TDF Stage 5

Lance gave up the yellow and with it almost 10 minutes to the frenchman. 10 minutes with the maillot juane on the shoulders of Voelckler is not much concern; he and his team will fight so hard to keep the jersey over the next few days that they will be exhausted by the time the real race starts in the mountains. Chechu Rubiera and Tricky Beltran both fell hard today, but continued the race and did not look like they were injured beyond some cuts and bruises. Bejamin Neval may have fallen, that has been neither confirmed nor denied. Great finish to the race in the breakaway, it looked like a track race.

This breakaway finally put some actual time between competitors, its better with things a bit broken up. Hopefully Postal and Lance can stay strong and come out of the Alps with a commanding lead [antijinx].

Stage 5 Results
1 O'GRADY Stuart AUS COF in 5h 05' 58"
2 PIIL Jakob DEN CSC at 00' 00"
3 CASAR Sandy FRA FDJ at 00' 00"
4 VOECKLER Thomas FRA BLB at 00' 00"
5 BACKSTEDT Magnus SWE ALB at 00' 00"
Also:
18 ULLRICH Jan GER TMO at 12' 33"
24 ARMSTRONG Lance USA USP at 12' 33"

Overall Standings through Stage 5
1 VOECKLER Thomas FRA BLB in 20h 03' 49"
2 O'GRADY Stuart AUS COF at 03' 13"
3 CASAR Sandy FRA FDJ at 04' 06"
4 BACKSTEDT Magnus SWE ALB at 06' 03"
5 PIIL Jakob DEN CSC at 06' 58"
6 ARMSTRONG Lance USA USP at 09' 35"
Also:
7 HINCAPIE George USA USP at 09' 45"
13 HAMILTON Tyler USA PHO at 10' 11"
21 ULLRICH Jan GER TMO at 10' 30"

I missed it today, choosing instead to pull off a 90km day, last 1/2 in rain.

Lance dropped 10+ min.? Wow.

The race starts in the mountains. Anything before that is all show.

Apparently Lance took a fall early in the race. I didn't see it, but they kept bringing it up.

Really boring stage today. The peleton looked like it wasn't moving at times. The leader's sprints to the finish were interesting, but not worth the 2 hours I spent getting to that point. Today just supports the need for a name change.

First week = Bore de France

Second/Third week = Tour de Lance

I didn't hear that Lance fell, and I watched the entire OLN prerace and all of the live coverage this morning, must have been something that only surfaced after the fact. As long as he's O.K., then the next several weeks should be amazing. Viva Lance!

-Ben

According to Chris Carmichael's daily report on OLN.com, 4 posties went down in crashes today, but not Lance.

There was a pile of wrecks. The last one of the day had a great helicopter shot that showed the middle of the pack just implode and the piled on to each other about 3 deep. At that point the whole of postal was at the front just to avoid that nonsense.

It was a great finish by the 5 on the breakaway with 4 of them trying to avoid the inevitable spint win by o'grady.

Good viewing and excitement for early flat stages.