Translated material
Race without prologue
The Tour de France will begin with the drawing of the mountain prize
The most prestigious multi-day cycling race on the international calendar, the Tour de France, starts in the city of Brest on Saturday. The Big Loop dates back to 1903 and is being held for the 95th time. In the current race there are 20 teams of nine cyclists each, that is, the peloton has 180 participants.For the first time in four seasons, the Tour de France is not part of the International Cycling Federation's Pro Tour series, so no ranking points will be awarded at this time. This is due to the conflict between the USI and the organizers of the largest cycling races, in particular the Amaury Sport Organization, which organizes not only the “Great Loop”, but also such well-known and popular competitions as “Paris - Roubaix”, “Liège - Bastogne - Liege” ", "La Flèche Vallon", etc. However, the absence of the famous race on the roads of France in the Pro Tour system worries few people. The prestige of the multi-day event does not suffer at all from this, but on the other hand, the organizers have the opportunity to make and implement decisions that USI would hardly support. Back in February, ASO announced that it would not allow the Kazakh team Astana, which has a Pro Tour license, and is in fact based in Luxembourg, to start. The main reason is last year's doping scandal with former Astana leader Alexander Vinokurov, who was exposed for using a prohibited blood transfusion method.
Due to Astana's disqualification, the current Tour de France automatically lost its 2007 winner. Spaniard Alberto Contador, who took first place, moved to the Kazakh team in the off-season from the defunct American cycling group Discovery Channel. By the way, along with Contador on contract at Astana are the famous sports director Johan Brunnel, under whose leadership the legendary Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times, as well as Levi Leipheimer, who a year ago took third place in the general classification of the Great Loop. .
The owner of the green jersey, the most active rider of the 2007 French stage race, Belgian Tom Boonen (Quick Step), is also not in the peloton. At the end of May, an out-of-competition doping test showed traces of cocaine in his system. Despite the fact that Boonen was not sanctioned by the USI and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the organizers of the Tour de France, who are particularly sensitive to the image of the stage race, did not allow Boonen to start.
The main favorites of the Great Loop include Russian Denis Menshov (Dutch Rabobank), Spaniard Carlos Sastre from the Danish cycling group CSC, his compatriot Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d'Epargne), Australian Cadel Evans (Belgian Lotto), Italian Damiano Cunego (“Lampre”) and a number of other riders, whose chances of winning, according to the preliminary calculations of experts, are rated slightly lower.
There are only four Russians in the peloton. In addition to Menshov, these are representatives of three different French teams: Vladimir Efimkin (AG2R La Mondiale), a debutant in racing at this level, Yuri Trofimov (Bouygues Télécom), Alexander Bocharov (Credit Agricole). The only team in which representatives of one country are gathered at the Tour will be the Spanish “Euskaltel-Euskadi”, and its composition is dominated by natives of the Autonomous Community of Baskonia. There is only one foreign driver each in the German “Gerolsteiner”, the Italian “Lampre”, the French “Agributele” and “Française de Joux”.
One of the distinctive features of the current “Pro Tour” is the absence of a traditional prologue. Race director Christian Prudhomme explained this change by saying that the organizers want to make the Big Loop more dynamic. Intermediate mountain prizes (albeit of the lowest, fourth category of difficulty) will be awarded already at the starting stage (the first at the 30th km), although previously the participants spent the first days riding exclusively on flat terrain and sprinters competed for a place on the podium. A 30-kilometer time trial in Cholet is planned for the fourth day of the Tour de France, and on July 10 the first serious mountain stage will take place with an assault on the summit at 1401 m above sea level.
The multi-day route this season is laid out counterclockwise. Before the first day off, scheduled for July 15, the peloton will be in the Pyrenees, and by the 20th they will enter the Alps and cross the Italian border. The finish of the 16th stage will take place in the city of Cuneo, and the next day the participants will return to France. At the penultimate, 20th stage, during the 53 km time trial race, all the i's will be dotted in the general classification. On the final day of the Tour, as a rule, nothing serious happens - before the finish on the Champs-Elysees, the cyclists are already drinking champagne.