[Hunter]

Originally Posted by yinstro

point is he was using the shield to shield himself, he could use it to shield himself and attack sasuke at the same time, sasuke not being able to see his opponent cant predict where gaaras sand attacks will come from,

Completely unimportant, Lee couldn't predict anything at all, still this kind of speed was just too much for Gaara to handle, the fact to see Gaara or not doesn't change that whatever the sand attack that Gaara would have launched, the sand would have been too slow to catch Sasuke and thus was useless.

as seen he can form sand from the ground, and they were fighting outdoors.

He couldn't do that before, we talk of Sasuke and Gaara during the Chuunin exam not now.
Gaara as he is now would have annihilated the Sasuke of before in less than 5s.

Also I dont think sasuke has as much stamina as lee, who can maintain his speed almost forever without wearing

You should re-read Lee's fight, Lee can't maintain his high speed too long either, during his fight with Gaara, Lee started to look tired because of this kind of speed almost immediately, even before Gaara used the armor of Sand.
Exactly as Sasuke actually, both of them were out of breath just after their second blows on Gaara's face.
The high speed of Lee drains his stamina as much as for Sasuke, the only difference is their respective amount of stamina and if Lee has certainely a better stamina than Sasuke because he trains his body harder and since years, it doesn't seem to be that much a difference.

keep in mind lee was unable to land a real hit with his weigthless speed, he was only able to break gaaras first defence, also chidori is nice and dandy but it gives you at best the distance of your foirearm with which to strike, he can cut through sand with his hand, not his body. basically gaara going for his final form played right into sasukes best chance to win. the charge time of chidori, and shiekd of gaara could have totally changed the match. I think his instability was why sasuke dominated, remember what lee said, that speed isnt enough to beat gaara. and chidori is useless if you cant watch your enemy, why else do you think he only hit him in the shoulder? he had no idea whats goin on when he couldnt see

Speed alone isn't enough, it just gives a draw, Gaara couldn't touch you whereas you can't hurt him.
But speed+Chidori was just the perfect combo against Gaara's way of fighting which is precisely why Gaara tried to transform : he wanted to kill Sasuke but couldn't with his set of abilities in the current situation.

Gaara used a sand shield : the Sand Egg.
Without that, Gaara could have been way more heavily wounded by the Chidori given that he couldn't stop Sasuke to strike him.
And the time that Sasuke needed to charge the Chidori isn't important, he just had to jump, avoiding the attacks of the sand while charging the Chidori which would have been an easy task given the difference of speed.
And then just run like hell to the shield and does exactly what he did in the story.