When your captain is wearing the leader's jersey, your team's biggest problem is controlling the pace, stopping breakaway groups and so on, right? Wrong, at least for T-Mobile Team yesterday. In his online diary, Jan Ullrich cites come of the "other" problems. Yesterday [Stage 4] started out with a long transfer from St. Anton to Vauduz, in Liechtenstein, and apparently everybody was on the road at the same time. "In the beginning it went quite fast, but soon we were crawling at snail pace on clogged roads up to Liechtenstein. Just 20 minutes to the start of the race, our bus arrived. That was pretty close! Fortunately, Mario Kummer and the mechanics had prepared everything perfectly, so we got up on our bikes coming straight from the bus."
He also mentions another problem, this time one for the TMO soigneurs. Apparently the Tour de Suisse management hadn't expected Ullrich to lead the race, or they didn't know what size jersey he now wears. "So far, the tour organisers in Switzerland had only one jersey in my size available."
So the TMO washing machine is putting in overtime in order to get Ullrich to the starting line each morning, clean, shiny and yellow.
Andreas Klöden is apparently not disappointed with his performance at the Dauphin Libéré, calling it "an important test for me" and saying that, "it went almost exactly as I had expected."
On his website, www.andreas-kloeden.com, he writes, "I wasn't at the Dauphine to compete with Lance and co., but rather to track down the remaining problems, in order to concentrate on resolving them with the right training in these last days before the Tour." He also said that he plans to ride the German championship on June 26. He won the German title last year.
Courtesy of Susan Westemeyer
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