Friday, July 16, 2004

LANCE ATTACKS!!! CHIRAC TOO!!!
 
a.) Lance
 
Today’s stage, the twelfth from Castelsarrasin to La Mongie, took the caravan to the steep Pyrenées, an impressive mountain range between France and Spain. It was hot, it was far, and towards the end it was above all steep (2 cols of first category). Although the winner was Ivan Basso, Lance made his mark on the day, as he finally worked his way up from the sixth slot and is now ON NO. 2 right behind Thomas Voeckler, who still holds the yellow shirt though. 


Ivan Basso: "The first contact with high mountains has been harder for the other Tour favourites and from what we've seen, Lance is obviously the strongest," the CSC team leader said. "It was the first mountain stage and the weather conditions may have worked Lance's way as he likes the rain."

 
Anyway, I’m glad that I can finally report something else than usual: see Mr. Armstrong suddenly at no. 2, 5minutes and 24 seconds behind Voeckler instead of the usual 9’35’’. 

  
b.) Jacques
 
You may or may not have heard about it, but lately it looks like we see the beginning of the end of the Chirass era. The very popular and energetic Finance Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, affectionately known as "Sarko", does not hide his presidential ambitions any more. I always thought Sarkozy was one of the saner heads in the French government (he is a firm backer, a.o., of giving up the ridiculous 35-hour week). On more than one occasion he has publicly contradicted the Président. Well, today it got so bad that my newspaper described their latest rift as Chirac having banned Sarkozy to the corner "as a schoolboy" ("I order and Sarkozy executes", Mr. Chirac was quoted).
 
Other issues where the two disagree is on the role of the French-German Alliance when it comes to "leadership" of the EU. Chirac is a strong believer in that alliance, whereas Sarkozy eyes London and thinks France's relations with Italy, Spain, the UK, Poland should be on an equal footing with Germany's. Also, Chirac wants to maintain the present Defense budget while Sarkozy wants to cut it to meet the EU's Stability Pact conditions.
 
Find more about it here.

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