What a great day for Cycling. What a great year for Spain. OK, nobody at Team Carlos is popping corks yet, but if a Spaniard adds the Tour to the Giro, the Euro, and Wimbledon... is there some sort of special prize for this? Does King Juan Carlos get to run the EU now? Or maybe throw out the first pitch at the World Series? I don't want to get ahead of myself, but let me say all hail our glorious Spanish masters.
Meanwhile, back at the Cafe, where the menu serves only tapas...
We have a winner! Not sure who yet, but Itswells correctly predicted Carlos Sastre's victory today in the Podium Cafe Le Tour Quick Challenge. This means someone will wind up winning the thing, as opposed to the 45-way tie for last that we'd been anticipating. With so little to go on, I'll add one wrinkle: the tiebreaker goes to whoever's pick for the final stage finishes highest. There's a solid chance we could enter Sunday with various teams holding one win... only to see a random guy win the final stage and make a mockery of our tiebreaker. If even this new wrinkle still doesn't result in a lone victor, we'll have to give multiple prizes.
VDS Results: Look for them in the early afternoon.
CERA-gate: CN lifts an interesting item from Aussie radio. Apparently Riccardo Ricco's positive test was the result of some pre-market cooperation -- which we knew. But more specifically, which I hadn't heard, is that the manufacturers inserted a molecule into the CERA formula whose sole purpose was to be detected in blood tests. It's a short walk to computer chips implanted in the butt... but still, this might be a bit more useful.
All for now. Gavia's probably got much more in the pipeline.