Rasmussen article

g00dd0ggy said:

Just in case you haven't seen this before, an interesting article on Raz's history:

timesonline.co.ukarticle2116022.eceOpen ↗

Alex Ball said:

The time trial result is a red herring so far though. He made up time on the climbs, rode agressively on the flat and didn't lose too much time on the descents. He also got lucky with the weather and ran a conventional front wheel with alloy rim, so even when the road was wet, he had decent brakes. You can bet he ran lower tyre pressures and so had a reasonable amount of grip. Most of the favourites came to grief through falls and then having to back off because their equipment was not set up for the conditions (carbon fibre rims offer no braking performance when wet and high tyre pressures off no grip).
They got caught out and he got lucky.

Contador has also been linked to operation Puerto, so he may not be as white as the jersey he's wearing either...

Alex Ball, London,

This is interesting factual evidence as to why Ras performed reasonably well in the TT.

plectrum said:

This is interesting factual evidence as to why Ras performed reasonably well in the TT.

I never understood why people were so sure he'd do badly in the TT. He had only ridden *one* TT that mattered, which was the dreadfull quadrouple crash one, which everybody remembers. All other times he rode to stay within timelimit, and some he admittedly rode badly on purpose so that he'd be allowed a longer leash on the mountain stages.

Coming in 11'th is not all that unbelievable considering everything in that TT was going his way, as well as him wearing the yellow jersey.