Just think if Tyler had just gone the David Millar route and said, "Yeah, I f***ed up and used stuff to gain advantage. I'll do my time and be back." He'd be getting ready for a return in September or October, right?

I wanted to believe him for so long, but the evidence continues to mount against him. I'm sorry, I just can't hang in there with a stone-faced liar.

Nice try, Tyler. I hope the foundation continues to do good work, at least.

here's what boonen said after surviving yesterday's stage:

"I've been riding on my bike for seven hours, I've climbed five cols; tomorrow, there's a stage of 212 kilometres, and after that, a stage of 230 kilometres... I think that's just great," he said sarcastically.

"This is scandalous, it's over the top. They are just shouting that they want to fight against doping, but then they give us a program like this," said Boonen, referring to either the UCI or Tour organisers ASO, or perhaps both.

"I'm also supporting the battle against doping, but with these sorts of stages, the battle will never be won," Boonen said, riding off back to the hotel in an effort to recover from today's stage. -- cyclingnews.com

I'm just f'ing loving it! They deserve it. Watching the "power houses" crumble when their supply of illegal vitamins is cut off is great entertainment. I wish I could've seen Mayo cursing the cameraman. I was watching the live update on the interenet at work yesterday oh'ing and aw'ing as the big names were getting smacked down. I was frustrated because no one else here cares about it.

So are the remaining guys clean or do they just have different suppliers? Hmmmm.

On Boonen not winning a sprint - he's just plain old jumping too early. As far as his comments about doping and the tour being too hard, he needs to quit whining and remember that this race was started on unpaved roads by guys riding stove pipe fixies. Quit b!tch!ing and cowboy up!

Mayo looked like a failed science project shouting at the camera and swerving. lol
I'm glad the Hincapiabators got their big surprise from George. Azcevedo "get me some water George" chop chop.
Levi is freakin me out. Down 7 mins on ITT, gets dropped on stage 10, and then drops the hammer on stage 11. Dude are ya sick or healthy. wtf?
It's amazing how good Landis is at keeping a poker face.

+1, his timing is wayyy off.

Not just Boonen's timing, QS's whole lead out has been all over the place.

Of course it's hard to beat a guy like Robbie who doesn't seem to need a lead out, what with his Harry Potter's Cloak of Invisibility and Floo Powder (or is it a Portkey). Anyway the guy is a friggin' magician. His second place to Friere the other day was just beautiful. Bang out of nowhere.

Doping has tainted this whole tour. And you have to wonder whether or not we've seen some guys who've gotten scared and stopped taking their special medicine.

But with the strongest leaders gone - either retired, kicked out, or abandoned - we're left with riders who haven't led anything. So that stuff has to sort itself out. And it may not sort itself out until after the Tour. No one is controlling the peloton. No one really wants to wear the yellow jersey for more than a day or two. It's kind of like Disco is a microcosm for what is going on with the whole TdF.

What was great, the best moments of yesterday's stage, was Rasmussen and Boogard just killing themselves to get Menchov up those cols. Reminds me of Disco the past few years.

But there's no one at the caliber of Armstrong, Ullrich, Basso, and Valverde left to hammer it out. Leipheimer, Menchov, and Landis are fantastic bike riders, but they're not the best. Well, they may be the best out there now. Throw Kloden and a few others in there and you have a race.

So when anyone asks about the Tour, I say it's wide open because of the doping scandals. But it's also wide open because no one has stepped up to lead. And it's the most interesting in years.

T-Mobile had the golden opportunity to control it on the ride to Pla-de-Beret on Thursday, but completely blew it. They had, what, 4 riders in the top 10 of the GC? How they did not capitalize on that is beyond me. It's like they attacked way too early in the stage and only hurt themselves in the process.

Rabobank stepped up and showed some ability to control the front of the race with Boogard and Rasmussen pacing Menchov. They kept it together until the final climb and then kicked it up a notch to separate the wheat from the chaff, leaving only Floyd, Levi, and Denis to fight to the top. That was as close to a team with its head on straight as we've seen.

From the comments of Floyd and Axel Merckx, Phonak basically told their team to hang back and not kill themselves on the stage. Only Axel rode hard, but he stated he just stayed to mark the Maillot Jaune group. It might mean a fresher Phonak team in the Alps if they don't expend it all in the transition chasing legitimate threats like Popo.

Agreed. That was brilliant.

Correct. Twice Steegemans has moved up to the front with McEwen on the wheel from 10-12 riders back in the last 500 metres. It shouldn't be happening, even though Steegemans is impressive and goes ABSOLUTELY FLAT OUT like he is supposed to when he moves. The lead out trains should be going so fast at 500m to go that no rider can move up more than one or two places in the line.

QS, Lampre, Milram and Credit Agricole have been trying to lead out Boonen, Benatti, Zabel and Hushovd respectively. Each of these teams have been doing disorganised, slow, pisspoor lead outs with clever riders like Friere, McEwen and Caspar taking advantage. What is worse is they are making the same mistakes day in day out.

Many surprises. Do we not have interest in the lesser knowns. Every couple years the new team leaders are in play. The loss of Mayo , Ullrich so changed expectations.
But,other examples of surprises. We all wanted to cheer for Hincapie and now Landiss emerges.
What about the likes of Cunego. Would we not expect more from him?
For Hincapie, possibly his injury last spring.? IT was pretty serious and he lost lots of training time?

That would be great.

Too bad it will never happen.