2009 Tour de France - Stage 8.

Alberto has been a bad boy.  American television has shown its bias after talking to the crybabies on team Astana.  Johan took  Alberto out behind the woodshed and gave him a good talking to.

I used to think I knew a little about bicycle racing but not anymore.  I thought the best team would control the peloton and carry their GC contenders up and down the mountains.  If a rival contender attacked, there would be a counter.  When the timing was right, a favorite to win the tour would attack and gain valuable seconds between himself and his rivals.  I guess you’re not supposed to do that unless Lance or Levi says so and it benefits them.  For today, we will see a very boring stage with the GC contenders being passive and kissing butt.

An attack has established itself and contains ten racers.  Some interesting people in that group include Hincapie, Evans, Casar, Hushovd, Martinez, and Cancellara.  This mixture has a variety of purposes.  Thor is going for green and Evans wants yellow.  Maybe Johan should send Alberto up the road to cover Evans’ move.  They would probably enjoy working with each other.  Thor continues to chip away at Cavendish’s sprint lead but there hasn’t been much else developing.  Here’s a development! The Tour is over for Oscar Pereiro as he abandons.

About the only thing significant with this break is the change of the green jersey.  You knew Astana would not allow Evans to gain any time.  The original ten leaders is whittled down to four.  The peloton has no concern and will allow them to battle for the stage win.  Hincapie makes an attempt to bridge to the leaders but doesn’t have any help and sits up to join the Peloton.

The battle for the stage win will be among Sandy Casar, Luis Sanchez, Mikel Astarloza, and Vladimir Efimkin. I will pick Casar. Of course, I’m wrong again as Sanchez had more reserve energy and passes Casar and Astarloza while the two of them were battling.  The peloton rolled in a couple minutes behind.

It looks like everyone on Astana behaved themselves today.  No need to pass out hankies to Lance and Levi.

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