Andy Schleck out of this year’s Tour de France

[PotomacCyclist]

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/andy-schleck-reported-to-be-out-of-tour-de-france

He finished 2nd at the Tour last year among the General Classification leaders. He was awarded the victory for the 2010 Tour after Alberto Contador was later suspended for a positive drug test. He also finished 2nd in 2009.

He has struggled this year with injuries. He has had a testy relationship with his new team manager. He crashed in a race last week. It has now been revealed that he fractured part of his pelvis. He will be out for six weeks.

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[TwoWheelsDC]

My fiance will be devastated. She doesn’t really even like cycling, but she gets into the races when I watch and she took a liking to young Andy when he killed it on the last couple of big climbs in last year’s TdF.

[DaveK]

I was a fan of Andy before the 2011 season and he’s gradually worn me down. His attack on the Galibier last year did a lot to remind me that he can actually race with heart occasionally, but his 2011 Tour on the whole was conservative and unexciting. As a guy who can’t TT to save his life (or even to not break his pelvis) he needed to be attacking and animated on the high mountain stages, and he didn’t do it. Outside of the one big attack, and it was thrilling, and a great move, he just tried to cover everyone else’s moves. The man could take a lesson from Tommy Voeckler. Actually two lessons – descending.

Hope he’s healed up for the fall – the Vuelta looks to be a great race this year. Contador comes back with a stomach full of anger and now Andy will be in it. Maybe Sky will let Froome off the leash for this one as well.

[PotomacCyclist]

Yeah, he definitely needs to work on his TT skills. I don’t know why he’s so bad at it. Well, for being one of the top cyclists in the world. Bruyneel was supposed to be able to help him improve this year. But now it seems like the Schlecks are barely talking to Bruyneel.

Still no Universal Sports on Comcast. If US covers the Vuelta again, I won’t be able to see any of it. It’s frustrating, since Comcast is actually a part owner of US. How can they not be able to come to an agreement with themselves?

[DaveK]

@PotomacCyclist 22235 wrote:

Yeah, he definitely needs to work on his TT skills. I don’t know why he’s so bad at it. Well, for being one of the top cyclists in the world. Bruyneel was supposed to be able to help him improve this year. But now it seems like the Schlecks are barely talking to Bruyneel.

Still no Universal Sports on Comcast. If US covers the Vuelta again, I won’t be able to see any of it. It’s frustrating, since Comcast is actually a part owner of US. How can they not be able to come to an agreement with themselves?

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You’ll get by…

[vvill]

Andy Schleck’s just never seemed to have enough heart/daring to me. He’s obviously talented but yeah his TT sucks and I don’t think he actually had a great chance of winning this year’s TdF anyway. I’m being unfair of course, because he’s a top tier pro cyclist and he rode with a fractured pelvis(!), and probably also because he doesn’t seem to show as much emotion as some of the other riders and that’s probably just his personality.

I guess it’s going to be the Wiggins vs Evans show. If Wiggins’ form continues though (esp in the TT stages) it’ll be mostly just Wiggins.

[Tim Kelley]

@vvill 22271 wrote:

I guess it’s going to be the Wiggins vs Evans show. If Wiggins’ form continues though (esp in the TT stages) it’ll be mostly just Wiggins.

I’m just going to say it now so that I don’t have to say it anymore this summer, but someone needs to slip a pair of underpants over Cadel’s chin. It’s downright inappropriate otherwise.

[Author]

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