Lots of subplots this morning. In the green jersey chase, Tom Boonen will be nervously eyeing that cat-2 hill toward the day's end. Milram and Barloworld will want to put him under pressure... provided their own sprinters can get over the thing. In the main event, nobody in their right mind will want to do anything on the eve of the time trial and the Pyrenees... which is where Alexandre Vinokourov comes in. He showed his true colors today: attack at all costs, against all reason. Vino knows how to race smartly from the front, but since he no longer has that luxury, it's back to the old aggressive Vino, to see who he can crack. Interestingly, there will be a huge collective temptation to ignore him, and at 8.05 back you can almost justify it. But letting him back in the race would hurt a lot more than ganging up to chase him down.
There are a lot of guys waking up now, hoping a suitable break gets away and stays there, so the contenders for all the various titles still up for grabs can take it easy, one last day.