2008 Dauphine Libere: What We Learned

The Dauphine Libere stage race concluded today, as Alejandro Valverde defended his overall lead and took top honors in the Tour de France tune up race. The Spaniard looks to be headed for a great performance in July at the Tour, as he showed off his much improved time trialing skills in winning the 31 kilometer time trial. In addition to Valverde though, other info can be extracted from the Dauphine as an indicator of what will happen in a few weeks time when the Tour kicks off in Brest.

1. Cadel Evans will be ready to battle come Tour time. The Aussie put in a good performance at the Dauphine, and showed that his form is coming along nicely ahead of his biggest target of the season. Evans has been tweaking his pre-Tour prep for a few years now and the former mountain biker seems to have it down to a science these days. He'll come to the Tour highly motivated, with a decent team behind him, hoping to improve on his second place from last year.

2. Robert Gesink will not ride the Tour, and he will be missed. Gesink is very young, and Rabobank team management wants to bring him along slowly, so he'll not ride the Tour this year. It is a shame for a couple of reasons. For one, his prowess in the high mountains could have dramatically affected the tactics on each hilly stage. Second, he would have been a very realistic contender for the polka dot jersey. He'll ride the Tour in 2009, but his absence in 2008 should be noted as a shame.

3. Astana will be missed dearly at the Tour. This has been discussed in detail already. Enough said.

4. CSC-Saxo won't know who its leader is until the first tough mountain stage. Carlos Sastre is usually on good form when the Tour rolls around, but he did very little to exhibit that fact at the Dauphine. In fact, the Spaniard has been invisible in 2008, and has not shown that he is riding especially well at any point this year. The other GC guys on CSC-Saxo, the Schleck brothers, also have not accomplished a whole lot in 2008. Frank was in contention in some of the hillier classics, but his brother Andy has had zero results. Add the fact that Andy is tackling his first Tour, and that Frank is unproven in stage races, and you have a very muddled team leadership picture for Bjarne Riis and CSC-Saxo. Which is probably just how Riis likes it.

5. Sammy Sanchez mirrors Sastre in terms of how he looks ahead of the Tour. Eskaltel-Euskadi management is saying that he is putting everything into having a good Tour, but he did not do well in the Dauphine. Expect teammate Haimer Zubeldia to have a better Tour, and to have team leadership from the first mountain stage on.

Racing now screeches to a halt in France, as the run up to the world's bigest cycling race ensues. Most of the GC favorites will go away to put the finishing touches on their preparation, while some of the one day specialists will compete in their national championships for the right to wear their country's colors over the next year.