So far, so yellow!

The stages in the Pyrenees just about killed me — so many attacks, Discovery Channel team falling back on the first day, Lance having to work like mad to keep his rivals from gaining on him. But man, what a payoff — he pushed back everybody, including Rasmussen, who was starting to look like a threat. We got to see Armstrong, Basso and Ullrich fight it out on the slopes for kilometers and kilometers. We got to see Georg Totschnig (Gerolsteiner) weep like a baby after winning the stage — even on the podium, he was so overwhelmed. And we got to see George Hincapie, after 9 Tours, finally get a much-deserved stage win. He’s always been a one-day race winner, and while he’s strong in the mountains, he hasn’t been there at the finishes. This time he got in a breakaway that stayed away, and while I thought he had gone too soon for the finish line, and that Pereiro would be able to answer, but he couldn’t, and George sailed across that line. Well done. And that finish puts Lance 2:46 ahead of Basso, but there’s still six more stages where anything could happen.