View From the Bushes

Okay, it's time to return to "View from the Bushes" Tour de France coverage. (As if anyone in America is talking about anything else after yesterday and today's exciting stages). Yesterday, of course, the race finished at the top of the legendary Alpe d'Huez. Everyone expected Armstrong to make an attack that would put a couple of minutes into all of his rivals. As it turns out, it was the other way around. Rather than Lance attacking everyone else, everyone else attacked Lance. Even Tyler Hamilton who is riding with a broken collarbone was attacking on the slopes of the final climb.

Nevertheless, Lance did take the yellow jersey and had enough strength to take third place for an 8 second time bonus, but it was a lot different stage then most people expected. It's going to be a very interesting tour. I'm with most people in thinking that Lance is still going to win, but I think it's going to be a lot tougher than previous years. Of course, now that Lance has shown that he's mortal, there's blood in the water, which was evidenced by today's stage. There were so many attacks that the peleton was stretched all over creation, and once again, Vinokourov got away and he's now only about 20 seconds behind Armstrong.

The biggest thing to happen in today's stage, however, was Beloki crashed and abandoned. This upsets me for a lot of reasons, but the biggest is that I had picked him as my podium bet and he was looking really good. I think at this point we've got a pretty good sense of the climbers; all that remains is to see where people's time trialing is at and for that we have to wait until Friday. Ullrich is a monster in the time trial and Armstrong has only ever lost once in the long time trial and that was to Botero, and trust me, I don't think Botero is really up to par this year. He and Gilberto Simoni, two big favorites going into the tour, have lost so much time that I think both must seriously be considering faking an illness and abandoning.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross