If you’d asked me before the stage to pick the winner, I probably would have picked a dozen or more before picking Stefan Schumacher. I definitely would have picked each and every other member of the top ten (named like Millar and Cancellara come to mind) and there are a few who finished a minute or more behind the Gerolsteiner rider (Valverde.)
Beyond that shocker at the top, the biggest surprise for me was the lackluster performance put in by Alejandro Valverde. He really didn’t show up today, which is a big disappointment- at least from a competitive perspective. From the other side, in addition to a rooting interest in the American teams, I’ve decided to pull for Denis Menchov (as karmic payback from last year’s debacle), so from that perspective, Valverde finishing that far back was a positive.
Now that we’ve had a little bit of a shakeup, I’m really looking forward to the finish atop the Cat 2 Super-Besse in a couple of days. We’ll have a lot better sense of who the real characters are for this particular drama after that initial mountain skirmish. It’s not quite tough enough to be decisive, but it will start to tell the story and this year’s Tour is looking to be one of the most interesting in years.
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