5:10am - Why am I up THIS FREAKIN EARLY??????
I can't even sleep until
my alarm goes off! Thankfully OLN has the Lance
Chronicles on this morning,
and there is sportsline.com so I can get my Tour
Fix. There's been another rider
to drop out of the tour, Steve Zampieri (SWI)
from the Phonak team, so Floyd
Landis has lost a rider. Megin, who fell yesterday
is not keeping up with the pace
today and is 2' behind the main peleton. The
cool thing is there are five Discovery
team riders in the top ten of the overall GC.
Today's stage runs 228.5k from Luneville in northern
France to Karlsruhe in Germany.
There are two climbs, the second being the first
category 3, then a long descent into
the finish. This is really the last stage for
someone to make a big move before the mountains.
I personally think Vinokourov is Lance's biggest
rival in this tour. He was out last year
due to an injury and was third in the Tour two
years ago.
At this point there is a lone German rider, Fabian
Wegmann of team Gerolsteiner,
who has managed a breakaway and is 8' in front,
but after getting the points on both
of the climbs today, he not only will be in the
King of the Mountains jersey today at
the finish line in his home country, but may
win the stage. But after yesterday's crash
involving all of the sprinters, I think he'll
be reeled in before the end. The sprinters need
this finish today since it's one of the last
of the few remaining sprint stages. However,
he should be the first to enter Germany, and
that would be great for the fans there.
5:50am - Wegmann is 8'30" ahead of the peleton.
They've all passed the feeding zone
with Discovery leading the chase, and the rain
seems to have stopped. I'm sure the
sprint teams will come up to do the main work
in the chase shortly.
6:30 - Rain is back. Gap is 7'55".
6:38am - The hammer is coming down - gap is 5'53", or else Wegman is having a nap.
7:00am - Gap is 3'35". Zooom. Whoa! They've just
announced that the
Tour will start in LONDON in 2007. Wacky.
7:15am - Gap is 2'42". The cool thing is, a German will lead the Tour into Germany. Nice!
7:32am - CRASH! In the middle of the peleton when
they crossed over
railroad tracks. 10-15 guys down, everyone stopped
behind them.
Everyone's back up again, not sure if anyone
is seriously injured, but
a few went over their handlebars. Gap is now
1'02". Boonen gets 2nd in
the last sprint, and keeps the green jersey.
7:45am - Gap is 18". with 24k to go. It's
done, Wegmann knows it's
over, and is letting the peleton overtake him.
We'll see if anyone
wants to get crazy with the sprinters in the
final frenzy. Vino is a
good climber, so he may wait until tomorrow.
8:am - 14k to go, and the rain is back. Are we
in for more carnage?
They're saying the finish here is straighter
with no right angle
streets. The great thing is to see how many people
are lining the
streets. Massive crowds! The sucky thing is that
last year OLN had com
commercial breaks during the last 30 minutes
of the stage, but this
year the commercials are non-stop. BOOOOOO!
Vino is right behind Lance, looks like he might
try to do a nice last
minute break again.
8:15am - CRASH!!!!! Just outside the chaotic sprint
finish! I was a
massive sprint frenzy at the end, with two riders
going down, and
miraculously everyone else managed to avoid them.
Robbie McEwen takes
the stage. GC stays the same as everyone crossed
in one big group.
Tomorrow starts the climbing. Lots of cat 3s in
the beginning, and
finishing with a cat 2. Oh yeah!!
GO LANCE!!!