With only 12 days to go until the start of the 2011 Tour de France teams are frantically shuffling and reshuffling their provisional start lists before the cut off date for team rosters passes next week. However the task is proving ever difficult this season with the emergence of some new and very genuine threats to what has become in recent years Alberto Contador's race.
In the Tour de Suisse an all but wrapped up race for Lampre-ISD's Damiano Cunego was taken away from him on the final ITT by the veteran Radioshack rider Levi Leipheimer. Levi stormed the final 32km ITT to pip Cunego to the top spot of the podium by a sliver of 4 seconds. There were other shuffles in the final GC also as Rabobank's young Bauke Mollema falls to 5th and pre race favourite Frank Schleck to 7th.
This has also put a spin on the pre tour UCI world rankings with Cunego and Leipheimer shooting up the rankings to 20th and 18th respectively. Andreas Kloden, Kruijswijk, Fuglsang and Mollema have all climbed up to higher positions within the top 50 also.
All you have to do is look at the preparation of some of these riders in the past few months to see that they are clearly aiming for victory, or at least a podium in Paris. Though not a new threat but still a huge one, BMC's Cadel Evans has gone through all the necessary pre tour steps and races to get himself in the best shape possible - BMC also announced yesterday a highly "Cadel" focussed team for this years race that will sacrifice everything they have to try and get their team leader the top spot on the podium. However it is in riders such as Robert Gesink, Jurgen Van Den Broek, Nicholas Roche, Benat Intxausti and of course Andy Schleck who I believe will be the real challengers in this year's race. They have all been put in teams that are almost entirely centred around putting them in the best position for victory and they have all been through rigorous pre tour training and race sharpening events throughout Europe.
That said I wouldn't count out the old boys yet. As I mentioned Cadel Evans is in the form of his life heading into this years race, put that alongside a very much on form Bradley Wiggins, Ryder Hesejdal, Andreas Kloden and Levi Leipheimer and you have yourself a race.
This years tour could be the best in decades. Count on attacks, aggression, team tactics, fighting, crashes, sprints and breakaways - it's going to be a fight to the death out there.
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