Etape Tres

Fabian Cancellara showed tactical skill and luck today by hanging with the decisive move. After frustration brewed unabated for Team Columbia, they decided to shatter the race and the resulting 39 second time gap between that group and the peloton may prove difficult to overcome for some of the favourites. With ~20 K to go, Team Columbia produced an echelon (a staggered paceline) in the angled headwind and motored to the finish line with about 30 riders. This was no group of slouches, you see, Lance Armstrong was in the winning move as well as Cancellara. Armstrong was the only favourite in the move and he erased the 40 second gap created by his teammate and rival Alberto Contador in the prologue. This moved him into 3rd place. Oh, and by the way, Mark Cavendish won the stage with a blistering sprint. If you want to see better coverage, go to http://www.cyclingnews.com/. If you can't get streaming video, this site at least has a good live feed. So Armstrong has thrown down the gauntlet and shown that he may be less than willing to succomb to team tactics. We will see what happens tomorrow when he must ride with his chief opponent during the team time trial (all riders from a team ride together, in staggered start list with the other teams; the fifth rider that arrives marks the team's collective time). Enjoy and I am glad you are interested!! By the way, I am cheering for Christian Vandevelde. He rides for an american team, is a clean rider (hopefully), and is coming back from a wreck in May, during which he broke the spinous processes off of five cervical vertebrae.... ow. Go Christian! After that cheeky move today, I can't help but sheer for Armstrong a little.