Yesterday’s stage confirmed my suspicion that this year’s tour will be reminiscent of 1998. Scared straight by Operation Puerto, the Peloton flushed their drugs down the toilet the night before the race…and now everyone suddenly seems human. There won’t be any solo breakaways across the pyranees by a cyclist with a broken shoulder riding on deflated tires and single-handedly holding off the Peloton. Nor will we see riders capable of going up the road every day, day after day, in search of k of m points. This will be a tour in which everybody counts their matches in hopes of making it to the end.

Team tactics will differ as well. T-mobiles non-defense yesterday suggested that, unlike previous tours in which teams like Discovery/Postal, were clearly the strongest riders 1-9, success will depend upon careful strategy of using the right players on the right day.

So who does this favor? Riis and Bruyneel have reputations as master tacticians but both are used to have an ace in the hole, ready to play. Not so this time. Phonak’s early season success suggests they may be tactically savvy but I have no idea. That said, their decision to announce Landis’s pending surgery suggests to me a wily sensibility. From the perspective of the competitors, the effect of this knowledge is unclear but I think the rationale had much more to do with the fact that the Tour referees insisted Landis change is TT position by lowering his position.

The margin between bearable and unbearable pain appears to be very narrow for Landis, perhaps a few milimeters. Which is why he did the bike change during the TT. His DS complied with the refs for the bike at the start house and then quietly instructed his mechanics to get a bike ready on the car at Landis’s preferred specifications. Then he decided to announce Landis’s condition to get the sympathy vote so that the referees won’t fuck with Landis’s position any more.

So that…and Landis’s performance in the prologue and the TT suggest to me that he’s the one to beat in this year’s tour. Kloden appears confident but he’ll get dropped because of his big ring climbing style. Who else will be on the podium? Frank will make his picks tonight.