Dropping Places and Products

The Time Trial at the Vuelta was Chris Froome’s big chance to take the race lead without the team-games of the Spanish trio being able to influence him.

Contador put in a good time trail to finish second, 17 seconds behind stage winner Kessiakoff, and ahead of Froome by 23 seconds. On a day that was predicted to put Froome into the race lead he instead dropped a place to third as Rodriguez did enough to hang onto first place, although he now has Contador just a single second behind. The good news is that Froome closed some of the gap to the leader, and is now only 16 seconds back, but with two strong climbers ahead of him, both Spanish and seemingly prepared to work together to shut him out. There’s a whole load of climbing to go and it seems less likely at the moment that Froome can win this Tour.

Froome himself thinks that the Spanish riders’ cooperation to beat him might disintegrate as the race heats up as they each start to vie for places amongst each other. The next couple of weeks will show whether that leaves him able to take advantage, or if any one of them is stronger. At the moment it looks like he doesn’t have an answer in the mountains, to Rodriguez in particular.

Away from the Vuelta the Paralympic track cycling starts today. While track cycling can be confusing to start with (it’s taken me this long to feel like I have a handle on most events) the Paralympics adds a whole extra level of confusion with the different categories of disability represented. I’m going to rely on what looks like being good Channel 4 coverage to get me through it and will try and give some response here. The upshot is more superb quality cycling in the London Games.

Talking of the track, one of the stars of the Olympic campaign has had his house raided and a car and his Pinarello, which he used for training and has his name on it, stolen. Setting aside the loss (which I hope is recovered as it should be recognisable) it must be horrible to think of the raid on his home.

The other big news that’s being covered by all the bike-media outlets with a budget and no other job to go to is Eurobike, which is the yearly showcase for the new cycling ranges, before they’re released in the next couple of months. Check it out in the usual places as I’m clearly not there. Let’s hope there’s not too many people thinking that the future of cycling looks like this. That seems to be some sort of mobile sex-harness or something, or failing that a move back to the hobby-horses at the start of cycling. This is not a good thing.

A