Overwhelmed by Stage 8

There are too many story lines from Stage 8, which means I can write a lot and leave plenty material for Stephen. Since it’s overwhelming, I’ll start with the simple stuff.

1) That was an awesome stage to watch. The first week of the Tour was really good, and it just got a lot better. Amazingly, the contenders are still close to one another despite all the carnage today.

2) Robbie McEwen was eliminated from the race because he finished too far behind the winner. Gone. Out. See you next year. Even though he was down 40 points, this is huge for Tom Boonen. The most dangerous man is gone. Having lost McEwen and Freire on consecutive days, Boonen can win the green jersey by playing defense. He just needs to mark Zabel, Hushovd, and Hunter.

3) While the contenders have been hesitant to take the race by the horns, Michael Rasmussen had no problem seizing the day. His acceleration up the last three mountains put everyone to shame. For the second consecutive day the hero gets a triple crown, for Rasmussen it’s a stage win, the yellow jersey, and the polka dot jersey.

4) Sylvain Chavanel looks lame. He wasn’t able to pretend as though he had any interest in the KoM today. At the start of the day he had a 20 point lead on Rasmussen; now he trails by 40. That’s what happens when you don’t lift a finger while the defending champ throws the gauntlet.

5) The day began with a big breakaway that included Michael Rogers. It was remarkably stupid, yet typical of Telekom to implement the worst possible strategy. Rogers wore himself out before the big mountains. When he crashed and sustained an injury that eventually forced him to abandon, it may have won him some sympathy, but even without the crash, he was doomed. Just how dumb is it to get into a breakaway a couple hours before hitting three big mountains? I’ll explain this so even the morons who run Telekom will understand. Of the 18 men in the breakaway only 1 finished within 10 minutes of Rasmussen. They all burned out. If Rogers hadn’t crashed, he would have finished, but lost so much time as to be out of contention.

6) The one member of the break who finished within 10 minutes of Rasmussen…Jens Voigt, naturally, at + 5:47.

7) Looking past Rasmussen, some riders looked great. First, congrats to Iban Mayo for having his first good TdF stage in 4 years. Cadel Evans and Chris Moreau led the charge out of the group of contenders, but the other guys with them never got organized to the point that they could put a lot of time on the riders that they dropped. As a result, they put less than 30 seconds on Sastre and Menchov, less than a minute on Leipheimer, and only 76 seconds on Vinokourov and Kloden.

8) Vinokourov owes Kloden a case of beer for pacing him up the mountain. Kloden looked very strong setting the pace for Vino. Clearly he sacrificed his own standing to help Vinokourov. I presume Astana isn’t going to pull the plug on Vino until after the first time trial, but his hole keeps getting deeper. Meanwhile, Andrey Kashechkin is now 5^th overall, nearly a minute ahead of Kloden and nearly 4 minutes ahead of Vinokourov. Vino had better have a very special time trial.

9) The time gaps in the GC are deceiving. Rasmussen has 3 minutes plus on all the pre-race favorites, but Rasmussen is one of the worst time trialists in the history of sports. Iban Mayo is also terrible. Linus Gerdemann sits in second, but this rookie is a sitting duck. So, the current top three is very vulnerable. Right now we know who has the lead, but I have no idea who has the best chance of winning.