Today was the first individual time trial at the Tour, and even though time-trial specialist David Zabriskie couldn't make it to France because of his still healing broken vertebra from the Giro d'Italia, there was one thing I wasn't missing with Dave's absence. What was that? The stock phrase the announcers always trot out about the American currently on the Garmin-Chipotle team: "most aerodynamic man in the peloton." I'm sure that was true of Dave at one point, established when Cervelo began working with Team CSC in the wind tunnel when they were designing their time-trial bike. Zabriskie claimed the lowest air drag coefficient of all the guys who spent time in the wind tunnels, when many pro teams were testing their bikes and skin suits. But sometimes Dave likes to grow a beard, and there have been faster guys on the time-trial circuit in the last five years, so who knows if his coefficient is still the lowest. So, I haven't missed that "most aerodynamic rider" moniker every time his image would have been flashed across the screen, especially a time-trial stage. That just gets annoying, seriously.
Unfortunately, the announcers have found a new rider and new stock phrase to repeat ad nauseum this year. Mark Cavendish, the young British sprinter on Team Columbia, now has "the fastest man in the peloton" attached to him, because it is generally agreed that he has achieved the highest top speed in the last 200 meters of several races this year. So now, whenever we see Mark's face on the screen, you can be sure to hear "fastest man" at some point during the commentary.
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