Dave's Dogmatic Dribbles

By Dave Osborne
Jul 25, 2003, 12:03

Tour de France: Stage 18

This is for you madre! Lastras takes the stage and dedicates the win to his mother who passed away four months ago. Photo copyright Fotoreporter Sirotti.

 

Ullrich steals a couple seconds in a sprint bonus, 16 riders go on a break at 62 km, and everyone is riding at 50 km/h. At the finish Phil exclaims a racer is coming through like an “express train!” (as opposed to a grand prix motor car). What does all this mean? The race is on!

Unfortunately for Botero, he missed it all. Maybe his alarm clock didn’t go off this morning. Or maybe he slipped out of town in the night. I guess 70^th place in GC is now wide open.

Two things that I have suffered and fear the most have happened. Tyler breaks his collar bone and today Ekimov gets stung by a bee or wasp. I run like a scared rabbit if anyone mentions there is a bee around. Because of a stupid rule, poor Eki can’t even get a shot of cortisone. Maybe they should just make a rule against bees and not allow them in next year’s Tour. I hope you can ride the last 2 days Eki, you’ve been doing great!

Oh yeah, getting back to the race thing. Canada (the person, not the country) is going to win; no wait, it looks like DaCruz; no wait, it looks like Nardello; no wait, it’s going to be Lastras! All that happened in about the last 5 seconds!

What will tomorrow hold…will two seconds make a difference? Stay tuned people, its not over yet!