Relatively quiet day at the Vuelta today, where Luca Paolini's nifty win was only moderately bloggable or interesting. Only one more dull stage before the action begins at last on Saturday. One more nervious, rainy day for the heads of state.
As for today, we will lift our ban on Pez articles imposed after yesterday's painful headline, and give you their take today. Also props to Cycling Revealed, the first publication to work Don Quixote into the 2006 Vuelta.
Plenty of other racing across the Pond:
- I've been ignoring the Tour of Poland, while Daniele Bennati and Fabrizio Guidi trade sprint wins, with Bennati taking his second today and the mustard jersey to boot. Fun starts tomorrow and finishes, for real, on Saturday.
- Meanwhile, the Tour de l'Avenir is going on in France. It's a continental race, strictly for the young'uns (young guns?), but you might want to see the, ah, list of past winners before ignoring it.
- Oh, and who better than the T-Mob site to preview the Tour of Nuremberg?
Elsewhere...
- The Paceline has Bruyneel's roundup of team news, including his assessment of where Brajkovich now stands (not the leader yet), and an invitation to email JB at
jbruyneel@gmail.com!
- Erik Dekker hurt his wrist in Poland in a crash, according to CN, but nothing broke, so he's still a worlds threat.
- Always entertaining, it's the Chris Horner diary! Hey Chris, how many grand tours have you now ridden this year? Here's a guy earning his next contract.
- For the Umpteenth time, wear a helmet!
Fortunately, our colleague Drew always does, and is resting comfortably and essentially uninjured after getting cut off by (gasp!) a driver too clueless to look. Drew assures me that his fall, going over the hood with one leg still clipped in, would be Stooges-level comedy had it been caught on film. It wasn't, but for the sake of dramatization, we have pictures of his doctor:
And the driver of the car: