i generally find sprint stages boring as puck. today's was not.

Exciting finish.

Btw, I was very impressed with the Universal TV feed today. Sharp image and good commentary.

Cagey (and powerful) sprinting by Petacchi. Cav never saw that jump coming.

Except for the part where the commentator exclaimed "Danilo DiLuca wins!!" I was like, WTF? Obviously not DiLuca.

Impressive to see him win somewhat Robbie-style; used to seeing him win at the back of a long train of team support.

Well, no one's perfect.

Oh, and I want to visit Trieste now too.

i'm sure the city council of trieste will be happy to hear that the euros they paid to get he giro there were not in vain.

I'd imagine that was the point.

Not gonna happen next week though...

Yes, that was definitely weird, but otherwise a great feed from Universal.

Why did Armstrong show up at the front about 8K out? Was he serious but got stuck behind that small crash or was he just wanting to be at the front for awhile?

The way Popo was hammering the train it looked like they were serious for a second there. I wonder if Levi was supposed to be up there with them? I think he is only 40 seconds down, but there are some serious GC threats up there that climb as well as he can, Vande Velde for one.

to stay out of trouble, and avoid any possible crashes at that sketchy section where the road narrowed.

i was surprised at how the course narrowed dramatically in a few spots.

good coverage by universal too - didn't feel like i was seeing a commercial every two minutes.

Got to love the effort by Leonardo Scarselli too.

Happy sponsors right now.

I wish I could have watched it. It sounded like a pretty good show.

Levi and Basso both lost 13 seconds to most of the other GC guys.

Where is everyone watching this?

It's on TV. Universal is covering it.

Levi was in the second group, 0:13 behind the Lance/Cavendish bunch.

Question: is there a way for me to watch it right now? not life 8:30-noon EST?

I think Petacchi will have Cavendish's number in this race. I've always thought MC was winning mostly because of Ale-jet's absence.

Probably because his DS told him they were paying attention to people who were actual factors in the stage, instead of providing the fawning coverage normally found on VS. I kept waiting for a 15 minute segment on the iconography on his Trek. Did I miss it?

Actually I'm glad he's there, at least it's on TV. And (gasp) they had 30 minutes on the Tour of the Basque Country. They keep this up and I might have to get Tivo.

They are replaying it a couple of times if you get the channel.

I thought the Gilbert/Pozzato move might work...both those guys race their bikes but just couldn't seem to get a good rotation going.

That was embarrassing for Cavendish. His team set him up perfectly (though LPR, especially DiLuca did a lot to get AP up there), I was thinking "Well, this is over", then my asthma inhaler kicked in. No. Way.

Way!

I guess once you get to 160 or so wins, they stop being flukes.

Going to be fun to watch from here out.

Lance looked rediculous in those new glasses oakley has.

I just noticed when I saw a shot of Columbia yesterday.
Where is Bert Grabsch? Does that guy even race his bike?

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