kdublog: Kloden and LANCE

I was watchin' the tour coverage this morning as events transpired...it was pretty amazing to see Kloden and LANCE, two, what I perceived as, bitter rivals of the past - remember stg 17 of the 2004 TdF:

Anyway, to see these guys "teaming up"...well, that's a bit strong, I reckon...I mean, one of them was working on a salary basis setting tempo for the other who was dropped, and limiting losses...the LANCE, well, let's just say it's a safe bet that he's probably betting on something longer term, financially, than this year's efforts, with a higher ROI than the UCI minimum salary, eh?

Anyway, pretty crazy to see how someone who allegedly/is accused of taking on blood transfusions three years ago:

http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2009/may09/may13news3

stacked up against LANCE on the alpe d'huez four years ago:

http://www.biketechreview.com/performance/la_cant_doit.htm

and more specifically this chart within the linked article above:

Which estimates (hey, that's an estimate, lawyer guys, eh?) LANCE at 6.4 w/kg and kloden at 6.0 w/kg. The NEW LANCE is going better than he was during two of his 7 previous victories, according to pre-tour interviews, though? As Trek likes to say during their tour de france versus coverage: "WOW"...

both of these guys (Kloden and Armstrong) are getting a bit long in the tooth (kloden is 34 while the NEW LANCE is 37 - which is, hey, the same age as yours truly - so I guess I know a thing or two about how performance at 37 rates against performance 3-4 years ago...or heck, 10 years ago for that matter...), but, how today's events transpired became a bit of a head scratcher for me, given all of that previous data/information... Though, now that I think about it a bit, well, I'm pretty sure Kate Hudson is what is behind it all for the NEW LANCE's performance: