Paris-Nice. Levi shows off his Lance imitation.

07. Mar, 2010 5 Comments

Go Levi.

Levi Leipheimer did his best Lance Armstrong imitation in the Paris Nice prologue time trial.

He’s not ready to perfect Lance’s walk or his vocal inflections or imitate his touch with the ladies but as far as racing a bike fast over a 22km time trial in a Radio Shack jersey and tying the time of arch rival Alberto Contador, well, impressive stuff.

Riding the Bike With A Thousand R Logos, Levi posted the third fastest time behind winner Lars Boom (Rabobank) and Jens Voigt (Saxo Bank). While Armstrong was by his own admission under-whelmed with his 8th place finish in the Murcia time trial, Leipheimer looked positively Lance-like.

Thinking Lance now needs extra work, Johan Bruyneel is debating adding races to Lance’s calendar. Levi, on the other hand, can relax in true Boss fashion and enjoy the excellent start to his season. Possible name change: Lance Leipheimer.

Levi has earned the Week In Lance’s Shoes Award that culminates with a Hollywood dream date with the blonde starlet of his choice and the chance to babysit all four of Lance’s kids. Good things happen when you ride super fast, even faster than Lance.

Just ask Radio Shack’s Sébastien Rosseler how his WILSA was. After giving Radio Shack its first win of the season, Sébastien got the keys to Lance’s 1970 Pontiac GTO, 12 cases of Michelob Ultra beer and a $100 gift certificate to the Oakley store.

Congrats to Levi. Love the Armstrong imitation. Texas boy, Montana boy —  it’s all the same, right?

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  • Drew

    You have stumbled onto Bruyneel’s master plan alluded to in the Nike comercial. The plan is not to clone Lance repeatedly but rather to morph the rest of the team into hybrid-Armstrongs with the Most desired powers of both (kinda like a liger).

    If you’ve ever seen ‘Multiplicity’ with Michael Keaton you know that the clone never comes out exactly like the origional and that a copy of even the hardest working clone will be completely unuseable.

    By metamorphosing other riders into hybrid-Armstrongs he can pick and choose the best traits of the peloton and make them more Lance-like. We have seen the TT abilities of Levi-Armstrong but what about the climbing ability of Chechu-Armstrong or the ultra-super domestiques Horner-Armstrong and Popo-Armstrong.

    Yes, The Shack is going to be a truly formitable team come this July.

    • walshworld

      Drew, you are on it, man. You're a dozen steps ahead of me. Keep me posted with your ideas and I may have to do a post on your brilliance.

  • Drew

    More has been revealed due to the un-timely and unfortunate loss of Gert Steegmans due to a broken collarbone. An unknown source has quoted Johan Bruyneel as saying "not again, this could ruin everything.". This is obviously a reference to a similar injury Lance suffered last season. After an extensive fact checking session with my magic 8-ball I have confirmed the following details:

    Bruyneel's plan was to accomplish the Merckxean task of capturing all 3 jerseys. The Gert-Armstrong hybrid was to take the Green, Chechu the mountains and in the event that Lance himself could not take the yellow, He would still have cards to play with Levi-Armstrong or Andreas K-Armstrong.

    What ultimately brought this to light was when it was revealed that the Gert-Armstrong project was the prototype and had been in the works for some time. This was the precipitous for the problems he had at Katusha. The fear was that DNA testing would uncover the Hybrid-Armstrong DNA and blow the lid off the entire project.

    • walshworld

      Drew, there’s a movie in this somewhere. I had no idea the secret project ran this deep, with so many deadly tendrils. Scary stuff. Thanks for keeping us on top of this story. We’re the only ones who understand the full ramifications. Watch our back, the walls have ears, speak to no one until you reach the safe house.

  • http://www.turbocrank.com turbocrank

    Now the big trick is for Johan to get all the riders to divorce their wives, hang out with hollywood stars and say they are going to spend more time with there kids, but don’t do it.

    Then they will be true Lancebots.