Please fill me in

[bironi]

This is take from an interview with Oscar P. from cycling news:

Q: We saw that you went to Carlos Sastre and you spoke with him. Can you give us some information on the content of that conversation?

OP: I don't have to give any explanation to anybody... but I was angry. I did my job yesterday so I'm happy with what I did myself. But of course, I didn't understand the way they acted yesterday, that's for sure.

I have not been watching the complete coverage. What did CSC do to make him angry?

Thank much.

[gone]

This is take from an interview with Oscar P. from cycling news:

Q: We saw that you went to Carlos Sastre and you spoke with him. Can you give us some information on the content of that conversation?

OP: I don't have to give any explanation to anybody... but I was angry. I did my job yesterday so I'm happy with what I did myself. But of course, I didn't understand the way they acted yesterday, that's for sure.

I have not been watching the complete coverage. What did CSC do to make him angry?

Thank much.
CSC didn't participate in chasing Landis down until very (too) late. Neither did T-Mobile. They pretty much left IB on the front for a lot of the stage.

[Ray]

CSC didn't participate in chasing Landis down until very (too) late. Neither did T-Mobile. They pretty much left IB on the front for a lot of the stage.
Interesting to hear Michael Rogers and a few other riders interviewed. They don't think anyone could have done more than they did. The leaders couldn't hang with Floyd on the first climb, so how could the teams? The IB guys were already climbing too fast for anyone except a relatively small group, the only place the chase took any time from Floyd was in the valley between the Columbier (sp) and the Joux Plain (sp?) - on the climbs he was just killing everyone except for Sastre and Moreau on the last one. Horner's opinion was that the only chase that would have even had a remote chance of pulling back some time was if the top 10 GC contenders formed a small group and worked together to pull him back. But, as Horner also said, that's NEVER happened in any stage race ever and probably never will. Rogers basically said anyone who's criticizing from the sidelines needed to be out on their bikes that day and see what THEY could have done. It wasn't bad strategy - it was an EPIC friggin ride by the strongest guy in the race (except for one day, obviously).

Edit - here's a short article that sums it up:

From Cyclingnews

Epic Landis "could not be held back"
By Hedwig Kröner in Mâcon

Opinions diverged in the press room on the unfolding of Thursday's last Tour de France mountain stage: with Floyd Landis attacking in the first climb of the day, able to turn such an impressive gear, didn't the rest of the GC teams commit a fatal error in letting him take the lead? Searching for an answer, Cyclingnews asked around within the peloton on the next morning in Morzine.

Polkadot jersey wearer Michael Rasmussen nodded. "It wasn't really up to us to chase Landis, as we're not the ones who have the Tour favourite," he said. "But there are definitely some other teams that made a huge tactical error yesterday - those who had their riders placed second and third on GC [T-Mobile and Team CSC - ed.]."

Then again, could Landis' attack have been just a tad too fast to follow? Cadel Evans, an excellent climber for his part, seemed to think so. "When Floyd went, I just thought 'what the hell is he doing?'," the Davitamon-Lotto racer said. "It tactically didn't seem like a sensible thing to do, but I didn't know he had the legs like that... nobody did! He went so fast from the start, he rode the whole peloton off his wheels! Nobody could follow."

Just one rider actually did: T-Mobile's Patrik Sinkewitz, ordered on the Phonak rider's wheel like a shackle. What did he think during all these kilometres, before getting dropped mercilessly at the foot of the final mountain, the Col de Joux-Plane? "I just thought that he must have had a motor hidden somewhere!" the 2004 Deutschland Tour winner said. "Usually, when you're on somebody's wheel, you can spare some energy - but I just couldn't yesterday. I was constantly in the red. The other riders couldn't follow him, either. He was just extremely fast."

What about the peloton, shouldn't it not have let him go? "Well, that's not what happened," he continued. "The teams behind didn't go soft, either - they knew of the danger Landis represented, and rode hard. But he was just a class stronger yesterday, nobody could hold him back!"

Even if T-Mobile and CSC had started to really chase earlier, wouldn't Landis have been caught? "Maybe they would have raced the first climb faster, but then there wouldn't have been any riders left to hold that pace afterwards," explained Sinkewitz. "That wouldn't have made a difference."

Evans' teammate Chris Horner, himself a climber and race tactics specialist, agreed. "It was epic!," he summed it up. "It was just legendary. Everybody was chasing yesterday. People have said 'T-Mobile should have worked sooner' - but no one could have worked any sooner! We were going as fast as we possibly could! And if we would have been any faster on the climb, there would have been no T-Mobile guys left!

"The only place T-Mobile could have done any work is when they did: through the valley, when they made up some time on Floyd. That was the only place you could go fast. The T-Mobile guys were stuffed just like anyone else. The pace the Caisse d'Epargnes set up in the climb was the fastest we could go."

Horner did evoke one last eventuality to counter Landis' move, but discarded it right away: "One possibility would have been for the Top 10 GC guys to all work together at a 100 percent, and that's it," he said. "But that has never happened in the Tour, and it's never happened in any other race I've done before - and it never will. It was an epic scenario, which I've never seen in my entire career!"

-Ray

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . . Horner's comments recognize the reality that it's a RACE. That's something that Oscar seems to need a review lesson in. Nobody is under any obligation to help anybody else on another team.

I think under the circumstances probably everyone thought for quite a while that Floyd's move would not succeed--that his ego and anger at his own failure the day before were writing a check his body was simply not going to be able to cash.

But they were wrong.

Sastre's own move to chase later strikes me as a desperation move, when either he personally or Riis recognized that Floyd was NOT going to slow down and that Sastre had better DO something or else any chance whatsoever he had to win the Tour was going too go down the drain as Floyd went up the road.

You've got to have a lot of respect for Sastre--as much as for Floyd, IMHO. To push it over the red line and take off like that and keep going--man, that is just SO impressive.

BBD

[manet]

... Sastre's own move to chase later strikes me as a desperation move, when either he personally or Riis recognized that Floyd was NOT going to slow down and that Sastre had better DO something or else any chance whatsoever he had to win the Tour was going too go down the drain as Floyd went up the road. ...
BBD

i saw it as good, very good racing. he had the nads and power to back 'em. it was going to get him some time on the kloden klan... and also limit the landis loss. i fully expected sastre to do that _ he's a strong little dude.

he bit off what he could chew.

[obtuse]

floyd had alot less to lose than sastre or kloeden or pereiro. floyd was out of gc contention when he went on his suicide break-away. they usually do not work. if it hadn't worked and he'd been caught on the last climb; he's back where he started. if sastre and kloedi or pereiro sit on his wheel from the start; they're pretty likely to wind up ten minutes down themselves.

there was nothing strange about csc's, illes balears' or t-mobile's tactics. floyd shot for the moon and won.

obtuse

[Vanilla Gorilla]

Floyd Effin Rules!!!

[jwprolo]

I missed when this interview happened- but it could be in reference to a cat 4 move by csc on stage 17 where they moved the entire team across the road near the end and opened up a gap behind sastre. The original results did show a different time for the two groups, but everyone was later awarded the same time due to the fact that CSC was physically impeding the race.

[BumbleBeeDave]

I think it could have been both.

BBD