Floyd's TT

Floyd didn't win the TT today. He finished 2nd to Sergei Gonchar (not the hockey player) by a minute. But as far as the GC goes, he was clearly the day's big winner. Gontchar is a TT specialist and no threat to win the Tour. So at the end of the day Floyd gains time over all the significant contenders. And he also beat some pretty solid TT riders: Current World TT champ Michael Rogers was 23 seconds slower, and Dave Zabriskie was about a minute back. We've had to endure lots of hype about George Hincapie as a GC contender due to OLN's zealot-like devotion to Armstrong's Discovery team. But he finished almost 2 minutes behind Floyd. And all of this despite some more mechanical misfortune for Floyd. His handlebars cracked while out on course and he was forced to switch bikes, which likely cost him somewhere around 10-20 seconds. He was also forced by the UCI rules committee to alter his riding position just before the start, but it didn't seem to bother him too much. The big loser of the day was Leipheimer, who conceded over 5 minutes to Floyd, and probably any chance of winning the Tour. Bobby Julich also had a horrible day. He took a corner too fast and went down hard, bouncing along the curb for about 20 meters. His Tour is over.

He didn't become the first Mennonite to don the yellow jersey today. But Landis now has to be considered a big-time favourite. But there is of course the small matter of the mountains that remains. It's easy to lose 15 minutes on a hard mountain stage if you have a bad day.

Current overall standings look like this:

1 Serguei Gonchar (Ukr) T-Mobile 30.23.20
2 Floyd Landis (USA) Phonak 1.00
3 Michael Rogers (Aus) T-Mobile 1.08
4 Patrik Sinkewitz (Ger) T-Mobile 1.45
5 Marcus Fothen (Ger) Gerolsteiner 1.50
6 Andreas Klöden (Ger) T-Mobile 1.50
7 Vladimir Karpets (Rus) Caisse d'Epargne 1.52
8 Cadel Evans (Aus) Davitamon-Lotto 1.52
9 Denis Menchov (Rus) Rabobank 2.00
10 David Zabriskie (USA) Team CSC 2.03