July 6, 2007 – The last couple of months have been a challenge for me but things are now getting back on track as I have finally recovered from pneumonia and I am racing once again. With ten days of training in my legs I started the Ster Elektro Tour in Holland, suffered through it, got stronger, then rode the team time trial in Eindhoven and am now on my way to the Tour of Austria – a week long race. During the last two weeks all the riders in Girona have been focused on the Tour and the group training rides have been intense and hard; just what I need after such a long time off the bike.

The Tour this year will be an interesting race as there is no clear favourite for the overall – even the sprints will be wide open as Petacchi is not at the Tour and each stage will be a wide open dash to the line. During the last few days I was training with George Hincapie and Fred Rodriguez, two riders that can animate the race. George did a lot of training on his time trial bike and is a good bet for the win tomorrow’s Prologue ITT in London. Freddie will be leading out Robbie McEwen for the sprints who has a great shot at winning another green jersey. I am not good at predictions so I won’t guess who will be on the podiums throughout the Tour but it should be an exciting race if the doping issues don’t overshadow the racing, and the racers race clean.

I have some work to do to get back to great fitness but it is slowly coming and I am glad to be back on the bike again and feeling normal. In the next months I will focus on the shorter stage races – Austria, Tour de L’Ain, Tour of Poland, Eneco Tour – and the one day classics, and hopefully, if all goes well, the Road Worlds. I will skip the Vuelta this year as we are expecting a baby in late September.

T-Mobile is going to the Tour with a solid mixed team of experienced Tour veterans and young pros. Mark Cavendish, the Manxman that has won six races to date has a great shot at winning a stage in the first week as there are few riders faster than him in a clean dash to the line. Mark is a great kid with a lot of confidence who can continue to progress significantly in the coming years as he is still young, inexperienced and lacking the sustained power of a seasoned pro.

Michael Rogers and Kim Kirchen are the likely team members that will be able to compete for the general classification while Marcus Burgharht, Axel Merckx, Linus Gerdmann and Bert Grabsch have the talent to win stages of medium difficulty on their own or in a small group. The team is solid overall with time trialists, sprinters and climbers. I am disappointed not to be there with them but also know that the situation was out of my control and that getting healthy now is the priority.