Le Tour

The Tour de France has one of its toughest stages today. 5 HUGE climbs, one category H (!!) and 4 category 1 (!!!!!!!) climbs. Today is stage 11.

Km 75 - Col du Tourmalet - 18.3 km climb to 7.7 % - H Category
Km 105 - Col d'Aspin - 13.0 km climb to 5 % - 1 Category
Km 136 - Col e Peyresourde - 9.7 km climb to 6.8 % - 1 Category
Km 161 - Col du Portillon - 7.9 km climb to 7.9 % - 1 Category
Km 204.5 - Puerto de Beret - 13.0 km climb to 5.5 % - 1 Category

The tour is really open this time because Lance Armstrong retired and the top 3 riders were disqualified because their names came up in a doping allegation and their respective teams had to pull them out. 10 stages are done and still there is no clear contender. The current overall leader is Cyril Dessel from the AG2R team.

Yesterday was the first tough mountain stage (nothing like today's though) and still it did not throw up any clear contenders. The contenders Floyd Landis (Phonak), Andreas Kloden (T-Mobile), Christophe Moreau (AG2R) and some others are still there off the leader by 3-4 minutes. The biggest casualty so far is probably Iban Mayo (Euskatel - Euskadi) who is down and out sitting in 153rd position 24 minutes away from the leader.

George Hincapie who was by Lance Armstrong's side through all his 7 Tour wins is surprisingly 6 minutes down from the leader. The discovery team does not have a clear leader and that is a little scary.

But after today's stage I expect the picture to clear up significantly. Not only should it bring the contenders for the tour to the top, it will probably also decide the respective team leaders for teams like Discovery and T-Mobile who have a few riders near the top but not a clear team leader...