team radio shack

Pierrick Fedrigo (Bbox Bouygues Telecom) wins the sprint in Pau. Photo: © AFP Photo

Lance Armstrong set out on Stage 16 of the 2010 Tour de France with one goal in mind, a stage win. With seemingly the worst luck in Tour de France history, Lance Armstrong’s last stand at the Tour has been riddled with mechanicals and a series of wrecks that even baffled the 7 time winner who arguably has the most Tour experience in history. To try to regain composure and go out on a high note, Lance Armstrong wanted a stage win.

The 199.5km stage 16 from Bagneres-de-Luchon to Pau was going to be Armstong’s stage and he made this readily apparent by making the early breakaways. The Lance of old seemed to be in stage 16 as he joined an 8 man breakaway all competing for the win. It all came down to the last 500 meters, but the last push by Pierrick Fedrigo proved to be too much for the veteran and Armstrong will go this Tour without a stage win.

“It was a very, very beautiful day, one of the best,” said Fedrigo. “I can’t say much more. When the group of Contador almost came back to us I attacked because I knew it was my day.”

Photo: (James Startt)

Lance on his performance on Stage 16:

“It was a tough day. I paid for it at the end,” Armstrong admitted. “I warmed up a little bit before the race and it went right at kilometre zero. 200km at the front took it out of me. I had a no sprint at the end. But I tried.”

“I had this day kind of dog-eared in the book but it was harder than I expected,” he admitted. “I guess I felt better as the race went on. It was tough day for all the peloton. It was hard…It’s been a while since I sprinted. We knew that Fédrigo was the fastest and then Cunego. We tried to catch his wheel. There were some questions whether or not we’d catch Barredo but I was just not quick enough.”

Despite not winning the stage, Armstrong was proud to have made one final flourish, one last show of pride. The attack also meant RadioShack kept the lead in the team classification ahead of Caisse d’Epargne.

“We did what we wanted to do: we tried to win the stage. We maintained team GC and Chris Horner had an amazing race. Caisse d’Epargne had two guys there but that means we’re equal on the day.”

When asked about the Tour de France and his professional cycling career, Lance simply said, “Lance Armstrong is over in about four or five days.”

So what now for Lance Armstrong?

With Andreas Kloden far off in the distance, Lance needs to take a more supportive role for Levi Lepheimer as the remaining days of the Tour de France unfold. That 3rd spot on the podium is still up for grabs, but it is going to take the team effort of Radio Shack to get Levi on the podium in Paris. Up until this point, it has appeared that Armstrong has been saving himself for a chance at winning stage 16. Now that it is over, it is time to put on the supportive role and really crank out a great Tour for Levi and the rest of the Radio Shack team.

If Lance falls to the back of the pack and just hangs out for the remaining stages, this LA supporter will be pretty disappointed.

Photo: Paulinho executed the final kilometers of his breakaway win to perfection. (AFP/Getty Images).

The breakaway finally keeps off the chasers. In a fantastic effort by Sergio Paulinho (Team Radio Shack) and Vasili Kiryienka (Caisse d’Epargne), the two riders kept off the chasing packs and ended in a sprint that was won by Paulinho in less than have a wheel length to bring a stage win to team Radio Shack.

As Chris Carmichael at Bicycling said:

It was no surprise that Stage 10 had a breakaway winner. After three hard days in the Alps, temperatures in the mid-90s, and with 10 days of racing already in their legs, the peloton is tired. There’s still a lot of racing left to be done, and the riders know they still have some really hard days in the Pyrenees to come. So once a breakaway group of appropriate size and composition was established, the peloton backed off the throttle and let them ride away to a 14-minute lead by the finish.

But even knowing that they were not at risk of being caught didn’t make the day out in front of the peloton easy for the breakaway riders. They still had to deal with the heat and share the pacemaking, and there were four decent climbs on the course (only three were categorized, but there was a final climb that topped out at about 10 kilometers from the finish line). As a result, when it was time to start making potentially race-winning moves, fatigue played a big role.

At the end of a long road race, nobody has the same kick in their legs that they would have at the end of a shorter criterium. Likewise, you can’t launch stinging attacks the way you might have done to establish the break in the first place. More than likely, you only have one or two strong attacks left in your legs at all, so you have to be careful how you use them. Interestingly, if you look at power files from long road races, the power outputs for the attacks and sprints are not nearly as high as what the athletes are capable of in short training sessions. The speeds aren’t as high either, which makes sense because they are attacking after five hours in the saddle. To win you don’t need to generate huge numbers, you just have to have the energy to produce bigger numbers than the rest of the guys you’re with.

“I knew I had to attack to get away from the group, and I actually felt pretty good,” Paulinho said after the stage. “I was just a little bit stronger than Kiryienka, and waited until the last moment to make my move.”

“We did a lot of work for the team in the first week of the race. The last two stages were very important to the team, and we were quite strong. All we really wanted was to get a stage win,” Paulinho said.

“In the team meeting this morning, we were told we needed to have someone in the breakaway. We also had to look out for the team classification, so when I saw a rider from Caisse d’Epargne go, that’s when I decided I had to be there.”

This win brings a much needed boost to Team Radio Shack as they shift their focus from Lance Armstrong to Levi Leipheimer.

The Race For 9th

The second sprint race for the finish of the day came from the usual suspects. While none of them were in contention for a stage win, the sprinters made their moves up front to grap precious points for the green jersey. What resulted was a typical sprint setup for the finish and 9th place in the stage. Mark Cavendish came out on top and picked up the points.

With no real shake-up in the overall standings, Andy Schleck stays in yellow as we head into Stage 11.

Next Stage: Stage 11 - Sisteron to Bourg-les-Valence (184.5km)

Stage 10 Final Results

GC Results After Stage 10