21 July 2009

Le Tour de France Stage 16

For those of you who may have missed Le Tour today, you missed a great one. I caught most of it at work today on Versus but, again, I was at work and missed pieces and parts. I will (likely) update this more this evening, once I have the chance to catch it off the DVR. I will say that it was an amazing race, and a fairly new contender proved his worth today. Astarloza was first today with Casar, Fedrigo, Roche, Van Den Broeck, and Moinard rounding out the next five spots all at +00:06.

I think a highlight for me was when Lance once again proved that he is every bit the pro he was when he won seven Tour victories. At the tail end of the race he pour on everything hes got to break away from the peloton at about 2km to rejoin the yellow jersey group just behind the six person breakaway at the front.

Once again this changes everything at the top of the overall standings. The top five now look like this: Contador 67:33:15, Armstrong +01:37, Wiggins +01:46, KlĂ–den +02:17, and Schleck at +02:26. This puts three Astana riders in the top four spots, and makes me wonder who will actually be Astana's 'go-to' boy for the yellow at the end. Will Armstrong be the domestique? Or will he play coy from now, and come back in the end to once again show the true athlete we've seen seven times in the past?

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