Sunday, July 24, 2011

Respect the Lanterne Rouge


Every year I see dumb comments and jokes about the Lanterne Rouge of the Tour de France and "the race" for the honor. I don't like that type of demeaning ridicule, personally (at least not at the guys who are doing massive amounts of work for relatively little pay and attention), and they're one of the reasons I started this blog.

Before anyone jokes about 2011 Tour de France Lanterne Rouge Fabio Sabatini of Liquigas - let's recognize the magnitude of his accomplishment. Over a span of 3 weeks, he was racing for 90 hours, 10 minutes, and 5 seconds at an average speed of 23.63 mph. Over the Pyrenees and Alps.

166 fellow professional cyclists were with him along the way and took up to 3 hours, 57 minutes, and 43 seconds less time to pedal exactly the same course - a difference of only 4.39%.

And 32 of the pro cyclists who started the race 3 weeks ago were unable to finish it at all (16.1% attrition).

Bravo, Fabio. Carry your Lanterne with pride.

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This item posted by Nancy Toby @ 1:50 PM  3 comments

Saturday, July 23, 2011

2011 Tour de France Lanterne Rouge

Fabio Sabatini, Italian rider for Liquigas, had the honor of rolling down the starting ramp first for individual time trial today and will carry the fabled Lanterne Rouge into Paris. He finishes 3:13 behind the previous holder, Andrey Amador of Movistar. Vincent Jerome finished today 155th out of 167 Tour de France finishers.

The final finisher of the 2011 26.4-mile ITT was Jeremie Galland of Saur-Sojason at an average speed of 23.7 mph - ahead of 31 DNFs this Tour.

Best wishes to both of them in their future professional careers. We'll be cheering you on!

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This item posted by Nancy Toby @ 2:22 PM  0 comments

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Italian Lanterne

Today Andrey Amador got into a breakaway and arrived in 11th position on an Alpine stage, moving him up the overall classification.

The new Lanterne Rouge is Fabio Sabatini of Liquigas-Cannondale, who is riding in support of Ivan Basso's podium aspirations.
  • Fabio's team page with a short video, "Bike for me is freedom"
  • Fabio's wiki page says that he has finished 2nd in a Vuelta stage and 3rd in a Giro stage, and he was also on the winning team time trial at the 2010 Giro.



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