I do see that Vino's getting better.  But I also saw yesterday he couldn't keep up even with the other GC guys not riding all out. One day of light riding (today) will not cure all his hurts.  He won't all of a sudden be flying up stage 9's HC's leaving the field in his wake. The best he can probably expect is to just keep up- which is a step forward for him.

What he needs to fully recover is about a week.  A week to get over the pain plus re-toughen his body to go all out.  The thing is, he might get it.  Stage 9 could see him bleed a little more time (a minute?) then he has a couple of flat days before the ITT where he will; keep up.  THAT will be when he needs to be fully recovered and IMO he'll be close by then.

So he'll go into the Pyrenees needing to make up time and the rest of the field will know that.  Its hard to see the field letting him go in a stage like they did w/ Landis on stage 17 last year.

A lot of folks have criticized his rivals for not putting more time on him and in part they are right.  But an important aspect of where he sits right now is that all of his rivals (except Rogers of course) have time on him and its a lot harder to pass all of them even if they have a relatively small time gap.  He may pass one of them or two or three.  But there will always be several others who are keeping up with him- unless you think he's THAT much better than the rest.  I don't.