Soler Power

The great thing about the Tour is that you can go from being virtually unkown to an international cycling sensation in the span of a few hours. It happened to Thomas Voeckler a few years back. It's looking like it happened to Linus Gerdemann on Stage 7, the way the media's jumping all over his post-win anti-doping declaration. And it may well have happened to Mauricio Soler today. The Colombian climber from the South African wildcard team, Barloworld, demolished the field today an took the last Alpine stage of this years Tour. Among the pre-tour GC contenders, Valverde, Evans, and Leipheimer finished in the top 10. But Rasmussen is all of a sudden looking like he's less interested in wearing polka-dots than yellow. Among other things, this means that Matt may have hosed me again. And Contador looks like a serious threat too. Interesting decisions for Discovery coming up, as Contador leads Leipheimer by about 45 seconds. Moreau, Sastre, and Kloden are hanging in there as well. Vinokourov, however, is not. He conceded another couple of minutes and now sits 8:05 behind Rasmussen and about 5 minutes behind everyone else that matters.

Full reports and results from the usual suspects.

With Mayo, Rasmussen, and Popovych, Dave L takes a second consecutive stage win. Jonny G solidifies his hold on 2nd place, and closes the gap on Matt to a mere 524 points. Hal continues to plummet down the standings, with his second consecutive scoreless stage. As for the rest of us, it's bunched up pretty tight in the middle of the pack. No telling how it's going to get sorted out yet. Saturday's ITT looking like it will be pretty decisive. Has Rasmussen learned how to keep his bike on the road in the race against the clock? I hope not.

Back to the flat roads tomorrow. A couple of small climbs toward the end have breakaway written all over them. You never know who's going to win those. Maybe someone has gotten lucky and picked the winner. We'll find out tomorrow.

Stage 9 Results:

1) David L - 137
2) Rachel - 126
3) Charlene - 123
4) Vic - 118
5) Jonny G - 114
6) Chris - 110
7) Jonny B - 94
8) Johnny S - 75
9) Matt - 52
10) Cheryl - 23
11) David S - 4
12) Hal - 0

General Classification after stage 9:

1) Matt - 1535
2) Jonny G - 1021
3) Vic - 823
4) David L - 783
5) Chris - 752
6) Hal - 726
7) Cheryl - 645
8) Rachel - 504
9) Charlene - 493
10) Jonny B - 343
11) Johnny S - 312
12) David S - 114

Stage winners so far:

Prologue Charlene
Stage 1 Matt
Stage 2 Hal
Stage 3 Matt
Stage 4 Matt
Stage 5 Vic
Stage 6 Matt
Stage 7 Matt
Stage 8 Dave L
Stage 9 Dave L

Today's Jonny B award for bad luck goes to Marcus Burghardt, who was unable to avoid a dog that had sauntered across the road in front of him.


OTT: Okkervil River, No Key, No Plan