Tour Tidbit du Jour - 7/25/08

Usually, the stage before the final time trial is supposed to be relaxing, tranquilo as the peloton calls it, where they let the breakaways go, and just make sure no one gets injured. However, on today's stage, since the earlier sprint stages were set up a little hard for the sprinter teams, and the flat stages were all scooped up by Team Columbia's Mark Cavendish, all the sprinter teams were chasing down the breaks, just trying to make something happen. Even then, two guys were able to break away, but the pace was so hard, that a grupetto finished up 13 minutes behind the finishers, and three guys were eliminated at 28 minutes behind. And these guys, Flecha, Feillu, and Wegman are some of the toughest guys on the tour, but they got blasted on a flat stage. So much for a recovery stage...