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Monday, 21st July, 2008: Fantastic stage finale yesterday. When Cadel Evans lost his only half-fit team mate Popovych early on the last stage, it left him wide open to attack after attack on the final climb. He was complaining afterwards about CSC ganging up on him and making it "three against one".. ffs... what did he expect? Better get used to it, cos teamwork is everything in the tour and the strongest team by far right now is CSC. It's those Cervelo framesets, see...
Two more days in the mountains could take so much time out of Evans that even an outstanding time trial won't be enough to put the whinging ozzie back in yellow. Either that, or he'll fight so hard he won't have the legs. This race will be won or lost in the Alps, not least because those with team help now will have the freshest legs against the clock on Saturday.
Simon Gerrans won yesterday with a brilliantly-timed attack after a shaky ascent, but he's about the only one of the current top six overall – with only 40 seconds separating them – that doesn't time-trial at least as well as CSC's danger men Sastre and Schleck... Kohl, Menchov and Vandevelde all did well last TT & might choose just to follow the CSC uphill machine until the last minute. Wildcat stage wins are probably up for grabs and the Euskadi boys have the form here. Martinez was robbed yesterday and either he or maybe Zubeldia could win back some Basque pride.
Whatever happens this is going to be the mother of all battles. Tomorrows stage is hard as hell, almost as hard as Wednesday when they'll end up on Alpe d'Huez.. and as with any fight, you want your hardest mates there at your side...
ITV4 – bless 'em – have live coverage on Wednesday: if you haven't already booked the day off, get a sick note now!

Sunday, 20th July, 2008: Seems like team Columbia are stronger than we figured, taking the front on the run into Digne-les-Bains yesterday, but as predicted Freire also had the legs to leave Cavendish back on the climb and grab his first win – and green jersey title – this tour. Cav is widely reported to be thinking of quitting today [edit: news just in is that he hasn't started today. See you in China, Mark...] and looking at that 20km HC climb up Col de Agnel, who could blame him... this is now a climber's race and there's no shame in a sprinter bowing out with four stage wins in the bag. He won't be the only class act failing to emerge the other side of the Alps; Robbie McEwan, without a stage win for the first tour in five years thanks to Cav, won't have anything driving him up the big climbs inside the time limit. The finish today is in Italy and you have to fancy Cunego's chances of winning on home turf. With Riccò out, he's the best-placed Italian climber and will be balls-out to take this one, while everyone else conserves as much energy as possible. The CSC climbers – Sastre, Voigt and the Schleck brothers – will likely start attacking the yellow jersey as well, hoping to hurt Evans, who has no team support left and will ironically be relying on the likes of CSC to hunt down the Alpine attacks. Today, Valverde, Vandevelde and Menchov all look like contenders, but (barring a long breakaway) Cunego's Italian Lampre squad will be badly wanting to drag him to the finish line ahead of them.

Saturday, 19th July, 2008: Well, he did it, left the best sprinters in the world standing. Against a headwind. The ITV4 coverage didn't show the overhead shot, which reveals just how big a gap Cavendish made over 100m. This post-stage interview from Versus shows him accelerating away from McEwan to the line. Amazing! There was an equally amazing crash yesterday, when Sven Krauss hit a traffic sign and snapped his bike in half. The ITV4 footage was as good as it gets. You might get the vid from the Cavendish interview link, if not here it is. There's talk of Oscar Freire trying to lose Cav on today's cat 4 climb, but the Columbia boys are way too tired to fight the uphill battle today. Friere might well win it. With Kirchen fading, for team Columbia it's a more case of surviving the Alps with enough left to contest the sprint in Paris, if Cav lasts that long. And if he does...

Friday, 18th July, 2008: So much for this being a relatively "clean" tour. The arrest of Ricardo Riccò yesterday and retirement of the entire Saunier Duval team was a real shocker. The word is that all three dopers this tour have been using the same new form of EPO they thought was undetectable to the testers, but they were wrong. Makes you wonder just how strong Riccò really would have been without it, and how good his hero Pantani really was, had he not been a dope fiend himself. The crazy thing is, Pantani's shame hasn't really tainted his memory in the minds of cycling fans. EPO abuse was so rife in the nineties, when average pro cycling performance levels coincidentally shot up, that every top-level contender must have been doing something – legal or not – just to stay competitive. Whether they still do is up for debate. On a completely different note (hopefully..) we should have put money on Cav winning yesterday, as predicted. He wasn't as aggressive as last time but today's relatively flat stage is as perfect for him as yesterdays was. He's currently 11/4 favourite to take an incredible fourth stage win in Nîmes. I wish I'd had a fiver on that record before the start...

Tuesday, 15th July, 2008: At last, a rest day. It's been a quiet tour so far; just one rider hauled off for doping [edit: two now, both Spaniards... is there a pattern here?] and a dozen or so leaving the race early, notably Barloworld's Soler, who crashed early on and broke a wrist bone. They're not awarding points bonuses at the finish line, meaning the sprinters have had to work extra hard. Top of that bunch has been the much-hyped UK rider Mark Cavendish, who's been awesome (see vid below) while the top climber has definitely been Saunier-Duval's Ricardo Riccò, who not only rides a lot like the late, great Marco Pantani, he carries a photo of him in his jersey pocket and wears a pirate outfit to bed. Actually, I made that last one up, but the photo thing's true...

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