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Man what a finish! Stage 17 proved to be a great stage for Lance and US Postal. Unfortunately I missed the live coverage ending this morning, so I made a point of avoiding any possible news coverage until I had a chance to watch it again. Four straight mountain stages now for Lance. I don’t think Klöden really knew what hit him until it was over, Lance just accelerated that hard and fast up to and then past him. Poor Phil Ligget had even called Klöden’s victory in the stage not even 20 seconds before Lance opened up his sprint.
With over 8 minutes on Ullrich, 5 over Klöden and 4 on Basso, it is fairly safe to say the Lance has done it. Barring a disaster tomorrow or in the last time trial he will take the Yellow into Paris. The races now are for 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the General Classification. Currently it’s Basso, Klöden and Ullrich respectively, but Basso could easily lose his place on the podium in the final time trial. Klöden only needs a minute gain in stage 19 to take 2nd, and Ullrich could very well take the 4 minutes he needs to finish ahead of Basso in a long flat time trial like Saturdays.
The other races are for the White Jersey (Young Rider) and Team competition. Both awards are tight right now. After holding the Yellow for 10 days Thomas Voeckler is now only 45 seconds ahead of Vladimir Karpets, and just under 2 minutes up on Sandy Casar. A good time trila by either of them could take the white jersey from Voeckler (but I sure hope he rides the TT of his life and keeps the jersey.) Ten and a half minutes seperates the top three teams right now, with the remaining teams all over 50 minutes behind. With a strong showing by all in the stage 19 time trial US Postal could pull off winning the GC and team competitions in the same year, which would be quite a feat, but for then again for this team…