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‘Rest day’ busy, but serves Julich, CSC well

Stephen Lloyd Wood and Andy Hood

GUERET, France – The first of two rest days at the Tour de France appears to have done a lot of good for Bobby Julich and his team.Tuesday, following the race’s 160.5-kilometer (99.73-mile) ninth stage on the winding, up-and-down roads of France’s Massif Central region, the longtime Glenwood Springs resident, 32, said he and his CSC teammates enjoyed having Monday off. He’s “recovering well from the two crashes that I had in the first week,” he said, and is looking forward to the week ahead.”The rest day went better than in the past because we did the transfer in the plane just after the stage, not on our rest day. We got to bed a bit later, but when we woke up this morning we had the day to ourselves,” Julich said. “We went for an easy, two-hour ride around 11 a.m., then had small lunch before making ourselves available to the press from 2 to 3 p.m.”I was then able to squeeze in a massage, too, just before heading to another interview at 5 p.m. After that session I was back on the table of our physiotherapist for a little more work on my sore body,” he added. “As you can see, the ‘rest days’ are anything but ‘rest,’ but it’s all part of the job.”While the weather there was substantially better Tuesday than it was in Brittany over the weekend – overcast skies and temperature in the 70s at the start in Saint-Leonard-de-Noblat – the racing itself didn’t lend itself to Team CSC’s strategy thus far in the race.Jens Voigt of Germany made an attempt to establish a breakaway just after the stage started in Saint-Leonard-de-Noblat, but the nervous peloton nixed that immediately. And later, Norwegian Kurt-Asle Arvesen crashed late in the stage when another rider apparently hit an obstacle in the road. Arvesen remounted his bike and finished the stage – but he was dead last for 172nd place, more than seven minutes down.”It’s been a little nervous. We have ourselves to blame as everyone’s trying to do the U.S. Postal way of doing things, with everyone riding around their one captain. You can’t have every team in the front, at least a full team in the front,” Julich explained. “Now everyone has the blueprint of Lance (Armstrong) and everyone is trying to copy that; everyone has the one leader who has to be in the front. Luckily we have two or three leaders, so we don’t need to have the whole team at the front.”He was referring to Team CSC’s Italian Ivan Basso and Spaniard Carlos Sastre, who are in 28th and 38th places on the overall classification, respectively, at 10:52 and 11:37. Julich’s main role in the Tour remains to support them once the race hits the mountains.The American himself, meanwhile, is 22nd overall, at 10:35. Third overall in the 1998 Tour de France, it’s not inconceivable Julich could find himself team leader if Basso and Sastre have a bad day.”I am feeling better from my crash,” Julich said. “The Tour de France is the worst race in the world when you’re feeling bad, but it’s the best race in the world when you’re feeling good. There’s so much more exposure with the Tour, riding well is a fantastic feeling for everyone involved.”For more on Julich visit his Web site: http://www.bobbyjulich.com.


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