I am watching this slightly delayed on my dvr on OLN channel 470 in Austin on Time Warner cable. Jan Bruyneel just jumped out of his car and gave Ekimov ("Eky") a push. He was having some mechanical problems. I was glad to see my favorite, Thor Hushovd (the Norwegian in green), win the yellow jersey for his time in the 4.4 mile prologue yesterday. Today is for the sprinters, and it's underway.

Floyd Landis! from my own http://austincast.com/blog Today, Landis nailed it in the time trail, besting Oscar Peirero and Carlos Sastre by enough to ride in to Paris tomorrow toasting with champagne. Landis is up by 59 seconds over Oscar and they're good friends so no one expects a challenge or breakout from Oscar. But then again, this has been the strangest of Tour de France's. This blog entries are from the previous two days and are on http://touroftexas.com/blog http://austinblogger.com/blog and http://austincast.com/blog (3 replicant posts) Floyd Landis - Superman? from worst to best in one day By austincast Two days ago Floyd Landis had one French newspapers depicted at the �worst performance in Tour history�. (pictured left on the podium with Bernard Hinault the five time Tour winner) Yesterday, Floyd had what may be called the best peformance in Tour de France history. The 30-year-old Landis, who said two weeks ago that he would soon need a full hip replacement, rebounded to ride alone to victory by almost six minutes in yesterday�s mountain stage. The effort jumped Landis, who rides for the Swiss Phonak team, from 8 minutes, 8 seconds behind race leader Oscar Pereiro of Spain�s Caisse d�Epargne to third place, 30 seconds behind Pereiro and 18 seconds behind Carlos Sastre of CSC. Landis performance was legendary, but he�s not satisfied. If you want to read a great cycling bloggers rundown, check out Martin Dugard�s blog, here�s a tidbit from that blog entry: �That he did. Per his style, Landis didn�t explode away from the peloton in the manner of most breakaways. Rather, he gradually left a yellow jersey group containing Oscar Pereiro, Cadel Evans, Andreas Kloden, and Denis Menchov. He tiptoes away like a cat burglar, as if afraid of drawing attention to himself. Landis then began an 80-mile individual time trial, constantly dousing himself with water on this humid mountain afternoon, at one point pulling so far ahead that he was the virtual leader of the race.� . . . Ah� but when Floyd crossed the line today, fist thrust into the air and a scowl on his face, Amber Landis jumped up and down. �Oh, baby!� she screamed, fighting back tears. Only this time they were tears of joy. And, if I am to be honest here, I was a little misty, too� So tomorrow the stage is a little on the downhill side, a 120-mile run from Morzine down into Macon. Teams might try to take a little bite out of Landis, hoping to gain a few seconds on him before Saturday�s time trial. With Pereiro (with whom Landis ate breakfast this morning, just the two of them) 30 seconds in front and Sastre 18 seconds up, Landis is close enough that a powerful time-trial Saturday will likely win him the Tour.� Like I said, it�s a great blog entry from a guy who was sitting watching the race with Amber Landis. http://blogs.active.com/dugard/ This race, can you believe it, could go right down to the Champs Elysees on Sunday. Posted in cycling, event, lance, lancearmstrong, tourdefrance, letour | Edit | No Comments July 20th, 2006 Floyd Landis amazing recovery By austincast �I am here to win the Tour de France� was the reply given when he was asked to comment on his amazing comeback in today�s stage of the tour de france at the podium. At the start of the last mountain stage, the favourites for the yellow jersey were, the current holder Oscar Perreiro, Menchov, Carlos Sastre, Dressel and a few others. But Floyd Landis wasn�t even counted as a contender anymore. At yesterdays mountain stage, Landis lost 10 minutes to Perreiro for an overall deficit of 8 minutes. Coming into the final mountain stage today, no one expected Landis to be in the top 5 fnish let alone the maillot jaune (yellow jersey), but after todays incredible breakaway from the peloton, Landis managed to build up a 7 minute lead which he held on till the finish of the 200.5 km mountain stage with steep ascents amounting to upto 10 degrees in the final 20 kms. Today�s stage was an awesome comeback by Landis, who had been written off by the Frech Press sometime back, when he held the yellow jersey, as some one who wasnt really worthy of it. Like the OLN announcers said, Landis seemed like a man possessed. He didn�t know what went wrong yesterday having cracked in the final 20 kms losing a huge 10 minutes. He made no excuses and today he was the man to reckon. As of today Perreiro leads in the general classification, with Sastre 12 seconds behind and Landis 30 seconds back. So who�s it going to be? Saturday�s time trial should tell the tale of this year�s Tour de France. Share and Enjoy: