doodledee

I know the race isn't over, but it's in its closing days and that means it's time for my post race commentary.

• For the record I called race over as soon as Lance passed Ullrich during the prologue. Also, for the record, I was nervous about my pick after Disco blew up and left Lance alone on the sissy climb into Gerardmer at the end of the 8th stage. Colin would say that was all just posturing and faking and that they weren't really that tired, but I believed it then and I believe it now.
• I still think it was stupid that nobody from CSC waited to ride in with the yellow jersey wearing David Zabriskie after he fell in the final kilo of the team time trail. On his blog he claims that before the race the team had agreed they would wait if it was Basso who fell.

• Watching Vino and T-Mobile have a mid-race meltdown has been great. The dude is fearless - in a 'maybe this time I'll succeed in running through a brick wall' kind of way - and he didn't get much, if any, support from his teammates. I wonder how you say "too many chiefs" in Kazakhstani.
• It's hard to pick a favorite moment, but one of the best has to have been the Lance/Popovich exchange on the last climb of stage 10. After setting a blistering pace for the whole day, the 'elite' group at the front was starting to show a little weakness. Lance looked at Poppy, his last remaining teammate, and told him to crank it up. Poppy looked at him and said "when?" and Lance said "now" and the subsequent burst of acceleration basically decimated the field, braking the minds and bodies of the other contenders. Neat.
• The lack of an internet audio feed from OLN caused me to search out other options and I settled on the guys at Eurosport. Not to take anything away from Phil and Paul, but the Eurosport guys are awesome. Jumping up and down in the booth, screaming like maniacs, and oh, yeah, and they also know a hell of a lot about cycling. I found myself wishing they did the TV coverage, too.

The final individual time trial is tomorrow morning. They're showing it live on the bigscreen down at The Riverview Theater so head down there if that type of thing interests you. If I knew for sure that there'd be a ton of people there I'd totally go, but I kinda feel like I'd be the only one in the theater and then it'd just be kinda sad.