The Tour de France hit Alpe D'Huez today in stage 8, which was won by Iban Mayo, a young rider for the Euskatel team. Those of you who follow cycling may remember him as the runner-up in the Dauphine Libere stage race held a month ago, finishing just about a minute overall behind Lance Armstrong. Now, he sits just over a minute behind Lance, who took over the race lead today. Now, with the major Alpine stage overwith (tomorrow is also in the mtns, but it's downhall for the last half), Lance holds a 40" lead of Joseba Beloki, who attacked Lance repeatedly today but finished in the same time as Armstrong. Bayo is 3rd, and Alexandre Vinokourov (who I've always thought was an underrated GC contender) is 4th. Jan Ullrich lost almost a minute and a half today and is a ways down. But on the whole, Lance didn't put time into everyone like he usually does on the first mountain top finish. Whether that was because of the mountains arriving about a half of a week earlier than usual or because he wasn't on top form, I'm not sure. But, the race is still very much wide open. I just wish OLN had live coverage on Sundays so that I could've watched it instead of having to deal with Internet radio that was 5-10 minutes behind the action. One more Alpine stage, a rest day, two flat stages, and then the time trial lie ahead for the next week. Then, it's several days in the Pyrenees, commencing the day after the time trial. I don't think we'll see any major classification shakeups until Friday's time trial, but it'll be interesting to see what tactic the USPS team takes tomorrow and over the next week.
