Voigt, Zubriskie, Merckx, Rasmussen.

Quel etage!

If you were to name the major teams over the past several seasons, all of them came out to play today except Discovery. The implosion there suggests that they still have recovered from Lance’s departure. Morale is obviously quite low. Meanwhile, the other well-drilled teams each put into play classic strategy. And this now includes Phonak.

Phonak opted to put a domestique up the road to help out on the final climb. And it was great to watch Merckx fils bury himself for his c.g. leader.

CSC went on offense as their Viking DS would have it; they made the stage today. Zubriskie has become my new favorite rider. It’s great to see an American riding on a fully European team and burying himself as part of a larger effort to spring a teammate for a win. Not since Greg Lemond has there been an American so truly integrated into the workings of a non-Americo-centric team. What else does one say about Voigt but that here’s a hard, hard man.

T-Mobile has always been a bit of an enigma: Vino, Kloden, Ullrich…it’s never been a clear situation. Kloden has been lucky to inherit full command but even still Massolini was never in it to help him up the mountain; he did his bit only after Damiano Cunego told him to fuck off. Still, Kloden looked better than good today while Menchov suffered. Will Menchov recover from the rest day? I’m not sure. He’s a big ring climber and needs to learn that F X V = W can result in a large value with a small F and a big V.

That said, Rasmussen’s effort to try to bring Menchov back into contention probably deserves the l’or du jour for the gutsiest contribution to a team. Rather than drop back to help, he rode his way to the front on L’Alpe. Enough said.

Tomorrow will be interesting. I stand by my previous predictions…although now I’m wondering if the podium will be Landis, Kloden, Leipheimer…with Menchov out of the picture. One thing is for sure…only two riders didn’t go to their limit today: one was Landis, can you guess who the other was?