The Tour de France is quickly becoming the Tour of Attrition.
Illness, a crash and a doping scandal have deprived five of the 20 teams of their leaders with more than two weeks left to go -- making it anyone's guess who the heir of seven-time winner Lance Armstrong might be.
So far, the top Americans have emerged unscathed.
PHOTO: AP
The biggest Tour shocker in years came on the eve of the race on Friday when T-Mobile lead rider Jan Ullrich, the 1997 Tour champion, this year's Tour of Italy winner Ivan Basso of Team CSC, and fourth-place finisher last year Francisco Mancebo of AG2R were forced out over doping allegations.
A sick Danilo Di Luca pulled out on Monday, decapitating his Liquigas team.
Young Spanish star Alejandro Valverde was the highest-profile casualty in the accident-strewn stage three on Tuesday.
The Illes Balears leader fractured his right collarbone in a spill after hitting a teammate's tire.
No wonder top Americans are keeping their heads down.
George Hincapie, a longtime Armstrong sidekick who is trying to take over as Discovery Channel team leader, is riding two months after breaking his collarbone in a spill in the Paris-Roubaix race. He had a standout start to the Tour by taking over the race lead for a day, but on Tuesday succeeded in staying out of trouble.
Gerolsteiner leader Levi Leipheimer of Butte, Montana, who finished sixth last year, is determined to avoid a repeat of his disastrous 2003 Tour, when a crash on the first stage put him out of the race.
"Believe me, I always remember that," he said.
In the Tour's relatively flat, fast and risky first week, "you calculate your risks. The main thing is just to get through the day alive," he said.
Even in a race as storied as the 103-year-old Grande Dame of cycling, rarely have so many big names dropped out so quickly.
With the other stars out, Hincapie -- currently third overall -- Leipheimer, in 25th, and Phonak's American team leader Floyd Landis in seventh are among contenders to win the first Tour of the post-Armstrong era.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier