Levi Leipheimer and Alberto Contador took third and fourth in the Olympic time trial today, which of course begs the question: what if they had ridden the Tour?

Levi told VeloNews that “For the time trial I think it was an advantage to not have the tour in my legs.” That said, Cancellara took 1′09″ out of him and it’s hard to imagine Levi yielding any more time than that. But we’ll take the man at his word. Who are we to disagree?

Alberto, meanwhile, was fastest at the first time check at the top of the climb on the first lap but lost time on the descents. So he had the speed but not the power. Even if the grind of the Tour had taken a bit of the edge off his top end, three weeks of racing might have built up his base. Plus he would have had a couple extra TT practices. But what do we know…

Either way, it definitely looks like these guys will be scary in the Vuelta. Is a 1-2 finish in the cards?

Back in the states, Chris Horner had some fiery comments for VeloNews about his getting passed over by USA Cycling for the Olympics. In our view, it’s tough to make a case against Horner being one of the 5 best Americans for a hilly road race against the best riders in the world. So what’s the deal?

It’s a stretch to say that there’s a conspiracy against him, but there’s always been a sense that Horner is outside of the cycling establishment in this country. He came up through the ranks outside of the USA Cycling system. He never rode for any of the US “poster boy” teams (Motorola back in the day, US Postal, or Discovery Channel) and he never hesitated to criticize (or beat) them, even when he was riding for tiny little Webcor. Horner has a long history of not playing politics, and it probably hurt his chances for a discretionary selection for Beijing.

By the way, Team Astana had three other riders in Beijing: Kazakhstan’s Andrey Mizurov and Maxim Iglinsky, Russia’s Sergey Ivanov. There’s a great page on the team’s website with updates from all five of their Olympians.

photos by Graham Watson

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