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Is Ullrich sandbagging?

4K views 51 replies 28 participants last post by  carlos 
#1 ·
Obviously he is not at his Tour weight, but he seemed to have good power today. And then there are the stories that he was freewheeling parts of the Romandie prologue...
 
#2 ·
he will use the Giro to ride off

the excess weight (which he normally does the first week of the TdF which seems to not work for him) and get some real Alpine climbing at race pace in. I think this will get him readier for the tour than anything he's done of late. I think he's on pace and am not gonna bash him unless he shows up at the tour unready to compete. Go Der Kaiser!
 
#4 ·
I don't think he's sandbagging at all. I think he's doing exactly what he said he was going to do. That said, depending on how his form develops and how Gonchar goes (I think not to the end) I could see Ullrich lighting it up on, maybe on a post-Corones stage, mainly to really test Basso's resolve and plant some seeds for the Tour battles to come.

Basso is being very circumspect in his interviews, and he's right: it's very early still.
 
#5 ·
I'm sure that Jan will go full out on some of the mountain stages to see how he does and to get the training benefit. I doubt that he will care about how he does on most of the stages as he is just trying to increase his fitness and some 'easy' days are necessary for recovery.
 
#10 ·
55x11 said:
Today we discovered that T-mobile has some good team trial riders, and that apparently Ullrich is one of the top 5 strongest riders in his own team. That's all.
But that is a lot. Rogers came to the Giro with the aim of winning the prologue and the ITT. Gonchar is the designated GC man and seems to be in good shape. By the team's time we can assume that the team is in good form. Ullrich, who is supposedly out of shape, was hammering the rest of the team. Despite his placing in Romandie, it does not look like he is in as bad as shape as some would believe.
 
#16 ·
Didn't Jan ride the Giro for Bianchi? You know, the May before he gave Lance the hardest race of LA's career? Seems to me like that might be a working formula for Jan. You know, I wonder if we won't see more of that anyway. Teams are having to ride more races, despite the I-still-don't-understand-it condition of the ProTour. And it's always been said that riding a three-week race makes deep changes in a rider's body. Maybe Jan needs racing to give him the kind of hard miles that Lance could put in in training.


Disclosure: I'm rooting for two things in July: A great Tour, won by Jan Ullrich. I've always thought he got a bad rap for never beating Lance. You know, maybe he was just the second-best Tour rider of his generation. I always figured that the reason he never beat him was simply that Lance was always that tiny fraction better. But in most of the Tours they raced together, Ullrich and Armstrong were clearly the class of the field. Nobody else was close. I want him to go out from the top step of the podium. Win the Tour, set the hour record, and retire

--Shannon.
 
#18 ·
tube_ee said:
Didn't Jan ride the Giro for Bianchi? You know, the May before he gave Lance the hardest race of LA's career? Seems to me like that might be a working formula for Jan. You know, I wonder if we won't see more of that anyway. Teams are having to ride more races, despite the I-still-don't-understand-it condition of the ProTour. And it's always been said that riding a three-week race makes deep changes in a rider's body. Maybe Jan needs racing to give him the kind of hard miles that Lance could put in in training.

Disclosure: I'm rooting for two things in July: A great Tour, won by Jan Ullrich. I've always thought he got a bad rap for never beating Lance. You know, maybe he was just the second-best Tour rider of his generation. I always figured that the reason he never beat him was simply that Lance was always that tiny fraction better. But in most of the Tours they raced together, Ullrich and Armstrong were clearly the class of the field. Nobody else was close. I want him to go out from the top step of the podium. Win the Tour, set the hour record, and retire

--Shannon.
No - Ullrich didn't ride the Giro Italia in 2003. He rode the TdS that year.
 
#19 ·
At Armstrong's retirement bash in Paris after last year's TdF, Ullrich in a farewell speech to LA said that he'd always tried his best to beat Lance, but Lance was better. Hats off to Ullrich for having an even-keel perspective on this, and not succumbing to the enormous pressure put on him by the media. Frankly, it's amazing that he stays so cool and still calls his own shots. I couldn't, with that kind of pressure on me.
 
#20 ·
What do you mean by sandbagging?

Do you mean playing possum to spring a big surprise in the GC race? Exceedingly unlikely and not realistic. His power may be good but he is clearly still several kgs from any kind of weight that he would need to be competitive especially given the many days in the last week with steep climbs.

He will probably only give a 100% effort in the TT and then ride within himself in the mountains so as not to over extend himself on his way to peak form at the Tour. If he finishes the Giro it will be mission accomplished, and if he doesn't it still isn't really alarm bell time (yet).
 
#22 ·
Dwayne Barry said:
What do you mean by sandbagging?

Do you mean playing possum to spring a big surprise in the GC race? Exceedingly unlikely and not realistic. His power may be good but he is clearly still several kgs from any kind of weight that he would need to be competitive especially given the many days in the last week with steep climbs.

He will probably only give a 100% effort in the TT and then ride within himself in the mountains so as not to over extend himself on his way to peak form at the Tour. If he finishes the Giro it will be mission accomplished, and if he doesn't it still isn't really alarm bell time (yet).

come on, tell us how do you know ullrich is "several kgs" overweigth???? do you know his actual weight and his tour de france weight?? :mad2:
 
#24 ·
CN said jan was actually spinning at one point. i found that amusing. and from the reports he was out on front leading the chase. i think the diesel is the one who started to string out the peloton.

as far as being second best to lance, remember that cycling is a team event. when comparing those two people seem to forget postal/disco had some great riders, great tactics, and great luck. not that bianchi/telekom/tmobile didn't, but you need all ingredients to make it.

and i do hope jan has a good tour. i hope basso has a good tour. as much as i like CSC and prefer them to TMobile, it would be nice to see jan bookend armstrong's career. plus it would be nice to see jan beat basso after lance said basso would win after he retired.

im still upset about that podium "speech." and he shoulda done some of it in french, just to keep the french press happy.

speaking of french press, i think i need some coffee.
 
#25 ·
weltyed said:
im still upset about that podium "speech." and he shoulda done some of it in french, just to keep the french press happy.
Why should Lance have spoken in French? He just wanted to piss off the French. And he certainly didn't owe the French press anything.
 
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