Road Bike Racing - [Spolier] Stage 8 results.

The top six in the overall classification after stage eight is:
1. Lance Armstrong (USP)
2. Jooseba Beloki (ONE) at 40"
3. Iban Mayo (EUS) at 1'10"
4. Alexandre Vinokourov (TEL) at 1'17"
5. Francisco Mancebo (BAN) at 1'37"
6. Tyler Hamilton (CSC) at 1'52"


Hamilton's 6th place is just as, if not more, incredible...

Go USA...:D

woo hoo now i dont have to watch it :)

Hamilton is a monster! I wouldn't want to race against him (couldn't come close anyway even if I tried! :lol: )!

Go Lance! It's no spoiler for me since I don't have OLN.... :( :cry:

Go everyone! :D This is shaping up to be much more exciting than last year!

Koffee

According to the live report by Cycling News, Hamilton was attacking all the way up the last mountain.:eek: Pretty amazing guy.

Just watched the weekly recap on CBS and Tyler was incredible. I couldn't believe he was right there at the front pushing Bolaki and LA all the way up the mountain. Looks like this year is going to be a lot different than last year. I think team postal is gonna have their work cut out for them.

Thank you for the report! I have been gone all weekend and away from my computer, cable, and radio.

What an amazing day! The finest day of racing I've seen in years.

Hamilton is god. Lance played it conservatively. I love this sport.

Tyler was suprising, to me. Even disregarding his injury... it was cool to see him riding right up front with Armstrong and Beloki.

Mayo won the stage by almost 2 minutes... an amazing ride, in my mind.

That was a little nervous moment when I saw Lance and Heras crash on the Galibier descent... it didn't look that bad though.

I just got thru watching the OLN coverage a few minutes ago.

Mayo had an awesome ride, and what a battle with all the attacks. Hamilton - just amazing. I was disappointed to see Ullrich fall off the pace a bit.

What about Armstrong? Conserving or vulnerable? I thought Phil and Paul made what sounded like goods points on both sides.

Armstrong has played dead before-everybody remember the year, I think 2001, when he rode at the back of the group up the first big mountain, and Telekom sent all its climbers to the front and started riding tempo to try and drop him, and then when they hit the first really steep section, Heras and Armstrong popped to the front like helium balloons, and all the tempo riders were dead from trying to drop him and he just rode away from them. Nobody screws with him tactically after that.

You can be sure that noone is saying that Lance is this or that for sure. Everyone is saying, "Well, he might be conserving his energy", or "he might be getting old", but noones gonna stick their neck out. He has been just to dominant.

Lance did say that he wasn't at his best today. All riders have off days. For an off day though he was still pretty impressive.

He recovers really quickly though and gets stronger as the tour goes on.

Damn

I'm hoping Lance is just conserving his energy and playing this smart :D Even people who are machines are human sometimes...although I would've really prefered to have seen Lance rocket up the mountain as he usually did in the past.

is hamilton stupid or a god, he could be doing long term damage?

he's neither. he's just a very very hard man who i'd like to buy a beer.

i'm sure his doctors would have let him know if long term damage was a possibility. the last set of x-rays he had taken looked good. he'll make it to paris barring any further crashes.

Mayo's ride was amazing - that look of pure enjoyment on his face was wonderful. Beloki looks on good form as well. Whilst I think you'd be daft not to have Armstrong as favourite hopefully it won't be a one horse race for first.

Originally posted by KennethToronto
Damn

I'm hoping Lance is just conserving his energy and playing this smart :D Even people who are machines are human sometimes...although I would've really prefered to have seen Lance rocket up the mountain as he usually did in the past.


I heard that in the Tour, it helps you win to know which stages you can afford to lose and who you can afford to lose to?

Originally posted by Koffee Brown
Hamilton is a monster!

He's a freak! It would have been an amazing performace sans injury. What he is doing is simply amazing! :D

I think Lance was just playing it cool and covering Beloki, with 2 more weeks of the tour left it would make sense to conserve yourself. Anybody notice his face didn't seem as pain striken as the other attackers? How about his riding style, when he was seated he wasn't rocking very much either. And then right at the end he pretty much left those other guys in that sprint to the finish. Of course I could be wrong as well, but he sure didn't look whipped to me.

And that tactic right at the base of the climb, very smart move. To bad it didn't drop everybody (or well GC contenders), but they really poured it on.

Andrew

Am i the only one that heard LA say his rear brake was rubbing for a while.

Yeah, I heard that also. It's either a blow to the moral or it's a positive thing.