lost another 7 seconds to Armstrong today (Who finished with Mayo & Ullrich) on the last steep climb to the finish.

I'm surprised that either the stage hurt them or they weren't paying attention.

Anyone watch and know what happened.

Len

Going into the last km, there was an acceleration by BLB and a few of the remaing sprinters, namely Zabel, with Mancebo right there. Postal had got Lance up in prime position and he just went with the acceleration to make sure no time gaps opened up and he wasn't left on the short end of the stick. Ullrich and Mayo were also pretty attentive and were right there, although Ullrich ended up being the last person to get the second group timesplit (by second group I mean after Virenque went through).

Because of the push up the last 250m or so (uphill), a split opened up and Tyler, Heras, Moreau, et al. were left with a 7 second time gap. They just weren't paying attention or were too winded to react to the sudden push. Although in their defense they were further back and the accordian affect slowed their response a bit.

It was interesting to see Lance at the front pushing so hard. I almost thought he was going for second place and the 12 second time bonus. But he ended up getting swept up by Klodden and Zabel, with Mancebo and one other rider squeeking by ahead.

It was probably the most interesting part of the entire race.

~Marc

It was a great finish from Zabel... if LA was going for a bonus, he stole it away.