Well, the Tour of California sure did a good job of trashing its credibility, huh? Wasn't there anyone in the organization who could look at this objectively and see how it would play? Gifting chunks of time to the hometown guy? I could go on, and have, but the best summary out there is at TdFBlog. So let's move on to today, another busy one.
- Uh oh... this Ignatiev kid, who beat the big boys in a sprint last week in the Med, just took the Trofeo Laigueglia over luminaries like Pozzato, Bennati, Garzelli, and a lot of other names ending in vowels. Ignatiev, who is twenty-freaking-one years old, jumped the field with 4km and stayed away by four seconds.
- More Disco heartburn? Alum Max Van Heeswijk nabbed stage 3 today at the Ruta del Sol, over teammate Oscar Freire, José Joaquín Rojas and three dozen others. Make it three wins for Rabo in two days. Dario Cioni is clinging to a slim one-second lead over Oscar the Cat with two sprint stages to go.
- Stage 2 of the ToC, currently just getting underway, climbs over the cat-2 Trinity Grade right off the bat, plus a lesser climb at 80km, before a long flat run-in to Sacramento. With the work week resuming, I'm guessing it won't be easy to snag a video stream, at least not in the closing stages (@3pm?).