{"id":9509,"date":"2009-04-17T09:35:41","date_gmt":"2009-04-17T16:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/?p=9509"},"modified":"2009-04-17T09:35:41","modified_gmt":"2009-04-17T16:35:41","slug":"cycling-road-no-team-will-be-able-to-control-whole-tour-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/?p=9509","title":{"rendered":"Cycling Road &#8211; No team will be able to control whole Tour &#8211; director"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">No team will be able to control the Tour de France during all three weeks because the route is too difficult, race director Christian Prudhomme said on Friday.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Astana\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Alberto Contador, a Tour winner in 2007, will be the overwhelming favourite when the race starts with a 15-km time trial in Monaco, on July 4.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">But despite possible support from team mates Lance Armstrong, a seven-times Tour champion, Levi Leipheimer and Andreas Kloeden, keeping the yellow jersey all the way to Paris should prove too tricky.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe one team will be able to control the whole race,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Prudhomme told reporters at the Monte Carlo tennis Masters.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u00e2\u20ac\u0153A team could seize power early in the race but given the route, they should not be able to keep it all the way,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said &#8230;\u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/sc\/news?slug=reu-tourprudhomme_pix&amp;prov=reuters&amp;type=lgns\" target=\"_blank\">Details<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No team will be able to control the Tour de France during all three weeks because the route is too difficult, race director Christian Prudhomme said on Friday. Astana\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Alberto Contador, a Tour winner in 2007, will be the overwhelming favourite when the race starts with a 15-km time trial in Monaco, on July 4. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-road-bike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9510,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9509\/revisions\/9510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}