2011 Tour de France – Winners

1. For obvious reasons, BMC’s Cadel Evans is the big winner of the Tour de France, winning his first grand tour and most important race since switching from mountain to road over a decade ago. Consistency and tenacity are two words that come to mind when attempting to describe the Aussie’s win—he also remained cool under pressure, a characteristic often lacking during his previous grand tour assaults. Some interesting facts about Evans’ victory:

1. At 34 years of age, Evans is one of the oldest riders ever to win the Tour de France. While 34 isn’t “old” by and normal standard, it is...Continue Reading

2011 Tour de France – Stage 21 Wrap-up

Stage 21 from Creteil to Paris marked the end of the Tour de France. Going in to the stage, every major classification – general, young rider, team and mountain – was finalized, save the points classification. HTC-Highroad’s Mark Cavendish entered the stage 15 points ahead of Movistar’s JJ Rojas, which meant that while Cadel Evans was sipping champagne, Cavendish and crew would need to control the peloton heading in to both the intermediate and final sprints. HTC was able to avoid excess work by allowing a break of six to go up the road, eating up the major points available...Continue Reading

2011 Tour de France – Stage 20 Wrap-up

Going into today’s Stage 20, the names Fignon and Lemond were on everyone’s mind, as people pondered whether Leopard-Trek’s Andy Schleck would fall, Fignon style, to BMC’s Cadel Evans by the scantest of margins in this final individual time trial. As predicted, Schleck did lose the yellow jersey to Evans, but not by the handful of seconds many expected. Rather, Evans recorded the time trial of his life, finishing second to TT wunderkind Tony Martin of HTC-HighRoad by a mere 7 seconds. While Schleck performed as well as we’ve come to expect–finishing 2:38 behind Martin–it was not enough to defeat...Continue Reading

The Sticky Bidon – July 22, 2011

Interesting cycling items from across the Internet, July 22, 2011

• Pierre Rolland: “He told me: ‘Play your card, go get the white jersey.’”
• Boulder Report » Blog Archive » A Throwback Tour | Bicycling.com
• What happened to Cadel’s bike in Friday’s stage?
• Tour Pro Bike: Johnny Hoogerland’s Ridley Helium

Seen any cool links we missed? Share ‘em in the comments below!

2011 Tour de France – Stage 20 Preview

For a preview of tomorrow’s time trial, head here to read my latest piece for Bicycling.com. For obvious reasons, I can’t reproduce the text here, but I think you’ll find it informative nonetheless. (And yes, I know I overlooked Tony Martin–it’s been a long Tour…)

And don’t forget to join me tomorrow at 8:30EST in the Live Blog over at Bicycling.com for what’s certain to be an exciting stage!

Thanks for reading–feel free to share your comments below.