)

Bicycling Magazine says "Stage 15 marks the beginning of a three-day stretch that, in all likelihood, will decide the 2008 Tour de France."

"The race crosses the border over the Col Agnel, a steep climb that will trim down the field. The day's break has a decent chance of surviving
to the finish and might contain a contender for the polka dot (best climber) jersey (as long as he is far down in the overall). The upper slopes of
the Agnel have some gnarly steep pitches which may draw out attacks for riders vying for King Of the Mountain points, but the top race
leaders will surely regroup on the long downhill and even work together on the flat run-in towards the base of the day's final climb."

"With no time bonuses to pick up at the finish line, the break may survive while the overall contenders poke and prod each other on the narrow,
switchbacking slopes of the uphill finish to Prato Nervoso. With a rest day buffering stage 15 from two more days in the Alps, some riders will
see an opportunity on this climb to attack and grab time in advance of stages 16 and 17's mammoth climbs."

[leilani]

Ciao yall & ping for the Tour de France’s Stage 15 from Embrun to Prato-Nevoso. We’re going to Italy today!

[PeteB570]

And the Man from Man retired from the race and did not start today.

[leilani]

Oh wow, he did? I guess I can understand since he probably doesn’t have anymore opportunities for stage wins in this Tour & now he can get ready for the games. He certainly did do that little island proud, though.

[Mom MD]

Bring on the alps!

[leilani]

Yeah baby! It’s like a breath of fresh air every year.

[leilani]

Watching these alpine descents sure gives this couch potato sooo much vicarious fun. It's like downhill skiing only sitting down!

Whoops!Correction: fun, but scary. Oscar Pereiro (& another rider, possibly Robbie Hunter?) just collided with a guard rail on one of rain-slicked the turns of the descent from Col d'Agnel. Phil just said he's his way to hospital.

[leilani]

It's looking more like it every minute.

They just did a quickie profile of the members of Silence-Lotto, showing all their ages. There are some (relative) geezers on that team, I wonder what the average is compared to other teams.

But Cadel can hope their collective experience will give him the edge that puts him on the podium in Paris.

[leilani]

Ruh-roh, Christian VdV crashed? Phil says that’s what he heard, but hasn’t confirmed.Julian Dean of Garmin-C confirmed down. It was a big crash (actually 2 across the roadway from each other simultaneously) but it’s doubtful anyone was seriously hurt.

[leilani]

Yep, Phil confirms Christian did eat it back there, also David Millar, but everybody’s back on their bikes.

[Sir_Ed]

Man, I’ll miss the Man from Man!

I hope Cavendish wins a gold medal...

Ed

[luv2ski]

You are really doing a nice job of posting the daily threads. Thank you so much! Even if some of us are just reading and not posting, we still appreciate the posts that you put together each day!

[luv2ski]

What a stage today! WOW! I Tivo’d it fortunately b/c it went on for hours! The attacks at the end were crazy! I have to admit that when they reminded us of who is on CSC this year, I was amazed. They are like the Yankees! Both Schlecks, Sastre, Voigt, Popovich, and more! Good grief! No wonder they finally wore down Evans today.
BTW, Andy was an animal in support of his brother today. You've got to love that!
Bring on the Alps!!

[BaBaStooey]

Would someone please ‘splain me how AG2R is second in the team classification, and not only are they second, but only 3 and a half minutes down on mighty CSC?

Now, please don’t explain to me how the team classification works. I know how it works. The top 3 riders from each team, each day, count towards the time total. What boggles me is that of all the teams in the race, the one that is second behind CSC is crappy little French team AG2R. I bet that if I polled the FR cycling posse and asked them who was in second, I’d get someone to suggest Rabobank, Lotto, or perhaps even Garmin or Columbia, but no one would say AG2R.

The team classification is significant, because it determines the order of the team cars each day. So, if you are an overall contender and you blow a wheel, it would suck if your car, was say...8th in line.

So here is the list of the team classification through Stage 15.
1. TEAM CSC SAXO BANK 191h 43’ 49”
2. AG2R-LA MONDIALE 191h 47’ 21” + 03’ 32”
3. RABOBANK 192h 12’ 02” + 28’ 13”
4. EUSKALTEL - EUSKADI 192h 16’ 54” + 33’ 05”
5. LAMPRE 192h 19’ 28” + 35’ 39”
6. GEROLSTEINER 192h 19’ 39” + 35’ 50”
7. CREDIT AGRICOLE 192h 26’ 37” + 42’ 48”
8. SILENCE - LOTTO 192h 33’ 24” + 49’ 35”
9. CAISSE D’EPARGNE 192h 35’ 36” + 51’ 47”
10. LIQUIGAS 192h 41’ 23” + 57’ 34”
11. TEAM COLUMBIA 192h 41’ 51” + 58’ 02”
12. COFIDIS CREDIT PAR TELEPHONE 192h 52’ 32” + 1h 08’ 43”
13. GARMIN CHIPOTLE 192h 58’ 53” + 1h 15’ 04”
14. FRANCAISE DES JEUX 193h 02’ 36” + 1h 18’ 47”
15. BOUYGUES TELECOM 193h 09’ 21” + 1h 25’ 32”
16. TEAM MILRAM 193h 18’ 42” + 1h 34’ 53”
17. BARLOWORLD 193h 29’ 52” + 1h 46’ 03”
18. QUICK STEP 193h 30’ 14” + 1h 46’ 25”
19. AGRITUBEL 194h 04’ 26” + 2h 20’ 37”

So I guess it pays to have someone in the break today, but Garmin and Credit Agricole had guys in the break too, and they aren’t in the top 3 on this list..hmm.

If AG2R management had any brains at all, they would get our hero CEREAL into the break tomorrow. He is 34 minutes down, they will let him go! Hopefully in a 10+ minute breakaway with some random Agritubel guy, just like in 2006. Then Efimkin and Goubert will limit their losses behind the yellow jersey group. AG2R needs to keep flying under the radar, so they can steal the team classification away from mighty CSC! Vive le Tour!

[leilani]

Thanks so much for the nice feedback luv. I may not be able to do it for the next coupla days though because I’m about to take off out of town again in a sec here & am not exactly sure what my wireless access is gonna be when I get there. I’m having cell phone probs & I have to depend on the kindness of strangers (or strange MacDonalds franchises) to plug my travel laptop in. If I am able put up a thread in the ams, I certainly will, but somebody else (hint: check the “To” line above) might have to come up to the head of the paceline if yall would like a daily thread.

[leilani]

Cereal Diesel dit: C'est une trés bonne idée, mon ami américain Baba! ;-)

[lainie]

I sometimes get pinged to tdf threads and sometimes I don't. (?) Anyway yesterday was a lot of fun to watch. I plan to record the whole six hours on Wednesday, too. That's gonna be quite a day. Too bad about Oscar P. :(

This means he's out of the Olympics, too. That is so sad.

[Texas2step]

If AG2R management had any brains at all, they would get our hero CEREAL into the break tomorrow. He is 34 minutes down, they will let him go!

Nice prediction!