{"id":117,"date":"2005-07-17T08:57:54","date_gmt":"2005-07-17T13:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auroralux.net\/blog\/2005\/07\/17\/discovery-is-really-missing-ekimov\/"},"modified":"2005-07-17T08:59:01","modified_gmt":"2005-07-17T13:59:01","slug":"discovery-is-really-missing-ekimov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/2005\/07\/17\/discovery-is-really-missing-ekimov\/","title":{"rendered":"Discovery is Really Missing Ekimov"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It looked like <a href=\"http:\/\/team.discovery.com\/\">Discovery<\/a> was bringing a powerful team to the Tour de France this year. After watching Lance Armstrong get isolated on several climbs for the first time in years, I have a theory for why: their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/road\/2005\/tour05\/index.php?id=startlist\">roster<\/a> looks skewed towards climbing this year. Yes, there are lots of mountain days lined up right in a row, but two major factors contribute to my idea: George Hincapie is claimed as being several KG lighter than past year, so in a way he&#8217;s transformed from a flat terrain and  rolling hill powerhouse to a power climber, and Ekimov is missing with no one to replace him. Watching the coverage the last few years, I remember seeing Eki on the front for miles and miles. <\/p>\n<p>Those two changes have put more burden on Discovery&#8217;s pure climbers during the flatter parts of the stages, leaving them unable to stick with Lance in the big mountains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It looked like Discovery was bringing a powerful team to the Tour de France this year. After watching Lance Armstrong get isolated on several climbs for the first time in years, I have a theory for why: their roster looks &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/2005\/07\/17\/discovery-is-really-missing-ekimov\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}