| | By Fred Rodriguez
Special to ABC Sports Online
American cyclist Fred Rodriguez a rider for the Italian Mapei team -- the top-ranked team in the world for the past three years. In just his fifth year riding professionally, Rodriguez won the US Professional Championships in Philadelphia on June 4. Throughout the Tour de France, Rodriguez is taking you through his first Tour de France -- sharing with you the ins and outs of the world's preeminent cycling event.
DRAGUIGNAN, France -- Friday's stage was pretty uneventful for me. I knew that it would most likely be a breakaway-type race, and I decided that I would save my energy and just try and get through the mountains the next couple of days. Going for the breakaway could have been good for me, but at the same time, if I made another break like the last one, I could have wasted a ton of energy for future stages.
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The U.S. Postal Service team has controlled the tempo in the mountain stages. |
The race was pretty aggressive in the first 50 kilometers -- attacks after attacks after attacks. U.S. Postal was controlling everything, but everyone was giving it a go. My job was to protect our team leader, Manuel Beltran, and keep him up front and out of wind trouble. The fact that it was such an active race actually made my job easier because there were so many hills and little turns and downhills. If you're in the middle or near the back of the field, you feel the surges almost twice as much.
It made for a really aggressive race for those who wanted to be up near the front.
Over the first Category 1 climb, one of our captains, Daniele Nardello, tried to go for it, but Jan Ullrich and his Deutsche Telekom team started chasing him down, so that didn't work out for us.
Finally, after about 80 kilometers full of attacks that didn't accomplish much, a group of 12 broke up a small hill. At that point, I was thinking about going for it, but then realized that it would be a lot of work, and that I'd rather save my legs for the later stages. Postal let it ride, and we were all pretty content to hang back with everyone else.
My best chances should come toward the end of next week once we're out of the mountains. I am definitely thinking about winning a stage. I'm hoping to go up against Erik Zabel and other sprinters late in the race when it comes down to group sprints. We'll see how my legs feel. It being my first Tour de France, I don't know exactly what to expect, but I think a stage like Paris would be good for me and I might have a chance to steal one.
It's pretty amazing what U.S. Postal's done so far in the Tour. The team's riding smart. They have a great mentality as far as controlling the race. Lance Armstrong is incredible. There's no one in the field that seems to even come close to how strong he is.
Unless something goes suddenly wrong with him, I don't see how Armstrong can lose. If you've watched him during the climbs, he seems totally comfortable when everyone else is suffering. I have yet to see him in any kind of trouble. His attack on Thursday was just an unbelievable move. He left everybody standing still. It's clearly his race to lose.
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