Hey there. I´m writing from some whack Madrillano Internet cafe, and have 21 minutes left on my Euro, so this will be brief: Kirchen won the Tour of Poland, getting a bit of revenge on ProTour leader (who beat him at Fleche-Wallone, but could muster only fifth here) and certain ProTour winner Danilo DiLuca, whose relatively one-sided victory (simply from dominating one-day races) exposes perhaps a rather large hole in the ProTour´s scoring system (only 3 points for a stage win?). Also interesting en Pologne was young Dutchman Thomas Dekker who laid a little pre-Worlds smackdown on would be-favorite Bobby Julich in the race´s final TT, clipping the American by seven seconds.
Speaking of Worlds, I scoped out the race course yesterday at the Vuelta finish. I had an ok spot about 500m from the line, but with a tired and severely depleted peloton, there wasn´t much action `til the commentator started shouting “Alesandrooooooooo Petacchiiiiiiiiiiiiii de juego Fassaaaaaaaaaaaa Bortolooooooooo.” It took him a few minutes to settle down after that. I can only imagine what it´s like when a Spaniard wins. Accortding to Boonen, though, it´s all camoflage and he´s ready to put it to the Ale-Jet, the consensus favorite come next weekend. I´ll be there to tell you how it all goes down, and unlike yesterday, when at Liberty-Seguros car with none other than Roberto Heras and Manolo Saiz sitting in the front pulls up to the curb right-freakin´-next to me post-race, I won´t blow it by fat-fingering the camera.