Full marks to Lance for his off-road action following Beloki's crash.  He reacted so smoothly to a situation which could have dashed his hopes for the Tour as well.  I was impressed, to say the least, by his most exceptional bike skills to stay upright....with such style too! 

As for my team, we are all very astounded and impressed by the performance of
Tyler - our sole hope for a result at the tour.  Breaking his collar bone in the first stage and then continuing to ride the way he is, is almost unbelievable.  We are all proud of him and hope he can continue.  Even if he has to stop tomorrow, he has already done an amazing job.

Keep an eye out for Jakob Piil too.  He's always one of the guys to pull off a big one when it counts....

As for having the most disappointing near-miss at the tour so far, that has to go to Dave Millar after losing the prologue by .2 of a second after dropping his chain and losing at least 10 seconds.  Now that's gotta hurt.....Let's hope Dave can give it a good nudge in the ITT.

The Aussies.....well what can you say about that lot???  The boys from DownUnder have done the rest of us Antipodeans proud and although when in NZ, Aussies and Kiwis are each other's biggest sport's rival, when we're out of our respective countries, it's always awesome to see them kick some butt for the Southern Hemisphere. 

And finally, as for me, I'm currently at a training camp with the rest of my team getting in week's hard training before the second half of the season gets into gear.  It's nice to be out of
Spain and its relentless heat.  We've been having an incredibly hot summer so far this year which has made doing quality training that much more difficult.  A week's reprieve from 40 degree heat will do me good, I think.  My first race back is Region Wallone so between now and then, I have time to come back up to condition and start racing at a level that will hopefully be a continuation of where I left off.

Spot ya,