Stage 8 and Beyond.

Sorry gang, have not had much time to write in this blog.  After 3 days and 4 cols in the Alps, I traveled to Belgium on Monday, 1 July and the airlines lost my Eddy Merckx, and I still don't have it......might have got stolen in Nice at the airport is a theory.  I have some big shots at Brussels Air trying to put some pressure on, but they just don't know where it is. And since I was traveling light, all my kit, including my shoes, were in the bike bag.  Anyway, the Izoard was a lovely climb, and a very fast descent followed.  Still a bit of snow at the top.  My last day of the 3 day tour seemed like a nice 65km "boucle" on some really narrow roads but it turned into 2100m of climbing and a real burner the day after the HC climb of the Izoard.

I have to agree with Dan, I was very disappointed to see that nobody other than Richie Porte could follow Froome.  But anyone can crack, anyone can have a bad day. I'm not sure why I am not a fan of Foome, I just can't get excited about him as a rider, but he certainly can climb, and he can time trial, so it looks foreboding for the rest of the GC favourites.  Evan's performance today was expected, Van Garderen's was not, and neither Porito and Contador.   I never really expected Schleck to do anything, but seeing Krueziger pacing Contador was grim!  And what wrong with Hesjdal?  He was just terrible today.  Make you wonder how he ever won the Giro, as he has not done anything worth writing to Mom about since then.

But it's a 3 week race, and this was only the first HC climb of the tour, so I remain hopeful that someone can claw back some time and make a race of it.  Great to see Qintana riding well and he went for it on the first climb and that is always nice to see.

But defending the Yellow Jersey is not easy on a team, and while they may be rejoicing tonight, it's very early in the race to control the peloton, so we shall see if SKY are up to it. We could see a team alliance happen: team after team sending their nearest GC riders up the road in an attempt to get SKY to work to hard for too long. Stay tuned.