Alright, so I came back from a second day in Belgium, this time in Tongeren, Flanders. After sucking down a Leffe Bruin, I started thinking about my favorite beer and was wondering what all of the PdC regulars are drinking. A little backstory first. After drinking some typical US swill in my younger years, I discovered dunkelbier during my first 3 year stay in Germany and that led to schwarzbier and when I got back to the US, microbrews. Now that I am back in Germany, I have started drinking Belgian a ton. After a trip to St. Vith yesterday and 61 Euro in beer (Rochefort 8&10, Leffe Brune, and Chimay Blue), a trip to Tongeren and a large order of frieten/some good beer, I am wondering what everyone is drinking. Please chime in and let me know.

After many posts and some thinking, I decided to post a topic for the first time.  The question is: How do past  performances determine future success?

It's a simple enough question. So what do you all think? A few factors that must go into this are below, in no particular order.

1. Past performances in other grand tours. There is one grand tour winner amongst the favorites, Menchov. He won the Vuelta twice, which is a far cry from the Tour. How much credit does he get for winning the Vuelta and does it trump progression in the Tour?

2. Progression. Most of the favorites are the same from several Tours now and the only person who has consistently progressed is Evans. How much does his experience in the Tour and his ability to grind it out count towards winning the Tour.

3. Team. We know that CSC has a super strong team, just like they've had for several Tours now. How much does having a strong team mean if you haven't been able to finish it off in the past? This many very well be Sastre's last real chance to win the Tour before Riis promotes one of the Schlecks. Is his team strong enough to make up for his shortfalls?

4. Time trialling or climbing. Which is more valuable to a GC man? We saw that even in the Giro with the super hard climbs that TT ability trumped all the climbing ability of Ricco and co. How does that carry over to the Tour? History tells us that time triallists have won more often than climbers in recent times, What do you all think?

I myself tend to look at history and past performances and am curious as to what everyone else thinks.