Tour de Georgia weblog

CyclingShots posts Eki photo, road art

Cycling Shots | Eki!

Eric over at CyclingShots has been periodically posting one of his TdG photos at a time.

Today's feature: Discovery Channel's robo-Russion, Viatcheslav Ekimov.

Check his, then mine:

Same (sour) expression in both -- maybe not as angry looking as one of the shots I got of him on Stage 5. I should crop mine at the top, but that's as it came out of the camera.

As for Eki's infamous mullet, I believe I can add to the conversation:

Also, he likes bears.

HealthNet rider Doug Ollerenshaw's interactive weblog

dougollerenshaw.com

Doug Ollerenshaw rides for HealthNet-Maxxis, and is keeping a weblog of his race experiences this week at the Tour de Georgia.

He's also using a GPS and web application from Motion Based to track each day's ride, including elevation gain, wind conditions, his average heart rate, average speed, and distance.

The entire route can be exported to Google Earth.

Here's the dashboard for Stage 5.

Here's a shot of Ollerenshaw overtaking Trent Lowe during the ITT on Thursday.

Stage 4 quick review

Sorry for the light posting; I've been going to the race instead of blogging it. I'll catch up this weekend, with more pictures and links to race reports around the web.

Wanted to say, however, what an awesome ride Freddie Rodriguez did today. I expected he would be back in the grupetto, cooling his jets and dreaming of Sunday, the last traditional sprint day. Instead, he pulled a Zabel, recognizing that he might not be the absolute fastest man in this field, but that he could be the fastest man to survive to the line. Brilliant.

Somebody noticed, as I did, that Popo wasn't wearing the leader's jersey yesterday. I still don't know why, but there have been a lot of jersey problems this year, with several teams getting fined for wearing vests that don't match their uniform and Phonak's “best young rider” not showing up at the jersey ceremony in Rome.

Today, it looked like Jittery Joe's riders were wearing new shorts, kind of an electrified camouflage in the team colors.

My only guess for why Popovych wasn't in yellow would be that there weren't skinsuits produced in yellow, so he rode his standard team skinsuit.

Big Stage 3 photo gallery posted

I've got about 80 pictures from yesterday's time trial up.

Please comment (at Flickr or here) if I've misidentified anyone; I had start order and rosters, and in a few cases, more than one rider from a given team came through close together and could have reversed their start order.

My favorite pictures (click through for other sizes):

The big boys:

Stage 3 quick review

I haven't seen the full standings, but I heard at the finish line that Landis was the fastest on the day, but that Danielson held him within 4 seconds, and Zabriskie was another 20 seconds behind Danielson.

Based on what we saw on the course, I was surprised; Z looked like he wasn't even going hard on our steep uphill section, and I figured Landis would key off Danielson's time splits and go all out to make sure he had some time in hand before the big mountains start tomorrow.

Smells like a repeat of last year; I respect Landis as a climber, but Danielson is a climbing specialist who's becoming an all-rounder, and I see him leading the contenders at the top on Saturday. Should be an interesting couple of days.

Pez offers TdG preview

PezCycling News | Preview: Tour de Georgia 2006

Jared Gruber at PezCycling News offers his look at this year's race. He's penciled in Landis 1st, Danielson 2nd, Zabriskie 3rd.

He notes that the time trial this year is a monster, at almost 40 kilometers with a healthy climb in the middle, and thinks that gives Landis the edge.

Gruber also looks at the tactical implications of the changes race organizers made to Friday and Saturday's mountain stages, cutting down the climbing in each, but spicing up Saturday's queen stage by coming over Hogpen Gap by the shorter, steeper route. On the race profile, it looks almost like that climb curves back on itself!

Also:

Podium Cafe | Tour d'of Georgia Time!

Thursday time trial previews

Daily Peloton | Ford Tour de Georgia: A Look at the Time Trial

The individual time trial is usually one of the decisive stages in the Tour de Georgia, and this year, organizers have routed the TT from Chickamauga, Georgia, up over Lookout Mountain and down into downtown Chattanooga. It's the first time a TdG stage has ended outside the state of Georgia.

Chattanooga has become a popular tourist destination for people around the Southeast, with the Tennessee Aquarium, the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, and a pleasant, walkable/rideable downtown.

As for the stage itself, it's almost 25 miles long, with perhaps 2000 feet of elevation gain packed in.

Recommended vantage points are the start line, where riders will be warming up well before ascending into the start house, Litespeed's SAG stop on Nick A Jack road, and in downtown Chattanooga, where riders will finish up.

The great thing about the time trial is that you can pick out individual riders and get pictures of each rider alone.

Floyd Landis won last year's Tour de Georgia ITT, and this year's would seemingly suit him very well. Dave Zabriskie's mad TT skills put him in yellow at last year's Tour de France, but that was on a much flatter (and shorter) prologue course. He was 2nd at last year's TdG ITT.

Also:

Tour de Georgia website | ITT Race Log

Litespeed blogging, supporting Tour de Georgia

Litespeed.com | On the road

As far as I know, Georgia doesn't have any bicycle manufacturers. I guess we might have a micro-framebuilder, but I don't know of one. So the closest thing we have to an in-state maker is Litespeed, headquartered in Ooltewah, Tennessee, just across the border.

This year's Tour de Georgia is making its first out-of-state appearance with Thursday's individual time trial in Chattanooga, and Litespeed will be there. They're offering factory tours on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, a Stage 3 sag stop atop a tough climb, and a number of other posts of interest to anyone staying in or visiting Chattanooga for the race.