Australian Michael Rogers will head into the sixth stage of the Tour de France on Thursday fully expecting the battle for the yellow jersey to soon move up a gear.
But while Columbia’s second-in-command has for now played down his own chances of challenging for the yellow jersey, he does not expect Lance Armstrong’s Astana team to try and distance their main rivals just yet.
”Of course they’re in an ideal position right now. They have cards to play but I don’t think they’ll play them until the later half of the second week,” Rogers told AFP on Wednesday.
With Cadel Evans, defending champion Carlos Sastre and Russian Denis Menchov all playing catch-up to Astana, the scene is now set for three days of fireworks in the Pyrenees mountains beginning on Friday.
But with several key stages in the Alps to come, and a difficult penultimate stage to the summit of Mont Ventoux, Rogers believes the Pyreneean trilogy will not be decisive.
”There will be fireworks but I don’t think they’ll be coming from Astana,” he added.
”These guys have got lots of experience, you just have to look at the way they rode in the Giro (d’Italia) – they didn’t do anything till the last week.
”I’m suspecting that will happen, and we won’t see much action from them until the second half of the race.”
Whether that is good news for fellow Aussie Evans, who is now 2:59 behind Armstrong and 2:40 behind the American’s Spanish teammate Alberto Contador, remains to be seen.
But after losing precious time to his rivals in Tuesday’s disastrous team time trial, his Silence team hope their two-time runner-up can make amends.
”Cadel has a three-minute deficit,” said Silence team manager Hendrik Redant.
”If he wants to win he can’t stay on his rivals’ wheels. If he doesn’t attack he can still finish second at three minutes, but he won’t win.”
Rogers is currently the best placed Australian in 16th overall at 1:32 behind Fabian Cancellara, and Armstrong.
But the big Canberran, who has been pivotal in helping to drive Columbia through a successful start to the Tour, leading to two stage wins for Mark Cavendish, is not getting carried away.
Rogers insisted: ”Kim Kirchen is still the leader of the team for GC (general classification).
”I’ll try and keep out of trouble, stick to my plan which for the moment is top ten place in the GC. For me it’s much better to try and aim for some stages.”
After the team time trial reaffirmed Astana’s dominance – they now have five riders, including four potential yellow jersey winners, in the top seven – Armstrong declared the race ”finished” for some challengers.
Rogers agreed, but he is reserving judgement until far later in the three-week epic.
”Lance is right,” added Rogers, before hesitating.
”It’s not …finished, but three minutes, it’s a lot of time for Menchov and Cadel. It could turn around, there’s still 17 days of racing to go and there’s some mighty hard stages.
”All it takes is for someone to have a bad day and he could lose three minutes.”
Evans, the runner-up to Contador in 2007 and Sastre last year, has often suffered from not having a sufficiently strong team.
However this year that has been reinforced with, notably, the addition of compatriot Matthew Lloyd, who suffered knocks in a crash on Wednesday.
And Evans appears to have shown that his strategy is not only about following other people’s wheels – a rather unfair criticism he has suffered during previous Tour campaigns.
”Look at how he (Evans) raced at the Dauphine Libere (stage race) in June,” added his team manager Redant.
”He was aggressive and attacked about 40 times. He has shown he is capable of doing it.”