Honestly, if Chris Horner and Sylvain Chavanel had spent half as much time pedaling as they did looking over their shoulders, one of them would have had a stage win today. Alas, they were both greedy, and Robbie McEwen triumphed via the Mother of All Leadouts from Fred Rodriguez. Or at least that’s how Paul Sherwin saw it. To the less experienced viewer, it looked like Fast Freddie was trying to win the stage himself. But of course he would never try to slip one over on his teammate like that. I did enjoy the way he celebrated to avoid looking like a loser.
Green just keeps getting tighter. Thor did well to highten the drama today by a)taking off 50 meters too early; b)leaving from about 5 riders too far back, c)being on the entirely wrong side of the road; d)not grabbing anyone’s wheel; and, oh yeah, e) all of the above. So now it’s Stuey 14 behind Hushovd, and Robbie Mac a mere 8 behind Stuey. Should be exciting battles for the intermediate sprints over the next few days.
Darn that Valverde. Darn him straight to heck. At least he was crying when he climbed up into the team car. For some reason, people seem to keep bailing all over the place when the get a jersey. Watch out, Michael Rassmussen. Speaking of, Lance was talking today about all the people he had to mark tomorrow, and how, oh, it was going to be tough to keep an eye on all of them. Jigga please. There’s one guy within 40 seconds of you; the next dude is like 3 minutes down. I don’t care how bad a TT rider he is, there’s only one guy to watch for Discovery, and he’s wearing dots.